Personal Blogs

My sister headed off last week to walk the Camino, she’s started in the south of France and is walking to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. For her, it really is a pilgrimage and not just a chance to post a selfie on social media.  Five years ago, this week, she lost her sixteen year old son Jude, to a brain tumour and is struggling with the loss more this year, than when he died.  The truth is, she hasn't fully grieved her loss and is trying to find some way to work through it and so, she thought that walking the Camino would help, and something she felt she had to do.

Around the time he died, I was going through a very rough patch too which went on for some time.  It was the culmination of all the traumatic events that had happened in my life and they came back to haunt me in one crashing blow.  One day, I was sitting thinking about all that had happened and feeling sorry for myself and asking the usual, 'Why me?' 'Why did I have to go through so much?', wallowing in self-pity and then, another thought struck me. I thought, 'Well, why not me? Yes, why not me? What is so special about me that I should I be exempt from suffering?  And, if not me, then, who?’ Could I point a finger at anyone and say, 'No, give my suffering and pain to them'. And I couldn't because as much as we might feel there are some who do deserve to suffer, (like the Tories) no-one really knows what is going on in anyone else’s life or what burdens they may have to carry so, why not me? And that was a big turning point.

There is a lot written on the subject of trauma and forgiveness and it is often said that, in order to move on from past traumas, we have to forgive. I’ll be honest, I always had difficulty with this and I know others who think the same. I’ve forgiven no one for what they have done to me but what I have come to realise is that it is not those who have injured us that we have to forgive, it is ourselves.  This was another step forward for me, to forgive myself for having allowed myself to be vulnerable or for putting myself into a situation where others could use or take advantage of me.  I did not always have control over the events or situations and often, my biggest fault was naivety, believing people to be friends when they were anything but.  In forgiving myself however, I have been able to make peace with the past and move on and the days or sitting feeling sorry for myself or ruminating on the why’s and wherefores are now over. 

They say, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and I have to admit, it was touch and go with that one for a while but in watching my nephew and my sister struggle and fight for his life, how could I throw my life away so, I soldiered on through the pain, like my sister is doing now, soldiering on across northern Spain.  And that is all you can do with that kind of pain and sorrow.  If it is something that happened in the past, there is absolutely nothing we can do to change it.  All we can do is sit with the pain, grieve our losses and eventually, we move on or at least, find a way to live with it.

I now have a full understanding of how and why things happened the way they did and the part I played in it.  That is another important step on the road to making peace with myself, being able to look back and admit to how I contributed to some of those events. I don’t mean that I consciously sought pain or suffering but because I wasn’t acting with full consciousness, it was almost inevitable that I would attract the wrong type of person into my life.  I had a victim mentality and may as well have been walking around with a large sign above me saying, ‘use and abuse’. 

Growing up in Northern Ireland and being brought up Catholic, didn’t help either as both those things feed into the victim mentality. 

I’m reading a book at the moment by Dr Gabor Maté. It’s called When the Body Says No and it is about pyschoneuroimmuno(endocrino)logy(try saying that after a few beers!) It details how stress is linked to cancer and how there are similar patterns of personality/behaviour in a lot of cancer patients. They are usually people who can’t say no and who insist in taking care of everybody and everything.  Then, they end up ill with cancer and when their past is delved into, there is usually a history of abuse of some kind, usually in childhood, where they were unable to express their emotions in a healthy way, especially anger and remained that way into adulthood and so they are still operating from a place of sub-consciousness. 

I thought this was interesting, especially this week, when it was announced that Willie Frazer had died from cancer which he had been battling for some time. Willie Frazer was the founder of FAIR – Families Acting for Innocent Relatives – and was full of hate and anger. His anger was understandable; he lost not only his father but several other family members at the hands of the IRA.  He could not make peace with the past or let it go, and it may have cost him his health and his life.

Also, on the news this week, was the result of a government consultation on plans to deal with the legacy of the Troubles where it was revealed that a majority opposed an amnesty for veterans.  I have to say, I was very disappointed to hear this.  There has been a lot of suffering in Northern Ireland and anyone who lost a family member or friend in the Troubles has my deepest sympathy. But, you cannot change the past and if you have lost someone, how can you ever really get justice? You can’t bring them back.

But, there are still a lot of people here with the victim mentality who won’t let the past go.  They wear their suffering where everyone can see it, they are victims, they keep dragging it up, like the scab on an old wound, they can’t or won’t leave it alone, picking at it and picking at it, never giving it time to heal. Each side, claiming victimhood, at the hands of the other.

There are very few of us who get a free pass through life and don’t have challenges, pain or loss to deal with at some point. We can piss and moan about it forever and a day but it won’t change anything.  In the end, there is little that can be done other than to sit with the pain, face it and deal with it, cry, go for a long walk, find a way that works for you to get through it because you have to go through it, there is no way around and if you don’t deal with it, it may be waiting for you further down the road or it may be quietly eating at you, in other ways.

Thankfully, I have now come out the other side of my ‘pain’, and while it was a tough road, I can look back now and see that it was both a learning experience and a period of great personal and spiritual growth and I would never have fully grown up without facing that pain and dealing with it.  I still have no forgiveness for those who were instrumental in contributing to my suffering but I can see now how nasty, weak and pathetic they really are. I’m not angry at them because I don’t have the energy to sustain that kind of anger and they’ve taken up enough of my time and energy and they’re not getting any more.  Actually, not only am I not angry, I don’t really feel much of anything for them, they just don’t really matter and maybe that’s the best place to be.  Maybe that is forgiveness?

I was walking the dog up around the river this morning and all the wildflowers/grasses and weeds(??) were blooming so I picked a few added some calendula and white foxgloves from the garden and voila! I'm very pleased with this and it got me wondering why are some plants regarded as weeds and what makes something a weed as opposed to a flower?  I stopped trying to dig the dandelions and buttercups out of my flower beds as I had noticed that dandelions are one of the first plants to flower in spring and an early source of nectar for bees.   I bought 3 grasses for my garden and they don't seem to have taken, looking at the wild grasses I thought, why did I bother to buy something that grows freely anyway so the grasses won't be getting the chop again either.

Number 3 son got married a couple of weeks ago and a great time was had by all!  It wasn't a traditional church wedding as neither bride nor groom are religious but it was held in the historic and very picturesque, Guild Hall, in Derry.  The reception was in a marquee in the garden of the bride's family home which sounds very posh but wasn't really. it was all very relaxed and casual and one of the best weddings I ever attended but maybe I'm biased.  And as a bonus, Liverpool won the European Cup that same night which added another layer of celebration to what was already a very happy occasion and we sang and danced into the wee small hours.

I was trying to upload a picture of me in my wedding finery but it keeps coming out sideways.  I then tried to change it to my profile picture but again it kept coming out sideways and there are no options to move/resize or rotate the image.  Extremely frustrating! It's a fairly simple process to upload a picture and it should be straight forward but the OU seems to be years behind with updating the technology and what you can do with your blog.

Meanwhile, back in the world of politics, we have the 'night of the long knives' as the egotistical and obnoxious scrabble about for the job of PM and leadership of the Tory party.  Boris, 'the buffoon' is, of course, the front runner, making him the prime target for the Neo-Liberal Fascists in the media and the EU.  Don't be fooled by the 'tomfoolery', Boris Johnson is a perfect example of the old saying, 'stupid as a fox!'  Which could be dodgy enough for Boris, considering the Tory position on foxes??? 

Maybe it's just me but there is something profoundly repulsive about Jeremy Hunt, he has a strange starey look about the eyes which I don't trust and makes me suspect he may actually be, I was going to say Artificial Intelligence, but I have serious doubts about the intelligence part of that but most certainly, very artificial or just full of artifice.  

Rory Stewart seems like a reasonable human being but then I remember he is a Tory!  I don't have a favourite, after all, they are all Tories but when you sit back and look at the whole thing, you realise what a complete and total farce it all is.  An unseemly scrabble between weak men with big egos because lets face it, if there was a real man among them, he would stand out a mile.  

I have to say, though, wasn't that an interesting bit of gossip about Michael Gove and his past dalliance with cocaine? Old dull and boring Gove, who would have thought it?  Although, they do say, it's the quiet ones you have to watch, I wonder what else he gets up to??  Can't you just picture him in all that bondage gear getting a damned good thrashing from a dominatrix!  Hmmm,,. maybe I should consider a career change...

Meanwhile, things are hotting up in the Middle East as the dark forces of the ‘Empire’ (CIA, Saudi Arabia, Mossad, Bilderburg) up their game in an attempt to start the war to seize control of Iran’s oil.

When I look back now at the events of the last 19 years, I have to wonder was it a coincidence that the secular states in the Middle East were the ones to be attacked and the leadership removed, think Iraq, Libya and the attempt to topple Assad in Syria.  Was the dark hand of Saud operating in the background and pulling some of the strings all this time?  It is refreshing to see that online, at least, the attack on the ships in the Hormuz Strait is fooling no-one and I haven't seen a comment yet that believes Iran was responsible.  Will that stop the sabre-rattling and a war?  I would hope so but considering the past and Iraq, I doubt it...

I don’t know about you but I feel as if I have just come through 3 weeks of ‘shock and awe’ on ‘climate change’. Between the media, Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion, we have been bombarded with ‘climate change’ propaganda. And no harm to Greta, she is supposed to be a clever girl but maybe she should start looking at the real scientific facts and not just the misinformation pumped out by the IPCC.

It was also quite nauseating to watch all the neo-liberals fawning over her. They even trotted out Ed Miliband for the all-star, and old has-been, meet Greta Thunberg Show. I wonder if the neo-liberals are planning a comeback or maybe a coup to oust Jeremy Corbyn. However, I’m also beginning to wonder if Jeremy has already crossed over to the dark side of the neo-liberal, politically correct and all-inclusive fascist movement?  One of the biggest disappointments recently was watching him jump on the Greta bandwagon by declaring a ‘climate emergency’. That should make for an interesting conversation, the next time he speaks to his brother Piers! 

Greta also stated after her speech to the EU that she was going to travel home by only using ‘green’ transport.  A noble idea with absolutely no meaning in reality, unless she planned to walk home barefoot across fields which is the only real way to travel ‘green’. Because every car, bus, train, boat and pair of shoes has been made in a factory somewhere using oil and products derived from oil because there is no human process anywhere on earth that doesn’t impact on the environment in some way. Unless you live in a house made from mud that you built yourself, grow and eat only your own vegetables using organic methods, spin your own cloth from your own crops and make your clothing by hand with a needle carved from wood and never fly, drive or travel, use a phone or any modern appliance, then you cannot be truly ‘green’. What is wrong here, is that we lack perspective and proportion but mostly, it is because we are narcissistic about who we are and what we can do. We, white folk here in the west, think we know it all about everything. We know how to fix the planet, we’re going to save the world, just like we knew how to bring all those indigenous and primitive tribes to civilisation. Because our way, is the best way, simply because it’s our way and anyone who thinks differently is stupid, misguided and ignorant. Gawd, bless us, one an’ all!

Meanwhile, in a boardroom or Bilderburg meeting somewhere far from us plebs and guarded by the forces of the state, while we’re all being distracted and arguing away about ‘climate change’ and Brexit and any other item they can use to keep us divided, other darker and more sinister forces are at work. In case you hadn’t noticed, there is a nice little build-up of tensions going on in the gulf as the US and the Saudi’s sabre-rattle towards Iran and the anti-Russian rhetoric is starting to build up online again too. Is there a war looming while we’ve all been looking the other way?

Going back to Brexit, I have to say, it was great to see the Tories getting trashed in the council elections.  Roll on the Euros! The Shinners got a bit of a drubbing here too and lost 4 seats on our council. It was heartening to see a move away from the old 1690/1916 parties and a swing towards independents and Alliance. I’m sure the murder of Lyra McKee had some influence on this. Not that it makes much difference to the politicos, they’re still trying to get the Assembly up and running again and still churning out the same old rhetoric.  ‘It’s not us, it’s them! Ya, boo sucks!’

Another interesting thing that happened a few weeks ago, it was actually the week before Extinction Rebellion started their protests in London, but wasn’t mentioned anywhere on the BBC, was the protest in London by 22,000 bikers and veterans in support of Soldier F. In case, you don’t know, Soldier F is being prosecuted over the Bloody Sunday shootings. A travesty if ever there was one. I don’t live very far from Derry but there are many there who disagree with this prosecution. This soldier has been scapegoated and hung out to dry by the powers that be. There are several reasons why this should not go ahead. For a start, soldiers act under orders so if there are going to be any prosecutions, it should be whoever gave the order. Secondly, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, all the Republican and Loyalist prisoners were freed. If they did not have to serve out their terms, then no one should be brought before the Courts for any of these past issues and events. The Attorney General John Larkin suggested a while ago that there should be no prosecutions for anything prior to the GFA and that we should draw a line under the past. Of course, he was met with howls of protest from most of the politicians and only Basil McCrea of NI21 supported the idea. Come to think about it, I haven’t heard of NI21 since! 

I managed to save about 80 lives yesterday with nothing more than a discarded cup from McDonalds.  I was up around the river in Sion with the dog and was checking out the tadpoles, there hasn't been much rain and most of the pools of water in the fields had disappeared.  I was going to go home and get a bucket but found the cup in a ditch so filled it instead, took it home and put the tadpoles in the tub in the backyard with the ones I had brought home a couple of weeks ago.  I may go back up in the morning with a bucket of rainwater and see if that helps those who were left behind.  It gives rain for later in the week but I don't think they'll last until then without a top up.

So, they're happy now feeding on cucumber and swimming around.  I'm going to hold on to them until they get a bit bigger then move them to the allotment.  They should help keep some of the pests at bay and are a better solution than chemicals.  

I've had workmen in all morning, putting in new windows so I had to seek refuge in the library.  When I was down there, I read a newspaper or at least part of one.  That's the first paper I've read in years, there was an interview with the wonderful Ralph Fiennes and also, a piece on the Bolshoi Ballet who are coming to London's Royal Opera House, later this year.  I must check it out.  

Apparently, Ralph lives alone and drew the distinction between being alone and being lonely.  This is something I have to explain quite often too.  I live alone too and I love it.  I'm quite happy in my own company, probably too much so, but everyone should try it.  They say you're not fit for a relationship until you've lived alone which is probably good advice.  

The windows are all in now and the mess isn't too bad.  The floors all need washed and there is a film of dust over everything so I may get on with it and start cleaning up!

I had a lovely weekend away in England, I went over to visit my sister and we managed to squeeze in a trip to London on Saturday.  There were a couple of exhibitions on in the Tate Modern that I wanted to see, Pierre Bonnard's, The Colour of Memory and Magic Realism, Art in Weimar Germany 1919 - 1933.  We didn't manage to get into the Pierre Bonnard exhibition as we had walked up the 3rd floor, only to be told, we had to go back down to the entrance and buy a ticket and the gallery itself was very busy, so we just did the Magic Realism instead and had a look around some of the other exhibits.  It was ok, but like a lot of art movements, they haven't travelled very well.  They are of a place and time in art and some of them were quite cartoonish and overall, I only liked one or two of the pieces.  

Picasso's Weeping Women was also on display in the gallery.  It is quite a gaudy painting but what made it worse was the ugly frame which did it no favours at all.  I found this with a lot of the paintings in the National Gallery in Ireland too, so many were let down by clunky, overly ornate frames which detracted from the art.  i prefer my art, for the most part, in plain white frames.  In relation to the rest of the 'art' we looked at, I have to say there is a lot of brock masquerading as art.  As my sister remarked, a lot of it looked like A-level art projects and left her cold.  I had to agree, Modern Art is very subjective and to be honest a lot of it really doesn't appeal to me, I'm conservative in my tastes and while I recognise that sometimes art can express the social and political, it has to be done well in order not to appear pretentious or ridiculous. 

So, we headed for the National Portrait Gallery which has an exhibit on at the moment; Elizabethan Treasures, Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver.  I loved this one; the detail was fantastic and took real skill and a very steady hand.  I would definitely recommend you go see them, if you can, the exhibition is on until the 19th May.  We also had a look around the portraits: there was our own Seamus Heaney and a large one of Judy Dench.  We weren't very impressed by the Judy Dench portrait, she looked like a doctor and all the character was missing from her face.  I did love the portraits of Ken Dodd and Stanley Spencer.  Unfortunately, we didn't have time to take in as much as we wanted but I have to go back over in the summer for the Van Gogh in Britain exhibition so we hope to get back to the NPG as well.  

I managed to rattle through Mark Blake's, Is This the Real Life, a biography of Queen while travelling.  I thoroughly enjoyed this as it details the fact from the fiction of biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody.  Highly recommended!

For Paddy's Day, the cousins and their children came around and we had some great food and a few drinks and a good time was had by all!  All in all, a wonderful weekend and made even better in that I'm not back to work until Friday!  Yayyy!  

I've been on a bit of a reading binge again. First up, Alan Cummings autobiography, Not My Father's Son. This was an interesting read and for anyone who doesn't know him, he played the role of Eli, in The Good Wife which is how I came to know him.  Alan's father was a bit of a psycho and he suffered badly from his bullying and abuse.  But in spite of all that, he got out and did very well for himself.  I won't say anything more about it, I don't like to give too much away but a good read and I would definitely recommend it.

On a similar theme, I was in the library 2 weeks ago and saw Operation Lighthouse by Luke and Ryan Hart.  I had heard them on the radio, the day before, talking about their lives and the book they had written.  Coincidentally, it was on the recommended display in the library when I went in to return the Alan Cummings autobiography so, I thought, I would give it a go.  

Luke and Ryan's father was also an abusive bully, controlling and manipulative.  He was never physically violent until he was completely murderous, and he shot and killed their mother and sister and then shot himself.  Their reason for writing the book was to show that while a relationship may not always be violent, it can still be abusive through the use of coercive control. Their father wanted to control every aspect of the lives of his family and did so through his bullying and demanding behaviour. They were also appalled at the sympathy shown to their father by the media after he murdered their mother and sister and how little sympathy was directed towards his victims.  I would highly recommend this, if for no other reason, than to open our eyes and minds to the quiet acceptance of abuse in society and the tendency towards victim blaming in the media.

Another, in the real lives genre, was Gavin Edward's biography of River Phoenix, Last Night at the Viper Room.  This tells the story of River Phoenix's life, from birth until his death, at aged 23.  Best known, in my house at least, for his role in Stand by Me, the Rob Reiner directed film, from the short story by Stephen King, The Body.  A favourite of my son's when they were growing up and one I still watch fairly regularly. 

River's parents were a couple of hippies who became part of the Children of God cult in the US and who travelled around and lived for several years in South America, preaching and recruiting on their behalf.  The leader of the Children of God cult, David Berg, advocated sexual relationships between children, and between children and adults.  River's parents parted company with them when they started prostituting women to attract more recruits but there is evidence in the book of River being introduced to sex at a very young age.

There is no doubt his death was a tragic loss. He was quite heavily into drugs and although, he had been clean for a couple of months while shooting what turned out to be his last film, the moment he got back to LA, he was straight back to the drugs.  How much of his drug use was a result of his upbringing, we can only guess at but the lack of education and involvement with the Children of God, I'm sure, played a part. 

I never knew that he was interested in music but it turned out that he was more interested in making music than movies, and there are some videos of him with his band, Aleka's Attic, on Youtube, if anyone is interested. Sadly, the talent he had, never got to play out into maturity, like so many before him. That's the thing about drugs, it only end one of two ways, you either stop or die.  But an excellent read and highly recommended as it also contains snippets about many of the other actors who came to prominence in the 1990's, like Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Leonardo Di Caprio.

No sooner than I call for a change in the political structure, than 7 MP's split from Labour with Chuka Umunna leading the charge.  In his statement, he said,"It is time we dumped this country's old-fashioned politics and created an alternative that does justice to who we are today and gives this country a politics fit for the here and now - the 21st Century," 

I wonder if he was reading my blog at the weekend??  While it would be nice to think that Chuka et al were just what I was looking for, I don't really have much confidence that they are the great hope for the future, I had in mind.  They are long on rhetoric but rather short on actual ideas and since they're all Blairite pro-Brexiteers, I don't envisage a startling and original manifesto being issued anytime soon.

But just in case they're looking for a few ideas to get them started here's a few of mine...

Complete re-structuring of the Government with a move towards issue-based politics.  This will take some time to set up but if it is done one issue at a time it is manageable.  I'm not sure how many politicians we would actually need but we may not need more than one or two for each county.  Changing to issue-based politics would also get rid of the need for general elections as we understand them now and instead, you would have a ballot paper with the issue on it instead and I envisage this working on a county by county basis and getting rid of the constituency model we have now.  So, if the country was to go to war, for example, it would be up to the people to make that decision.

Proportional representation would be used until the changeover was complete and anyone standing for election would have to have been a resident of that constituency for a minimum period of 2 years.  

Ministerial positions would then be advertised as jobs and given to the most qualified and experienced.  This would reduce the size of government further because all you really need is a leader and a good accountant to dish out the money.  

Overhaul the tax system to ensure everyone pays their fair share.  This would stop the rich and obscenely rich from paying nothing.  Devolve some tax powers to the counties with more of the tax raised staying within their areas.  Put the betting tax back on and stop gambling being advertised on TV.  

Fair employment legislation.  This would break up the 'old boy networks' that have reduced social mobility and would help to build a competency based society not one based on who you are and what your daddy owns. Get rid of the Honours system.

No public money for private schools and an overhaul of the public education system with parenting as part of the school curriculum along with philosophy and personal &social responsibility. This would get people thinking again and as parenting is a basic for the foundation of a good society, as good parenting produces good people (mostly), especially when they've been educated in their personal and social responsibilities.

No public money for the private sector unless they pay into the system,

All large companies to have worker's representatives on their boards.

Well, that's a few to get started on, I'll have to start fleshing things out now, you never know who could be reading and who knows, someone, somewhere might be interested in creating a real alternative, some day!  

I took my life in my hands and headed out on Friday night to see Atom Heart Floyd in the Balor Theatre, in Ballybofey.  I didn't realise at the time, I was taking a chance with my life by going.  Storm Eric was forecast, it was raining and a bit windy but nothing overly tempestuous.  However, by the time the show was over, Eric had arrived in full force.  Between the howling gale and the torrential rain, it was a treacherously slow drive home, much of the time on the wrong side or in the middle of the road, to avoid the pools of water.

Was it worth it?  Definitely!  A great time was had by all!

Atom Heart Floyd hail from the south of England so keep an eye out for them if you're a Floyd fan, they put on a good show and if they come back this way again, I'll definitely be there.

They started off with some early Floyd from the Sid Barrett era and finished the show with Comfortably Numb.  They had a large circular screen and throughout the show, there were mini films projected on to it featuring, among others, Sid Barrett and other surreal graphics and images.  During Brain Damage, from the Dark Side of the Moon album, they showed film of politicians from the 80's, Maggie Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev and a few other less notables.  While listening to the lyrics and watching the screen, I was struck with the thought that at one time these people were all giants on the political world stage, inspiring admiration and loathing in equal measure.  Now, practically all of them are dead.  

Considering the state of politics in the world at the moment, this was a comforting thought, because it made me realise that no matter how big they are politically or how much power they might wield, eventually, their time will pass, things will change and they too, will become a footnote in the history books or an image on a screen, reminding us of the past insanity of our 'leaders'. I can safely look back now to all the anti-Russian rhetoric of the 80's and the threat of nuclear war that hung over us like a cloud of lead and see that it was nothing more than egotistical grand-standing by idiots with too much power and not enough sense to realise the limits of their time on earth. They could have done so much good but most of them wasted it.  In a thousand years, who will even remember them?  So, if you're worried about Trump, Putin, Brexit or anything else in the world, political or otherwise, take comfort in the fact that it won't last forever or as Shakespeare so brilliantly put it - 

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

In spite of the cold, I ventured out tonight to see Vice, the biopic about Dick Cheney, starring Christian Bale as Cheney, Steve Carrell as Donald Rumsfeld and Sam Rockwell as Dubya.  What can I say? I have looked upon the face of evil and lived to tell the tale...

Brilliant performances all round.  Christian Bale is truly deserving of the accolades he has received for his performance.  Steve Carrell was so good as Rumsfeld, I've even forgiven him for Finding a Friend for the End of the World and Sam Rockwell was outstanding too as Dubya, I got the feeling he was enjoying every minute of it. Mind you, you never go too far wrong with Sam.

The downside is that they were all so good, I came out feeling like I needed a shower after being in the company of such slime for 2 hours.  I had always thought Rumsfeld was the real evil in the Dubya camp, but Dick Cheney is a man??? Well, a male person anyway (I think? Possibly made in Area 51c...) He's cheap, nasty and soulless.  He reminded me of a description of the character, Annie Wilkes in the book Misery.  'You could stick your thumb into her and she would just be solid the whole way through' or something like that.

The other downside is that because of Dick Cheney, I'm never donating any organs.  My car tax and insurance were up this week and I was online getting it sorted the other day and coincidentally, there was a form for organ donation.  I started to fill it in and when it came to the liver, I thought, I need to think about this one, I don't really like the idea of my liver being given to someone who has drunk themselves into ill health (yes, I know I'm being judgemental but I don't care, not when it comes to alcohol).  So, I didn't fill it in.

In the film, Dick Cheney gets a heart transplant after years of heart trouble.  The big surprise was that he actually had a heart!  I remember thinking the same thing when it was announced Martin McGuinness was having heart trouble.  A bit of a coincidence too, now that I think about it!

So, that's why I'm not donating any organs because you don't know if they'll be given to some evil toe-rag to extend their life and I don't want to be responsible for keeping the Dick Cheney's of the world alive.  

But apart from that, anyone with an interest in politics or the Iraq War, should check this movie out.  It shows how rotten the whole political world is, not that we didn't know that anyway, but we just don't get any in-depth investigations into their dirty dealings anymore.  At least, none of the calibre that we used to get in World in Action and Panorama.  And the worst thing about it, is that they got away with it!  Cheney, Bush, Blair, the whole rotten shower of them, they got away with it and made a fortune.  Disgusting!  But go see the film anyway!

Just back from the cinema after watching the new Laurel & Hardy film starring Steve Coogan and John C. Riley.  There wasn't a dry eye in the house!  A very moving and poignant portrayal of Stan and Ollie's lives towards the end of their careers.  Just go and see it, that's all I have to say about it, just go and see it...and bring tissues!