guinnessorig

Nuggets from the OED #1

2009-11-15T11:49:03+01:00

Famous last words #2

2009-11-13T20:26:48+01:00

George Armstrong Custer. Montana, United States, 1876. ‘Another five minutes, boys, and we’re going to have ‘em surrounded.’

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Did you know...?

2009-11-06T22:07:42+01:00

'Morning Coffee' biscuits are still stamped with an original design by Victorian art-critic and philosopher John Ruskin. The lamb-chop sideboard-wearing Ruskin, author of The Stones of Venice and a keen exponent of baking, etched out the design during a visit to the biscuit factory in 1875.

This sugary baton of artistic heritage was picked up by quirky Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, famous for his paintings of oddly shaped women, in 1913, when he too created a design for the legendary teatime treat. However, the Picasso biscuit has never gone on general sale and its distribution is limited to directors of the company, making it the world's most highly prized item of confectionary; even surpassing the richly desirable, special edition Matisse 'Wagon Wheels'. The biscuit is only baked in small numbers once per year, each one numbered, for consumption at the firm's Annual General Meeting at their Manchester headquarters. Legend has it that one Picasso 'Morning Coffee' was sneaked out of the boardroom in 1963 and is now in the hands of a private art collector in New York, albeit somewhat crumbly at the edges. It is not thought to be edible.

'Morning Coffee' are still the biscuit of choice for artists, and it's believed that Yorkshire-born avante garde charlatan, Damien Hirst, gets through three packets a day, usually dunked in milky cocoa.

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Famous last words #1

2009-11-05T00:41:59+01:00

Robert Falcon Scott. Antarctica, 1912. ‘Don’t worry, lads, I think it’s going to blow over.’

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Things I hate #9

2009-11-03T19:18:03+01:00

People.

Misanthropy is the natural conclusion of a rational mind when confronted by other members of the human race in any situation that involves queuing. Cars pulling out on you at junctions from twenty yards away and expecting you to slow down and accommodate them, two people approaching the same door from opposite directions, two vehicles racing to a point where two lanes narrow to one like the final straight in Ben Hur, pedestrians walking across each others’ paths in a shopping arcade, a hoard of people lurching for the only till that’s open at B & Q on a Saturday fucking afternoon; any of these situations will show you that there is no other conclusion to reach than that mankind is a festering boil on the arse of creation.

Take Sunday. I was shopping at the Tesco in Hemsworth in the afternoon. I was stood looking for a sandwich when some old fucker ploughed across my path with the biggest trolley available, in which, as far as I could see, he had a trifle and some pan scrubbers. He plainly saw me but pushed forwards anyway. He plainly heard me when I called him a cunt. But neither of us acknowledged one another openly. Because in public situations we are all zombies to each other. We move amongst the animated undead. That family of Mum, Dad and the two feral kids are ghosts to me as they stalk the Fresh Meat aisle. That Renault Clio in the queue of traffic at the lights is driven by an attractive blonde wraith behind the wheel. They aren’t real people in any solid sense. We are all unresponsive automatons. We live in our own virtual reality that’s only shattered by a vicious mugging, a road rage collision or some appalling incident that shakes us awake. We think of nothing but ourselves and our own needs.

In that moment as he bent down in front of me with a millimetre to spare, desperate to get hold of a prawn and mayo sandwich, I hated that old fucker with a passion. I could have started punching his exposed bald head until he lay a bloody pulp at my feet. No one would have turned and looked. No one would have queried my actions. A member of staff may have approached with a yellow ‘Danger, slippery surface’ sign once it was all over and done with and blood and cerebral fluid was leaking from his eyes and ears, but that would have been it. Other shoppers wouldn’t have mentioned it to their families when they got home. They may have talked about the offer of Stella Artois, or the deal on McVitie’s biscuits, or the fact that some twat cut them up leaving the car park, but they wouldn’t have thought about the old man beaten to death by the ‘For your convenience’ stand. It wouldn’t have affected them.

I left him unharmed. He slavered over his prize and pushed on. Straight into the shins of a pensioner who went skittling painfully out of his way. But I was fuming. I was left hoping that the prawn sandwich that he went through so much to secure was riddled with streptococcus and had him shitting without respite for a week until his ring piece ended up resembling an old, baggy stretched out Manchester United sock (imagine George Best after ninety gruelling minutes of an FA Cup tie against Don Revie’s Dirty Leeds c. 1970). All red and distended. And this encounter was just a start. There were fat people filling their trolleys with huge bottles of lurid-coloured soft drinks, blocking entire aisles unnecessarily. Three bottles of cherry, Pauline? Get four, Wayne, and as many as you want for yourself. And don’t forget the kids. There were slow moving middle-aged women reading the label on the same bottle of ketchup that they’d been buying for twenty years. Just checking it’s still got tomatoes in it. There were the panic buyers who monopolized entire products because they’d read on the internet that there was going to be a world shortage in Oatsosimple. Time and time again I found myself contemplating dreadful acts. I won’t call them crimes because no respectable judge or jury would ever convict me for sending these ignorant morons out of a world they only clutter with their rudeness and their ignorance. I felt like kicking and punching, I felt like swinging my metal basket as if it was a medieval weapon of war; felling all who lay unnecessarily in my path to the tills and a Crunchie. And I know I wasn’t alone. I could feel the pent up aggression all around. That grumbling sense of personal conflict that looms behind the apathetic faces of the spectres that move in front of you. Man’s inhumanity to man extends to even the meekest and mildest when faced with a particularly tempting ‘two-for-one’ offer or the final parking space at Meadowhall. And it’s a truth universally acknowledged that a Grandmother would scythe their way thorough scores of disabled kids in the local newsagents with a sharpened carving knife to grab hold of that last copy of this month’s People’s Friend. Especially if it had some free wool and a decent knitting pattern attached. Put us behind the wheel of a car or in a shopping centre and we are all latent sociopaths who passively subscribe to a form of primitive Thatcherism. We are all animals. It’s part of the over-lauded hunter/gatherer instinct. Because despite technology and the advances in the arts and sciences, despite iPods and toilet rolls and deodorant and central heating, despite any progress that we’ve made as a civilization in flight and tall buildings or the motor car, we are all bald, hairless monkeys beneath the Italian suits and the Berghaus breathable, waterproof fabrics. There is a Neanderthal in us all just waiting to barge another motorist into a ditch or shoulder a blind man out of the way for the last box of Rice Crispies. We have a veneer or civilization which hides manky, rotten chipboard underneath. And altruism is a lie. When anyone offers to do anything with apparent self-sacrifice the first thing I ask myself is – what’s in it for them? And there always is. Without fail. There’s always some little wrinkle that makes the philanthropy worthwhile. Even if it’s just gleaning themselves a bit of spiritual satisfaction from acting the good Samaritan. Even if it’s someone stepping aside to let you get the final packet of Chocolate Digestives. Because they’ll all be broken and they know it, and they’ve just seen the shop assistant go to the back for a fresh packet.

People are despicable cunts.

On which note the news of Boris Johnson’s new ‘X’ crossing at Oxford Circus fills me with dread. Get ready for fight club. Get ready for carnage. It’ll be like a re-enactment of The Warriors.

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Long shot kick de bucket

2009-10-25T18:36:11+01:00

I went to York for its final flat race meeting of the season the weekend before last. The weather held, despite some dark clouds and an unfriendly breeze, and we even saw some burnished Autumnal sun. We arrived early in the city and browsed. York was packed. It was a Saturday; there were shoppers, there were tourists, there were race-goers, there was an opera singer in the Coppergate, there was a man and his dog selling roast chestnuts at the bottom of Swinegate. We’d headed into the Old Starre Inn before the race to find it taken over by Scots. Glasses of Stella lining the bar. One up, one down, one in your hand. Nervous fingers desperate for nicotine. Elsewhere Northumbrian accents were arguing over the potential favourites, shouldering each other aside to look at a copy of the form guide. Punters were flooding in from across the North of England. The American, French and German tourists were swamped by race-goers. Shoppers out to get the latest Dan Brown or their groceries in Marks and Spencer were inconvenienced. We’d eaten in the Stonegate Yard Bar & Brasserie. The heated courtyard slowly filled up with men in suits that were obviously having a rare outing, shoes over polished, ties fastened awkwardly, women in fragile hats and bright dresses as if they were dolled up and ready for Yorkshire’s wedding of the year. There was a carnival feeling. High Feast. Everyone felt to be on holiday.

Historically gambling has been a male domain. Either because of the male exclusivity of gentlemen’s clubs habituated by men in evening dress with more money than sense, or because Working Class betting shops were run down, utilitarian shacks occupied by chain smoking men, only pausing between bets to cough up nicotine rich flem onto the saw dust floor and encourage their nag grimly. These were the days when a lone woman entering a pub was either frowned on or assumed to be of incredibly easy virtue. But society has changed. Betting shops are homogenized and sit next to Gregg’s and Tesco Express on the sterile High Street. The National Lottery showed us all that gambling can change your life. And the internet has put Bingo into every home with a computer. Betting is fun.

Like all hobbies/interests/obsessions gambling creates a community. It generates debate. Give a man a topic in his head, a throb of pleasure in his heart, and he will be glad to share it with the first person that he meets. There is a changing but infinitely repeated season, there are the different meetings to anticipate – the Derby, Royal Ascot, the Oaks, the St Leger. All as traditional and as vital to our national identity as fish and chips and pessimism. They are points of reference to peg your life to in the same way as the football or rugby or cricket seasons. They give shape and apparent purpose to the shapeless and the sadly purposeless. But gambling holds some people more than others. Any happening where the end result is uncertain is capable of being pitched as a bet. In the wagers book at White’s Club, formerly White’s Chocolate House (in the 18^th Century chocolate houses were primarily for gambling while coffee houses were popular for political debate) are some remarkable speculations. Two rain drops running down a window pane. Would the Dowager Duchess of Smelling outlive the Dowager Duchess of Swipe…? The Clermont Club – second home to Lord Lucan – who earned himself the ironic nickname of ‘Lucky’ – and one of the many West End gambling dens that the murdering peer threw away his family fortune, ran a book on which one of its members would be the first man to commit suicide. It’s not known if Lucan put any money on himself (he was quoted as five to one. Debate has rumbled for decades as to whether the circumstances of the bet have been made out or not). Lives have been made or lost on the turn of a card, the outcome of a fight, the speed of a horse, or the number of potatoes in a sack. Regency dandy Beau Brummell, a regular fixture at White’s during the Regency, eventually fled Britain due to debt in 1815. At one time he was £250,000 up at the tables (which would have made him one of the richest men in England) before plunging deeply into the red en route to bankruptcy and exile in France, all in the same night.

Heading out of the city centre we moved up to the Knavesmire. When it came to gambling, we were going to be scientific about it. We had the Racing Post, we had the form guides, we’d watched Channel 4’s The Morning Line. We wanted to know what the going was. Good? Good to firm? Soft? Someone thought it had rained overnight in North Yorkshire. Bloody hell, this news was met with some frantic turning of pages and some reassessment. The ground would make all the difference to our selections. We wanted to know which side of the track the stalls would be set. Puzzlemaster likes the stand side, someone said. How did they know that? They’d heard John McCririck say so. John McCririck who looks like Uncle Bulgaria and who when asked the time has to control his hands so that he doesn’t ‘tick tack’ his response. Ten to one. Five to three. A quarter past two. Obviously you can study form or you can select a horse by the often more successful system of guessing. A horse with a particular name will create a favourite regardless of the actual quality of the horse. Take Harrison George, for instance. My Sweet Lord, that afternoon people couldn’t throw their money away quick enough on this nag. And the colours worn by Some Sunny Day – a subtle shade of lilac, with pink highlights on the hat – had the girls dashing up to place their bets and narrowing its odd exponentially.

Passing into the course we asked the old man who checked and ripped apart the tickets if he had any tips. ‘Aye, keep your money in your pockets.’ You could tell that he’d said it a thousand times before. He said it with a grim smile. The smile of a man who’s done twenty years in gambler’s anonymous and once staked his wife on a game of gin rummy. You could tell that he meant it.

Getting another drink under the belt, we immediately took a chance with the Tote Six. Two selections from the first six races. If anyone one of the two are placed throughout your selections then you win. It’s makes gamble appealing to people who play the lottery. The selections are made on the same kind of card. It makes losing your money easier and less enigmatic. You don’t have to worry about working out odds and all that hassle, you can throw your money away with just a few marks with a stubby pen. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were prepared for gambling by the Richmond Tests at junior school.

The race course has all the trappings of the modern feast. This is Bartholemew Fair with big screens and Robbie bastard Williams piped through the tannoy. Where in ye olden days were the slee gadgers, tempting the gullible with games of chance involving cups and a hidden ball, today we have a white Lamborghini parked up that could be ours just for the cost of a £20 lottery ticket. Where once the mage gerderers had sold cleverly butchered cat dressed as chicken, now we have the burger man selling industrial meat between cheap and impossibly white teacakes at a fiver a go. There is pop corn sugar in the air. There is processed food a plenty. Chips in cones with lashings of salt and vinegar. Hot dogs, kebabs, paninis. There is pomp and there is spectacle. The horses are magnificent. The stands are monuments to enjoyment. There is a sense of being at the centre of a moment. The races are a good day out, providing you don’t take the experience too seriously. Provided you’re prepared to pay for the adrenaline rush. Provided you’re prepared to be at least mildly disappointed. What remains after the beer and the chips and the carnival sensation is that the main interest is in gambling. The sense of life changing possibilities is palpable. You can feel that some people are desperate to win. These are the men who are in the ill-fitting suits with thin faces or big bellies. They were the men to watch. No £2.50 each way for these fellas. They’re betting big to win big, on outsiders at ten or even twenty to one. They’re going to change their lives. They’re going to turn things ‘round. Bills will get paid, the mortgage will be met, outstanding debts to men with cauliflower ears and broken noses will be lifted from their shoulders. Amongst the lasses dolled to the nines in the dresses from Asos and the lads beered up by noon, these blokes are in deadly earnest about the afternoon. Gambling at this level doesn’t make sense any more than do most drugs to people who have never tried them. The mysteries of heroin or crack cocaine are as enigmatic as an each way accumulator on Housewifes Choice in the two-forty-five at Wetherby. Gamblers select their predilection. Cards. The horses. Greyhounds. Cannabis, Crystal-meth, amphetamine. But gambling is legal and so it must be harmless, surely? Yes? Like those other legalized vices of alcohol and nicotine. Gambling is equally addictive, especially to those predisposed to addictions.

We passed into the betting enclosure, passed the security guards with their Americanized uniforms. A hand raised to anyone with a glass. Because you can’t drink in the area provided for on course betting. Instead there’s a hypocritical fence that separates the licensed areas from the betting posts. The ticktack men are gone. The chalk boards have been replaced by LED. But the old names are still there. The Percy Edwards and the Douglas Thompsons. Names that conjure up spivs and flash harrys stuffing white fivers into the linings on their demob suits. We were in with the rabble at the County Stand. Betting shops and a relatively high entrance fee have thinned out some of the more colourful characters that must have been attracted to the course on race day. Before the advent of Ladbrooks and 888.com. The race gang toughs of Graham Greene and Margery Allingham have turned their hand to other more lucrative ways of villainy. Peaky Doyle, Natty Johnson and Pinkie Brown are now peddling heroin and organizing the import of large quantities of cocaine and cannabis resin. But there is still a mix of people who fitted neatly into stereotypical groups. I immediately bumped into men with pale faces that were very very very pissed. One little man puking in the sinks in the Gents until I thought he was going to bring his intestines up. There were girls out for the day from the office, in full tilt, staggering from the enclosure in impossibly high heels, a boozy wobble on, searching for another Bucks Fizz and a gristly Gimster’s. Then there were men wearing clothes that went out of fashion sixty years ago. British warm and West Country check. Cavalry twill and felt waistcoats. Trilby hats bought from exclusive Gents’ outfitters in Harrogate where a record of the family’s hat sizes have been kept since 1710. The men with the tell tale badge looped through the buttonhole, like cattle on their way to market. They are part of the county set who probably own the rights to shoot grouse and peasants on Ilkley Moor and had their social engagements published in The Dalesman and are married to women that not only know about horse flesh but look like it. Dodging between the legs of all these were trainee jockeys who have to be seen to be believed. They are miniscule. I saw two ignoring their calorie restrictions and drinking pints of John Smiths’ Smooth. They looked like cynical, world-weary eight year olds.

The first race came. Expectations were high. We clutched our slips. We had our Tote Six tickets poised. A furlong out and I had the winnings in my pocket. I could feel those crisp tenners in my hand. Then things started to waver. They couldn't take the trail… It all began to go wrong. Another horse moved up through the field on the outside. My horse, my nag, my dobbin that would have been better off pulling a rag and bone cart, my horse started to fall back no matter how many times the little jockey bouncing about on his back slapped him on his big arse with the crop. The spectators collected at the rails. The shouts became more desperate. More hopeful. More angry. We saw the horses cross the line and then all eyes went up to the big screen. Well…?

Our heads went down. Our shoulders lost shape. Nowhere. Not even placed. We lost hope. The promise that had been with us in the pub in York over the cheeseburgers, the Caesar salads and the pints of Guinness had faltered. At the same time the weather turned, the sun dipped out of sight and a cold wind blew in from the Vale of York.

That’s the trouble. The whole spectacle is created by the stake. What you can lose, but more importantly what you can win. The horses start out of sight. You follow them on the screen. You right off your horse, playing down expectations. Mine’s boxed in, already trailing, running backwards. The stakes are relative to what you can afford to lose. It’s the Widow’s mite placed on an outsider at Doncaster in the three-forty-five. And the win lies. The win is deceitful. The win creates an impression on the mind. The win wipes out all the defeats. Losses are seen as minor set back. Mere hurdles to be suffered. Once anyone is started upon that road, it is like a man in a sledge flying down a snow mountain more and more swiftly. In a plus and minus account most gamblers will struggle to break even over time. But runs of luck will hide a multitude of sins. The win will change your attitude. And then the sensation of winning becomes more important than the money. The money becomes a token for success. For the triumph. There is a sense of snatching victory from the very jaws of defeat. Of winning fate and feeling life is on your side.

We headed away from the course as dusk was coming on, passed the spent betting slips, grim faces and the broken plastic pint and champagne ‘glasses’. Public executions used to be held to coincide with the race meetings. It says something for the fearless optimism of the gambler that highwayman Dick Turpin, AKA John Palmer placed a five shilling bet on the afternoon that he was brought to the Knavesmire to be hung for horse theft. Swift Nick to win at 25/1. He was still willing the ride on as he jumped from the ladder and into the unknown. Swift Nick was unplaced.

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Introducing the Magical World of Michael Head

2009-10-17T22:02:20+02:00

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Fiddle About

2009-10-14T17:40:48+02:00

In AD64 as the city of Rome was being decimated by a huge fire that would leave one tenth of the city homeless, the Emperor Nero stood on the Tower of Maecenas on the Esquiline Hill and, skillfully playing his lyre, sang ‘The sack of Illium’ to a small coterie of scheming sycophants. The fingering for the piece was difficult, but Nero persisted, selecting complicated arpeggios to compliment his rich baritone, and his artful interpretation was praised by those privileged enough to be present. The backlight of the city in flames and the distant, terrified screams of the populace was held to give the performance a poignant atmosphere.

It’s been announced that Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg are to sit side-by-side as part of a live pre-election debate. This is the first time that such an American-style format has been used in British politics, leading up to the anticipated General Election next summer. Given the appalling state of the economy with unemployment expected to cross the three million threshold, the ongoing war in Afghanistan which looks set to last decades and leave thousands of UK troops dead and disabled, and the shame and scandal of MPs fattening out their already bloated salaries by fiddling their expenses, the leaders have chosen to ponder the hotly debated issue of how to get more women, ethnic minority and disabled people to enter Parliament. Fingers on the pulse.

To round off the debate, with Brown on bass, Cameron on guitar and Clegg drums the three will jam to Boyzone’s ‘Love the way you love me’ in honour of Stephen Gately. Each taking a turn on lead vocal. The X-Factor voting lines will then be opened and the frantic, desperately worried public will cast premium rate telephone votes on who they would like to see make a mess of the country for the next five years. Cheryl Cole has pledged to take Gordon Brown under her wing and groom him for political stardom. Speaking of Brown’s troubled premiership, which has seen major banks wobble on the verge of collapse and government borrowing reach horrifying levels to meet benefit claims and Jacqui Smith’s mortgage repayments, a tearful Cole was understood to have said: ‘I duv'ent naa hue ya've coped, mun! Am really prude of ye!’

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Dirty Old Bastard (Part 2)

2009-10-07T11:09:28+02:00

The Oxford English dictionary defines a paedophile as ‘a person whose sexual desire is directed towards children.’

Last week the film director Roman Polanski was arrested by police in Switzerland acting on a US extradition warrant while he attending a film festival in his honour. Polanski was wanted in relation to the vaginal and anal rape of a thirteen year old girl. He had groomed the girl with the chance of a photo spread in Vogue magazine and then drugged her. The case dates back to 1977. Polanski had pleaded guilty to statutory rape in the hope of escaping a prison sentence but then skipped bail and hasn’t been back to the United States for more than three decades. You might think that the capture of a fugitive paedophile would be universally applauded. Not so. The intelligentsia were in uproar at Polanski’s arrest and pending extradition to America to stand trial. Celebrities were livid. Whoopi Goldberg, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, et al couldn’t believe that Polanski had been banged up. He should be released. NOW. And they know better than you, so you’d better listen. Because they’re special people. Celebrated Swiss photographer Otto Weisser, famed for his photographs of women both in and out of bikinis, caught the mood perfectly when he said: ‘He's a brilliant guy and he made a little mistake thirty-two years ago.’ And, I mean, we all mistakes, don’t we? Haven’t you? Last week I left one of my electric hobs on.

Film producer Harvey Weinstein threw his weight behind the outrage and commented at length. He remarked: ‘It is a shocking way to treat such a man. Polanski went through the Holocaust and the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, by the Manson family. How do you go from the Holocaust to the Manson family with any sort of dignity? In those circumstances, most people could not contribute to art and make the kind of beautiful movies he continues to make.’ A petition has been organized by a group of film luminaries, aghast that such a famous and gifted paedophile has been arrested. It states: ‘We demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski. Film-makers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision… It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary film-makers, is used by police to apprehend him.’ One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. One man’s paedophile is another man’s… what? Polanski’s cause has been taken up by, amongst others, Stephen Frears, Terry Gilliam, Michael Mann, John Landis, Monica Bellucci, David Lynch, Jeanne Moreau and Tilda Swinton. He may become the Paedophile Mandela. Perhaps the Specials will re-form; dust off the pork pie hats and get the two tone out. I can almost hear Terry Hall now, with his rude boy patois: He was just having fun when he poked her up the bum, so Freeeeeeeeeee, Roman Polaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanski…

So I was wrong and the capture of a fugitive paedophile isn’t universally applauded. It seems it’s down to ying and yang, and so, obviously, as Harvey Weinstein said, Polanski’s got a few trump cards to play when it comes to inserting his penis up the vagina and backside of an unwilling thirteen year old. (1) He survived the holocaust. (2) His pregnant wife was murdered. (3) His molestation of a child is somehow mitigated because of his blinding use of colour and lighting in China Town. In that case, crack on, mate, fill your boots. Perhaps paedophilia is a question of context. Perhaps it’s a question of who, when, how and why? A Roman Catholic Priest stuffing one up the choirboy after Vespers and we all know that it’s a shameful act and should be condemned. The Church is such an incestuous organization, perpetuating myths and lies. Not at all like the film industry. We've all read The Da Vinci Code. Some random dirty old man flying to Thailand to get smoked by a thirteen year old girl deserves the unflinching contempt of us all. But, obviously, Polanski’s is a special case. And as Whoopi observed: ‘It wasn’t rape, rape.’ No? Whoopi cleared things up by adding: ‘[America is] a different kind of society we see things differently. The world… Europe sees things differently…’ So maybe it’s all down to taste. Maybe it’s a question of a certain kind of European’s sophistication when it comes to matters of sex. Maybe it’s because the general public, drones that we are, don’t understand the exceptional place that such people as Whoopi and Polanski inhabit. Under these circumstances, perhaps Polanski’s sexual molestation of a child can be likened to a gourmand who appreciates outré cuisine reserved for those of a discerning taste, intent on sampling the finest dishes. Those dishes that are out of the ordinary. Those dishes that only the special people with deep pockets and glamorous lifestyles can appreciate. Like fattened foie gras and honey seasoned baby Orang-utan’s colon. Polanski’s sexual palette is refined by his apparent genius, the common rabble wouldn’t understand. Perhaps with his creative force, this wasn’t the run of the mill sodomy of a child by an adult, this was the sexual adventure of a cinematic sage savouring the succulent vagina and anus of a thirteen year old girl with a special, sophisticated relish that is not only excusable, but understandable for a man of his refinement. Perhaps the illustrious people who have signed the petition to free Roman Polanski grasp something that we lesser mortals simply cannot understand? Polanski champion Stephen Frears and his painter wife, Anne Rothenstein, have young children. Would he, I wonder, be happy to have Polanski help his daughter at thirteen to earn her brown wings? Perhaps he could commemorate the event by having her first bowel movement post rape dropped onto one of his wife’s blank canvases. Framed and hung. ‘Brown, red and white. A study in the anal rape of a child’. It might win the Turner Prize.

Hmmm.

We are, as Jonathan Meades once observed, when comparing the contrasting attitudes to mass murders Adolf Hitler and Uncle Joe Stalin, ‘selectively fastidious, selectively demonizing.’ Polanski’s arrest coincides with the case of nursery school worker Vanessa George in Plymouth. George took indecent images of children in her care and shared them with like-minded perverts Angela Allen from Nottingham and Colin Blanchard from Rochdale. There is nothing glamorous about the life of Vanessa George. There’s nothing sophisticated about the images she took of toddlers. Her use of depth of field had none of Polanski’s touches. Her lighting effects were appalling. She didn’t capture a naked child with anything like Polanski’s flair behind the lens. Vanessa George has been universally vilified. Vanessa George has been branded a monster even by her own children. Detective Superintendent Adrian Pearson, of Nottinghamshire Police, who investigated the case, said: ‘Those three individuals have shared quite willingly and freely images, texts, fantasies of the most serious level you could imagine.’ George, unlike Polanski, isn’t a genius film director and friend to the famous. George has yet to draw on the support of Whoopi Goldberg, Woody Allen or Martin Scorsese. Stephen Frears has not, so far, jumped to George’s defence. Monica Bellucci has said nothing about George. Perhaps if George’s work is repackaged as cutting edge gonzo cinéma vérité she’ll get them behind her. You never know. But, as it stands, George isn’t rich, she isn’t sophisticated, she isn’t a genius, she’s just a pervert who preyed on children. No one has called for her release. No one has vilified the authorities for bringing her to justice. There’s a world of difference between her and Roman Polanski, obviously.

Anyway, I’m going to watch Whoopi in Sister Act 2: Back in the habit (the director’s cut). It’s a bit of an auteur’s version. It’s challenging to watch. It has the deleted scenes where Father Maurice and Father Ignatius spit roast an altar boy while Whoopi and the sisters sing ‘I can’t help myself (sugar pie honey bunch)’ in the background. Cinema gold.

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Blockbuster!

2009-09-20T09:29:42+02:00

I’ve just got back from a fortnight’s holiday in Tunisia. In between the camel rides and visiting the Star Wars sets in the Sahara, and in the lazy sunny spaces between haggling over a few dinars for some knock off sunglasses that will see my retinas burned to buggery and playing golf, I got through six books. On holiday I have a habit of reading books that don’t offer much of a challenge. Not what I’d call trash exactly, but nothing that’s going to trouble the narrow, emotionally bigoted minds of the Booker Prize judges, with their love of pent up tedium and labyrinthine metaphor. But, in fairness, I don’t think that’s what the authors set out to do in the first place. And when you’re all inclusive, heedlessly slamming down the vodka and coke and the Celtia, who wants to make the effort to read clever sods like Martin Amis? I don’t want four hundred pages of emotional evolution, the plot never really going anywhere, just for the sake of it. I don’t want to drag myself through 16^th June 1904 over hundreds of thousands of words with James Joyce and Leopold Bloom; despite Molly Bloom’s unpunctuated sexual revelations. I don’t want to stumble through an anonymous Prague with Josef K, trying to figure out if his experiences are real or some long delusionary nightmare. I don’t want anything that’s got any work in it. I want bangs and whistles. I want a story that grips me by the knackers and doesn’t let go. I want man books. I want books that have testosterone mixed in with the ink. I want explosions, I want violence, I want edge of the sun-lounger thrills and danger, I want gratuitous sex. I want righteous revenge. I want Quentin Tarantino in paperback. I want Hollywood in my hands.

I read Stieg Larrson’s The girl with the dragon tattoo and The girl who played with fire with relish. Both well-written (albeit in translation from Swedish), both addictive. I’m eager for the final book in the trilogy to be published next month. I also ripped through Elmore Leonard’s Hunted in a day. Leonard with his muscle prose. Lucid descriptions all told in a street drawl. No word wasted. All good stuff. But neither Larrson or Leonard had any hidden metaphors that dissected the shackles of humanity in a capitalist world, no heart-bleeding social messages that were shoved down my throat, no equivocal essays in spiritual grace and fatalism but decent, solid fiction. The pages went by at a fair old lick.

And then there was Clive Cussler. For all his faults I find Clive Cussler ideal holiday reading. Whenever I read one of Cussler’s books I’m immediately transported to the black beach at Kamari. I can see islands shimmering in the haze as I get staked out under a palm parasol from 9AM. I can feel my hand around an ice cold glass of Mythos and I can taste gyros and tzatziki as the day slowly grills me. I’m walking out in to the sunshine at the Rodos Palladium. I’m watching the sun make its way across Faliraki bay and dipping over the cape. Because I only ever read Cussler on holiday. The books are big, satisfying wedges to have in your hand when you have no other commitments for the day. It’s reading with the glass half-ful. You know you’ve got plenty of pages in front of you and it feels good. And you’re guaranteed that there’s going to be no long lumbering narrative, nothing that need interpreting, nothing that is left unsaid.

Cussler’s been knocking out thrillers for more than thirty years. They’re not what you’d call hard work to get through. Unless you hold especially strong feminist views, perhaps. Then Cussler has the ability to challenge you on so many levels. But, by and large, Cussler churns out pop corn fiction. He’s writing out of a mould created by Alistair McLean and Ian Fleming. He doesn’t write novels as such, he writes bestsellers. His signature character – heavily protected legally – is underwater salvage expert Dirk Pitt®. Dirk Pitt® is a man’s man. More than that he’s a 1970s man’s man. Think a Smokey and the Bandit period Burt Reynolds in scuba gear, packing a really big hunting knife. Only tougher and more wisecracking. With more birds throwing themselves at him. He might not be everyone’s particular brand of vodka, but he does have a certain charm. Dirk Pitt® with his dangerous green eyes and well-tanned musculature. Cussler sculpts the man he would like to be. He’s a six foot, hot look, All American Man, yeah. I bet he’s given him a really big knob, as well. In the early novels Pitt® is especially unreconstructed. I remember sitting up when I first read this from The Mediterranean Caper on holiday in Santorini a couple of years ago. Some woman Dirk® has just met (and I mean literally, JUST BLOODY MET) on the beach tells the story or how her husband snuffed it racing motor cars. Dirk® is listening intently:

Pitt sat silent for a minute, staring at her sad face. ‘How long ago?’ he asked simply.

‘It’s been eight and a half year now,’ she replied in a whisper.

Pitt felt dazed. Then anger set in. What a waste. What a rotten waste for a beautiful woman like her to grieve over a dead man for nearly nine years… He could see tears welling in her eyes as she lost herself in the remembrance, and the sight sickened him. He reached over and gave her a hard backhand slap across the face.

Her eyes jerked wide, and her whole body tensed from the sharp blow. It was as if she was struck by a bullet. ‘Why did you strike me?’ she asked.

‘Because you needed it, needed it badly,’ he snapped. ‘That torch you carry around is as worn out as an overcoat… you belong to everyman who turns and admires you as you pass by and who longs to possess you.’ Pitt could see his words were penetrating her weak defences… ‘When was the last time you had a man?’

‘Not since…’ Her voice trailed away.

Pitt took her as the long shadows of the rocks crept upward over the beach, shielding their bodies from the sun…

‘I don’t know whether to ask for your thanks or your forgiveness,’ he said softly.

‘Please accept them both along with my blessing,’ she murmured.

Hmmm. OK.

Cussler is the kind of writer Jack Regan or Gene Hunt would take with them to the beach on Torremolinos back in 1977, a sneaky peak at the bronzing briskets wobbling past from over the top of the pages as they reach for another San Miguel. Then back to the print as Dirk® chins another big, wide nasty, before strolling off for a knee trembler up against a ticking bomb with some big-chested heroine, forever grateful to Dirk for (i) having saved the world and (ii) having given her the best orgasm of her life. Cussler writes about the world as Jack and Gene would see it. It is masculine and Cussler’s women love it. They lap up the sweaty atmosphere and the bulging muscles. Cussler’s females like their men to dominate. To show them who’s boss. And they do. Pitt® prowls into the bedroom, a chilled Cinzano in one hand, ready to deliver a kidney punch with the other.

A typical Clive Cussler blockbuster – because that’s what they are, blockbusters, these aren’t novels in any Dickensian, Will Self, E.M. Forster sense of the word; these are Hollywood movies in print – a typical Clive Cussler blockbuster will include the following:

(1) More often than not the story will open with a prologue set in the past. This will establish the ship wreck, lost airplane, hidden treasure that the story will hinge on. This may provide a target for the baddies and/or the means by which Dirk® will save the whole bloody universe.

(2) The story will be peopled by fruity side characters that make Dan Brown’s Leigh Teabing look like something from the mind of Joseph Conrad. These characters will be important in their given field (archaeology, aeronautics, whatever it may be). May also be linked to (9).

(3) Cussler’s books are buddy novels. Pitt® and his best pal Al ‘barrel chested, arms like a gorilla, heart the size of an ox’s’ Giordino are going to save the world, watching each others ‘six’ and sharing their last can of Budweiser as the face a firing squad. You better believe it.

(4) Cussler will ram massive character back stories at you in the space of a paragraph. An entire autobiography, and its psychological affect on the character, will be shoe horned into a few sentences. It saves time. At, the age of ten Hank Bowen was exposed to by a clown in the circus big top, from then on he was always nervous around clowns and tents. Today, fifty years later he looked at the marquee hosting his daughter’s wedding with fear and trepidation. He stepped inside. Oh my God, they’d hired a clown for the entertainment. Hank started to sweat.

(5) Pitt® will rescue someone early doors, obviously incurring overwhelming odds and risking almost certain death himself. Though altruism will be the key motive, Pitt® will often throw himself into danger just for the helluvit, man. The person rescued will often be female and sex starved (e.g. some library bound cryptologist with big knockers who hasn’t had sight of a bloke for years). A second rescue/escape may also be on the cards later in the book. This time from the enemy’s clutches.

(6) Pitt® will establish a mortal vendetta with someone. Usually a heavily muscled, oppressive foreigner (the Axis powers are still alive and kicking in Cussler’s books), who often has simmering homosexual tendencies that Pitt® seems to arouse. This may be linked to (13).

(7) There will be a secret society. Secret societies are meat and good liquor to the world of Dirk Pitt® and Al Giordino. They will be linked to (6) and possibly still harbouring a grudge about losing World War 2.

(8) Cussler will hurl research and knowledge at you like a monkey throwing its shit at kids through the bars at the zoo. This is guaranteed. He knows this stuff and you’re going to know it too, OK? Some paragraphs read like a Haynes manual.

(9) There will be a double-cross. Some seemingly innocuous, benevolent figure will turn out to be a proper bastard. Again, this could be linked to (2).

(10) Pitt®, though a big emotional slab of bachelorhood, will fall in love. But they’ll be no trips to Wal Mart with the wife and kids for Dirk (though apparently he does marry later in the series). Dirk falling in love isn’t good news for the woman in question. It’s akin to being a friend of Jessica Fletcher’s in Murder, she wrote. The woman’s days are numbered. She’ll undoubtedly kipper it before the end of the book.

(11) Pitt® will lead himself and Giordino in a task that involves certain death for the pair of them. Something typical would be riding a tandem bicycle across Antarctica or taking an adapted Jet Ski across the Sahara desert. Giordino will make a wisecrack and follow without hesitation. This is Achilles and Patroclus. This is lifelong brothers.

(12) Pitt® will make periodic prognostications on how the bad guys are going to get their assess whupped. These have been studied by Horatio Caine of CSI:Miami. They appear at the end of chapters and get the reader psyched up and thirsty for blood in the next round.

(13) There may be some kind of genetically developed superman or superwoman. Guaranteed baddy material. These creatures will have a perfect physique but a totally blank emotional landscape. Dirk will ultimately kill this genetic abomination in some vaguely erotic way (e.g. strangle, skewer etc). These super villains may be the creation of (6).

(14) Cussler will explain people and their relationships to each other in ITALICS, UNDERLINED AND SET OUT IN BLOCK CAPITALS. You’ll be left in no doubt. She hates him, he loves her. He respects him, he thinks he’s a great guy. Why waste time with interaction, take it as read.

(15) There will be a big pow-wow, usually in Washington, usually at the White House or some secret war room at the Pentagon, usually involving the President gathered with experts in the relevant field (who generally went to school/college with Pitt® or his boss Admiral Sandecker – dapper little fellow with a ginger Vandyke beard; there I’ve just drawn him for you in the same detail as Cussler’s used for the past three decades. Oh, and he smokes big ceegars) where imminent global catastrophe is discussed over a chocomocca and a few fat Cubans. Sandecker will often invoke rule (11) and give the reader something to chew on. This may also be the moment that point (19) occurs.

(16) Cussler will doubtless make an appearance. But these aren’t Hitchcockian, self-deprecating cameos. Oh no. Cussler saves the day. Cussler steps in at a crucial moment. Cussler flexes the financial muscles and expertise and comes through to give Dirk® a helping hand to bitch slap the bad guys just when all looks as if it might be lost and the world is wobbling on the edge of chaos. This is all part of Cussler’s romantic American imperialism. Americans do everything bigger and better. Fact.

(17) Pitt® and Giordino will inevitably succeed where teams of Special Forces fail. In the course they will save everybody’s bacon and earn the respect and gratitude of the specialist grunts the world over.

(18) There will be a car chase. Generally it will be unevenly matched. Say Pitt® in a vintage Ford Model-T up against a Uzi blazing Yakuza hit team tearing up the tarmac in a pack of re-mapped Nissan Skylines, bent on world domination through poisoned noodles and sabotaged fortune cookies. (Cf. the unpublished Yakuza Death Noodles).

(19) There will come a point when it looks like Pitt® has bitten the dust. The odds will be too great. The action will cut from Dirk just as he’s run out of the last lungful of oxygen ten thousand feet below the Atlantic or has thrown himself out of a plane at 30,000 feet to save the universe. Everyone bar Al Giordino and Admiral Sandecker will give up on him. They know better.

(20) Against the seemingly impossible odds, despite the injuries they pick up along the way, heedless of sniper attacks from gangs of feminists, Pitt® and Giordino will come through triumphant and victorious. Sanity and normality will be restored. The world will keep on spinning.

So, next time you’re heading through the airport, grabbing the SPF 15 that you’ve forgotten and all those duty free designer labels are tempting your compulsive, avaricious streak, and you’re looking for something unchallenging to read in the sun then grab yourself a slice of Cussler from the bookshop. He won’t let you down. And neither will Dirk®. Biff, bang, pow.

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Online shopping for those holiday essentials

2009-08-30T23:13:55+02:00

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Brian Epstein

2009-08-26T13:51:28+02:00

Brian who? Few people below a certain age who find themselves buying a Beatles CD or listening to a Beatles song on the radio will have any idea about Brian Epstein. The man who discovered the Beatles. Mr Twenty-five percent. The Beatles manager between 1961 and 1967. Brian was instrumental in defining an era that he never left. As well as the Fab Four, Brian managed Cilla Black. He looked after the interests of Gerry and the Pacemakers. He guided the careers of Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas. In 1963 Brian’s acts spent 37 weeks at number one. Brian raked in £5,000,000 in 1964[1]. Mr Brian Epstein. The fifth most famous man on earth through from ’64 to ‘66. Brian presented the Beatles to the world. From the first meeting to the first hit single – ten months. Ten months of graft. Ten months of disappointment. Ten months of rejection. Of hard sell and hawking the boys around London. And then the long train journey back north, devising new schemes to keep the dream alive. Met at Lime Street by John and Paul. Brian finding a way to break the news. Ten months of not letting on to the boys just how grim the responses had been. No one wanted to know about the Beatles. Guitar bands were old hat. Brian persevered. Brian didn’t give in. He boxed them up and gift wrapped them. Neat and tidy. Zeitgeist. Ready to go. But no one would remember Brian. Time would roll by and the fame would melt. Brian would diminish. Brian would fade out. Slowly getting quieter until he made no sound at all. The moments of triumph would die with him. He would become an anonymous face in black and white photographs surrounded by the eternally recognizable. The public awareness of Brian will evaporate. John, Paul, George and Ringo will remain. They’ll get all the credit. They’ll stand alone. They will abide. Brian will be forgotten in his Liverpool graveyard. The only one who will ever go back home.

Forty-two years ago this August Bank Holiday weekend Brian Epstein was reported dead in his house at 24 Chapel Street, London. He was thirty-two years old.

Brian’s was a background of comfortable affluence. His life, for all appearances, was safe. His parents successful in that moderate, local way that will make most smug and self-satisfied and serves to sap all ambition. But Brian was a troubled soul. At his public school Brian is lazy. Brian doesn’t concentrate. Brian dreams of becoming a dress designer. Brian spends his maths lesson thinking about the bias cut. He designs theatre programmes for mythical productions. He thinks about Norman Hartnell. He thinks about Cecil Beaton. The marvellous designs. The wonderful creations. The stage. The West End. The glamour of Hollywood. He spends his time looking out of the window and seeing fashion parades. Fuchsia pink married to bright powder blue. Soft peach and mint green. Perfect for this season at Royal Ascot. He imagines himself famous in a discrete, exclusive way. You’re so clever, Mr Epstein. His own studio in the West End. A beautiful boutique. His own label. Princess Margaret calls him up direct. A new hat? A new dress? Some evening wear for a soiree on Mustique? The Ambassador’s ball? Yes, ma’am, no ma’am, three bags full, ma’am. Brian gets kicked out of school. Reports about his lack of work. His laziness. His day-dreaming. His softness. The schools are anti-Semitic. The schools hate Jews. The schools hate Brian Samuel Epstein, Jew. Brian grows up racked with guilt and confusion over his sexuality. Brian is queer. A pansy. Brian is an outsider. He can’t be himself. He can’t join the club. He’s driven by a sense that he wants to achieve something with his life yet seems constantly stalled by one problem or another. He has a buzz for the stage. Perhaps there he’ll find some outlet. Somewhere to fit in. He joins RADA. He stays a few months. He leaves RADA. Brian was a complicated individual. Brian doing his National Service. Heading to London. Miserable. Trapped. Escaping into a world of his own imagination. Caught by the Red Caps in some West End bar, impersonating a major in the Guards regiment. Awkward questions. Brian stuttering replies. Brian getting flustered. Brian’s been trawling for men. Meeting men in public toilets. Young boys. Seedy. Needy. Gay. Brian gets picked up by the police. A sting operation. Brian sees a boy. The telltale signals. Brian is tempted. Brian hesitates. Brian leaves and then returns. He plucks up the courage. Why not? He follows the undercover copper into the public lavs. He gets lifted. He gets taken to the police station. He gets cautioned for importuning. You don’t tell that story in your little book, do you, Eppy? A cellerful of boys. And you don’t tell them about getting discharged from Her Majesty’s armed forces because of your unnatural appetites. You gloss over that one, don’t you, Brian? Epstein returns to Liverpool and is gifted a job managing his parents’ furniture shop. He accepts his fate. To be comfortable and affluent and bored. He knuckles down. He wears nice clothes and goes to the theatre. He works hard. Plays hard? Who knows? Epstein’s Mr. Brian. Always punctual. Always diligent. But Brian refused to accept the safety. Something in him won’t rest. He needed a gamble. He wanted to take risks. He branches out and starts selling records. He pledges to get any record in the world through his shop in Liverpool, Lancashire. Brian is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He trawled the pubs for rough trade. He kept an eye out for vicious rent boys. He wants a slice. He needs a taste. He has to have a piece. The other Brian at the Walker Gallery, in raptures over some canvas daub. The other Brian keeping office hours in his clean, white shirt. Epstein’s Mr. Brian sitting down to the day’s work with the angry welts underneath his clean, white shirt.

And then Brian stumbled into the Beatles. The legend is that he fell in love with John Lennon. Brian spellbound in the clammy, sweaty atmosphere of the Cavern Club below Matthew Street in Liverpool. Condensation dripping off the painted walls. Smoke collecting in the low, curved ceiling. The air thick and degraded. Brian mesmerized by Mendips’ Master John on the badly lit stage. Mendips’ Master John playing the part of the hard man as he crunches out ‘That’ll be the day’ to the Cavern faithful one grey northern afternoon. Everything still in black and white. Mendips’ Master John laughing at cripples and spastics. Mendips’ Master John stumbling forward without a thought for the future. Mendips’ Master John and the rest of the boys laughing at queers. It’s possible. Brian was attracted to men who didn’t appreciate him. Brian was drawn to men who responded to his affection with cruelty and unkindness. Brian liked a bit of rough. Brian went for the tough boy look. Brian took beatings because of his love of the tough boy look. Brian got the shit kicked out of him because of his love of the tough boy look. Brian got cut up with a broken milk bottle because of his love of the tough boy look. The Beatles played the tough boy part well back in 1961. Leather jackets and Teddy Boy haircuts. Cigarettes and cheap amphetamines. Flirting with the girls from the stage. Stopping mid song to cadge cigarettes from the front row. To exchange funnies. To swear. To take requests. To pull John’s spaz faces. For George to munch on an egg sandwich. For Paul to set up a date with a girl who worked the make-up counter at Boots. Brian saw something. Brian saw an opportunity. Brian turned his artistic eye on the Beatles. He applied his RADA training. He schooled them in stage craft. He directed them in manners. He prompted them in deportment. He implemented the synchronized stage bow. Deep and low, bend from the hips. He demanded professionalism. He showed them what they could achieve. He took on the gamble. To make them bigger than Elvis. He groomed them for fame. He made them his project. He found someone he could belong to. A world where he could fit in. Without Brian we would never have heard of the Beatles. Brian picked them out of apathy and carried them to become the biggest musical phenomena ever. He gave them the scope to create the cultural landscape beyond their own achievements. What were their plans if Brian hadn’t turned up? Where were they heading? A ten year residence at the Bootle Working Mens’ Club; sandwiched between the bingo and the blue comedian, knocking out old rock n’ roll covers. Still in the Hamburg leather jackets and the Teddy Boy haircuts. Doing Elvis tracks in working mens’ clubs across Merseyside. In Blackpool. In Bolton. In Preston. In Manchester. In Leeds. In Halifax. In Newcastle. In Sunderland. In Doncaster. In Barnsley. Johnny Silver and his Silver Beetles. Direct from Liverpool. Knocking out the old rock n’ roll hits. ‘C’mon everybody’, ‘Blue suede shoes’, ‘Peggy Sue’. Still with no money in the bank. The future narrowing. Mal’s still driving the van. They split the cash. John starts a fight with the entertainments committee. Old men in brown suits with grey sideburns. No complimentary bar bill. Flat north country vowels. No fucking swearing on stage, this is a fucking family club. And if you drink all that booze you’ll have to bloody pay for it! Paul flirts with the girl behind the bar. That’s my fucking wife, you Scouse bastard. George leans forward to catch what someone is asking. Some old dear in horn-rimmed specs, hair like candy floss, a spent bingo card in front of her, supping gin and lime. You want what, love? Requests for Tommy Steele hits. Half a fucking six pence? Get fucked! And what would we have had without the Beatles? A Cliff and the Shadows 1960s. Good grief. It doesn’t bear thinking about. It is a horrible glimpse at a future that might have been. Hitler in Buckingham Palace. Emperor Hirohito in the White House. Cliff singing ‘Summer holiday’ at Shea Stadium. Imagine…

Brian enjoyed the trappings of his success. He revelled in his fame by proxy. He found confidence in the Beatles apparent invincibility. You were only as good as the next record and the next record was going to be a hit. You didn’t argue with Lennon & McCartney. Eighteen number ones. Twelve hit albums. Each one more original than the last. Each one an evolution. Brian had the plum Bentley – just like the Queen’s. He sits comfortable in the deep leather upholstery and watches London drift past between meetings and interviews. The handmade suits from Savile Row. The new glossy friends. The shiny, exclusive doors opening. The complimentary boys. The glittering parties on his London roof garden. The exclusive clubs where he swapped jokes with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. The showbiz premieres. His friendship with Alma Cogan. His appearances on television and radio. Brian picks two of Paul’s songs for his Desert Island Disks. Keep the royalties coming, Brian. Brian bought himself a house in the country. Kingsley Hill just south of Heathfield in Sussex. He had his own TV show – Hullabaloo. He ate at the best restaurants. He owned his own theatre that hosted concerts by Jimi Hendrix and Cream. He was the subject of two Beatles’ songs, both written by Lennon – ‘Hide your love away’ and ‘Baby, you’re a rich man’. He mixed with all the fabulous people of the decade. But Brian still had his flip side. Mr Hyde still clawed at him from the inside. He still liked the hard boys. He still liked to gamble with huge stakes. Financial and personal. First in Liverpool – where he became the complainant Mr X at a trial at the Crown Court in a case of blackmail – then in London where he could really go wild. Late nights spent in the Curzon House, the high class gambling den. Thousands on the table. His trips to Fascist Spain to drool over bullfighters. Sat rigid in the Cordoba sunshine with a tall glass of something cool to watch some homoerotic ballet where an animal is made to die slowly so that Brian can get a shot off. Brian disappearing on tour. Twenty-four hours AWOL in Cincinnati on the ’64 summer tour. Brian comes back walking stiff. Bruises on his ribs. A pale look to his face. Minus his wallet. Minus his watch. Minus his lighter. Where the bloody hell have you been, Brian? Brian the fifth Beatle. The fat Beatle. Brian with his Windsor knot and his officer’s voice. His manicured nails and classical LPs.

Brian does the dirty work. Brian earns his twenty-five percent gross. The Beatles: John, Paul, George and Pete. Pete the attractive one with all the fans in Liverpool. Pete who got the boys bookings in the early days. Pete with his head in the gas oven as the Fab Four are on TV. Rattle your jewellery. Pete in Liverpool. Pete on Merseyside. Pete looking ‘round for a job. Pete having to pull himself together in the face of the hurricane. Didn’t you used to be in the Beatles? Pete fucked. Pete fucked over. Pete dumped. Pete with his head in the gas oven as they collect their Variety Club golden hearts from Mr Wilson. Brian does the dirty work. Brian earns his twenty-five percent gross. Brian gives Pete the bad news. Erm, Pete, I’m afraid the boys feel that… Pete sticks his head into the gas oven as the boys run through the streets in A Hard Days Night chased by screaming teens. Brian remembers Pete. Brian thinks about Pete. As Brian slips away Pete Best is kneading baps for £12 a week in a Liverpool bakery.

Brian was an industry joke. The subject of spiteful sniping. The object of jealous criticism. Brian was a patsy. Brian was overwhelmed. The Americans carved up Brian’s boys. The Yanks were bleeding them dry. The Americans had a feeding frenzy. The Americans were having their pants down. Brian could sell the boys a thousand times over and the Yanks would still be coming back for more. The figures were off the scale. There was no precedent. Brian didn’t know what he was dealing with. No one did. Not until it’s too late. Not until the signatures were dry. No one was expecting anything on this scale. Brian is willing to take what they’ll give him. Brian doesn’t understand that they’re willing to give a shed load more. A lot more. A massive amount more. Millions more. Brian nods. Brian is personable and reasonable. Brian doesn’t see the need to be ruthless. Brian doesn’t think it’s necessary. Brian thinks he’s got a good deal. They’ve given everything he asked for. Brian asked for nothing. Relatively. Brian feels pleased. Brian tells the boys not to worry. Brian says they’ve got it sewn up. Brian throws some cash around. The money seems limitless. The earnings are amazing. The floodgates have finally opened. More than they dreamed. Brian sees the crowds and his heart sinks. Brian does a rough head count. Brian adds it all up. Brian does his sums. Brian calculates. Brian multiplies. Brian converts. Dollars. Pounds Sterling. Brian quietly panics. Brian sees the cash bleeding away. Brian sees a fortune fall into someone else’s hands. Someone who knows nothing about his boys. Who cares nothing about his boys. Someone who’s done nothing to bring his boys this far. Brian nods coldly to ‘I want to hold your hand’ from the side of the stage. Jelly Babies reigning down. The white noise of teenage mania. Brian gets a whiff of ammonia coming from the piss-sodden front rows. Brian’s felt his arse drop. Brian keeps doing the figures. Brian folds his arms. He taps his polished shoe to Ringo’s pounding beat. To the Beatle noise. Brian smiles rigidly. Brian is aware of the camera flashes. Brian slaps on a smile. He nods encouragement. The smile doesn’t reach his eyes. The nod misses the beat. Brian has fucked up. The man who made the Beatles.

Monday 29^th August 1966. The Beatles had played their last official concert. Candlestick Park baseball stadium, San Francisco. They’d only sold just over half of the tickets. The promoter had made a loss. Broad banks of seats empty. 1966 wasn’t 1965. John had opened his big gob and put his foot in it. Corporate America was flexing its muscles and fighting back after the Fab Four nearly destroyed the Billboard Chart. Corporate America dividing the audience with The Monkees. Back home other acts were stealing their thunder. Bands that played harder. That seemed cooler. Dressed differently. The Who. The Small Faces. The Kinks. The Rolling Stones. Candelstick Park was an end. Brian had missed the show. All thirty-five minutes of it. He’d rushed in when it was all over. Sweat beading under his perfect shirt collar. Damp gathering in the creases of his beautiful suit. Too late. He’d missed the boys last appearance. After John had hinted at the future with the opening chords of 'A Day in the Life' and they walked off the stage forever. Brian had been in time to see big Mal and Neil putting away the kit. Where the bloody hell have you been, Brian? Brian had experienced some trouble. A bit of a hitch. Nothing to concern the boys. Nothing to worry them about. An ex-boyfriend had half-inched his attaché case. Compromising papers mixed up with the Beatles business correspondence. Some dodgy top-shelf muscle magazines. Some dubious prescription drugs. A couple of joints. A bag of grass. Some nasty photographs. A dirty boy on boy skin film. The police were brought in. There’d been more trouble. Brian balked at pressing charges. He didn't want to criminalize the boy. He thanked the police kindly for their efforts to recover his property. No, no need to check, he was sure that it was all there. Brian made a contribution to the police benevolent fund. Brian shook hands. He arranged Beatles’ autographs. Brian became urbane. He played it down. Brian was compromised. Brian was scared. Brian played it polite and retreated gracefully. Brian’s personal life was a mess.

Monday 29^th August 1966 had marked the end of an era. A period of usefulness was now over. Brian had no more concerts to organize. No more tours. No more itineraries to arrange. No more TV appearances to sort out. The boys were growing up. The boys were coming to their own conclusions. The boys are making their own decisions. Brian feels slightly wrong-footed. Brian’s not sure about the wisdom in putting out the Sgt. Pepper cover. Brian’s worried about the new hairstyles. Brian’s making the best of the drug disclosures. Brian’s loyalty for the boys never wavers. The boys spend more time in the studio. Brian rarely visits the studio. He’s rarely been there since he was word slapped by John when he appeared in the control room. You here to count your percentages, Brian? Brian starts to see less and less of the boys. A day in the life. All change. What now Brian?

Just under a year later, on Sunday 27^th August 1967, and Brian was dead.

Epstein’s death was the first real tolling of the bell for the Beatles. Even Lennon’s Jesus remark and ‘Paperback Writer’ not hitting the top spot in its first week the previous year were incomparable to the affect Epstein’s death would have on them. As Lennon would later say: ‘I knew we were in trouble then. I didn’t really have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music and I was scared. I thought, “We’ve fucking had it now.”’ With Brian gone, in-fighting ripped the band apart. The fractious relationship between Paul and John got out of hand. The rumbling power play between them. Paul with the Eastmans. John and Yoko and Allen Klein. They were slated for their meandering self-indulgence over The Magical Mystery Tour film when it premiered on the BBC over Christmas. Then 1968 took them to new lows. The paranoia began to climb the walls. The mistrust smothered them. John got into Yoko and Bagism. Paul wanted more control. George was tired of taking guitar lessons from Paul. Ringo felt unloved. Drugs addled their brains and the sharks began to circle. It all spiralled out of control. The band went into a tailspin. Less than two years after Brian’s death and the Beatles would make their final album together.

I find it difficult to read any account of Epstein’s death and not see cover up written all over it. Something more happened that weekend. There’s a back story that we haven’t been made privy to. That was kept secret. The most obvious deduction is that in some way his death was linked to his sexuality, and consequently something that wouldn’t look good reported in the press. Did Brian kill himself? There are many that say not. That try to rationalize behaviour. He wouldn’t have done it, his father had recently died, he wouldn’t have left his mother… But that’s with a benefit of hindsight. Behaviour in real time is rarely rational. Even more so in the case of suicide. Brian had been depressed and unhappy for some time. His father’s death, his failed relationships, his worries over a future with the Beatles. His mood made worse by his spiralling drug misuse. By a need to maintain composure. Brian was under incredible pressure. He’d tried the Priory clinic before it became fashionable. Before it became a route to recover your career. Brian had checked in to recover his nerves and kick the bad habits. He’d bought Kingsley Hill to escape from London. Brian was up against it. It was all getting too much. Though I don’t necessarily think that a suicide in itself would have been covered up. There would have to be aggravating circumstances. It seems the only chance of this happening would be dependent on what – if anything – Brian had to say in any note he left behind. Would that note have seen the light of day? None ever did. The house was thoroughly cleaned. The carpets hoovered. The drawers emptied. The cabinets rifled. Everywhere made safe. Did a note exist? Brian had written suicide notes previously. But not this time? What might it have said that some thought should be left unsaid? What might have caused Brian to plunge to the bottom of his own personal well? What might have left Brian unable to take any more? Brian’s despair at his homosexuality? At the venality of his lovers? His fears over the future? His sadness at his father’s death? His life breaking apart? Did Brian die accidentally? As the coroner decided. As the death certificate stated. A relief to all concerned. Accidental overdose. Years of prescription medication abuse coming on top. A build up of toxins. Through his haphazard use of Carbitral. Through his lucky bag crunching of Preludin. Perhaps. But I’m not entirely convinced he died at Chapel Street. Or that the accident was the one we’ve been given to accept. Kingsley Hill slumbering in the fat English countryside. Did the rent boys actually turn up? Did the party down in Sussex go ahead? Did the party down in Sussex go wrong? Did something happen to Brian at the party? Did somebody make a mistake? Did something go wrong? Did someone hurt Brian? Kingsley Hill. Brian’s thrown a fortune at the interior design. Trimmed it up. Every detail thought out, imagined in his head, through his mind’s eye, made real. Brian loved it. Brian had earned it. For the first time in his life, something that he’d gone out and made for himself. No Harry, no Queenie, no Hebrew Mafia. Brian Epstein, the man who made the Beatles. Brian’s down for the warm and sunny Bank Holiday while the boys are in Wales with Sexy Sadie. Brian will have the long weekend at Kingsley Hill and join them later. Brian in his queer arcadia. The green rolling hills. The fat trees. The blue skies. The thrills. Prescription drugs, marijuana and a punnet of rent boys. The climax of the greatest British summer of the greatest British decade of all time. Our apotheosis. The Garden of Eden to which we would all forever try to return.

What happened, Brian?

--------------------------------------------------
[1]If the Great Train Robbers’ haul of £2.6 million is estimated at £38 million in today’s money, then in one year Epstein earned the equivalent of roughly £75,000,000.

For more on Brian Epstein click here to watch a 1999 documentary.

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The water in Majorca…

2009-08-21T11:20:26+02:00

Friday 17^th July 2009. Berwick was damp, grey and drizzly when we got there just after eleven in the morning. The M1 had been a nightmare. Visibility barely reaching beyond the windscreen at times. Miles and miles of the wet North Country disappearing in a silver haze. We’d stopped off at Holy Island and stared at the low marshy hillock from the wrong side of the tide. A pale slate sky and a bright green line on the horizon struggling to raise itself up from the dark water. We knew the crossing wouldn’t be possible at that time after checking the internet the night before but felt we had to make the detour and gawp into historical space as it was so close. We gazed for a minute or so, soaked in the atmosphere of illuminated manuscripts and Viking raiders, then I did a quick three-pointer in the rising water and we headed back to the main road. I felt much better for it, somehow.

Berwick’s reached from the South by a non-descript roundabout off the A1*. Past a tree-lined industrial estate, under the solid Victorian certainty of Brunel’s rail bridge and through a canyon of strangely incongruous rows of utilitarian terraced houses raised up from the road. Another inconsequential, suburban mini-roundabout and you’re on the long road bridge over the cosy, twisty-sounding Tweed that takes you into the fortified town, with the rail bridge reappearing on your left shoulder and the awe inspiring cold, brooding mass of the North Sea on your right.

We parked the car near the harbour with its thick defensive walls. The rain started coming down heavily again. Lashing the brown stone walls and the blue slate roofs and running in the gutters. We speed-walked up to the town centre and into the café under the town croft. The Doolally. Hot Chocolate in a big mug. Some calories and a break from the driving on my 690 mile round trip.

Sat in the café contemplating a big slab of soggy chocolate cake, it was then that I’d been surprised to hear the Scot’s accents. They’d snuck up on me like the Highland charge at Prestonpans. Shock and awe. Everyone spoke with a Caledonian twang. The tidy waitress in her white blouse and black pants, the old people gathering for a chat, the bickering teens who’d congregated to discuss spots and cider. Och aye, the noo! We’re still in England, surely? Fair enough, only two and a half miles inside England, but in England nonetheless. Despite what some members of the Scottish National Party might want or suggest. Despite the town looking like a cover from The Peoples’ Friend. Berwick is in England. Just. Yet here was everyone talking like they’ve got a gob full of Shortbread and Irn-bru and would be going home that night to play Rod Stewart’s back catalogue on the bagpipes and tuck into a tea of haggis and deep fried Mars bar followed by a dozen cans of Special Brew. And a fight. I didn’t hear anyone that sounded even vaguely English. There was not even the ubiquitous posh bloke speaking beige Received Pronunciation with his rolled up copy of The Guardian under one arm. Berwick-on-Tweed has been fought over for centuries; as the pages of The Dandy will testify. And here I was living inside ‘The Jocks and the Geordies’ comic strip. Except there didn’t seem to be any Geordies. It struck me oddly. How far back South into Northumbria would I have to travel before the local accent became recognizably English again? I considered running an experiment. Jumping back into the car, pulling off the A1 into some bypassed village, storming into a pub and demanding the locals describe what they see when I show them a photograph of Janette Tough dressed as Jimmy Crankie. Och, that’s the wee laddie, oor Jimmy! Fandabidozy! Two miles South – It’s that bloody Scots dwarf that dresses up like a school boy for her husband. Fucking weirdos! Method, results, conclusion.

Looked at more widely, where is the demarcation line for accents drawn? Are there invisible borders pegged into the landscape? Are indigenous accents the products of geography and microclimates? Is it all about the adenoids and the damps – or otherwise – affect on the vocal chords? I supped hot chocolate and considered. I resisted cake and thought about it. When do the flat, blunt vowels of Yorkshire turn into the fruity half-witted burr of Lancashire? Where does the English accent of the satellite villages of Marches towns like Shrewsbury and Ludlow acquire the singsong vocal traits of Wales? And how does an accent affect your identity? How does it colour your personality? The way we speak becomes a verbal shorthand. Words and letters missed out to enable us to speak quicker. I’m goin’ t’pub. Human beings will always find a short cut. Look at the evolution of text messaging in the past decade. Look at any grassy square with straight paths around the side. Then there is a sense of local identity and local pride in a dropped aitch or a wobbly diphthong. And the feeling, not always natural, of fitting in with those that surround you. Human beings are imitators. That’s how we learn most of our skills as children. Monkey see, monkey do. That’s how we acquire skills and ways of understanding that we often never really question later in life. We do things and say things without truly appreciating them. Our speech and sayings are indicative of this. It’s like place names that we accept at face value simply as names devoid of meaning without understanding their origins. The Anglo-Saxon suffixes, the Norse surnames, the Norman impositions. But will the turns of expression that we litter our speech with affect our thought processes? And how are the thought processes of our brain linked together with words? Do we think with a region accent? Will our accents and familiar sayings engender preconceptions? Does an accent colour our thoughts as heavily as it does our ability to say ‘book’ to rhyme with ‘duke’, and pronouncing ‘there’ so it sounds like ‘dare’? Will you pass me dat dare bewk?

But in the modern world how long can all this last? Regional identity is under threat. Regional identity makes us more difficult to govern. Pronouncing ‘right’ to rhyme with ‘weight’ is morally divisive. Surely it can’t be allowed to go on. Perhaps eventually we will all be indoctrinated with some form of Newspeak. Blandness and homogeny programmed into us, all individuality routed out. How now, brown cow. The rain in Spain. The water in Majorca… How now, brown cow. The rain in Spain. The water in Majorca… How now, brown cow. The rain in Spain. The water in Majorca… How now, brown cow. The rain in Spain. The water in Majorca… How now, brown cow. The rain in Spain. The water in Majorca… How now, brown cow. The rain in Spain. The water in Majorca… How now, brown cow. The rain in Spain. The water in Majorca… How now, brown cow. The rain in Spain. The water in Majorca… How now, brown cow. The rain in Spain. The water in Majorca… How now, brown cow. The rain in Spain. The water in Majorca… How now, brown cow. The rain in Spain. The water in Majorca… How now, brown cow. The rain in Spain. The water in Majorca… Say it again and again and again until we all sound exactly the same. Until Received Pronunciation is stamped into your physiology and branded onto your psyche. Until we all speak beautiful and totally sterile English. Perhaps then we will all be more obliging with what we think and believe. Perhaps then we will have less to argue about. Less to disagree with. When all the differences between us will be removed. Our local, shared identities beaten out and obliterated until we’re all shiny and smooth. This following on from the programme of house building which has seen housing estates the length and breadth of the country drawn meticulously from the selfsame blueprints. The United Kingdom of Barratt homes. This following the programme of ASDA/Sainsbury’s Tesconomy that rules the land and has brought the same products in exactly the same looking stores all over the country. You lucky affluent bastards.

As we made our way back down from the town centre to the car we walked parallel with a kid with ginger hair wearing an England football shirt. He was speaking to a friend and saying he was out to buy some wee tatties for his bonnie bairn and expressing his hopes about England’s chances in the upcoming friendly with Holland. This, I thought, was what Coca-cola and the New Seekers were hoping for. A world of rich harmony and smiling multi-culturalism. A world for us all to share. A world where borders meant nothing.

Sean Connery, are you listening? You porridge munching twat.

* Equally from the North by another non-descript roundabout, this time with a Morrison’s supermarket plonked on the side.

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Tonight let’s all make love in London

2009-08-20T21:42:50+02:00

On Saturday 29^th April 1967 into Sunday 30^th, the 14 hour Technicolour Dream was held at the Alexandra Palace in London. John Lennon appeared, and the Pretty Things. Together with an array of other psychedelic acts. As dawn broke over the Summer of Love The Pink Floyd took to the stage. Syd Barrett played the same D7sus chord for twenty minutes during ‘Interstellar Overdrive’. They were hailed as geniuses.

These poor fuckers got ASBOs instead:

A busking duo who tormented a Birmingham village by continuously playing just two songs have been given an ASBO banning them from performing in the area.

Guitarist James Ryan and dustbin lid-player Andrew Stevens would regularly perform late night renditions of the only songs they knew - Wonderwall by Oasis and George Michael’s Faith – in Moseley village, Birmingham.

However, the plug has been pulled on their impromptu gigs after frustrated locals said the performances turned Moseley into a ‘nightmare of loud noise and fighting’.

The complaints led to Ryan, 40, and Stevens, 39 - both of no fixed address - being banned from entering parts of Moseley and playing musical instruments in public in the area. The pair were also banned from begging anywhere in England and Wales.

They were warned they faced jail if they breached the two-year anti-social behaviour orders handed down yesterday by District Judge Qureshi at Birmingham Magistrates Court.

After the hearing, Ryan said: “The whole thing’s about playing a guitar, it’s a joke. Most people loved it.”

Birmingham City Council said the pair stood near taxi ranks, cash points and various pubs in Moseley singing and begging, often playing from early evening into the early hours. Revellers often joined in with them at pub closing time.

One resident was forced to call police 60 times after attempts to talk to the pair was met with “abuse and threats”.

Matt Williams, 43, who has since moved out of the area, said: “I break down every time I hear Wonderwall or the intro to Faith. It was just one after the other, it was awful.

“It was everything from the noise of them busking on the streets, to begging and causing fights, to the general lawlessness it encouraged while they were there. They would go on until four, five or six in the morning. It was horrendous. It completely affected my life.

“I couldn’t sleep but it had a far deeper effect where all of a sudden your home isn’t a place where you could feel comfortable, safe or secure. I didn’t feel I had anywhere that was my sanctuary.”

Another victim, aged 40, added: “If you popped out to go to the shops, you would get hassled on the way out and hassled on the way back.”

Residents said that after interim banning orders against the pair were granted earlier this year, the atmosphere around Moseley Village had dramatically improved.

from the Independent, Thursday 20th August 2009

'The atmosphere around Moseley Village had dramatically improved.' Bloody Squares!

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Did you know...?

2009-08-11T13:42:05+02:00

Many supposed film cognoscenti falsely believe that American director Quentin Tarantino, famed for the films Jackie Brown and Reservoir Dogs, was influenced by the jumping chronology of 1950s film The Killers when penning his 1995 academy award winning gangster flick PULP FICTION, starring ultra-cool Samuel L. Jackson and a curtains-wearing John Travolta. However, the true inspiration behind the LA-set movie which features a hallmark-Tarantino quirky timeline was former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the footage from the 18th June 1984 riot at the Orgreave coking plant between Rotherham and Sheffield, South Yorkshire during the year-long 1984/85 U.K. Miners Strike.

So struck with this excellent and effective piece of dramatic licence - where the actual chronological order of events was surreptitiously reversed when screened on the BBC television news that night; thus showing striking miners initiating the violence which marked the day, rather than the police - was the geeky American filmmaker that Tarantino turned most of his story arse about face in order to get more of a wow from the audience. 'Hey,' confessed Tarantino, at the Cannes film festival in 1996, where PULP FICTION snatched the coveted Palme d 'Or, 'it worked for my bitch Maggie, I knew it could work for me!'

Motherfucker.

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Things I hate #8

2009-08-01T12:31:03+02:00

Automatic checkouts. I seriously despise those fuckers. In principle they’re a good idea. Let’s face it, anything that means you have to endure less interaction with other human beings and their selfish bad manners, their sticky germs, their appalling, unbending attitudes and their repulsive, blackhead-pitted skins has to be a good thing. But the technology is flawed. It’s shite.

The system is simple enough. You’re essentially saving the supermarket some money and working for them for free by checking out your own shopping, thus allowing them to sack the members of staff who would have been working the tills. Serves ‘em right, the miserable fuckers. A big thumbs up for capitalism. You scan your choices in, then bag them up, insert cash into a note reader/coin feed, or chip and PIN your bank card, HAL then thanks you for your custom and away you toddle. Simple as. Except it’s not. Because, despite the big-hearted slogans and the loyalty cards, the supermarkets don’t trust you. The supermarkets know that at heart you’re all thieving bastards and you’d fleece them of their last tin of Rice Pudding given half the chance. And so they have programmed such a level of distrust and suspicion into the automatic checkouts that they’re constantly challenging your honesty. The fuckers are paranoid.

Anything you scan has to be put in into a bag which is suspended between two prongs over a weight sensitive plate, or onto the conveyor belt which (again is weight sensitive and) carries all your groceries so that they can be messed up in a bagging area. If anything appears on the weight sensor that hasn’t been scanned you’ve had it. Because shoplifters are notorious for bagging up their swag and would never dream of putting anything in their pockets. Equally anything you scan has to be put in a bag. This last stipulation has got nothing to do with the supermarket but is an initiative started by the express checkout CPU itself because the computer wants you to use more plastic carrier bags, destroy the ecology and kill the planet so that machines can take over.

My trip the other lunchtime was typical. Chicken and bacon sandwich with mayo on brown, bar of chocolate, bag of crisps, bottle of Coke. No challenges there, I hear you say. Think again. We started with the crisps. Beep!

‘PLEASE PUT THE ITEM INTO THE BAG,’ says a robotic female voice pitched with well-enunciated superciliousness.

I look down. I look back at the machine. I have, it’s there. It’s in the bag. Let’s move onto the next one.

But no, it won’t move onto the next one. It’s not going to let this lie. Because you’re trying to have its pants down, aren’t you, you thieving cunt. The barcode reader is locked and every CCTV camera in the store has now trained it’s beady eyes on me. I can almost feel the laser guiding red dots on my chest. Zooming in on my head. Go ahead, punk…

The machine underlines the problem: ‘PLEASE PUT THE ITEM INTO THE BAG.’

I’m in danger of repeating myself here. It’s in the fucking bag.

‘No it isn’t. You’ve pocketed it along with a gas barbecue set worth £159.99. PLEASE PUT THE ITEM INTO THE BAG.’

It’s in the fucking bag!

This implied accusation that somehow I’m shoplifting scum goes on until it sees me retrieve the Seabrooks’ Ready Salted and then begin hurling the packet back into the bag like John McEnroe grounding his Slazenger racket into the turf like it’s Wimbledon c. 1983 in the hope that the weight sensor just might believe that the fucking crisps are there.

IS IT IN THE FUCKING BAG NOW?!

The computer thinks about it. Finally, the suspicious twat chip inside the machine recognizes my now broken packet of Seabrooks. It nods it’s head and grudgingly beeps as if to say, ‘I knew you had it all the time you light-fingered fucker’ and we progress.

I scan my next purchase. Beep! I drop it into the carrier.

‘UNEXPECTED ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA.’

Eh? What do you mean ‘unexpected item’?! How the fuck can it be ‘unexpected’? I just scanned it and you agreed that it was a Toffee Crisp and cost 0.44p. I dropped it into the bag. How can it suddenly be ‘unexpected’, you daft twat! It’s not a fucking mini-fridge, is it?!

‘PLEASE WAIT FOR ASSISTANCE.’

WHAT???!!!!!!! ‘Please WAIT!!! Please fucking WAIT!!!!!! Zipperdeefuckingdoodah! The whole point in this fucking process is that I don’t have to fucking wait. Because I haven’t got the fucking time to wait. The red light goes on regardless, indicating the start of a foot-tapping, obscenity-generating, anger-fostering, bile simmering pause until some assistant finds the motivation to drag themselves away from a conversation about dildos with an equally unenthusiastic co-worker and shamble across. ‘It always does this,’ she inevitably says. A dead voice and a sour look on her face. ‘You fucking Luddite!’ she might as well add. ‘You thieving fucking Luddite!’ She’s the machine’s slave. She’s the computer’s lacky. Until boffins can devise robots that are any good in a foot chase, she’s got herself a job. Pretending to help you out, surreptitiously she checks to see if you’ve got a patio heater tucked up your t-shirt or a 50 inch LCD shoved in the carrier bag.

She swipes her card. She reassures the machine. I smile. Cheers, love. Always does it? Really? I know it fucking always does this, because it’s done it every fucking time I’ve used the bastard thing!

That it fucks up constantly, with at least every second item that you scan, is compounded by the fact that you only used the ‘express checkout’ because you were in a fucking hurry in the first bastard place. Twats. Humanity-quenching, money-fucking-grabbing, suspicious bastard twats. And now you’re late. And now you’re wound up. Every little helps, my fucking arse.

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Ethel Jolie

2009-07-29T18:50:31+02:00

You have a famous Hollywood actor. Their bloated lips are too big. Their goggle eyes set too wide apart. Their whopping hooter of a nose has a strange shape to it. Their jaw is like a lantern. But somehow it works. The camera loves them and they are a star. World famous and drooled over by millions. Then they have a sibling that has the same family traits. The same lips, the same eyes, the same nose, the same jaw. And they don’t look right. They never climb out of B movies. They make pilots that never progress to the network screen. They look somehow odd. Not quite fitting. And so we have the BMW Series 1 and the Hyundai I30. I was sat behind an I30 in traffic on Rotherham Road yesterday. For some reason I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that I was looking at Megan Fox’s cousin’s arse.

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Tomorrow never knows

2009-07-23T01:36:01+02:00

I don’t understand reality. It seems so fractured to me. And overwhelmingly subjective. My own thoughts and impressions undergo so much constant change and review that little, if anything, seems certain. Feelings, which form the basis of thought and opinion, are fleeting and operate under huge pressures forcing them to evolve and alter. They are subjected to a multitude of stresses that cause them to harden or be crushed. They warm and they cool. They pander to self-interest in all it’s many shifting guises. Feelings which are dependant on the chemical balances and shivering imbalances of my body. Dependant on the reactions and interactions with other people. People with their own individual takes on reality that they bring with them. We all experience reality in different ways. With different interpretations. Some have their impressions altered further. Alcoholics who have poisoned their brains, people re-wired by drugs, people with a billion different types of emotional trauma and awareness, people whose thoughts are a raging mental blizzard. Schizophrenia, bi-polar, depression. Minute shifts and changes in the body’s metabolism and our experiences can alter the world around us unbelievably. There are times when I experience a sort of emotional intoxication. I find myself floating without control on a river of my own sensations. High or low. I come to and find it impossible to be sure of anything. Suddenly marooned. Did yesterday really happen? Did I really say that? Why did I say that? How could I say that? The echo of my own thought returns to me with an unfamiliar voice. Time itself is like a series of falling dominoes; each one knocking down the next. Spent. Gone. Apparently. Reality, and by extension sanity, seems little more than an agreement conform and an ability to control ourselves. A consensus. And reality only exists through the power to remember what we did five minutes ago.

And then there’s dementia. Where we walk off the map altogether and stumble into an endless, broad white space. There are more than a hundred diagnosable types of brain disorder that result in a loss of mental function. Each is usually progressive and eventually leads to severe, debilitating symptoms. Gradually worsening memory loss, uncharacteristic mood swings, the reduced ability to communicate. A truly alternative reality lurks within us all. Nearly half a million people in the UK are afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. A further quarter of a million with other degenerative brain disorders. Dementia sees reality reduced to a broken lens. Where you find yourself looking at the world through a prism. Dementia means the individual loses that consensus of reality with the rest of the world. Instead reality becomes wholly personal and totally subjective. Locked inside a dark labyrinth, your own confusing ideas and obsessive thoughts become the only basis for reality. Mental myopia. The field of vision shrinking and becoming increasingly opaque. Alzheimer’s is a broken time machine: where you find yourself locked inside 1984; certain – with a hardcore, unshakeable belief that will terrify all those around you – that you’ve got a can of Quatro in your school bag and that you’ve got to finish off your History homework or else you’ll be in big trouble. Alzheimer’s is a liar that whispers in your ear and tells you that the people you’ve loved all your life are strangers to you.

In the next fifteen years it is anticipated that the combined figure of people suffering with different types of dementia will top a million. A million people trapped inside a nightmare. By the middle of the century it’s predicted that number may double again. Dementia blights lives and destroys families. We find ourselves bereaved of those who are still alive. We become prisoners in our own minds. Yet dementia is almost seen as a natural progression. You get old, you become forgetful. You get old, your mind gives way. You get old, you retreat into the shell of your own body. Dementia isn’t generally afforded the same understanding and sympathy as cancer and other more overtly life-threatening illnesses. Instead dementia is quietly accepted as part of the aging process along with arthritis, an addiction to Werther’s Originals and bad eyesight. People aren’t seen to die because they’re forgetful or because they don’t recognize their own family any more. So what’s the problem? Those suffering from dementia are mothballed with prescription drugs and soup. They are already lost to us, the individual we knew has gone and is replaced by a stranger, we can do nothing to save them. Have some Amitriptyline and a bowl of Cockerleekie. Now wander off back to 1976 when everyone you loved was still alive. Is that right? Are we seeing things clearly? Are we doing enough?

Reality is subjective. Just like pain. We all see through a glass darkly. We look at each other across an ocean.

Adapted from Notebook, Edinburgh/Dundee Friday 17^th July 2009

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Golf tips #19

2009-07-22T12:44:28+02:00

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Handicapped

2009-07-16T21:33:17+02:00

I went to the Woodlands driving range at Staincross on Sunday. It’s not that often I get up there; I generally go to the Sandhill range as it's only a short drive (boom boom) from my house. But, with the foresight and catering to my own self-interests that I’m famed for, I thought I'd head over the other side of town and skank a Sunday dinner at my Mum's at the same time as drilling a few balls.

I quite like the Woodlands, primarily because the view’s not bad, falling away as it does towards the flatlands that spread out to the power stations of West Yorkshire. Miles of countryside and then Ferrybridge and Drax rising out of the landscape like relics to the lost industrial 20^th Century. That said, I always think that the bays are laid a bit wobbly and seem to slope away from you. But that’s the beauty of my game. My shank can adapt itself to accommodate any situation.

As I struggled through the door out to the range itself with my big basket of balls and my clubs, a father and son occupied a pair of neighbouring bays by the entrance. Nice, I thought. There's Dad showing his offspring the ropes. Passing on to the next generation the intricacies of lining up and choosing a Vardon grip over an inter-locking. The arcane knowledge of weight transference and the need to be aware of the striking area of the club face. This would be a lesson that would bind them together for life and set the youngster firmly on the road to chronic sciatica and a general depression about a persistent fade that cropped up when it was least wanted. This is what it's all about, I thought, smiling. Nice picture.

I stepped down the back of the bays and the first words I heard the woolly-haired, rather hirsute, Dad utter were: 'Do you know, if I was at school with you I'd beat you up.'

I must admit this made me pause. Interesting, I thought. That’s different. Nothing about swing arc or trying to develop a draw. No. None of that. 'Do you know, if I was at school with you I'd beat you up.'

Now, don't get me wrong, he didn't say this nastily. There was no gritted teeth or saliva flecking on his narrowed lips. No clenched fists or narrowing, contorted brow. He didn’t raise his voice. He wasn’t overtly angry Dad, there was no threat of violence. But rather, he said it with a bland element of speculation. As if he was sizing up his own son and thinking to himself, 'Yep, at nine, I could have taken you. No problem. Pussy.' Had I not overheard him, I wouldn’t have noticed them. No one would. The dynamics of their relationship would have been hidden away.

I trotted on a few more bays, ditched my mobile ‘phone etc on the rubber mat, and got to work warming up with an 8 iron. The weather was good. Notton Park fat and green in the elbow of the valley. And as I started banging balls down the track, I considered that in this one sentence the entire back catalogue of this thirty-something Dad was revealed.

I looked back down the bays. Obviously he was a bit of a cunt. But I’d made that snap decision about him even before he spoke. His words simply confirmed the first impression he was radiating anyway. He was pappy. Soft at the edges. He had man boobs and fat arms. He wore a resort-branded t-shirt. Fatal. Wind back the years and you could see him building his own BBC Home Micro in 1987. And then programming some software using Cobal just to be even more of a cunt; creating a script that told him when to start revising for his GCSEs. For fun. He taped Star Trek: Next Generation. He found Lenny Henry hilarious. Later he preferred Blur to Oasis. Grade A cock, in other words.

Judging by his swing and the appalling flight trajectory of his ball, he was a sporting under-achiever. He looked like he was trying to use his driver to scythe some long grass. And there was something in his clean, slightly awkward movements that branded him a posh kid. You could tell that – nine year olds apart – he couldn't fight. That he couldn't come up with anything funny. Unless it was some hilarious gag related to Pi and the square root of a triangle. That he always did his homework on time. That he never had the fashionable gear. He lived in his school uniform. That he was bullied for being a cunt and has resented it ever since. Being a cunt and being recognized for being a cunt had pushed him into a job that would allow him to take his spite out on society and be even more of a cunt. Tax collector, something at the council that involved taking money off people for doing bugger all. So that they resented paying. So that he felt good about himself. And now he had a son and he was going to re-write his own life.

'Do you know, if I was at school with you I'd beat you up.'

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had and add some extra, just for you. And here was pappy Dad passing on a snap hook together with an over-compensating inferiority complex. The need of some parents to live vicariously through their kids is well-known. Soccer Dads. X-Factor Mums. The kids are a second chance for them. To be the golfer that they never were or could be. To become the pop star they always dreamed of becoming by proxy. And so pappy Dad was drilling his son relentlessly to play off scratch and not enjoy a single moment of it. He was gifting his son with his own fears and short-comings. He was bending his son’s personality to the shape of his own needs. He was insidiously warping him. Perhaps pappy Dad and bendy son will refer back to this hidden moment in their relationship at some point in the future. Maybe son will remember this Sunday back in the summer of 2009 in a decade or so. 'Do you know, if I was at school with you I'd beat you up.' And at this point I hope son turns ‘round to pappy Dad and leathers the absolute fucking shite out of him. And if he does he will have fulfilled the destiny that was handed to him. And, smiling through a mouth filled with blood and broken teeth, one hand clutched to a rack of split ribs, pappy Dad should be proud.

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Bonjour, Monsieur Le Monty!

2009-07-09T13:54:44+02:00

Monty's Gang, a book aimed at children under five has become a surprise bestseller in France. Wishing to save money, first time children's author Linda Darrington translated her own novel into French using Alta Vista's Babel-fish web site, a free service that provides online translation of simple sentences. Darrington's book tells the story of a boxer dog called Monty who has a girlfriend called Ruby, and two cat friends, Kitty and Bobby. This innocent tale of one dog's adventures with his furry pals has become an immediate existential classic in France due to the peculiar automatic translation process. Innocuous sentences like: 'Monty ran to fetch the ball', which when run through the lingo program was translated as, 'Monty a fonctionné pour chercher la boule', seemed to accrue a deeper if less certain significance for the French readership than Darrington had originally intended. A translation back into English of that French phrase being, 'Monty functioned to seek the ball'.

The slim novel has become a coffee-table favourite amongst the Gallic cognesetti and has been placed on the philosophy syllabus of the Sorbonne university in Paris. Ms. Darrington said that she was surprised by the success of her novel in France and was busily working on the follow-up, tentively entitled Monty and the absent-minded empiriscist.

14/10/2003

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Nessun dorma

2009-07-08T17:12:58+02:00

The Republic of Ireland is to hold another referendum vote on whether to ratify the European Union Constitution, oops sorry, I meant European Union Treaty. How could I get those two mixed up? Obviously, the referendum held in June 2008 by the Irish – when they rejected the Treaty – wasn’t decisive enough and clearly showed the Emerald Isle to be wavering somewhat, and so, to give them another chance to get it right, it’s time to vote again. Which is only fair, don’t you think? Sometimes people don’t know what’s best for them. It’s a simple fact of politics. United Kingdom voters aren’t to be pestered with a referendum vote on whether to accept the Treaty or not as our Gordon doesn’t want to bother us with it. And believe me, I can see where he’s coming from – this voting lark and making your own mind up, it’s just a hassle. Pure and simple. Nothing but a bloody annoyance. You’re worried about your rising utility bills, saddened by yet another British casualty in Afghanistan, wondering where your next 0% balance transfer is coming from, not sure if England’s pace attack is going to be enough to overcome the Aussies in the Ashes, and you don’t need the sort of pesky aggravation caused by having to decide on your own political, cultural, economic and financial future, do you? It’ll just tire you out. Instead consider Gordon’s approach to the referendum and the whole EU Treaty business to be a sort of democratic direct debit, he takes all the work out of it for you. You don’t even have to know anything about it. Why would you? Just leave it to Gordon and his team. Safe hands, as you know. It just happens. Sorted. Now, if we’d still been talking about the EU Constitution then, obviously, it goes without saying, as Labour pledged in their 2005 election manifesto, the public would get a vote. That’s self evident. There’s nothing more binding than an election manifesto promise. Everybody knows that. So, yes, had it been the EU Constitution at issue, and we were signing up to say that we wanted to surrender sovereignty to a central Europe government with unelected quangos, and relinquish our economic and political destiny to a bunch of self-interested foreign powers, making it simpler for them squirt some oil on the wheels in order to give Multi-Nationals free rein to establish Europe as a New Age Sweat Shop, then Gordon would have badgered us with a referendum. He wouldn’t have let us rest. I can guarantee you that, day and night, night and day, he’d have pushed that referendum vote down our throats. We’d never have heard the end of it. How important it was. How vital it was that we considered what was at stake. How much we needed to weigh up the issues at stake and make our vote count. I have no doubts about it. But the EU Constitution got ditched when the Dutch and the French voted against it in 2005. The European Union Treaty is a completely different animal. Completely different. Not the same thing at all. In no way. So nothing to worry about. No need for a vote in the UK, you see?

It’s not been said whether they’ll be a further referendum in Ireland should the treaty be accepted in this next vote. But why would you need one? At that stage the vote would have shown to have evolved from the voters’ initial ignorance of European and world affairs to a proper understanding of the issues at hand and everybody would be happy. Voila! End ex. Perhaps they’ll want to give the voter a third chance if it gets rejected again. Just to be sure. Not everybody is going to grasp the complex issues at hand on the first or maybe even the second occasion. Voters make mistakes. And don’t we know it! It doesn’t mean you give up on them, does it? No. Keep hammering away, they’ll get it in the end.

Under the auspices of this innovative take on final results I think the FA should get on the ‘phone to FIFA’s Sepp Blatter. I would like to see England and Germany replay the penalty kick qualifier from the semi final of Italia ’90 over and over and over and over until England win. At which point I will be happy to accept the result and England can progress to the World Cup final, where, again, we’ll play as much time as necessary for Gary Linekar to score the winning goal. Three weeks should do it. A bit more if we’re lagging behind. Then blow the whistle the moment the old Walker’s crisp munching goal-raker bangs one into the net and puts us in front. They think it’s all over, it is now. It seems fair. Let’s have more of this way to settle things. Has anyone mentioned the procedure to Kevin Pieterson and the English Cricket Board? I think we might need it. Get ready for a long Ashes summer. We’ll still be playing come Christmas.

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Did you know...?

2009-07-03T01:24:44+02:00

Portly comedian Terry Scott was the son of Polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott. This fact explains the ‘tears behind the laughter’ expression visible on the chubby comedy actor’s face in the 1969 feature film Carry on Camping when Barbara Windsor leaves the tent in order to put the top back on her bikini. The same melancholic expression was often evident in snowy Christmas episodes of classic 70s sitcom ‘Terry and June’.

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Has everyone gone to the moon?

2009-07-02T09:10:40+02:00

Thank God for Jack Straw. Where would we be without him, eh? I will sleep safer tonight knowing that he’s used his superhuman power as Minister for Justice (does the role come with a Stan Lee designed costume? Something in figure-hugging bright red spandex with a blue satin cape) and denied Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs parole. Thank fuck for that! We don’t want that mad twat roaming the streets, do we? Phew! And I don’t feel that I’m alone in resting easier due to Jack’s vigilance and care. I think the people of Britain will heave a sigh of relief knowing that dangerous bastard is still behind bars and not menacing us all with his geriatric viciousness. Jack summed up the heaving tide of outraged public opinion that still seethes against the train robber: ‘Biggs chose not to obey the law and respect the punishments given to him - the legal system in this country deserves more respect than this.’ Too right. Let’s have more of this.

Biggs, for anyone who has no idea of history or popular culture beyond the size of Jordan’s tits and how many number ones Take That have had, was part of a gang who robbed a Royal Mail train in the summer of 1963, while the Beatles were at number one with ‘She loves you’ and The Great Escape was playing in cinemas, getting away with £2.6 million (about £38 million in today’s money when adjusted for inflation, probably more). Biggsy’s crucial role in the operation was to throw the mail bags into the back of a van after proving to be too thick to operate the train once they had it stopped. This is the Night Mail, get ready to board her, fat with the cheque and the postal order, cash for the rich, cash for the poor, chuck out the bags and stand by the door. Heading for Ledburn, slap bang on time. Mess with the lights and she’ll stop for the crime. Away with the readies and head for the safe gaff, play some Monopoly with real notes for a laugh. Keep our heads low until the fuss passes – but we’ll all do some time ‘cos of our dabs and the grasses. He was arrested in 1963 and sentenced in 1964. Biggs escaped from Wandsworth prison in 1965, went on the run through several countries and through several recordings with the Sex Pistols, before handing himself in back in 2001. Biggs is now 79 years old and has suffered a series of strokes whilst in prison. He’s served 10 years of his original 30 year sentence. Add on inflation and we’re talking about 140 years bird the geezer’s done.

Biggs has applied for parole on several occasions. All denied. This time the parole board had approved Biggs’ application for early release. Namby pamby liberal wets. Not like New New New Labour and their recently found vein of white working class values in the wake of last months council and Euro election debacle. When they lost ground to the BNP and Tories. Oh no, they’ve got their finger on the pulse now, after a mere twelve years in government. Local homes for local people. Kick dole spongers back into employment or cut their handouts. Keep octogenarian train robbers behind bars. No u-turn from rampant liberalism, just listening to the grassroots. Right on. And, let’s not forget, even the leftie-thinking parole board stated of blagger Biggs: ‘there was little evidence, apart from his increased age, to suggest he would not return to his old criminal lifestyle.’ And so Jack stepped in. Too right. I bet Biggs can’t wait to have a meet with some East End hard nuts and plan another big job. I can see it now, Biggs pulling armed capers with shootas, pausing mid-blag to rub Deep Heat into his arthritic knees and pop some glycerine under his tongue to ease his angina. Biggs pulling off daring jewellery heists like a modern day Thomas Crowne. Face contorted behind a ripped pair of 15 demier tights, sawn offs blazing. Screaming at the top of his voice through a blizzard of white fivers: ‘No bastard copper’s going to take me alive!’ And then being assisted into the getaway car by his home help. Come on, Ronnie, let's get you back to the home for a nice cup of tea and some Madeira Cake. You can count your swag this afternoon when you've had a nap.

But no, we’re safe. Our Jack has overruled the parole board having seen through the villain’s decrepit façade. Dangerous, devious bastard that he is. That Jaguar Mark 2 will have to stop under wraps in a lock up down in Streatham a bit longer. Tuned and ready to knock off that Securicor van. Since 1966. A couple of pounds of jelly and a cosh in the glove box. Because Justice Jack has said: ‘Mr Biggs is wholly unrepentant and the Parole Board found his propensity to breach trust a very significant factor. He has not undertaken risk-related work and does not regret his offending.’ The slag!

I fully agree with prisoners serving out the full term of their sentences. Everyone should do what they’re given by the court. No arguments. And if we’re not going to have a death penalty (for now) then life should mean life. No parole, no get out of jail card, no requisite period. And so, under these terms, Jack Straw is probably right to deny the octogenarian parole. But it doesn’t really work like that. No one serves their full sentence. Someone given five years will do less than three. And good behaviour doesn’t alter the decision to release early any more than general ambivalence does. They simply get let out. And so I have to ask myself the question, does Biggs really pose a more serious threat to society than the killers of James Bulger? Who would I rather have living next door to me, Ronnie Biggs or child-killer Robert Thompson? Who would you? But Thompson has been a free man since 2001 and is still only twenty-five years old, after serving eight years for torturing and murdering a two year old boy. So where is the parity there? Money or human life, which does the criminal justice system prize the highest? When courts are handing out twelve month sentences for manslaughter.

Biggs is an easy target. For Labour to get tough on crime. To be seen to be tough on crime. High profile, few rights, a shed load of potential sentence left to play with. But does the denial of Biggs’ parole really serve a purpose other than to let big Jack stretch his heroic muscles? And what of Bigg’s apparent unrepentance, as stated by Justice Jack and the parole board? Hmmm. I seem to recall Jonathan King showing little repentance when he was released early on parole after being found guilty of four indecent assaults on fourteen and fifteen year old boys, and two offences of buggery and attempted buggery on two boys aged fourteen. Nasty crimes. Life destroying crimes. King gave a press conference outside Maidstone Prison on the day he was released, three years into his seven year sentence. Did King show regret at his offending during this press conference? Oh no, just a sec, he was saying he hadn’t done it, that’s right. ‘I'm totally, absolutely 100% innocent.’ So how’s that work then? What message is that to send to the victims? To other like minded dirty bastards? To send to the parole board? To send to the Justice Minister? Out after serving half his time without any remorse. So why him and not Biggs? And correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t remember Ronnie Biggs slipping his finger up anyone’s arse when he robbed the mail train.

It might be noted that Bruce Reynolds, the ‘brains’ behind the Great Train Robbery, was sentenced only to ten years, after having been on the run following the crime and enjoying considerably more of the proceeds than Biggs ever did. Reynolds has been a free man since 1979.

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Beat it!

2009-06-24T10:31:55+02:00

It has been revealed that Michael Jackson is working as PCSO Supervisor whilst in London for his series of record breaking concerts at the O2 Arena. Jacko, who became a Police Community Support Officer in March and was promoted to supervisor only last week, is working from the Isle of Dogs and responsible for eight staff.

‘I just want to give something back,’ said Jacko as he filled out a Admin 171 for an off road bike that had been tearing around scrubland. ‘I love being out here, among the ordinary people, where the city winks a sleepless eye. Well, at least until midnight. I’m doing this for the children of the world.'

Jackson is contracted to work until the end of the year but says he may stay on beyond this. ‘I’m finding it so rewarding. I have several tea stops on my beat and even go into Noble’s Amusements for some time on the dance off machine.’

Jackson is to appear as a PCSO in a series of billboard advertisements in the capital, mimicking General Kitchener’s ‘Your country needs you!’ pose under the slogan, ‘Be careful of what you do 'cause the lie becomes the truth!’

Jacko posing for his ‘know your PCSO’ picture. ‘I’ve adapted the uniform and given it some of my trademark stardust,’ he said.

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With the Beatles

2009-06-24T10:01:01+02:00

Two Beatles links which kept me busy last night. The first has an obsessive attention to detail - in a totally pointless and somehow melancholy way - that I can't help but admire. An attempt to dive back inside four years of the 1960s; time travel for the mind. The second opens up a whole new window on their lives during a period that has now been packaged and presented so many times. But the images on this second site are a million miles away from the polished studio photographs and carefully designed album covers.

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If you see Sid tell him (we’re about to get ripped off again)

2009-06-20T18:46:41+02:00

Gordon Brown is pledging his affinity with rural, carrot-crunching masturbators the length and breadth of Great Britain by promising ultra-fast broadband for every home. Hurrah! Soon, if big Gordon gets his way, you’ll be able to crack one off to crotchless panty-wearing cheerleaders even deep in the boggy bowels of rural Cornwall, download handy-cam-shandy gonzo porn when atop the very peak of Cumbria’s Scafell Pike and live stream triple-X web cams, without the off-putting pauses, pixelization and crashes that spoil your rhythm, direct to the middle of the lonely purple heather-carpeted North Yorkshire moors. The Prime Minister has stated his belief that fast broadband is as vital to our happiness, well-being and prosperity as electricity and water. And he’s right, access to redtube and the BBC iPlayer is fundamental to the Human Rights of this country. During these dark days of recession and financial despair we owe it to ourselves to wallow in porn and velvety repeats of ‘My Family’. Our Gordon is promising lightening fast cyber scuzz for everyone. At last, a Prime Minister who understands the needs of his people.

The plan is to get 50mbs capability piped into the homes of the nation by 2017, investing heavily in Fibre to the Cabinet technology. This will mean that so-called ‘Not Spots’ that are presently denied the pleasures of illegal file sharing and HD quality pornography through poor network capacity will be brought into the 21^st Century and be gobbling gigabytes of illicit downloads before you can type ‘MILF money shot’ into the Google search bar. The speeds will be tremendous. No more irksome, frustrating waits for that Dutch hardcore to buffer, your access to big breasted Heidi in Amsterdam will be immediate and smoother than her shaved lady bits. The upgrades in hardware will be achieved with a 50p per month tax on all landlines, raising somewhere in the region of £170,000,000 per year. The Porn Tax. But it will be worth it, believe me. Those lactating ebony babes will arrive faster than ever. The Latino teens (certified 18) will be performing some girl on girl on your dual CCFL back-lit LCD 17” laptop screen within nanoseconds. It’s going to be seamless. But it’s not just about porn. Watching that Anthea Turner explosion clip on Youtube will be crisper. Scamsters in Nigeria will have quicker access than ever to your personal banking details. Those spam emails for Viagra and pipe lengthening, girth enhancing pills will be dropping into you inbox faster than you ever thought possible. And it’s all thanks to Gordon Brown.

But what is the taxpayer going to get in return for this massive forced investment? Who is going to profit? Who is going to get fat? The taxpayer buys the cables, the taxpayer creates the infrastructure, the taxpayer shovels money into the project and then some corporate branded internet service provider charges the taxpayer for using the network. Eh? In simple terms the taxpayers’ money is a ‘top up’ to private investment but still it buys the taxpayer nothing. It secures the taxpayer nothing. The taxpayer ends up with a stake in nothing. Because Nationalization is bad. Do you understand? Bad. Because to be seen to be progressive and all that it’s vital that we just throw our tax money away without return. We’re progressive, we believe in the free market. I mean, look how well the banking world has conducted itself. It’s the sensible way forward. So the taxpayer will still have to stump up more cash to use the service. Meaning that we pay twice. Sounds reasonable for New Labour’s vision of Britain. Where everything costs more than it should through layered taxation and the scurried vision of private/public partnerships. A vision that shackled us to the monstrous debt of Private Finance Initiatives. That saw National Insurance contributions increase at the same time that prescription charges went up (still, I get a warm glow when I think of how my money is helping fund the needle exchange and the methadone programmes, don’t you?). This is the sort of forward thinking free enterprise I associate with the Golden Age of Thatcherism, when Maggie was selling us back the major utilities and heavy industry that we already owned. British Gas, British Telecom, the National Grid, British Nuclear, British Steel, council homes. Build it and they will come – and then make you pay for what you funded in the first place. A cracking idea. Because there is nothing more reliable than the immutable complacency of the British taxpayer. And you’ve got to admire the sort of innovative thought that manages to get someone to pay twice for the same thing and still end up owning nothing and then take credit for having done us all a favour. I love it.

Anyway, it looks like Angelika’s bonk booth in Prague is finally buffered. I’d better go before I lose my connection.

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Golf tips #18

2009-06-19T21:14:58+02:00

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Golf tips #17

2009-06-15T12:51:53+02:00

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Speaking words of wisdom...

2009-06-12T23:25:46+02:00

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