Let the train engender strain

It's the final day of 2014.  Tonight the missus and I head to Cornwall.  We're taking the train this year.  Usually we drive, but as we're both at work today anyways, we thought South West Trains (peace be upon it) could carry us yon.  It's always a stressful endeavour, train travel.  With all due deference to Network Rail, it goes to cock more often than it doesn't.  I can't think of the last time I took a train journey in this country when all the constituent elements worked according to a preordained plan.  I must have been an infant of sorts.  Going somewhere with my parents, I dare say.  Probably in the way to my christening.

As matters stand, the service appears to be running smoothly.  But that worries me.  It could be a trick of the fates.  To offset this concern I've raided my local Waitrose and procured wine and nibbles to Caligulian excess.  So if the shit does hit the fan in any way, at least we'll be fed and watered.  For 'watered' read 'drunk'.

Happy New Year.  Or if you're an American, happy NEW year.

Puppies for sale

I bought a radiator fan the other week.  What's that?  Oh, the name pretty much nails it, to be honest.  It's a fan that sits atop a central heating radiator.  The logic is that instead of drifting slowly ceiling-wards, the heat is coerced into the middle of the room.  This heats the room up quicker, and for virtually no additional power consumption.

I haven't published any peer-reviewed findings on the matter, but anecdotally at least, I'm not sure it's doing any good.  In fact, it might be cooling the room slightly.  I know this makes no sense; the physics just doesn't stack up.  The one thing I can say is that the air coming out the front of the fan is less warm than the air emanating from the rest of the radiator.  The reason for this is unclear at this stage.  Clearly the plastic body of the fan itself is taking some of the precious.heat; perhaps it's in there?  Oh, fuck, I don't know.  My physics is about as good as Russell Brand's acting, comedy and/or thinking.  Don't get started on that twat.

Anyway, my point is I may have been the victim of marketing brouhaha, which is spectacularly annoying for one so usually canny as me.

Vigilance.  At all times, vigilance.

That was the year that was

Right, Christmas is done.  It's over.  Let it go.  It really didn't touch the sides, Christmas, this year.  Not a festive thought scudded across my brain the entire time.  We didn't watch a Bourne film, or Bad Santa - not nothing.  I used to love Christmas so much.  I really did.  Now that's gone.  Is this inevitable?  Perhaps.

I think I may have fallen for that idiotic trope of reviewing myself that people tend to do at year's end.  I'll be honest with you: I didn't like what I saw.  I have a boring, alienating job.  I don't work nearly hard enough at my interests.  I'm not thoughtful and/or dutiful.  And I drink far too much.  So, what to do?  Well, the drinking is easy to remedy.  The trouble is it then leaves a big old hole in my schedule, which is likely then to be filled with boredom.  I dread boredom, really really fear and dread it.  I've always run from its shadow.  This no doubt explains the drinking.  But I know I can't carry on as I am, so I'll just have to suck it up a bit, as they say.

Why am I bored the whole time?  Anyone?  What is boredom anyhoo?  I'll look it up.

This is interesting:

"To be bored, some scientists reasoned, 'is to be in a state of longing for activity but unaware of what it is that one desires and to look to the world to solve the impasse,'" - http://www.livescience.com/23493-why-we-get-bored.html

That's it in a nutshell.  But what to do?  It appears I have to pay attention to my thoughts and outside stimuli more.  It doesn't say how one is to do this though.  Should I take up meditation again?  I did a bit of this during the summer but packed it in as a bad job.  You guessed it: it was boring.

Shit.

 

The afternoon before Christmas...

I'm at work.  It's Christmas Eve, and, as you'd expect, the office is vee quiet.  I work for a newspaper, and Xmas Day is the one day of the year that our industry traditionally draws breath.  I'm alone in my department too.  It's an odd experience, working on days like this.  It's sort of fun, in that it's different and certainly less pressured than proper works days.  But there's also that strange feeling of missing out.  You can't help thinking that the rest of humanity is having a rare old time, necking sherry in front of a roaring open fire while Bing Crosby croons from the mantelpiece.  I'm sure the truth is catastrophically more prosaic than that.  They're all probably watching shit telly and eating Jaffa Cakes.

The plan is to leave very shortly.  I don't know what I'm planning to do with the rest of the afternoon though.  I can't go shopping without having to be restrained by by armed officers and a Taser.  And I hate watching television in the afternoons.  I find it disspiriting...and common.

I might clean the oven.  Merry Christmas.

A free window

A very short entry today (insert own joke here).  I'm off to the pictures with the missus.  Some overlooked classic from the yesteryear with Maggie Smith and Peter Ustinov.  How did that one slip by unnoticed?  Let's hope it's not a turkey.  I know it's Christmas, but the tickets weren't cheap.  It's at the NFT, which is super-jolly, so if it is a howler, at least the seats will be comfy.

Smiley High Culture

Mrs O and I went to see The Nutcracker yesterday afternoon.  Great Scot! it was fine.  Really wonderful.  Old Chai Kovski knew how to set down a choon, didn't he?  The second act in particular is an absolutely smörgåsbord of hits.

We didn't actually see it in the flesh, as t'were.  It was a live, high-definition broadcast from the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and was screened at the Greenwich Picturehouse.  The Bolshoi Ballet are renowned for their lavish and traditional productions of ballets like this one.  No searing social commentary or transposition of the action from 19th century bourgeois Russia to a housing estate in 1960s Bradford for them.  And thank God for it.  The Nutcracker is a festive treat for classical lightweights, like myself.  It's the equivalent of The Wizard Of Oz - beautifully done and timeless, but not there to challenge and/or upset the prevailing social order.  It doesn't do to fcuk about with it.  And I believe I speak for the cognoscenti there.

Yul Brynner-tide

At last!  The office has that odd festive feel.  Everyone has been champing at the bit since about 1.30pm, desperate to make an early segue without damaging his or her career prospects at the same time.  I've been trying manfully to concentrate, but who am I kidding? it's not a day for intellectual endeavour.

I'm going to scoot off in a moment and meat Mrs O for a brace of sharpeners.  Thence home to fire up the central heating.  It getting cold in London, which is annoying as it was a mild morning.  This means I've been left high and dry as regards warm clothing.  I've had to grab one of the bastard Xmas jumpers that they were handing out at work.  That should go down a storm with the trunks on the train home later.  Still, needs must...

The path of least resistance

If I'm honest with myself, then I've settled into an early middle-aged, petty-bourgeois rut.  I earn a comfortable living, live in a nice house, go on holiday six-dozen times a year and have savings in the bank.  And yet...and yet I'm bored, literally to tears on occasion.

The idea of making a major lifestyle change is hatefully discombobulating, but I don't feel I can continue in this slough of...well, despond is overstating it; it's more of a dangerous world-weariness.  Even cycling, my go-to passion and distraction from all life's ills for the last 25 years or so, leaves me cold.  I'm jaded.

I remember Hugh Laurie talking about something like this in an interview a few years ago.  He said he only realised he was depressed when taking part in a car race.  He used to be quite into motor sport.  He said he didn't feel anything as he raced around - no adrenaline, no fear, no joy, no angst...nothing.  And that is what depression is - a total disconnect from the world of human interaction and emotion.  It's not the presence of despair, so much as the absence of joy.  After a while, this lack of simple pleasure eats away at you.  It's difficult to countenance 40 years or so of that.  That's when the problems begin I guess.

So, what to do?  My usual mantra (to others at least) at moments of indecision like this is "the prospect is always worse than the reality".  I do believe this to be true.  But I'm much more compelling when you're not privy to the neuroses and manias that habitually fly around the inside of my skull.  I all too familiar with them, which means I take my own advice with a pinch of Saxo.

Bad mood music

I woke up in a bad mood this morning.  I retired last night feeling quite chipper, so what happened in the small hours to knock me off course, I cannot say.  I would have thought that REM sleep was the definitive portion of one's day that one could ringfence as "not subject to mood swings".  It seems I was wrong.

Well, as I intimated might be the case a couple of weeks ago, I'm off to another carol concert tonight.  This one takes place in a Wren church in the City of London.  It's usually a riproaring shindig too.  Just as well - I could use a fillip.

Hi-tech shambles

It's been cold of late.  No massive surprise there, I suppose.  It is December after all, but it's been quite a warm year, so winter's tendrils felt particularly unpleasant.  Saturday in London was a charming day, full of winter sunshine and with a festive dusting of frost.  But festive comes at a price, and that price is draughts.

Despite living a new-build house, the missus and I have noticed that the front door area tends towards the draughty and unpleasant during cold spells.  Being a modern house, ours has eschewed the traditional porch or hallway off the front door that the Victorians favoured.  The thinking behind this is to maximise the space one has to live, front and/or lounge in, and this the configuration does admirably.  Unfortunately it also means you've only got a sliver of wafer-thin mdf between you and the great outdoors.

I took to the web to find solutions for this modern architectural foible.  Apparently the only option is to buy a new front door, which runs to about £500.  Or one can lag the inside of the shit door with space-age thermal lining.  Sadly, that stuff costs a fortune too, and one then has to fit it, which looks tricky to mine untrained eye.

In desperation, I decided to line the inside of the portcullis with cushions.  I don't know why but we seem to be overrun with cushions; people keep buying them for us.  We're both quite thin, and obviously look like we need upholstering.  We'd recently had a cull of unused scatter-cushions and the condemned ones were piled up in the front room, waiting for the end.  I simply stacked a couple up against the inside of the front door, like a brightly-coloured, flaccid flying buttress.  The result?  Instant draught-free comfort.

My spirits were lifted immeasurably by this small victory for cheapskate lateral thinking.  Some much we encounter in modern life is disposable and impossible to fix, needlessly so too.  Why does it take a degree in engineering and one hundred man hours to replace the battery on an iPod, for example?  There's no reason why it should be so difficult.  What it does do of course is put you off trying it yourself.  No, chances are you'll leg it down to Currys and buy a brand new replacement.  That might be good news for Apple, but it spells disaster for the environment and for you bank balance.

I'm no anarcho-syndicalist, but I am suggesting we wrest some power back from the man and his corporations by changing the batteries on us own consumer durables.  Take to the barricades, brothers.

Bored members

Aah, a funny day today.  I woke up feeling rested and reasonably buoyant.  This is rare, doubly so for a Monday, so I embraced the moment and lept two-footed into the working week.

Something happened en route to the office though, and I toppled over into a trough of bewildered ambivalence at about 11.30.  I'm still in it as I type, rooted to the floor and staring at the stars.  Will I climb out?  Perhaps.  But, in truth, the grey cloud and chill wind I can divine at the top don't inspire, so perhaps I'll park my weary noggin on a pillow-shaped boulder, and make the best of it down here.  Down here - when I am to master of my own destiny.  I answer to no-one.  I sleep and work when I wish.  I have shelter and a few friendly spiders for company.  The perfect housemate, your spider - they're more than happy to keep themselves to themselves.  As am I.

Guinness...straight glass

Well, I survived the annual office Christmas piss-up relatively unscathed.  I had to be up earlyish this morning to scoot off to a physio appointment, so I took it easy.  Actually, I didn't take it easy; I necked at my usual fevered pace, but I dragged myself away from the crash site at 9pm, so all was well.

This morning I felt very pleased with myself as a result.  What a dreadful little prig I am in circs. like this.  My hubris was compounded when I got to work and surveyed the damage amongst my colleagues, one of whom was so hungover he winced at every time he took a step around the office.  The chap who sits next to my desk, and who has a raging thirst, couldn't a recall a single event from the entire evening except for his being harangued by the staff at his hotel for trying to climb over the reception desk and steal a bag of Maltesers when he returned to his room in the small hours.  He then had the Olympic chutzpah to complain about the absence of bacon on the complimentary breakfast buffet.

Anyway, one Yuletide hurdle cleared.  Time to pin back the ears and hurtle toward the next.  To the pub!

There's a good boy

As we go to press, my plan to behave myself at the office Christmas party tonight is holding-up manfully.  I rode my bike to the tube station this morning and left it there.  The strategy behind this move is that having to ride it home from the station later will reinforce my resolve to drink moderately - the rationale being that one cannot ride a push bike when catastrophically pissed-up.  Although having said that, I have done this in the past of course, once memorably along the very narrow towpath of the river Lea.  The blood still curdles at the thought of that trip.

At my age, I should be able to control myself better than this.  In small groups I am quite disciplined, but in a vulgar mob I lose all restraint.  This is due to my profound shyness.  I need at least four pints to settle my nerves.  By then of course one's judgement is clouded and the Tasmanian Devil that lives in my head starts goading me into "having a tear up".  The residual sensible part of my brain sees all this unfolding, but is powerless to intervene.  He just sits in the corner, shaking his head and tutting.  After a couple of hours of determined necking, I'll find myself dancing, and then even the crapulent mind knows the game's up.

No dancing tonight, none.

Carol King

Missus O and I attended our first carol concert of the year last night.  Our residents' association set the whole thing up, and despite the light drizzle, it was very jolly and very festive.  I do like a carol concert, but it's particularly pleasing to yodel glad yuletide tidings with your friends and neighbours in attendance.  Life-affirming stuff.

We've another one in the diary for next week, a traditional service of nine lessons and carols at St.Stephen Walbrook, a Wren church in the City of London.  That one is our annual curtain-raiser proper to the festive period.  The vicar of said church is a very, very jolly man, generous of spirit and warm of welcome - just what a proper Christian should be.  I believe he retires this year; he'll be missed.

Sadly, this year I've begun my customary bout of maudlin Xmas-introspection early.  It's a tiresome ritual, this.  I sift through the smouldering wreckage of my achievements, silently weeping in nostalgia for a past that never existed.  It's as much fun as it sounds.  Drinking doesn't help of course, but getting through advent without drinking would be like treading grapes on stilts: infuriating, protracted and absolutely pointless.

I'm having a mid-life crisis I think.  It's tough.  I'm not depressed, just bored, which is actually worse.  The only upside to this is that if the name of the condition is to be taken seriously, I should live to the ripe old age of 92.  Bingo!  It reminds one of that joke Woody Allen tells at the beginning of "Annie Hall" - "Well, that's essentially how I feel about life.  Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly." 

I may bemoan life at times, but it's better than the alternative - that I do know.  Clive James gave the lie the romantic notions that surround the youthful death wish when he was given a terminal leukemia diagnosis.  He noted that all thoughts of self-immolation and nihilistic grand gestures that he used to have as a younger man fell by the wayside.  He started to concentrate on the what he had.  A bird in the hand...

Yes, that's the stuff!  Thanks, Clive.  I should remember this lesson when I'm down in dees next - read the words of a funny, intelligent wordsmith.  That's life-affirmation.  A defibrillator for the spirit.

Yuletide pressure

I popped to see my physio this afternoon.  My left knee's been giving me a bit of non-specific gyp, as I believe it's known in the medical game, for a couple of weeks.  So I needed an expert eye and a BUPA slush-fund to give it the once over.  The prognosis is positive.  I'll be back to my middle-aged best in no time.  The only eff in the oh is the fact that I have another appointment on Friday morning at 9am.  Normally, this wouldn't present any great hardship, but this Thursday is our firm Xmas set-to.  Generally, the day after this is reserved for sweating and personal recrimination.

When the fizz suggested this "window", I bullishly thought "Yeah, why not.  Let's do it,"  Now I can't stop welling-up at the prospect.  I may have to back out.  I don't like to disappoint him, but the inner-weasel is strong.  The weather's supposed to be shithouse as well on Friday.  I've started making excuses already.  Have you noticed?

But first things first - it's our residents' association annual carols tonight.  I'll get through that and see how I feel in the morning.  I don't hold out much hope for the current appointment's prospects.  Know thyself.

Kalt in the name of the law

Kin Nora, it was cold in London over the weekend.  Saturday was one of those concrete-nipple-inducing clear winter days, of which we're so justly proud here in northern Europe.  Trouble is it also co-incided with a day-long yomp around Camden and the west end in search of the last few Xmas pressies.

It was actually very lovely to be in town on Saturday.  The weather, lights and crowds of shoppers all aided the festive feeling.  It pervaded everything - even my lunch in the pret on Frith Street in Soho was a jolly affair, as I watched the hoards scurrying about with their groaning Hamleys bags.

Sadly, I did eventually agree to succumb to exposure, thanks to the bitter conditions, and rather let myself down by getting a touch tearful and maudlin.  I also had a full-sized replica of a Viking sword on me at the time (long story), which I had to carry home on the train.  This of course acted like a magnet for mentalists and the congenitally drunk as I waited for my train.  If your timing is off to even a modest degree, Liverpool Street Station can periodically resemble a mediaeval asylum.  

It's not as much fun as it sounds either because the threat of crapulent violence is ever-present.  LP station serves Essex and east London, for the most part, and so is extravagantly overfurnished with leering tattooed cockneys.  Add a couple of stiff Yuletide what-have-yous and a tweedy, thin bespectacled man carrying a broad sword (yours truly) and you have yourself a social powder keg.

I did manage to get home unmolested as it happens, but it was the most unrestful 15 minutes I've experienced since queueing for a urinal in the gents of Millwall's firm's pub just outside The New Den.  That episode required an acting masterclass from myself.  You need to look non-threatening and hard at the same time, and all you've got to play with is your stance and your facial expression.  Get it wrong, and you'll resemble the hunchback of Notre Dame trying to suck the skin off a pickled lemon.

Kipper Bisto

The prose might be a little rudderless today.  I'm in one of those mental holding patterns I enter from time to time.  I'm subject to that slightly unnerving feeling you get when you're sat in the dentist's waiting room, waiting for the local anaesthetic to kick in before the fracking begins in earnest.  This makes it hard to unboss the eyes and get on with things.

I'm my own worst enemy at times like this.  Bitter experience has taught me that getting stuck into work or chores brightens my mood hugely.  Despite this, I always vacillate when bored.  This prolongs the moment of inaction and makes my mood worse.  Even jotting this guff down requires a decent run up at pres.  But once I begin, it's quite therapeutic.  For me I mean, not the reader.  Don't look at me like that - I'm not Claire Rayner.

The wayward psychological steering has also put me behind somewhat with the old Xmas shopping.  I made some progress last weekend in Norwich, but since then nuttin'.

Come on, you - finger out.

When is Christmas this year?

I've taken my psychological eye of the yuletide ball of late.  This is particularly irksome as I'd promised myself about a week ago that I wouldn't.  I should explain - "taking the PE off the YB" means allowing yourself to get swept up in the pre-Xmas brouhaha too early.  You keep thinking tomorrow's your last in the office for a few days when in fact you've still got twenty days left to toil

It's a real pick axe to the optimism when the alarm clock goes off at 7am then.  "Oh, fcuk, not another work day?" your brain complains as you fill the breakfast bowl with Bitesize Shredded Wheats yet again.  Also, "evening-Jerry" can be relied upon to drink too much and stay up late at this time of year because he, too, is convinced he's on holiday.  And there's nothing I can do to disabuse him of this misapprehension.

So, I'm stuck with it.  Could be worse I suppose.  I could be in an iron lung.

A routine matter.

I think I may finally have divined the root of my lifelong ennui and general dislike of matters societal: it's routine.  The business of routine I mean, not it's straightforward, the divination.  I don't know why this didn't dawn on me sooner.  I hated routine as a child.  It's my first real memory if I'm honest.

You can see the problems this brings one.  Every part of modern life is subject to the jackboot of routine.  From nursery onwards, we're taught to operate within very narrow confines and constraints.  I railed against this development as a nipper.  Prior to going to nursery at the age of three, I spent my time at home with my mother, in an completely improvised and most enjoyable protracted playtime.  Why wouldn't I hate the agencies of routine, then?  They wrenched me from this joyous, ambling life and tried to force me to conform to their bourgeois version of reality.  In their joyless world, play was to be enjoyed in predetermined and regular bursts.  "Playtime's over, children."  "Whoa, hang on a sec, I'm really breaking new ground with this Lego sculpture; I can't stop now."  

I hated being told when and what to eat, when and what to play, when to come and when to go.  I assumed in my preschool naivete that everyone felt the same, but no - most people seemed to like strictures.

The problems continued into secondary education of course, intensified even.  I did find some succour at university.  I could sleep when I wanted and work when I wanted.  What these three years taught me is that I am very productive and very diligent when allowed to be.  I also wasn't beleaguered by chronic fatigue, as I was at school and am now.  The reason for this is not that I slept too much, in the usual lazy sitcom parody of studenthood, but that I was able to retire only when tired.  That meant I could sleep and rise 7 hours later, feeling rested.

Sleep, apart from this brief hiatus, has always been a problem for me.  The reason?  The notion that you must immediately go to bed adds unhelpful psychological pressure to the situation, which is guaranteed to ruin matters.  So even if you are tired, you'll struggle.  It's a bit like trying to have sex with a hectoring partner who continually shrieks "GET A HARD-ON.  QUICKLY NOW - I'M WAITING" as soon as you've pulled your socks off.  That's not going to help, believe me.  Nor, if you're reading this, is trying to slap some life in the offending organ whilst simultaneously tutting and rolling your eyes.

So, the theoretical solution to my ills is clear: shatter routine.  But how does a man with a square job, like me, do this?  Answers on a postcard please.  I do my best at the weekends; I wage a guerrilla war against routine.  I go out of my way not to have appointments in the dairy at the weekend, and this extends to not meeting friends in the pub.

Now, anyone who knows me even vaguely well will wrinkle the brow at this.  Normally, I adore the pub, and can think of no better environment in which to while away my hours, but on a Saturday night it's that enforced and carefully demarcated window thing again.  We'll meet at 9pm and stop at 11.30.  There's no scope for things to develop in an organic way.  There's no distant horizon to gaze at.  The whole enterprise lacks romance.

That's it I suppose - I'm a romantic.  I must remember to explain this to the missus when I get home.  "I'm too romantic, which is why I've resigned from my job."

Good-bye to all that

Bah - the gods of progress are conspiring against me.  Mrs O and I were in Primrose Hill on Sunday evening, and discovered that our former local has been sold.  The new owners are making the usual comforting noises about not changing the place too much, but we've all heard that before.  Besides, they also own a couple of other pubs in the kinds of areas that only merchant bankers and TV presenters can afford to live.  I don't know these particular boozers, but my guess is they're efficient and rather soulless restaurants-cum-pubs.

There's nothing inherently wrongs with pubs of this kind; it's just that the one they've taken over was the last of its kind: a truly independent local hostelry that reflected the diversity of the neighbourhood it was in.  The couple who ran it until recently were an admirable pair.  They were a New Zealand couple d'un certain age, who wanted nothing more from life than a heavily-laden table, a couple of bottles of fine wine and a terrier or two scurrying about their ankles.  They used to eat their supper every night in the pub itself, even though they only lived upstairs.  It was a joy to watch two people dine with such brio.

They'd run the pub for donkey's years, after moving to London in the 1960s.  The pub they built resembled them and their shared outlook on life.  It served fine food (this was years before the fad for gastropubs took hold) and fine wines, not to mention fine ales.  But it did this without losing its unpretentious, convivial and cosy atmosphere.  It was not a place for posing, posturing and/or poncing about.  Primrose Hill has plenty of establishments where you can indulge those particular interests.  My fear now is that it will go the way of the others.  Also, I read on the web this morning that the new owners have already tried to sell off half the beer garden to a property developer, with a view to turning it into a "luxury dwelling".  The rotters.

I always hanker after moving back to PH.  It's a lovely, friendly and well-positioned place.  I love my current home, but The Hill will always have a special place in my heart.  It was some small compensation to Mrs O and myself that although we could not afford to buy so much as a skip there in which to live, we could always go back and revisit the pubs and restaurants that served us so well during our stay.  Now it seems they're being picked off one-by-one by developers.

It's becoming like the other moneyed areas in London: conservative, corporate and dull.  Oh so dull.

Gnaw wee chunion

I'm off to Norwich tomorrow for a spot of Xmas shopping and general carousing.  It's a splendifferous town, Norwich, full of interesting independent shops, fabulous cosy old-school pubs and nice people.  I remember going there to see Orient play The Canaries in the 3rd round of the FA Cup some years ago.  I was struck by what a lovely family club it was.  The ground is modern and walking distance from the centre of town.  And the Norwich faithful all turn up in family groups.  It was more like an American sporting event than an English football match, and was none the worse for this.  If I lived there, I'd go to much more football than I do currently.

I think also the weather's supposed to be good this weekend.  East Anglia in general, and Norwich in particular really reach escape velocity in the cold winter sunshine.  I cannot think of anywhere I'd rather be at this time of year when it's like this - the low countries perhaps.  This makes sense of course as East Anglia and the LCs are of a piece - one land, three countries.

I do hope all this Black Friday bullshit has died down by the time we arrive there tomorrow.  How this previously exclusively American phenomenon has gained a foothold in the U of K is a mystery to me.  It makes precisely no sense here.  In the States, Thanksgiving heralds the traditional beginning of the run-in to Christmas.  People rush to be with their loved ones and eat turkey.  It's also a public holiday, so many choose to take the Friday off too as they're usually not at home.  It's sensible, therefore, for American retailers to begin their Christmas marketing campaigns on this day - loads of people with a day off, all feeling Christmassy.  Now, we don't have Thanksgiving here, as you're probably aware...well, you can see where I'm going with this I'm sure.

What's particularly galling about all this is the bovine acceptance of this "trend" by Britons.  "Woo hoo!  It's Black Friday."  That's right - it is Black Friday...in Ohio.

Tragically mundane

Phillip Hughes, the young Australian cricketer who was struck on the head by a delivery during a game on Tuesday, died today as a result of his injuries.  And the shock of his death is palpable.

This isn't the usual, empty and mawkish mourning for a famous person that one is living through vicariously though.  It's real shock.  The shock is bourne out of the innocuous and mundane nature of the event that killed this young man.  Basically put, he turned his back on a bouncer, as one is supposed to, and the ball struck him low down on the back of his neck.  The impact severed an artery, causing a massive bleed into the brain.  Hughes managed to stand for a few seconds after the impact before very dramatically collapsing to the ground.  It's clear now that he was beyond help even at that stage.

The seemingly ordinary nature of the delivery and the speed with which it killed him made this tragedy almost too much to process.  Hughes was just 25 years old.  The ball struck the one tiny part of his body that was unprotected and where a sufficiently violent contact could have caused serious injury.  Even then, the chances of the artery being completely ruptured by an impact were slight.  The unlikely nature of the chain of events has left everyone dumbfounded.

The match was being filmed, as it was a first-class fixture, and to see a young man struck down with such speed was unbearable.  We are all hanging by a thread; we all know this, at an intellectual, theoretic level at least.  But to have this principle demonstrated with such wanton and ruthless efficiency is too much.  It bespeaks a cruel universe, one with one no regard for human sentiment or emotion.  

I was reminded of the words of Randy Pausch, the professor of computer science, who shortly after being told his pancreatic cancer was terminal, delivered a lecture on the subject "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" to his students and colleagues.  Pausch mentioned that after his diagnosis people were keen to point out to him how unfair it was that a man of his relative youth should have been thus blighted.  But he dismissed this, replying "we are all in the crosshairs".  It's what happens to humans.  It's not unfair or fair: it just is.  It's a part of life, the quid pro quo, if you like.

There will be calls to change cricket no doubt, to ban quick deliveries, change the ball...whatever.  But this is to misread the event.  Phillip Hughes was killed by an extremely unlikely ocurrence, extremely unlikely.  This needs to be put into perspective.  People slip on icy pavements and are killed every winter, but we accept these tragedies, telling outselves that we would be more careful.  "It-won't-happen-to-me."  This is self-delusion.  What we mean is "I-hope-it-won't-happen-to-me".

More sportsmen and women will die in appalling circumstances in the future and this too is a part of life.  We're going to have face this again - an exhausting and disheartening prospect.

Missus O and I popped to see Imitation Game last night.  It's a dramatisation of the Bletchley Park story when a team of friendless geeks cracked the German enigma code, thereby expediting the end of the Second World War.  The breakthrough, which had beaten the finest minds at the allies' disposal for years, was cracked primarily by Alan Turing.

Turing was a fascinating character, not perhaps the kind of man you'd care to share a diving bell with for any great length of time - but a compelling figure for those of us looking back on his life.  He was treated appallingly by the British establishment, in spite of his immeasurable contribution to the country's very existence.  It's generally agreed now that the allies may well have lost the war were it not for the work that Turing oversaw.

So, why then was he treated so badly?  Well, he was (a) spectacularly arrogant and rude ...and... (b) a homosexual.  B was used as the flimsy pretext of his destruction by the powers-that-be because they felt slighted by Turing thanks to 'a'.  In fairness to him, Turing wasn't arrogant.  He was autistic and a genius.  This combination made him cleverer than everyone else on Earth at the time and incapable of telling white lies.  This meant he would tell people that he was cleverer than them and that they needed him if they ever wanted to break the code.  This wasn't arrogance; it was a statement of irrefutable fact.  For Turing, it was like pointing out that night followed day, and he couldn't understand why people took umbrage at his telling them so.

So, he was a difficult man to like.  However, this mitigates not one jot what was done to him.  He was convicted of gross indecency and chemically castrated as a result.  Aside from the wretched heterosexual totalitarianism of this decision, what is worse still is the fact that the treatment destroyed his mind.  He was incapable of ascending the intellectual heights due to the side effects of the hormones he was forced to take.  Think about that for a moment: a genius of Turing magnitude purposely destroyed by a nation that owed its very existence to that genius.  That's the same country that venerates Newton.  Fucking outrageous.

What is more outrageous is the fact that homophobia is still rampant in Britain.  What have we learnt from Turing's persecution?  Precisely nothing.  He was correct in his analysis of the intellectual shortcomings of the rest of humanity, Turing, and they lived down to expectation.  Perhaps that why he killed himself.

Only five minutes from this cinema...

The missus and I are off to our new local cinema tonight.  It's one of those faceless, multiplex shitholes - the kind of human skip I normally wouldn't touch with a barge pole - but it's a cinema that's walking distance from our front door, and that has got to be worth celebrating.

Our last local one closed in 2003.  Since then we've had to travel by bus or tube to see cutting edge flicks.  To those of you who don't live in a large city, this won't sound like much, but to a Londoner, not having a cinema hobbling distance away is like not having central heating.  Yes, one can manage, but surely this shouldn't still be happening, should it?  It's 2014 ffs.  People were coerced into fighting a war for this country.  What was the point?

My only misgiving about the new place is that multiplexes are like honeypots for scumbags.  There's a risk, therefore, that one might be sharing the auditorium with noisy, fcuk-witted fellow denizens, of which there are plenty in my hometown.

The area I live in has been furiously regenerating over the last five years or so - particularly the "village" bit I live in.  All my neighbours are respectable, educated and middle-class.  But the self-same area used to be exclusively working-class and not a little rough with it.  Most of the locale still clings doggedly to its lumpen tattooed past.  Nothing wrong with that of course - it's just that I demand respectful silence when I at the pictures.  What's the point otherwise?  

People (middle-class people) snort and pull faces when I complain about things like this.  But that is to misread the target of my ire.  It's not the working class whose nose I aim to bloody (I am one of them after all), it is scumbags I have a problem with.  These two cohorts tend to get confused by the media and polite English society at large.  I suppose my own class is partly to blame for this.  There is a creeping mistrust of education and erudition among today's hoi polloi.  

This is at odds with the prevailing wisdom I was brought up with.  Then, working class children were encouraged to amass book learning if they felt inclined to.  And those to didn't take to formal education were expected and encouraged to learn a practical skill.  As a boy, my (exclusively working class) friends and I revelled in knowing stuff - not Greek myths or calculus maybe, but abstract notions that appealed to us and facts.  Nothing wrong with a distended arsenal of facts, my boy.

Working class children nowadays wallow in their ignorance and this I find contemptible.

York Shyer Pie

Well, well, what a gem York turned out to be.  It's a charming place, full of interesting historical architecture, fascinating museums, lovely places to eat and dozens of superb pubs.

The journey up on Friday evening was a treat for starters.  The train's an express, so it only took two hours.  Also we were sat with a gaggle of Yorkshire ladies d'un certain age who were very friendly and good value.  They did the usual Ls d'un C-A thing and cracked open a bottle of prosecco as soon as the train left Kings Cross.

We also happened across a couple of young Dublin students who were travelling from Dublin to Edinburgh via London and Newcastle.  There were taking part in a charity event.  Several teams of two had to undertake this journey with absolutely no money whatsoever.  It was also a race, so no chance to rest whatever.  They'd been on the go since 9am that morning.  This was at about 8pm.  We helped them out with some food and a few quid for their collection.  So, all in all, it was a very diverting journey.

We arrived in York at 9.30 and checked in.  Then out for a couple of sharpeners in a craft ale pub at the train station.  Normally, you'd need your bumps felt for drinking in a pub at a train station.  They're generally foul - anonymous, violent and poorly maintained, like Guantanamo Bay with pool tables.  But the one at York station is lovely.  The beer is great and the staff friendly.  This is fitting addendum to the station itself, which is a gorgeous high-Victorian palace to the age of steam.

Saturday was spent at the National Railway Museum, which wasn't the cavalcade of sweaty confirmed bachelors I'd feared.  It was actually a very well kept and presented collection of important engines and carriages from the around the world that illustrate the history and innovations in rail technology.  Even as I type those words, I can feel you slipping away.  I'd had thought the same in your position, but, believe me, it's a great museum.  Everyone uses trains to some extent.  Their history is our history.  It is therefore of interest to most of us.

As Saturday night!  Well, what can I say?  It's absolutely packed with charming, cosy hostelries, York - absolutely packed.  We wandered around, tasting the wares, and finished the night in a lovely curry house.

Sunday morning we charged around the city walls for an hour before heading off home at noon.  A tremendous place - we'll be back.

Man up Friday

The back's a soupçon better today, which is just as well because I was in danger of getting downhearted by it all.  Well, I mean to say, it's day two ferrchrissakes.  The best years of my life are being eaten up by this boring condition.

Still, onwards and upwards.  It's off to Kings Cross straight from the office this evening for the two-hour journey to York.  I've procured a massive picnic to see us right en route.  Better that than worrying about being stranded by "a jumper" outside Hitchin.  That's happened before.  And when it does, market forces turn all the travellers against one another.  

Last time it happened, some old hands dashed-off and emptied the buffet car of booze before the engine had even struck the poor unfortunate in question.  The tell-tale urgent braking was enough to alert them to the imminent impact.  It was ten minutes before I realised something was seriously "up".  I trotted off to the buffet car for a soothing 12 cans of bitter, but the cupboard was bare.  A very dark and introspective two hours followed, which I'm sure would have been grist to the mill for Arthur Miller, but which for me was nothing more than a prolonged opportunity to confront my sober unconscious mind.  I did not like what I saw that night, friends.  No, I did not.

Anyway, no danger of that tonight.  We've half a case of Tattinger each if needs must.

Is it a tom?

We're off tut Yorkshire tomorrow, the missus and I.  The plan is to leap on a train at Kings Cross at 7ish and arrive in the north two and a half hours later, fed, watered and raring for plain-speaking action.

I love going to the north at this time of year.  In my febrile, southern imagination, it's a winter place, the north - like Berlin or Stockholm, say.  Nothing wrong with that; all places have a preferred season when they really come into their own.  Madrid, for example, needs to be experienced in the summer.  I've been there in the winter, and it's facking freezing.  It doesn't work.  They're not geared-up for it.  

It's like when it's boiling hot in London - the denizens go a bit doolally.  It's fun to watch the carnage unfold, but you know it can't last.  This rule is writ even larger in the north of England.  It needs to be chilly.  It's cold in London today, so I'm hoping for the best.

My only problem with travelling north is that I feel so ridiculously fey and affected.  I come across like a RADA rendering of a middle-class, slightly fey Southerner.  It's like when I'm in Ireland, which I am regularly.  My accent sounds stuffy and my syntax wordy and archaic.  Actually, the reason for that is because my syntax is wordy and archaic.  I must cut that out...presently.

Can I speak to your back please? 'Fraid not - He's out.

I somehow put my back out last evening.  This is a depressing and unhelpful development at the best of times, but when you've a long train trip in the diary in a day of two, as I have, it's doubly unwelcome.  It also happened in the most innocuous of circs.

I was on the phone to my sister for 10 minutes or so, and when I walked away from the wretched apparatus, I could distinctly feel a twinge.  This escalated over the coming hours.  And this morning, it was properly sore.  I spend all my waking hours when not shackled to the desk at work, cycling and doing yoga.  How is it then that answering the land-line can upset my lumbar spine?  It's not right.

It's easy to get psychotic - well it is for me at least - when one's back plays up.  It's such a debilitating pain.  Every simple action is turned into a test of will and physical endurance.  The ironic thing is that when I'm being active and physical, it's fine.  It's only when I sit that it starts to ache.  Unfortunately, sitting is what I do for a living, so the days are long and arduous - my two least favourite adjectives.  Well, 'long' has its moments, but you see what I mean.

So the plan tonight is to scoot straight home, carbo-load on wine and then see out the evening in palliative yoga poses.  I wonder what Axl Rose is up to tonight.  No doubt his back will be aching in the morning too.  The rotter.  Anyway, I digress.

Slapstick consumer durables

A friend of mine popped round last night to drop in a new/old computer for me and the missus.  Our old/old one went to meet its maker (Steve Jobs) last week, so we needed a replacement.

This one is a couple of years old, but it's a fine machine.  My mate works in IT, so it's been well looked after.  He tells me too that the spec is still pretty high falutin' although I'll have to take this on trust as I'm way off the pace when it comes to matters IT-esque.  It's a direct replacement for the old one, a mac for a mac.

It's funny when you buy new stuff.  It immediately makes the old item look about as advanced as a granite ashtray.  I always thought our white i-Mac looked pretty hot and cutting edge.  I know now that to the cognoscenti it couldn't have looked quainter had it been carved from mahogany.

I'm quite lucky when it comes to computers and stuff because I have a number of friends who work in the field.  Should anything go wrong with hardware, they can usually be relied upon to brandish a screwdriver in exchange for beer.  Also, it means we've been allowed to test drive this particular model to see if it fits our oh-so exacting requirements.  So far, so good.  Mind you, the screen did fall out overnight, so we're not out of the woods yet.  I'm quite strict about things like this; I don't like objects I've paid several hundred pounds for falling apart like Arsenal's back-four.  Born fussy, I suppose.

What to do?

I'm alone in the office today.  My boss materialised for literally 10 minutes earlier.  He had the look of a man being pursued by Mossad.  He hurried into the office long enough to tell me he was immediately leaving again.  I did strike me as an utter waste of his and my time, this.  Why not just go the next appointment directly from the first?  Unless, that is, he was keen to establish his whereabouts in front of dozens of witnesses should the authorities come-a-callin'.  He was wearing a trench coat too, to add to the whole le Carré vibe.

All this happened after I'd been contacted by my junior colleague to tell my his car refused to start on Saturday evening.  The RAC pitched-up diagnosed terminal gearbox failure.  Apparently it as good as had its tongue stuck out the side of its mouth, so the decision was taken not to attempt resuscitation.  This left him stranded this morning as he lives in the back of beyond.  So it's just me.

The trouble is it's a bit quiet chez work at the mo.  After a few periods of frantic activity of late, we're entered a natural lull.  The industrial winds have died down and the mainsail is hugging the mast like a curtain.  This gets tiresome after a while.  I need something to do.  At times like this a civilised society would simply send me home.  "Come back Thursday," it would say.  "Something's bound to have cropped up by then."  But, no, I've got to sit here, simply for form's sake when I could be at home dismantling the dishwasher, or redoing the draft excluders around the front door.  Useful middle aged sheight like that.

Oh, well, people have greater crosses to bear in life I suppose.

An evening on the tiles...

I had a rare night out on the pop last night.  It was to commemorate and commiserate with my former boss, who has been unceremoniously bumped from his job after 20 years' service.  I used to look forward to these affairs, but these days I eye them with dread.  I simply cannot stick away six pints and not feel the consequences.  That implies I used not to notice the damage; that isn't true.  But I was better at ignoring it when I was younger.  Also I had fewer qualms about turning up to work in an unfit state.  These days, I feel bad if I arrive at the office bright green and trembling.

I left them to it at about 10 o'clock.  My former boss, who was visibly in his cups when I arrived at 7pm, was still draining the bitter cup when I left.  I imagine the inside of his nut resembles the Somme today.

[update]: I got an email from him a few moments ago.  He was so "confused" upon reaching home that climbing the stairs seemed a Herculean task, so he slept downstairs with the cat instead.

What else has been happening?  Oh, yes, I know - Sainsbury's has unveiled its Christmas advert, which is a dramatisation of the famous Christmas truce during the Great War when British and German troops met in no-man's land to play football.  It's a beautifully realised, subtle and sweetly poignant film, and about the most offensive thing I've ever laid eyes on.

I'm staggered that not absolutely everyone in the country isn't horrified by this cynical, heartless and brutally calculating piece of marketing.  Let's think about it for a moment.  A supermarket is using the First World War to hawk its pickled onions and y-fronts.  If, as some people argue, it's fine to to invoke an historical event in which thousands tragically died, then why not go the whole hog next year and base the entire yuletide campaign on 9/11?  The reason they won't is because people would, quite rightly, hit the fucking roof.

But the principle is exactly the same.  Or are we to conclude that an event that killed 37 million people...err...yonks ago is fair game, but one that killed three and a half thousand and happened within living memory is off limits as to use it to market Pot Noodles might, just might, be considered to be beyond the fucking pale?  This is clearly bullshit.  It is either a principled or an unprincipled act.  One cannot cherry pick instances when it's okay and others when it's not.  That's like arguing that it's fine to ridicule a Chinaman, but not a Nigerian.  Actually I do believe some racists actually advance this confused argument.

Gloam is where the heart is

I'm typing this at seven minutes to four in the afternoon, and it's virtually pitch black out.  You certainly wouldn't be able to negotiate a country lane without a miner's helmet on, not unless you like being run over by threshing machinery, that is.

Still, onwards and upwards.  I'm off out for a drink with former colleagues this evening, and it's good weather for gathering together in a cosy boozer on the banks of the Thames to share a couple of mugs of foaming mother's ruin with friends.  It's starting to feel like Christmas already.  And, let us face facts, Xmas is a bacchanal.  I know the Pope or Aled Jones would have you believe otherwise, but don't listen to them; the pagan festival that takes place at the end of the year, with all its attendant dancing, boozing and rutting, far far predates the arrival of Christianity.  The church simply chose to hitch its star to winterval's wagon.  So, be in no doubt, it's all about the carousing.  Happy Christmas - debase yourself.

The only downside to this season is its length.  Everyone is clammering to get drinks in the diary - former colleagues, relatives, old school friends, tramps I once gave money to - everyone.  This makes matters a little cluttered.  In a couple of weeks' time for example I've got carols (and drinks) on Tuesday, drinks with former colleagues on Wednesday, work's Xmas do on Thursday and a shindig at the neighbours' place on Saturday.  That leaves Friday free, and Friday, as everyone do be know, is pub night.  Phew is right.  I'm getting bilious just typing out the schedule.

Croak a computer

Mrs O attempted to turn on our aged and infirm Macintosh computer the other day, and instead of wearily booting, it coughed up some digital blood and shuffled off this mortal etc.  This is no massive surprise as it's had a good desktop innings.  Unfortunately, as JL pointed out to us before being shot by a maniac, life is what happens to you while you're busy making plans.  In accordance with this law, I had been planning to back-up the Mac for some time.  I didn't.  I must point out by way of mitigation, however, that I am a shiftless and an idle man, so it's not my fault.

Needless to say really, there's a ton(ne) of stuff inside the cadaver of the machine that I'd quite like to get back - music, photos and other bits of electronic flotsam.  In desperation I had a quick trawl of the web, and there might, just might, be a chance that the system unit has been overwhelmed by dust, which is why it's refusing to start - the digital equivalent of having shit in the carburetter, if you will.  So in the tradition of devil-may-care British idiocy I decided to take it to pieces and hoover its guts, in the hope this might give it another six months of poor quality wheezing (ahem) life.

I've completed the first part.  I dismantled it on Monday, following some thankfully very comprehensive instructions that some jolly egg had posted on-line.  I then wedged in the thinnest nozzle in the Dyson arsenal and gave it a good old suck.

Tonight comes the final part, the reassembly.  And, frankly, if it works, I'll eat my hat and coat.  Still, stranger things have happened I suppose.  I just can't think of one.

The North-South Divide - define your terms

I've been pondering the north/south divide.  The reason for the ponderage is that I don't believe it exists - not in the simplistic and rather offensive way the term implies anyhoos.

If you're not from England, a quick precis is in order.  The north is an ill-defined and loose coalition of disaffected English people who hate "the south", and believe that "the south", and southerners generally, have got it in for them, and that this displeasure manifests itself by their hoarding all the money and coal at the country's disposal for their own ends.

Now, the first problem with this north/south thing is that no-one from the south (myself included) believes "the south" to exist.  We do not define ourselves as southerners; the demographics of southern England are far too complicated and diverse for us to do that.  What possible overarching sense of self links me, a Londoner, and a farmer from Somerset?

Also, it ignores the geographical arbitrariness of the designation.  Penzance is 400 miles west of Ipswich; these are wildly different places.  One looks like the west of Ireland; the other looks like The Netherlands.  Penzance is in Cornwall, the poorest county in England.  Ipswich is commutable distance from London.  But according to the orthodoxy of the NSD, they are of a piece - southern, and, therefore, equally guilty of raping the north.

Sheffield, on the other hand, is 180 miles from London, but is apparently a victim of the south's economic conspiracy.  The logic would appear, then, to rest on not absolute distance from London, but the degrees of latitude crossed by that distance.  Longitude has no bearing on the matter (pun intended).  What absolute sheight.

Also, whither the midlands?  Are they in the north?  Generally they're not considered to be.  But they're certainly not in the south either.  No Black Country denizen would thank you for suggesting that he or she is a southerner.  But all would agree that they fit the material criteria: north of the capital, former industrial heartland of England, laid low by de-industrialisation and recession.

This implies that the north is a cultural construct.  That also explains why the Scots and the Welsh aren't counted.  As far as the Scots are concerned, the northern English are just the same as the rest of us.

And the final point is this.  The term assumes that southerners contrive to do down northerners.  This fails to recognise that the south is home to plenty of northerners.  If the south gets more money than other regions, it is due to this economic internal migration as much as anything.  The south east of England is one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Boys and their toys

I bought a new bike on Saturday.  I'd been planning to for ages.  My commuting bike of the last 12 years finally gave up the ghost a few weeks ago, so I had a bike-shaped hole in my collection.  I did think (briefly) about not replacing it.  The Mrs and I had a purge of our belongings during the summer.  We also rejigged the furniture, which made the old homestead feel rangy and splendid.  Whilst I was caught up in hysteria this engendered, I thought it might be nice to thin out the number of velocipedes cluttering the downstairs.  The mood passed, however.

In fairness, I do (I suppose) need two bikes.  Should one develop a mechanical, then I always have another at my disposal, which is reassuring.  They are tools, rather than playthings for me.

The funny thing about making major purchases like this is that it doesn't excite me anymore.  When I was younger, I used to sweat cheddar finding the money for guitars and stuff.  I'd salt away tiny amounts of cash whenever I could.  I remember I used to walk down to my building society branch late at night and stare at the balance on the cash point machine, just to give myself a little frisson; my dream was getting nearer.  And on the day of the purchase itself, I'd spring out of bed hours before the shops were open and spend the morning pacing the up and down like an expectant father.

I remember in particular the joy I felt when I bought my first good guitar, a 1974 Fender Stratocaster.  After getting it home, I would sit and stare at it for hours, such was my love for it.  This was in 1986.  About four years ago, nearly a quarter of a century after that initial guitar purchase, I had occasion to buy another good guitar.  I was playing in a band with friends at the time and needed to upgrade my machine.  This experience was the polar opposite of that mid-eighties one.  I had tons of money, so I trundled up the Denmark St, tried out a few guitars, found the one I wanted, slapped down the money and simply waltzed home with it.

Even as I minced up the Charing Cross Road with it en route to the tube station, I was aware of the disappointing contrast with my teenage self walking back to Mum and Dad's with that strat.  Age and money had made me unshockable.  I could buy any production guitar in the world without feeling the financial impact, and that was the difference.  Also, the later guitar wasn't charged with future possibility and aspiration.  It was simply a rather nice object that allowed me to indulge a much-loved hobby, just like my new bike.  Sigh...

Grimble gromble hatstand

I'm not sure what's happening today, blog wise.  I've found by rereading my diary that I've started dropping into a very prescriptive form for my daily entries.  The weather first, followed by how busy I am at work, followed by my route home and ending up with what's on the telly.  There's no scope for empty-headed scat scribbling within this highly-structured form.  I need, therefore, to break its face with a forearm smash of art terrorism.

When I was younger (i.e. at any time prior to now) I used to be so tired and hungover when filling in brer diary that my musings would meander wherever they saw fit.  This was useful because rereading it was like reading the thoughts of a dissolute stranger, who just so happened to be inhabiting my body at the time as I was using it.  This is as exhilarating as its sounds.  But as I've aged, I've become more and more bound by bourgeois routine.  And the old BR absolutely hates improv.

This is age creeping up on one of course.  However, I'm a great believer that age-appropriate behaviour is conditioned - nurture rather than nature.  Given this, it is possible to override it.  I shall do this using positive affirmation and hyperventilation.

Who steals my verse steals trash...

I haven't written any poetry for a while, if one can refer to several years as a while.  As with most things, it's a question of context.  But anyways.  The thing with poetry, in my experience, is to set yourself a technical brief and then see what subject matter these strictures suggest to the unconscious.  And don't be afraid to swear if you feel it's artistically justified.  Only one-nation Tories dislike swearing, so use it as you see fit.

I'm really flagging at the moment - both physically and mentally.  Luckily, I've managed to lift myself out of this fug by reading Scott Adams' blog.  It really restores one's belief in the basic worth of humanity.  I often get down due to feeling isolated.  My isolation stems from a fundamental disinterest in the things that most people seem to find fascinating and/or important.  Reading SA's blog helps to dispel the myth that everyone on the mothership is like this.  Most are, yes, the vast majority in fact, but not all.  And that fact gives me hope.

And so to bed...

Rhine, women and song

Mrs O and I are fresh back from a weekend in Berlin.  It was one of those exhilarating lightning-quick city breaks, the kind of thing that convinces to you give adult life a second chance.  We both clambered on the plane home yesterday afternoon with a feeling of unfinished business.  We didn't stop once the whole time we were there, but still left with the feeling that we'd only scratched the surface of this fascinating place.  

So - we've resolved to go back.  We're also going to get some rudimentary German under our belts.  We're not setting our aim too high, just the ability to order food and drink in a reasonably fluent manner would be nice.  Mrs O studied German at school, which is useful because she has the vocab, albeit buried.  But I'm a complete novice.  I find it sufficiently close to English to make listening comprehension fairly easy, however, so that's half the battle won.  French, which I speak reasonably well, is a nightmare in this regard.  I find it murderously difficult to follow people's responses to me in France.  I'm hopeful that German will be less tortuous on the English ear.  

Another benefit of German is that now and again you encounter the oh-so pleasing instance of a German phrase that is exactly the same as its English cousin, albeit with a more sinister accent.  "Brown beer" or "all in order?" are examples of this charming phenomenon.

It's funny too that one feels a certain unspoken affinity with other northern European races.  The Dutch, the Germans and the English are very much cousins as far as outlook and society is concerned.  And, cliche though it is, I always feel comforted when in Germany because things are so well organised.

Eric Von Pickles

As I'm spending the weekend in Berlin, I'm going to have to steal myself to the realisation that I'll be eating pickles at some point.  Actually, I'm sure things must have moved on a little in the decade since I was last in Germany.  On that occasion I was on a mob-handed stag do.  We dined exlusively at Burger King, so I was able to give the gerkins the swerve.

This first time I went to Germany was in 1990, whilst interrailing.  My mate and I arrived in Munich, and I was mortified to discover that all the supermarkets etc. had shut on Saturday afternoon and would not reopen until Monday morning.  Bavaria wears its Catholic heart on its sleeve.  No matter though - we'd simply eat out.  Unfortunately, the only takeaways trading were traditional German places, so even the cutlery was picked.  And I cannot abide pickles.  

 I think I spent the entire weekend eating oranges and buns.  By Sunday afternoon I was so desperate I'd have eaten a husky had we had the presence of mind to bring one.

I've been scarred by this experience.  My worst misgivings about the merciless nature of Teutonic cuisine were confirmed, and  I still to this day refuse to believe they are capable to producing anything intended for human consumption that is anything other than appalling.  Let's hope they progressed in the last quarter of a century.  I know I have.

Lurlled of weather

A week of many hues, this one.  Yesterday was a full-on late autumn day in Londres.  The cloud base descended to a height of about seventy feet, and the air below that was absolutely chockablock with moisture.  I'm not sure that it actually rained in a strict meteorological sense, but you couldn't walk the length of a dining table without getting sodden.  The air was saturated.

I went for a wander anyhoo, my usual route down to Westferry Circus.  It was wonderfully desolate down there.  The office fodder were put off by the weather and it was deserted.  There's a lovely le Carré feel to the place when it's grey and empty like this.  I can fill my time simply to staring out to the river, pretending I'm awaiting a contact from "our man in the Soviet trade delegation" or something.  This kind of glassy-eyed time wasting gets me down usually, but not at especially grimy moments.  I did try to read at one point, to take the curse off my idleness, by the book starting taking on board water like shit dingy, so I gave up.

Today, on the other hand, is a sunny, warm and life-affirming November day.  The colours are superb, and I say this as a registered colour-blind person.  It's the contrast between the plant life and the sky that does the trick.  Decaying organic greens and browns seem to suit that cornflower blue you get in the sky in the late afternoons at this time of year.  I was always taught that "blue and green should never be seen", but this is the exception.  Everyone from Keats to Jeremy Clarkson seems to like the combo.  

Actually, why on earth did they try and teach us an orthodoxy of the aesthetics of colour using rhyme in the 70s, like this?  It's seemed as natural as learning the times tables at the time.  Now it strikes me as a lot bizarre and a little sinister.  I dare say Thatcher heaved that bit of the syllabus out the window as soon as soon as her skinny white ass hit the Parker Knoll in Number 10 in 1979.  Had she stopped there, I might have felt better disposed towards the dozy old sow.

Or perhaps not.

Portland ill

A truncated post today as I'm (a) as busy as a one-legged waiter on a trampoline and (b) I'm not feeling tip top.

The reason for the under-the-weatherness is clear to me: everyone in my air-conditioned office is coughing and spluttering with some wretched seasonal lurgy, and try as I might, I cannot escape their microbes.

Air conditioning is the greatest drain on the productivity of the UK since the Second World War.  I'm pretty robust when it comes to seeing off germs.  I exercise; my diet is good etc.  And yet I am laid waste to several times a year by colds.  You can imagine then what the same maladies do to the army of sedentary weeds I work with.  Most of them spend the winter months huddled in wheelchairs in sanatoriums in the Swiss Alps, with tasselled hats and tartan blankets for succour.

Why can't we just open the fcuking windows?  That used to work okay bee-in-the-dee.  We won't jump out; I promise.  Well, I might, but I'm unusual in this regard.

Right: linctus.

Remember, remember - you're in England, not Ohio

Mrs O and I are off on yet another mini break this weekend.  This time, it's off to Berlin.  We're flying quite early on Saturday morning, so instead of running around like a pair of rank amateurs on the morning of the flight, we've decided to spend Friday night in a hotel at Heathrow.

Another unplanned but welcome benefit of this decision is the fact that it means the hoose will be empty on the night of Halloween, which means we'll be spared the ordeal of having hundreds of children led to our front door by their easily-led parents to demand sweets.

I know the grumpy old man thing is supposed to be both effortlessly hilarious and fashionable these days, but, believe me, it's not that.  I can't stand Arthur Smith's contrived moaning any more than I can trick-or-treat.  I personally don't hate the internet, my mobile phone or ipod.  I love the ipod.  Why wouldn't I?  It allows me to bring my entire record collection to work with me.  No, my ire about Halloween is not born of my age and gender.  It's born of a hatred of Americana being blindly adopted by Britons.

Halloween used to mean fcuk-all in the UK.  This was primarily due to its proximity to Guy Fawkes Night.  That was always a much bigger deal here.  Not so any more.  Over the last 10 years or so Halloween has turned into a cross between A-level Thursday and Christmas Day.  And everyone just treats it like this is perfectly normal.  It's like schoolchildren having a prom.  We don't graduate from high school, like the Americans do, so its meaning is lost.  They have to earn a high school diploma; the prom is a celebration of that fact.  All our school children have to do is reach the age of 18; then they are forced to leave, irrespective of how well, badly or indifferently they have performed academically.  So a prom in the UK is rather like having a graduation ceremony for simply having made it to 18.  Woo hoo!  Well done, us.

I don't have the child mortality rates for the UK to hand, but I'm guessing most of our progeny make it unscathed.  Why not go the whole hog and award prizes for having a spine?  It makes as much sense.

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods

I was watching a 1991 interview with Frank Zappa over the breakfast ale this morning.  Zappa was ill at the time with prostate cancer.  His condition was terminal, and he knew it.  During the interview, FZ restates his long-held opposition to drugs, as they "rob the young of their ambition" and "are a license to act like an asshole".

Naturally, as a musician during the late 60s and early 70s, Zappa's position put him at odds with the prevailing wisdom of his professional peers on the subject.  I broadly support his views on this.  Narcotics co-opt one to the system that supplies them.  Unless you grow your own "shit", you must become a customer to someone or something to feed your habit; this limits your freedom.  

I've always had a dislike of being signed-up to things I can't control, committing my future to some institution or person.  It makes me nervous and claustrophobic.   What if I don't want to be a soldier in two years' time?  Tough.  It's also why I don't like debt and hire purchase.  That simply means I have to go to work for the next 28 weeks, or whatever the credit period is.  I've sold my liberty for a consumer durable, which is an appalling act when you see it in those stark terms.

However, there is a problem with Frank's argument in that all the while he was expounding his thoughts on this subject, he was holding a cigarette.  To him, cigarettes were not drugs.  He describes tobacco at one point as his favourite herb, and voices doubts as to perceived damage it does to smokers.  His refusal to classify it as a drug implies that he believes smokers have some choice in the matter, and are able to make a detached decision prior to lighting-up each time.  This is clearly nonsense; that's the drug talking. 

The truth of course is that smokers  are hopelessly and clinically addicted to cigarettes, and are therefore subjugated absolutely by their addiction.  I realised this when I was a child.  Whenever I went on a train journey as a boy, I would look in horror at the adults in station frantically bolstering their stashes of fags prior to the off.  I thought to myself then "if you can't undertake a two-hour train journey without this drug, you are anything but free".  Imagine if the cigarette companies decided to limit the supply in order to drive up the price.  Smokers would be on their knees in days, unable to function, pleading for a hit.  Fcuk that.  I decided there and then that that would not happen to me.

All this makes me sound like a paragon of drug-free virtue.  I'm not that.  I have a very active relationship with alcohol.  But my childhood phobia of addiction constantly keeps me on my toes.  I'm always eyeing booze carefully, lest it start calling the shots instead of me.

My trouble with alcohol is that I'm not clinically addicted.  I can and do go without it regularly.  I also virtually never crave a drink.  That doesn't sound like much of a problem, I'll grant you, but it is.  It's a problem because it makes me complacent about my ability to control matters.   And that is how narcotics work their evil magic.  Suddenly, they're at the steering wheel, and then it's a problem.  This is what caused Frank's momentary lapse of good sense in the interview.  It was the addiction using his vocal chords.  The same temporary madness also explains, but does not excuse, David Hockney's ludicrous pronouncements on why anti-smoking legislation in the UK is " the most grotesque piece of social engineering".  We live in world when people starve to death every day, but not being able to have a fag in a Wimpy Bar is what gets DH's goat.

I don't blame you, David.  I blame the Capstan non-filters.

The Dark Knight

The clocks go back this weekend.  This, as per, will cause an awful lot of brow-beetling and gnashing of choppers - most of it from yours truly, sadly.  It's a real emotional size nine to the knackers, this shift back to winter.  Yes, the mornings will be brighter, but who gives a stuff for that?  You're on the way to work anyhoos, so it might as well be raining down tongues of fire for all I care.

The real problem is the afternoons and evenings.  It will be gloaming like a mofo when I take my late-ish lunchtime stroll.  That's a heart breaker.  It's the first hiatus of the working day, and already the sun has fcuked-off over the horizon to shine of the Aussies.  Like they need more vitamin D.  And of course by the time you're actually released from commercial bondage, it will be pitch black.  The urge then is to hibernate, but this can be disastrous.  If you give into it, you'll do nothing with your meagre free time until April.  You might as well be a Labrador.  No, one must fight this - using stimulants, sex, whatever.

In other news, I read on the BBC web site earlier that Lady Gaga recently bought a £24m luxury home in Malibu, which hasn't improved my mood any.  I think I've made my feelings on LG clear before now, but, in essence, I believe her to be little more than a boot-faced Madonna for the Poundstretcher generation.  Her music stinks.  There, I've said it.  The dunce army that laps up stuff like the X-Factor of a Saturday night nebulously try to defend her (ahem) oeuvre by repeatedly pointing out that she plays the piano and composes all her own material.  Let's deal with those two scintillating observations, shall we?

She earns her crust in the music business.  In years gone by, having some musical training, allied to a deal of natural musical talent used to be the minimum requirement for a jobbing musician.  And is she a virtuoso pianist?  No, she fcuking isn't.  She's no Elton John, is she?  Years ago, you could walk into any pub in the east end of London and find at least a brace of functionally-illiterate cockneys who could play the piano at least as well as she can.  Anyone with two hands and enough time can master the piano to a reasonable level.

On the second point, I must hold my hand up and admit that, yes, she does compose all her own material.  Unfortunately, all that material is incorrigible shite.  Artless, wanton, self-aggrandising aural chewing-gum for the kind of people who cried when the Princess of Wales died, but who would happily stop in the street to watch, with ghoulish glee, the victim of a road traffic accident thrashing around in the gutter, as he tries in vain to reinflate his chest cavity.

Where does she get off buying a £24m pound house?  It's a fcuking outrage.  If popstars were paid according to their talent, she'd be sharing a flat with the Chuckle Brothers.  It just as well the music business doesn't work this way.  I wouldn't wish that on Barry and Paul.  They've done nothing, as we go to press, to deserve that.

Up against the impersonal pronoun singular

Super busy at the very present.  I work in a small team.  There are two of us.  That really is as small as the law of team dynamics allows, isn't it?  Any less than that, and it's all "I" in team, which nature will not have.

The reason for the professional mania is that the other 50% of the first squad is working from home for a bit, due to unfortunate family circs. that I'd rather not go into.  For as long as I've had a hole in me arse, as they say, I've been telling my alleged boss that a two-man team is fine as long as both parties are fit and available for selection.  When that happy state of affairs is undermined for some reason, it all goes to cock in a handcart.  This is the current state of affairs.  

Worse still, I'm off to Berlin for a long weekend on Friday week.  Who's going to do the needful then?  My boss?  Roger De Courcey has more chance of joining the SAS, frankly.  I don't know what's going to happen, and, more to the point, I don't care.  When all is said and done, it's only work.  Does my attitude shock you?  Excellent.  Then my work here is done.

The sun has got his (thermal) hat on

We had a junior hurricane in the U of K yesterday.  Well, it wasn't a hurricane by the time it reached our shores; it was more of a hooley, as they say in Ireland.  But, still, the wind blew and the rain lashed.  For the east of England, this counts as biblical stuff.

I was delighted when I got home to see that the shed I'd hastily nailed together a few weeks ago had withstood the tempest.  I had already mentally earmarked it as "missing - presumed dead" as I surveyed the carnage from my office window yesterday.  But, no!, it came through unscathed.  Well done, me.

Things settled down overnight, and the only lasting impact of our brush with the elements is on the water butt in the front garden, which looks like it's been overdoing the meat and potato pies.  I don't know what one is supposed to do in circs. like this.  Is it in danger of exploding if we get a severe frost, for example?  Should I "let" some of the water into a milk bottle to ease the pressure?  Every householder of a certain age except for the wife and I appears to know this stuff automatically.  Like Bill Hicks, I feel constantly that I must have missed a meeting somewhere along the line.  This is nothing new for me of course.  I've felt like this my entire life.  Impostor syndrome, I believe it's called.

I'll google it.

The received wisdom is that one cannot overfill a WB.  And no-one makes mention of one shattering its sides due to water expansion on freezing.  I'll ignore it then.  I'm sure that's best policy...as it is with most matters in life.

 

Men of garlic

Mrs O and I spent the weekend in France - Montpellier, to be exact.  It's a city we'd never visited before.  And I can pronounce myself happy with it.  Like all truly interesting cities, it has its architectural moments (cathedrals, a university etc.) but it's also a little grubby and unkempt in parts.  Never threatening, just a little grungy.

It's unsurprising, this shabby side, when you realise that a quarter of the city's populace is made up of students.  It's a big place too, so that's plenty of students.  I've never been in a place that is so student-heavy.  A demographic like this is wont to attract shit-kickers, and this Montpellier does with gusto.  They're everywhere, but their biggest concentration is to be found outside the big Monoprix supermarket on the main square.  Again, they're not threatening (the French police would never tolerate that), but they do drag the otherwise Belle Époque vibe of the place down a notch or several hundred.

I do get annoyed by white (and they are always white) dreadlocked dropouts like this.  You just know that they're all the over-indulged offspring of relatively well-to-do bourgeois families, and could lift themselves free of the mire in a heartbeat if required.  They're playing with bohemianism, which annoys me.

What annoys me more, however, is the fact most of them try to dress up their lifestyles as some kind of mordant comment or satire on "the system" and its corrupt mores.  The truth of matter is rather more prosaic: they're drunks.  That's all.  No more and no less.  

I do feel for yer actual tramps when I see wimps like this toying with the lifestyle.  At least real tramps recognise their place in the hierarchy of developed industrial society: they're the ones rolling around at the bottom of it, boss-eyed with drink and, frankly, loving it.  They make no claims to a greater insight than the rest of us, or to living lives of greater veracity.  They simply have to live that way.

Nor do they pretend that substance abuse is the golden highway to self-knowledge.  They just like being pissed-up more than they don't.  That's why a steaming-drunk tramp will always repeat some variation of the same tramps' manta to you when you happen across his path.  He will want you to know in no uncertain terms just how "fooking pisht" he is.  End of message.  If you want to read more into it than was intended, that's your look-out.  Mr Tramp simply called the material situation as he saw it at the time.  Real tramps are suspicious of schools of abstract thought.  That's partly why they end-up being tramps of course.  It's difficult to concentrate on passing exams and insuring your home when your belief in the intrinsic value of society has been undermined by cider.