Deadwood

100% true: in a recent episode of Jedward's Big Adventure on CBBC the following dialogue took place between the Jedward monkeys:

Jedward 1: "Yo bro, you're goin' down like the sunrise!"

Jedward 2: "Oh yeah? Well the sun ain't even out today 'cos it's too cloudy!"

It's saying something when even my 6 year old son turns to me and proclaims, "Word up, pater, but I swear to God the British Broadcasting Corporation is dumbing down kid's television."

And it got me to thinking that perhaps the Jedward twins are like a viral idiocy genome that is slowly spreading across the UK via HD cable signals, deliberately targeting and infecting our kids and corrupting their synapses so that in a mere generation's time George W Bush will be seen via the readjusted lens of History as a politician of Einsteinian proportions. The Jedwards are a virus. A virus with the big-eyed baby seal look of a stranded three-legged puppy dog and the asexual physiognomy of a Ken Barbie doll. They appear to be so harmless we just don't bother to defend ourselves. They are the perfect storm.

The only effective vaccine is a potentially lethal dose of cynicism. It's either cure society or kill yourself. Compared to the alternative that has to be a win-win.

Preamble over, onto the main thrust of this post. What if the Jedward virus started to manifest itself in other entertainment settings? Movies and the like?

Imagine The Twilight Saga (and I accept I may have lost most of my readership right here) with Bella Swan perpetually mooning over Jedward Cullen and his inability to consummate their relationship. I say "inability" not "refusal" out of some half-assed outdated Christian belief system where having sex out of wedlock leads to eternal damnation (and the production of children whose innocent state is revered in Christianity as a virtue worth emulating). No. The Jedwards can't have sex because (a) they are not sexually mature enough (both physically and mentally) and (b) they can't stay focused long enough to maintain even a half-mast erection.

Jedward 1: "Oh Bella, you make me feel all tingly down below, girlfriend."

Jedward 2: "Me too, boyfriend. She's a hottie, ain't she?"

Jedward 1: "Oh she is boyfriend. But who's gonna go first because if we both do it at the same time it'll be like doing it with ourselves and it'll all be gross and stuff and our mammy said we shouldn't do that again because it'll be like masturbating with ourselves but worse 'cos it'll be like you doing it to me as me and me doing it to you as you and I'll end up with all your warts and hairy palms like joke monster gloves."

Jedward 2: "Ooh I just love joke monster gloves. Let's go get some! We could play a joke on Bella and pretend we're wolves or something and then pounce on her in the forest and really screw with her already questionable emotional state..."

Or what about Jedward Scissorhands: our poor Jedward twins are artificially created in a weird Walt Disney Frankenstein experiment out in the American sticks but their creator dies before he can finish making their hands (and their brains). So our hapless boys fashion hands for themselves out of scissors and knives and other equipment they find lying around in a gentleman's barbershop and become known as Jedward Scissorhands. Unfortunately they are so stupid they can't even get jobs as letter-openers in a Home For Paraplegics and so starve to death because I really don't want to mess with my fragile psyche by thinking up a happy ending for them.

Or finally ('cos I'm already scraping the barrel here) they morph into a weird living dichotomy of Edward Woodward and become Jedward Woodward, The Equalizer. They decided to live a life helping the little people (you and me, as opposed to Leprechauns) and with that in mind put an advert in the local paper: "Odds against you? Need help? Call the Equalizer. 212 555 4200". Only the newspaper they put the advert in is The Bet and they soon find themselves receiving death threats from all the irate gamblers who have lost fortunes based on the boys' sage advice to bet against "the sun rising tomorrow 'cos it's just too damned cloudy."

And breathe.

Bile vented.

Thank you for listening.

Nativity

I must have been in the nativity play every year that I was in infants’ school but the only single recollection I have is of being a sheep one year and having to wear a cardboard sheep mask that I’d made at school especially for the purpose. The role wasn’t demanding. I think I just had to sit at the side of the stage and not upstage the toy doll in the crib. I didn’t even get to baa. The speaking parts were always allocated elsewhere – to the more confident, gobbier kids who could project their voices loud enough to be heard at the back of the hall. Never once did the classic line, “There is no room at the Inn!” pass my boyhood lips.

And now it never shall. Unless I suddenly take up a career as a hotelier in a very small building.

There seems little chance it will happen vicariously either as in this year’s school nativity play my youngest boy pushed for and won the role of a star.

Literally a star.

As in twinkle twinkle.

And not even The Star, i.e. the main celestial protagonist in the nativity story. No, he was one of six generic stars that performed a dance routine in front of the manger about half way through this year’s school nativity production. You know, I swear to God these teachers take massive liberties with Bible interpretation these days. I’m amazed their photos are not publically burnt by American Mid-West Evangelists at gospel rallies more often… you know, the kind of thing these God botherers do to spread the ethos of loving thy neighbour and encouraging people to value religion as a unifying and harmonizing force in the world?

Anyway, he was very cute and I was impressed that he’d learnt what was quite a complicated dance routine – he plainly has a mind for choreography. He seemed chuffed to see his mum and dad in the audience and bestowed upon us a couple of waves. No more than that; he was very focused on his role and threw himself into it with all seriousness. A great acting career is bound to follow. Or at least a decent career as an extra. I look forward to seeing him in Downton Abbey next year as chief urchin.

And you’ll be glad to know that the Virgin birth went off without a hitch for another year though I couldn’t help but notice the complete dearth of sheep.

That was a huge oversight in my opinion. You can’t have a stable and shepherds without sheep. Do these teachers know nothing about the Bible?

If I’d had more notice I would have rummaged around in the loft beforehand. I’m sure I still have that mask stashed about the place in a box somewhere.

And I bet you a night’s stay in a five star hotel room it will still fit me.

Wayne’s World

I had to make an emergency dash to my grandfather’s house on Monday to rescue the old hunting horn that hung over the stairs from the hands of the house clearance people – not that my grandfather ever hunted or particularly blew the horn except on Christmas morning to annoy my Nan (which is another story for another time). The horn always reminds me of my granddad and always makes me smile. There was no way it was going to be consigned to the black hole of the auctioneer’s warehouse.

The house clearance people had been primed of my imminent arrival and had set the horn aside for me. I imagined that going into the partly eviscerated house would be painful and shocking. And in a way it was. The banging about upstairs by strangers. The boxes being carted outside to the van. The furniture moved and strewn around the sitting room ready for removal. But they had put my granddad’s old radio on and the noise – any noise at all in fact in a house that has been horribly quiet for 6 months – was comforting. And somehow right. It made me feel better about someone new moving in.

But this isn’t why I am writing. The visit was still emotional. Still upsetting. Another acknowledgment in a whole line of unwanted acknowledgements that the time is nearing (is already here in fact at the time of writing) when I will no longer have access to this much loved house. So I was rather mournful as I meandered home again. But having time to myself was what I needed. A bit of head space. A bit of heart space.

As I neared home all I wanted to do was get inside, shut the door and have a quiet moment or two.

However, when I reached the house my way was barred. Wayne, our friendly neighbourhood window cleaner had his ladder propped up over the front door and was cleaning the window above. I briefly thought about walking around the block until he was done – I really didn’t want to talk to anyone – but in the end I decided that I was just being silly. A quick nod and a hello and I’d be in. I could even pay him on the spot and save him having to call round and disturb my evening meal later. So I approached the house.

As I did so Wayne spotted the horn and, quite naturally I guess, asked if I did much hunting. I explained the situation and by way of explaining revealed that my grandfather had died 6 months ago – the last of my grandparents.

Did I believe in God, Wayne asked.

Hmm. I should have picked up on the warning signs here but instead answered truthfully – I was no longer sure.

Over the next 20 minutes, ignoring my obvious distress and desire to get away (how loudly do I have to jangle my front door keys for God’s sake?) Wayne, our window cleaner, did his best to proselytize me into his own personal religio-political worldview.

Did I know that the laws of the West are based on Canonical Law? The Ten Commandments? Did I know that the West was falling? Falling not to Islamic Fundamentalism but to... (and here’s one from the back of the closet) communism? It has been creeping in for decades. The powers that be know about it but are lying to us about it. Because they are not really in control. The true leaders are hidden and secret.

Alarm bells were really ringing now but I could not escape. Even though mentally I was swearing at this man to shut the eff up and go away all I could manage were monosyllabic replies and grunts, still in emotional shock I suppose, desperately trying to inch my way to the front door that was held prisoner beneath his ladder.

And then came the biggy. The national deficit. The global financial collapse. He explained that all this had come about because originally the idea of loaning money at a set and reasonable rate of interest had been laid down in the Old Testament – but all this was now being ignored. The interest rates were now designed to take more and more money from people, designed so that nobody would ever be able to pay it all back again. It was designed to keep us all servile and malleable. And the bankers... the bankers... they were all... Satanists. He looked me in the eye as he said this and nodded sagely. Yep, he said. Satanists. He genuinely believed that.

Great, I thought. A religious nut is coming to my house every month to clean my freaking windows. And he had seemed such a nice guy before all of this.

In the end I made some jokey closing comment that grated upon my own tongue and lunged for the front door. I got the key into the lock and turned it. Phew! I had made it. Wayne, however, was unrepentant (well, he has no need to be I guess) and was still going on and on... I’d be OK, he said. I’d be fine because I was on the right path. The path my grandparents had laid down for me... Blah blah blah.

I shut the door and fumed.

How dare he? He doesn’t know anything about me and certainly knows nothing at all about my grandparents. Both were Christian but neither forced any kind of religion down my or my sisters' throats. Their religion was a very personal thing – as indeed all religion should be.

The whole encounter left a bad taste in my mouth and I am still angry about it. Outraged in fact. Did Wayne really think he was spreading “the good word”, “the good news”? What an awful ragbag of pub lounge paranoia and twisted up personal bigotries. I’d arrived home feeling vulnerable and had been trampled on by someone who’s only interest was to try and recruit me into an ugly, ignorant doctrine of their own making and score some kind of self esteem point.

Far from helping me find my religion again it made me want to turn my back on all of them and keep walking.

What a git.

If eyes are the windows to the soul, I want Wayne nowhere near mine.

Electric Boogaloo

I have just survived the maddest two days at work that I’ve ever experienced in my life.

Day One. On Tuesday afternoon a burning smell was reported coming from the main electric metre of the building. Investigation revealed not only an overpowering smell of burning wires but also an inordinate amount of heat emanating from the metre box and the cable housing beneath.

I’m not a trained electrician but even I know that’s not a good sign.

Cue various visits from various electricians and experts who all, to a man, sucked their teeth, nodded, oohed and aahed and basically said there was an imminent risk of fire and/or explosion.

We promptly evacuated. The building that is. Though the public were amazingly nonchalant about getting out of the danger zone. The internet junkies from the Library’s cyber café had to be dragged away twitching and sobbing about their abridged chatroom romances. Old ladies had to go to the loo just to spend that last penny. And we even had a Christian group in the Assembly Room who refused to leave early because God’s work was far more important than saving their own hides – though they were lightening fast at demanding compensation for their lost room hire. God certainly moves in mysterious ways.

As do the electricity board. They turned up around 7.30pm, took a look at the metre and cable intake, isolated it, shrugged their shoulders and said they’d see us in the morning around 9.0am. Ta-ta.

Great.

Except that the building only has battery back-up power for a maximum of 8 hours. Which meant that all the fire alarms, security alarms, heating, IT facilities, and all other essential services all died around 1.0 am the next morning leaving the entire building – including the Art Gallery with an art and object collection worth millions of pounds – completely “unprotected”.

To add to our problems most of the external doors to the building are electronically operated. Without power they all defaulted to open so absolutely anybody could have walked in off the street and helped themselves to whatever was available. Hence my boss, Jeff, and I were stuck at work until 10.30pm getting all the doors secured with a local carpenter. This involved nailing planks of wood across them on the inside so that they couldn’t be opened and swapping the electronic lock on one door with a mechanical lock so that at least staff with a key could get back into the building again the next day.

Day Two. Back at work to find the place in total darkness and quietude. The electricity board arrived at 9.45am (as opposed to 9.0am) and straight away brewed up for a cup of tea. I guess it’s all a question of priorities.

While the building staff milled about in the penumbral atmosphere, reading newspapers by the light of their mobile phones and basically making use of the shadows for whatever nefarious purposes that took their fancy I ran about trying to coordinate the “clean up” operation so that when power was restored at 12.30pm I was able to lead in a team of engineers, alarm experts and IT boffins to restore the full range of exciting services that my place of work usually offers.

By 3.0pm we were back on-line. All systems go. Sorted. Open for business. Hallelujah.

Except at 4.30pm there was yet another reported smell of burning coming from the electricity metre...

Aaaargh! Here we go again. Sigh.

Anyway the current state of play is this: the smell (and this is from the mouths of top-notch high level experts) is merely the new unit “bedding in”. All is kosher. All is well. It’s fine, gov. Have a cup of tea. Praise the Lord. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about at all.

Worry? I’m too effing knackered to worry.

Night-night all.