Ummagumma

Someone mentioned to me today that Abigail Witchall was 'lucky' because, although it looks like she'll be paralysed from the neck down for life, at least she still has her mind. A mind she can disappear into whenever the pressures of her new life become too much.

To a certain extent, I can see where my colleague is coming from, but I had to point out the massive learning curve that the poor bugger's going to have to go through before she reaches this 'Nirvana' where the mind really does overcome the prosaic realties of having your arse wiped for you, having yourself bathed by strangers and having to communicate via blinking and mouthing soundless words. No more running through the surf, playing games with your kids, making a sandwich, walking a dog, making love. No more clicking your fingers, picking your own nose, scratching.

At the end of the day, no matter how positive and God-loving you are, that's going to wear you down. Deep depression for a start. Worries about your longevity next. More worries about the tenacity of your husband and, even, eventually, your children. Before finally - in about 50 years - coming to terms with a seemingly random piece of barbarism.

Lucky? My arse! I really wouldn't want to have survived something like that happening to me - at that age. Twenty Six is no age to be condemned to complete and utter dependence on others. Certainly not with a young family either.

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Well. Fortunately my father hasn't got Parkinson's disease, his symptoms were a direct result of his own doctor dispensing inappropriate drugs. We all sat round his hospital bed one night and my mother had been reading the leaflet that came with said medication. DON'T GIVE THESE BUGGERS TO DIABETICS screamed the instructions. Side effects include shuffling about like someone suffering from PARKINSON'S DISEASE. Weakness, talkin' bollocks and early death will soon follow. So we showed it to interested nurses and he ended up on different medication, demanded that he be discharged from hospital and is generally giving us all a hard time, as belligerent, frustrated, still-not-a-hundred-percent 76, going on 77-year-olds are want to do.

He's still raging against the dying of the light though, so that can only be good. Unfortunately, he's raging against everything else as well. My Mam, anyone under the age of 90 years on the TV, Lulu on Radio 2 ("What the friggin' 'ell does SHE know about music? It's a disgrace"), and, naturally - and certainly not unfortunately, Michael Howard. Thus our days draw to an end. we've all got this to look forward to peeps.

Enjoy what you've got left and fill it to the brim.

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You know, most of what I have written on this blog since day one has been spur of the moment, get it off your chest, stream of invective type of stuff, designed merely for the salving of my soul. This is the place I can come and lash out, spit venom and vent my spleen. Incoherent sometimes, foul-mouthed on occasion, devoid of wit at others, maudlin even. But this is where I come to release some of the pressures of being 50 years old in an extremely unforgiving industry, with ageing parents, kids fleeing the nest, pensions under threat and the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it lurking 'round every corner.

And, most times, I remember, in the the heat of the moment, to save my bile as draft or in a text file somewhere due to Blogger's predilection for crashing and sentencing all of my precious time ranting to so much digital dust. But sometimes I don't. And that really pisses me off. Get your act together Blogger it's happening too often.

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Other news this week.

Tess, the shit machine nearly met her grandad in 'doggy heaven' as she ran out in front of a car speeding in a 30-mile area on Friday evening. The vet reckons that, if she had been a couple of inches shorter, and had the car been going slightly slower, she would've got stuck under the front and acquired wings and a halo within seconds.

Fortunately it was Dearest who was guilty of allowing the dog off the lead near a major road. Mind you she is distraught and chock full of guilt, but at least I can walk around smug as a smug thing on St Smug's Day. Hmmmmmm moral high round..............

Tess was discharged from the vets tonight (thank God). £70 for three consultations, a couple of injections and six painkillers.

£70. I must admit. It was well worth the money. She's starting to grow on me as we both begin to understand each other.

I'll never understand where all that shit comes from though.

Hang Down Your Head

Religion? Fuck it forever. THIS is a disgrace. I thought Mr Bush had put an end to this type of behaviour?

Stoned to death on the uncorroborated account of a twat who hadn't supported his wife for 5 years.

I'm incoherent with rage!

Who's Next?

How the hell have we managed these past few weeks without a Pope? Where has our spiritual guidance been coming from during this interegnum? Who will God rely on to get his message out without a Papal conduit? According to some rumours Birmingham City Football Club are bolloxed without a 'Representative on Earth' being around. Here's hoping the 'clave (cheers Andy) argue amongst themselves until after Wednesday's clash with the mighty Blues of Manchester.

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Well, my Dad's back in hospital tomorrow. Tests for Parkinson's Disease. It never rains but it pours. At least we'll have a better understanding of his needs and why he's like he is once he allows himself to be poked and probed again.

Fortunately he's at a different hospital. One that's a damn site (sight?) more accessible via public transport, cleaner and more modern. Here's hoping he isn't visited by a Tory candidate. It would make the national news - believe me.

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"You can't describe the feeling. When the smoke came out it looked white and I got chills," an Italian student Silvia Mariano, said. Get a life. Not an afterlife. Prick.

40,000 watching the chimney. 40,000? It sounds a lot. But it isn't. Manchester City consistantly attract 46,000 plus for premiership games every couple of weeks or so. Any other premiership team with a ground big enough would hope for crowds of the same size. I ask myself, 40,000 pilgrims hanging around to see who the next representative of their God on earth will be? Pretty poor turn out if you ask me. Especially for the founding church of the Christian religion on this blue planet of ours.

Rivetting TV though. Fuckin' chimney. Rivetting.

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Tonight's post brought to you via:-

It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding): Dylan, Bob
Rosalie/Cowgirl's Song (Live): Thin Lizzy
Pinball Wizard: Elton John
Song With No Words: David Crosby & Graham Nash
Picture Book: The Kinks
The Look Of Love: Diana Krall
I Am a Rock: Simon and Garfunkel
Everyone's Gone To The Movies (Demo): Steely Dan
Harvest: Neil Young
Spanish Bombs: The Clash
Something New: John Mayall
Faena: Gipsy Kings
Road Ladies: Frank Zappa
France: Keb' Mo'
Woodhenge: Mike Oldfield
Olive Groove: Brom Man
Easy Rider: Chris Rea
Surprise, Surprise: Caravan
I Ain't Ever Satisfied: Steve Earle
So You Want To Be A Rock'N'Roll Star: The Byrds
Reggatta De Blanc: The Police
She Is So Beautiful: Mike Scott
Florentine Pogen: Frank Zappa
Atlantic City: Bruce Springsteen
Cry Me a River: Dinah Washington
Mrs. Robinson: Simon and Garfunkel
Billy the Kid Slide Guitar + Mandolin: SJG – The Stringmen
I Can't Let Maggie Go: The Honeybus
Porrohman: Big Country
Chance: Big Country
The Storm: Big Country
Harvest Home: Big Country
Fields of Fire: Big Country
Inwards: Big Country
In a Big Country: Big Country
Carry On-Questions: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Chain Lightning: Steely Dan
Satin Doll: Charlie Byrd
Visions Of China: Japan
....and many more.........

My Back Pages

OK. Today started fine. Dearest, Eldest, Ed the Blue and myself retired to local number one (blue through and through) to watch Fulham and City scrap a 1-1 draw. Just as the full time whistle blew though, we got a phone call from my Mam; my Dad had fallen in the bathroom and couldn't get up. So off we shot in a Taxi and Dearest and I (bad foot an' all) manhandled him into his favourite chair.

Apparently he'd been trying to shower himself in order to go to the pub this evening. The poor bugger had to give up that idea. Hopefully next week eh Dad?

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After an hour or so we came home and cracked a bottle of wine while we had beef, roast spuds and yorkshire pud. Dearest then expressed a wish to watch a DVD of "Persuasion" - a BBC adaptation of the Ms Austin novel. Consequently I expressed a wish to leave her to it. She was asleep within 15 minutes.

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So finally, I have a look at my regular blogs abd discover that TimesNewRoman has challenged me to answer the following questions:-

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

I took this to mean which book would you memorise? If so then I'd have to say "The English Passengers" by Matthew Kneale. A darkly comic expose of the clash of Western and Aboriginal morality in 19th century Tasmania. A classic. If it means which book to burn then I'm with TNR - anything that claims to have come from the mouth of God.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Mrs Amelia Underwood in Moorcock's "Dancer's at the End of Time" trilogy. I was very impressionable at the time. Strangely, I shared a taxi from Sheffield to Manchester with Moorcock years later. I must write about that.

The last book you bought is:

"Chronicles Vol One" Bob Dylan.

The last book you read:

"A Year in the Merde" Stephen Clark

What are you currently reading?

"Chronicles Vol One" Bob Dylan. It's surprisingly good as well.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

"The English Passengers" by Matthew Kneale. Because genocide isn't a purely 20th century phenomenon. "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown. Because genocide isn't a purely 20th century phenomenon.. "Revolution in the Head" by Ian McDonald. Because I could read this again and again and again and again. "The Complete Pratt" by David Nobbs. I'll need a good laugh. Finally "Old Glory by Jonathon Raban. A masterpiece of travel writing as the author sails a 16 foot aluminium skiff down the Big Muddy. Philosophy, reportage and a masterful ability to bring the landscape to life.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

I will invite anyone who feels the need to dive in.

Cry Me a River

So, so long MG Rover. Nobody wanted to buy your cars but, somehow, as a company, it has been deemed by certain newspapers of the anti-Labour persuasion that you are more than worthy of a shitful of tax payer's money. The Express, Mail, Times, Telegraph and the rest are all castigating the government for allowing the loss of 5 or 6 thousand jobs to happen and demanding some form of State intervention. Now, WTF is that all about?

A private company deserving of State aid? Demanded by the very newspapers that espouse the virtues of raw capitalism: red in tooth and claw? How can this be justified? Ahh, simple; we need to save British English jobs.

Quite, quite commendable. Saving jobs, yes, of course. Such a noble goal, and one that the Government of the day should have made their number one priority. After all, the calamity can't be placed at the door of the blameless managment team who acquired millions of poundsworths of assets for less than a tenner a few years ago. Can it?

S'funny you know, but a few short weeks ago, I'm sure I read in these self-same bastions of the Right that not enough jobs were being sacrificied in the Public sector to finance the tax cuts promised by certain political parties in the run up to Election '05. 22,000 civil servants. All surplus to requirements apparently. Not enough. Sack more of the paper-pushing arseholes cried Fleet Street. No mention of peripheral businesses going to the wall. No mention of us (standard-rate) tax payers having to foot the bill for the inevitable benefits required by a damn site more than the 22,000 dismissed.

Way back in the 70s and 80s. The 'car workers' - as they were so imaginatively dubbed, were the 'enemy within'. The political Right detested the very soil they...err...soiled. Constantly berated them for relying on State handouts to bail them out of their latest catastrophe.

Never, as long as my arse points South, would I have thought that the Daily Express and its ilk would be supporting that industry, and screaming for Government intervention.

Clem Attlee, Hugh Gaitskill, Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and John Smith must be sat bolt upright in their graves, smacking their foreheads with the palms of their right hand and saying: "fuck me!" (Unless, of course, they were left-handed. Anybody know?)

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A hobble to local number two was on the cards tonight and most welcome it was too. There's only so much surfing, blog-reading, daytime TV watching a man can do without going out on a random shooting spree.

How many houses have I seen transformed over the past fortnight? How many gardens? People? How often have I lay there, foot elevated, TV on and suddenly snorted awake half an hour later? I despair.

I keep coming back to this phrase - Orwellian.

The war against Asiatica is going very well I believe.

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Incidentally and for the record. I am with Youngest on this. I DON'T want Malcolm Glazer to take over Manchester United. I'm absolutley convinced he will break up the current agreement to sell all Premier league games under one umbrella payment, thus ensuring that the likes of Crystal Palace still get a payout from Sky (or whoever in the future) everytime United, Arsenal or Chelsea are on TV.

Now that would create an insurmountable wall between the top three or four and the rest.

The next thing after that of course, would be franchise football. Surely?

You Can't Always Get What You Want

Ahh well - I'll still be voting Labour. Lib Dems = local politics for local people. Who knows? Maybe when and if Proportional Representation comes in? 'Till then however.........

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Labour

Your actual outcome:

	Labour 8
Conservative -43
	Liberal Democrat 67
UK Independence Party 0
	Green 26

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

Walkin' Spanish

Sheer boredom made me drag myself and my enfeebled foot back to work yesterday. A mistake. This morning found me on the phone to my boss letting him know I wouldn't be in again. I had hoped that a little exercise would, perhaps, be just the job. Wrong. On top of that, I was next to useless at work anyway. Couldn't lift, drive or walk any significant distance. That only left paperwork - or what passes for it in today's modern, almost paperless office - and if wanted to be as bored as that I would've stayed at home for certain.

So, more phone calls to my doctor and I have finally got an appointment for Thursday morning at 8:40. No doubt I'll be as mobile as Michael Flatley by then.

And what a week I picked to be incapacitated with next to nothin' to do but read, cogitate or watch TV. The Pope pops his clogs, Tone calls an election and Prince Bloody Charles marries his mistress.

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The nonsense of all religion is, for me, encapsulated by the singing and chanting to a Big-Man-Who-Lives-In-The-Sky while swishing a fancy ball with smoke coming out of it over the Pontiff's coffin. If the perpertrators of this act had been living in some South American rainforest, cut off from 'civilisation' for centuries, we would have smiled and said "ahh poor, unsophisticated savages" as the Discovery channel, or somesuch, allowed us a 'unique insight on a tribe who still lived a pre-industrial life'. As it was we were witnessing a Western, European country in the 21st century.

Furthermore, if that wasn't medievil enough, in an age of mass, instantaneous communication, we will discover when the all-male conclave have elected a new Pope via the emmission of white smoke from a chimney somewhere in the Vatican. White smoke. Not a web site, TV broadcast or owt modern, but white smoke. I guess their God doesn't approve of digital, or, come to think of it, analogue, technology. He must've give up on his 'creation' not long after the invention of the printing press.

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Actually I wrote about the Pope's funeral the other night and thought I'd lost the post after Blogger went Tit's Up - as it frequently does. I've just re-discovered it and I'll post it at the end of this. It's quite weird how my scribbles can change so much - about the same subject - in a couple of days.

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The election is boring me shitless already. When the fuck did politics become as sanitised as this?

I'm not listening anymore. There's no passion. Why? Well, sadly I really do have to point the finger at the media - and Murdoch's gutter press/TV in particular. Sadly because I believe a free press is vital in a Democracy. Sadly , in a Democracy that is reaching the Bread and Circuses stage of its development, the free press has become an Orwellian palliative - pandering to endless, mindless obsession with good-looking, intellectually-airbrushed celebs. We'll be declaring war on some previously unknown continent next, and lying blatantly about 'our' success. It started in the 80s - the Devil's Decade, when Thatcher (*spits uncontrollably, curses vehemently and punches wall*) was madeover from a frumpy, strident-voiced asexual horror, into Judge Dredd (with added domination).

As this obsession with media image took root, every politician was churned through the same 'consultancies' and we ended up with the sterile, don't-say-the-wrong-thing-for-fuck's-sake-the-Media-will-pick-up-on-it, pile of shite that we are presented with today.

Does anybody out there remember George Brown drunkenly pontificating on the night of JFK's death? Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech? Churchill being profoundly pissed in the House of Commons? Heseltine swinging the Mace in rage? John Nott telling Robin Day he'd had enough and walking out of the BBC studios? Neil Kinnock talking of taxis delivering redundancy notices in a Labour council-controlled City?

Sad and devoid of interest. Fuck it. I'll vote Labour. I can't handle Tories. Deep within they're selfish twats who, in my experience, always analyse situations on a what's-in-it-for-me basis. The Lib-Dems I quite like. The Lib Dems round here though gave us a councilor who spent most of his four years in office living in Amsterdam, not turning up for surgeries and generally being the subject of much pissed off correspondence to the local Rags.

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Which brings me to Chuck and Camilla's nuptials. Well, what can I say? Just get on with it for fuck's sake. But don't - purlease DON'T - bore the fuckin' arse off me by ensuring it's rammed down my throat on ALL major TV channels.

Even Dearest wanted to watch it to see Mrs Parker-Bowles' dress! What is it with wedding dresses? Overpriced fairy frocks that are never worn again. Pointless.

Dearest's obsessive fairy-frockery combined with my incapacitation meant that I was subjected to this 'small' wedding for far longer than I would've wished. Before I left the lounge and hobbled up to my eyrie however, I witnessed a sight that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

A minibus approached the scene of the nuptials. The crowd cheered and whooped and waved and fluttered flags and fainted and orgasmed (possibly). That minibus was chock-full of fuckin' wastrels. Arseholes who haven't done a day's work in their lives. Ordinary folk (well apart from obvious tendencies to elevate pricks to stations far higher than they deserve) screaming and whooping and clapping and acting irrationally because a bus-full of dickheads with blue blood drove by. Shocking. And all to a soundtrack of gushing, psychophantic twaddle from the mouths of the BBC, ITV and all the other TV stations that we can now pass our days watching.

And, of course, the day after, Chazza and his Missus are attending Church; because without the Church telling everyone that they have a devine right to rule, they'd just look twattish and full of themselves wouldn't they?

Medievil.

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Here's the post about the Bob Hope from the other evening as promised:-

It's The End Of The World As We Know It (and I feel fine)

Am I missing something? Was there this much outpouring of the "world's" grief way back when? The "world's" press (BBC included) are falling over themselves to rewrite the right-wing pontificating cult-leader's past and make him out to be a rational voice in a planet driven by geo-political necessities. He was an intellectual inadequate. He BELIEVED he was the representative on Earth of a supernatural being who no one has ever met, seen or talked to. Just like a Witch Doctor. A supernatural being moreover who made the Earth and the Universe in one short week.

They were singing and chanting and incanting tonight in St Peter's Square - just like pre-industrial tribes paying tribute to a water god or some such. Fuckin' medievil if you ask me. But then again nobody will ask me tonight will they? Spoils the way it plays on Fox or Sky or even the BBC.

So long Karol, you have shuffled off your mortal coil just like all those AIDS sufferers YOU condemned to death with your nonsensical intransigence over condoms. Not to mention all those extra mouths to feed in parts of the world where food was at a premium. Frankly you did fuck all to help. A rain dance or two might have helped. Rain dances are as relevant to the modern world as "Holy communion" in my book.

For now, in an age of t'Internet and the rest, we will witness the election of a new Pope being broadcast to the world via white smoke from a chimney. Finger on the pulse or what? Set up a web page - or even a blog you jostlers, you career men - you wankers, you inadequate rain-dancers.

The media (BBC Radio 5 mainly for me) are talking this reactionary, ill-educated waste of space up like he was worthy of attention. He isn't, he wasn't. He believed he was God's representative on Earth. In any other walk of life we would have called it like we saw it. We would have called him a nutter. And quite correctly in my view. And now all his colleagues have started the shenagigans that go with attempting to elect a new Pope.

Good luck, in the meantime I'm off to bed.

Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush

Well, there you go. As widely predicted, the Election will take place on May 5th. The Queen apparently 'graciously agreed' to dissolve parliament earlier this morning and Tone turned up outside his gaff to inform the assembled hacks.

Cue floodgates of spin, analysis, reportage, claim, counter-claim and shite between now and the end of the hustings.

In the meantime, as I sit here with my bad foot elevated and iced as advised by the nice lady from NHS-Direct, I can't get an appointment with any of my local GPs until Thursday 21st April. Not much changed there since 1997 then. What has changed though is that I can now attend a local NHS walk in centre open from 7:30am to 10:30pm. This place is staffed with doctors and nurses and is available for those illnesses/injuries that don't justify a trip to A and E. So, credit where it's due and a big thumbs up to Tone and the crew.

I'll let you know how I get on.

****UPDATE****

Well, that was painless - apart from the clinical forcing of my foot to places it hasn't been since last wednesday. Less than an hour to see an assessment nurse and then, if your condition dictates, a doctor. Pretty efficient I'd say. A little like doctor's surgeries used to be like before they introduced the pointless appointment system. Must've looked fuckin' great on paper that. You're either friggin' ill or you're not. Consequently you need to see a doctor. It never used to be too difficult. You turned up, waited and you were seen to. If you were dying and and the surgery was shut, the locum would come out and see to you. These days you can't get an appointment because of the number of inconsiderate twats who make 'em and then don't have the courtesy to cancel. Near enough 30% of appointments aren't kept at my local Health Centre.

I'd give 'em a 'three strikes and you're out' ultimatum. "Well you couldn't be arsed to pick up a phone, call in or even write to let us know you weren't going to turn up , so now we can't be arsed treating you, so die you bone idle waste of space."

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PC problems at the mo'. My home desktop is playing up, constantly freezing, won't talk to my iPod and is generally unreliable. A reload of the OS hasn't helped either. Looks like friggin' hardware again - memory maybe. I just hope it's not the motherboard. In the meantime I've got a borrowed IBM Thinkpad T41 with an ASUS PCMCIA wireless network card so I'm not completely cut off from the blogosphere. Just as well with my present inabilty to amuse myself otherwise. Well.....apart from the obvious......

Life on Mars Earth

So, after the excitement of meeting Doctor Who in my own space and time, Wednesday saw me booted and kagouled taking the shit-machine for a run round Dovestones Reservoir. Sandwiches, flask of coffee, spare sweatshirt and lashings of Kendal Mint cake (only joking), and off we went.

Less than half an hour's drive from my front door and we're there. I leave the dog in the car while I slip into clothing more fitting to the howling winds and constant drizzle. The dog spots 20 or 38 ducks waddling about not 10 feet from the car and goes as crazy as a fundamentalist as she attempts to fling herself through the reinforced glass in my Volkswagen Polo. Finally I am wind and rain proof and the dog is on the lead. Off we go.

The first thing she does of course, is crap in full view of everyone. A party of 10-year-old schoolchildren found the episode worthy of whistles claps and shouts. Highly amusing. Anyway 30 minutes later the pair of us are well up the valley and miles away from anyone in weather like this. Blowing a gale; that fine rain that soaks you through finding its way hither and thither. The good thing was the fact that I could let the dog off the lead for a good run. The last dog we had (Sally O'Malley the Red Setter) would just leg it the minute freedom was sniffed. Tess the Shit Machine is different. She gets worried if she can't see me. So much fun was had hiding.

After an hour and half or so of walking round the two main reservoirs, we found ourselves on a hillside. Boggy and slippy and just plain awkward underfoot. There was a small stream between us and the main path and I soon spotted some stepping stones. "That's the way for us" I thought, and off we shot.

Funny things stepping stones aren't they? These had obviously been there since time began. Rooted they were - rooted. So, confidently, I place my Hawkshead-booted foot on stepping stone number one. No problem. Stepping stone number two however was the wobbler; all my (substantial) weight on the fucker and the next thing I am face first in two feet of ice cold, peaty H2O. Refreshing.

I shot out like a bat out of hell. Soaked to the skin with a very stiff breeze shrinking my testicles to the size of Fenning's Little Healers. No matter - careful fondling would have them back to their previous glory in no time. What worried me more though was the fact that I had obviously damaged my left foot. More upsetting was the fact that the car was a good two miles away. Suffice to say it took fuckin' ages getting my knackered body - and the over-excited dog back to the car park. Nearly two hours of absolute agony.

Couldn't get a mobile signal either - I could've died. Face down with my dog frolicking in the water not five feet from my cadever.

Ah well, could be worse I suppose. I mean, look at the Pope. The poor bugger's off to meet his immediate boss soon. All three of 'em!

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So, back home after a couple of hours excrutiating walking, followed by a rush hour trawl through Oldham towards Manchester via every road work requiring temporary fuckin' traffic signals between here and Lower Slaughter. Left foot an' all. The clutch foot.

By the time I got home and packed it with ice, I was beginning to fear the worst. Eldest had a look and with the benefit of his footballing experience, he reckoned it was probably a severe sprain or tendon-ligament damage. Rest it and all would be fine.

Two days later and it's no better - indeed it's starting to swell like a swelling thing. Ice packs help - but the tell-tale puffiness soon returns.

On the plus side though, I've not had to take the dog out since. Result.