Farewell To Moussaka

It grieves a man to confess his failures, his weaknesses.

Especially when those failures result not only in the deaths of hundreds of thousands but in the resultant non-existence of billions of billions more.

In my heart I am responsible for a mass genocide too heinous to contemplate. The snuffing out of an entire culture upon which most of the Western world has been founded. The pillars of democracy lie smashed and as dust at my sandaled feet. Philosophy and play writing have been set back millennia. Ray Harryhausen would have spent most of his adult life out of work.

But for a small quirk of fate (and reality) Greece – the classic Athens of ancient history – would have been utterly smashed and wiped from the face of the earth on my say so. Some of the more erudite historians among you are going to point out to me that pretty much happened anyway but don’t spoil a good anecdotal fantasy when I’m spinning one.

The wife and I went to see “300: Rise Of An Empire” on Saturday.

We didn’t expect to be bathed in an academic recreation of pre-history; we expected to be bathed in blood.

And we were. A tidal wave of CGI spatter patterns and arterial Jackson Pollocks cartwheeled and rooster-tailed across the screen in a ruby carnival of spear thrusts, sword flourishes and shield jabs. Limbs were liberated. Guts were eviscerated. Necks were relieved of gristly burdens.

Boats were rammed. Boobs were bared. Six packs were enhanced.

Fans of the original “300” won’t be disappointed by this sequel. It delivers and then some.

Sullivan Stapleton as Themistocles may not have the stature of Gerard Butler’s King Leonidas but he certainly manages the presence. His performance is an artful mix of machismo and convincing battlefield intelligence... enough that I was able to overlook the slight Australian twang of his accent. Lena Headey reprises her role as Queen Gorgo and it is nice to see her actually cutting her way through some of Xerxe’s black clad hordes rather than just looking coolly superior from afar but it is Eva Green as Artemisia who steals the show. Both visceral and yet weirdly supernatural she is by far the strongest character on the screen. A seething brunette maelstrom of contempt, bitterness and vengeance.

Her attempts to seduce Themistocles verge on the sadistic / masochistic. The violence is matched on both sides but it is Artemisia who inevitably ends up on top like a mocking Succubus.

And it is at that moment that I knew in the very depth of my soul that, had any of this been real and I had been Themistocles, I would have sold Greece down the river without a second thought. Thus proving that despite my pretensions to the contrary I am no high minded poet but a base animal of flesh and (non-CGI’d) blood.

Goodbye moussaka. Goodbye drachma.

Goodbye Sparta. Goodbye Olympus.

Goodbye Democrates.

Hello beautiful Persian rugs and buoyantly curved Arabian jugs*.

Utterly no contest.

*Ahem.

Mother Russia

I don’t, I confess, have much in the way of political acumen so my grasp of the situation might be slightly awry but even I can see that the situation is at best tense and at worst explosive.

A country divided ideologically by the people who live there. One half wanting a split that defies geography, the other wanting to keep governance the way it is with a few tweaks for the better.

Foreign troops carrying out in-your-face manoeuvres on the sovereign soil of another nation; foreign soldiers right in the face of the native populace.

Centuries of bad feeling, grudges and old bloodshed threatening to bubble over into a whole new round of the same.

All the good – the partnership working, the shared achievements, the decades upon decades of neighbourliness which surely can’t all have been forced all of the time – on the brink of being swept away in a hysteria of media induced patriotism.

The politicians of the West giving forth disapproval and frowns, casting doubts on what is ostensibly a democratic process, voicing reservations about the abilities of the ordinary people on the street to know what it is they really want. David Cameron’s face is coming more and more to resemble the Lurpak butter man suffering from a bout of bowl bursting constipation.

But I can’t help thinking that it is really nothing to do with us or anybody else. Nothing at all.

If Scotland really wants to split from the Union and become part of Russia surely that’s their business?

D’ye ken, comrades?

Skivvy

The wife brought it up the other day. Just dropped it into the conversation like a self-cleaning grenade.

"Why don't we get a cleaner?"

A what?

I confess I initially recoiled. Who the hell had she killed? This is what comes of waving a handgun around in the back of the car with the safety catch left off. One speed bump and boom. Death by hair trigger and then you have to spend the rest of the day being nice to Harvey Keitel while he picks some dude's brains out of your furry dice. And no, that is not a euphemism for oral pleasure.

Turns out the wife actually meant get a cleaner. A Mrs Overall. A Mrs Doyle.

A skivvy.

Someone to come and do for us (though that still sounds a bit Pulp Fiction-esque to me).

The wife's argument is thus: she and I both work full time, when we have any free time we are battling a constant malaise of exhaustion that raising kids prevents you from ever giving in to so you keep pushing and pushing yourself with the end result that your effectiveness as a careerist / parent / homeowner shrivels down into a depressing spiral of endlessly diminishing returns.

Now I'm not saying that our home deserves to feature on a Channel 4 documentary fronted by the spectacularly fronted Jasmine Harman (though she's more than welcome to rifle through my Tallboy any time she likes) but, you know, sometimes things get left. For a few weeks. And I put it to you that having water cress growing out of your draining board is not a look that will entice Nigella Lawson around for an evening meal. And that's even before she negotiates the sometimes tacky floor of the bathroom on her way to powder her nose.

We do our best but our best isn't good enough. Our best certainly isn't up to the 1950's ideal that my Nan and mum embodied when I was growing up. But, of course, looking after the home was and is a full time job in itself (especially when you throw young kids and cats into the mix) and they lived in an age where a woman having a career and going out to work full-time was unusual and, outrageously from the modern perspective, a bit of a talking point. Neither of them worked full-time in the career sense. Though in terms of labouring to maintain a spotlessly clean home they never bloody stopped.

So. We - Karen and I - are considering hiring a skivvy.

I feel surprisingly ambivalent about it.

My first reaction was kind of an inverse snobbery borne of my thick overlay of working class ideals and a deep sense of class embarrassment: what the hell would my friends say? What would my mother say? My second reaction was to begrudge the money: are we really going to give away hard earned moolah to someone else so they can come into our home and do the jobs that we would and could do (albeit haphazardly) for free? My third was the English Man defending his castle stance: have some grubby faced dole-ite invading our home, pocketing our loose change and hijacking our wifi when we're not looking?

Was my wife utterly mad?

But as the idea has lain with me and snuggled up softly, gently pushed sugar kisses into my ear and raised its eyebrows suggestively I have started to see the positives.

(a) More free time and energy to do the things we really want to do. (b) A more hygienic, more healthy standard of living that the wife and I, the kids and even the cats would benefit from. (c) Someone who can scrub the bloodstains out of the backseat of the car for a lot less tin than Harvey Keitel asks for.

We shall ask for references naturally and have to think carefully about keeping any kind of monetary temptation out of view. My wife will be at home on the days the cleaner comes round. And my Lego sanctuary... er... "office" will be out of bounds to uninitiated duster-wielding hands.

With those provisos in place, I am slowly coming round to the idea.

So hello, Upper Middle Class.

Who knew that a slightly grubby lifestyle would lead so effortlessly to upwards mobility?

Red In Tooth And Claw

To continue the animal theme (my last post was clearly flogging a dead horse) I’d like to impart a small tale to you of feline derring-don’t.

One of our cats, Missy, were she to be human would undoubtedly be a blonde bombshell. She has the feline version of Hollywood good looks and “salon quality hair”. Beautiful markings, well-proportioned and the ability to turn on the charm, she is hot and she knows it. I have no doubt that should the unknowable gods of the cat universe suddenly bestow the curse of humanity upon her she’d make a nice living for herself as a gold digger.

As it is, she is completely pussified for the moment and, due to the soft touch nature of the humans she allows to exist in close proximity to her utter greatness, lives the enviable life of riley.

One of the feline rights she lays claims to is the right to physical elevation.

The implementation of this right entails a fortuitous combination of her inherent ability to leap many times her body length in height and my ability to not move out of range fast enough so that my shoulders provide a convenient, cat sized landing gantry. 

You get the picture I am sure: in a previous life I was a pirate (possibly Black Beard, probably Cap’n Unknown) and Missy was my parrot.

On the whole I put up with the re-appropriation of my shoulders with a good spirit. Having a purring cat nuzzling your face tends to win over even the hardest of hearts.

But. I do draw the line at Missy’s shoulderobics when I am (to quote an old saying of my grandfather) “pointing Percy at the porcelain”. The thought of Missy – ever so surefooted 99% of the time – mistiming her jump and sliding down my frontage, claws out while an intimate part of me is about its work and in her direct line of descent makes me very wary of allowing her onto my shoulders when I am making my intimate water.

So I show her the hand. Literally. I put my palm into her face and directly block off her angle of launch. This has the result that she hovers on the bathroom sink, ears back, looking very peed off while I pee. Normally.

Not so last Saturday.

Last Saturday Missy got tired of “talking to the hand”.

Last Saturday Missy thought “sod it” and launched herself anyway.

Last Saturday Missy somehow managed to bypass my palm, make a failed attempt at entering geostationary orbit and impossibly hook a claw into the inside of my lower lip. Thankfully her purchase had not bitten deep and a split second later saw her disengaged and in freefall to the floor while I cushioned her landing with some robust air-filled expletives.

End result: sulky cat for the rest of the day and me with a cat scratch inside my mouth that had miraculously all but disappeared by teatime (the scratch that is; not my mouth – despite my wife’s fervent wishes to the contrary).

Still, it could have been worse. I could have ended up with a lower lip like Mick Jagger at a gurning contest. Or, worse, no lower lip at all.

And at the end of the day, thanks be to high Heaven, Percy was unmolested. Because that was still the priority, OK?

It’s just like my unmarried Aunt Ethel used to tell me: Percy’s and pussies don’t mix.

And with that sage advice a-ringing in my ears, I shall be keeping the bathroom door very securely locked in future.

Are Yow Larfing At Moi Bruvva?

It's rare that Birmingham - capital of the UK Midlands - gets to feature in any kind of television drama. Most of the time film crews avail themselves of the city because it is undoubtedly cheaper to film there than the nation's capital and then represent it as actually being London. The BBC's Hustle is a case in point. Most of the exterior city shots were filmed in Birmingham but sold to the world as being London.

So it's rather satisfying to see Birmingham featuring in a BBC costume drama and being sold as itself. Noisy, grimy, rough, tough and with that unmistakable Midland's twang that I grew up with. Not that Leamington Spa has much of an accent. Compared to the true son of Birmingham, the Leamingtonian accent is rather poesh and nice (as opposed to "push" and "noice").

Peaky Blinders kicked off last week and is the fictionalized account of the Shelby's, a gang of Birmingham crims who held sway in the city just after the finish of the first World War. I daresay the writer's have taken numerous liberties but I am not in a position to point out any factual inaccuracies as yet; I'll leave that to the numerous "Brum" academics who'll not be shy in voicing their complaints as and when any Birmingham based misinformation hits the slagheap.

Knowing parts of Birmingham well and others not at all I can at least say that there is a clever mix of real location and CGI that brings 1920's Birmingham to life; not to mention heavy use of the canal yard at The Black Country Museum. The accents, for those of is the know, sometimes veer from the true Birmingham "yam", but on the whole hold true. The actor with the toughest accent to crack is Sam Neil as Chief Inspector Campbell who has nailed his oracular flag to the mast of the Reverend Ian Paisley. Sometimes it jars but the script is cracking enough that you overlook the occasional dip into Walt Disney Oirish.

The star of the show is Cillian Murphy as Thomas Shelby (or Tommoi as he is referred to in our house), the leader of the Shelbys. The Peaky Blinders were so named for the razorblades they concealed in the peaks of their cloth caps that were then transformed into slashing weapons in a fight... but in truth Cillian Murphy could cut a man wide open with his cheekbones alone. He's a powerful presence on the screen and exudes an air of calm, urbane, gentlemanly violence that is somehow the more brutal for being measured and calculated. Helen McCrory too is a strong backbone to the rest of the cast and manages to slum her vowels into Birmingham's street talk with aplomb.

The show has everything; horses and bet rigging, stolen army munitions, pub fights, gypsy warfare, blood, sex, cheekbones and exortations not to "larf at moi bruvva." And best of all it is bigging up Birmingham.

The city up the road from me has a history that is just as magnificent and nasty as the one to the south.

Only our accent is better.

If yow can't get a rowm at the Premi-air Inn then jus' yow tyoon in to the Beebeeceee of a Thursdaaay and it's like yow is proppa in the Bullrinnng. Jus' down't look at us funnoi. Cos we down't loik it.

Red Feathers

The thing about pigeons is, when they get run over by motor vehicles, they tend to pop.

And not a nice dry, party balloon type pop either.

But a horrible, muffled, wet kind of pop.

I know this for a fact because last Thursday I saw it happen up close and personal right in front of me.

I was on my way home after a shitstorm of a day at work and, quite frankly, the last thing I wanted to see was a pigeon playing chicken on the main road that runs through the south part of town. But there he was (I'm assuming he was male, as females tend to have more sense). Strutting his stuff in the middle of the road. Damned stupid when nature had provided him with the means to make an instant airborne means of escape.

But no. He seemed determined to walk his way out of trouble.

I put it to you, my learned friends, that it is nigh on impossible to walk your way out of trouble when a double decker bus is turning 45 degrees and heading right on top of you at 25mph. The first wheel missed and the turn of the bus took the pigeon well underneath the undercarriage. When he emerged again into the light it was plain that the back wheel of the bus had crushed the pigeon's left wing.

The pathetic crawl-flap-crawl-flap commenced.

I felt decidedly green at this point and wanted to rush out and pick the pigeon up. Unfortunately the lights had changed and the through traffic was now starting to come the other way. Not one of them seemed intent on stopping or slowing down. And I confess a little voice in the back of my head was asking what difference any intervention I could possible make would ultimately have. Even if I got him to the vet did I really think they'd waste good money saving one pigeon out of the millions that were already lined up to take his place? The chances are they'd nod sadly and administer a lethal injection as soon as I was out of the door (electric chairs being so costly to run these days) and Mr Pigeon would be off to the incinerator. And all that would cost money too.

As it was there was no time to act anyway. The fourth car along completed the job the bus had started. I had to turn away before impact but could hear the moment of death plainly enough. When I turned back around there was a mass of mangled feathers and raw spaghetti spread all over the road. I felt sick. And I felt sad. And cross with myself for not leaping into the path of the oncoming traffic to save this poor suicidal pigeon. Ridiculous, I know.

Next day only a few feathers and a stain on the macadam remained. I'd like to say we will not see his like again but it just wouldn't be true.

To end then, I'd like to present you with a poem I wrote in my twenties (back in '92) about just this kind of pigeon centred demise. I no longer think the glib tone of the poem is at all fitting but it is all I have. Enjoy.

PIGEON PIE

Oh blue plumed and portly blown pilot,

A tyre has done for you.

Popped like a paper bag obese with

Breath between a clap sandwich.

Macabre children, passing, coo for

You, enquire after your

Two-dimensional demise, your brave

Unbirdlike stand against a

Post office van.

Stubborn pigeon,

If God had meant you to

Strut the road's white hyphens a gunless

Gunfighter, he would have cursed

You human and alcoholic!

You should have known: the mail

Always gets through. You're a sober sight

Now, a sheriff’s badge on a

Black macadam breast, a toe level

Monument to avian

Derring-do or die.

Chiselled by chance

Yet as if by a maestro.

You're almost symmetrical, arranged

Like a vain martyr. Could

Your corpse have been beautified by hand?

Havoc has no such aesthetics.

For a humble pot of a bird, a

Miscalculation of

Strategy has left you ready made

For the Tate; a model of

Impressionism, a

Dis-assemblage on asphalt.

Pop art.

Blood And Earwax

It’s been like an episode of ER in my house over the weekend. The live one directed by Quentin Tarantino.

The wife and I have been vying to win a competition of ailments and injuries.

Call it cowardice, call it lack of motivation, call it perhaps just a healthy dollop of sanity but I put on a very poor show. I hardly made an effort.

I kicked off with a sore toe at the end of the last week. Is it a corn? Is it a nascent verruca? Is it a Manitou growing on the side of my little toe? One that will eventually start talking to me in a the lost dialect of the Mohicans, asking me plaintively what the hell ever happened to Madeleine Stowe ‘cos she was a proper fox, she was?

The wife suspected it was just a sore patch where my feet had been rubbing together. Not even worth a Band-aid.

Next I went for an infected ear. I’ve been suffering loss of hearing and irritation in my inner ear. Have been for months. Eventually I went to see the doctor. He couldn’t see any infection. Mainly because he couldn’t see my eardrum. It was occluded by a large mass of compacted earwax. In fact both my ears were 90% stoppered by plugs of my own making. I imagined two big balls of wax each the size of a Granny Smith but then couldn’t help wondering – if wax balls that big were inside my head where the heck would my brain be?

What? I didn’t quite catch that?

Anyway, I thought I might be in for a good syringing but no. The cure these days is a week long course of olive oil ear drops followed by a week long course of bicarbonate of soda ear drops. The first to soften; the second to [and I quote my doctor here] “fizz and disperse”.

I know, I know. I let Tarantino down. And I was hoping to get Brad Pitt to play me and everything.

My wife, Karen, however, decided to go for something not only spectacular but also improbable.

Picture the scene. She’s in her jimjams / sweats / slacks / comforters / whatever you want to call them. A casual trouser and top combo by any other name. She’s heading upstairs. Suddenly there is an ear piercing shriek (well, it would have been if my ears hadn’t been gunked up with wax). I dash out to the hallway, hastily abandoning my book, the TV remote, my box of chocolates and my crème de menthe and find my wife mimicking the one-footed kung fu pose from the original Karate Kid film.

The big toe on the foot that is raised is bloodied. Bloodied in fact in a thin line that seems to extend completely around the toe a few millimetres from where it extends from the base of the foot.

My first thought is that she’s broken the toe. Stubbed it against something so hard that it’s snapped violently and ruptured the skin all the way around.

But no. She hasn’t stubbed her toe.

What happened was, whilst walking barefoot in her slacks, she managed to catch the toe in the hem of the bottom of the trousers.

I turn slightly green, imagining a loop of loose thread that has acted like a cheese wire around my wife’s big toe. Karen fears the same and tells me later her biggest fear was that the skin was cut so deeply all the way round that the flesh would have simply fallen off like a discarded sheath, exposing the perfectly clean bones of her toe beneath.

I’m not even sure if that’s possible.

As it is, once I start cleaning up the would I see that actually she’d only cut the flesh on the top of the toe. Quite deeply but not enough to need stitches.

Phew.

I have a few minutes when I think that maybe I’m about to trump her endeavours with a mini heart attack but actually once I’ve calmed down I’m fine. Panic over. Don’t worry about me, folks.

However, Tarantino and my wife are now like this.

His next film is gonna feature a toe-job, I’m telling you.

And my wife wishes me to tell you that, just from experience, it’s not a nice way to go.

One For Sorrow

It’s not a common occurrence for me to feel like Rolf Harris (even when I am humming-and-harring along with my wobble board) but this week I felt like I’d stepped into the old man’s Blundstone boots good and proper.

A member of the Great British public, always so ready to immerse themselves full-bodiedly into the foaming waters of sentimentality, came rushing into my workplace on Wednesday to report an injured magpie lying in the park outside. Could we ring the RSPCA because they didn’t have a phone on them?

We’re not hard-hearted psychopaths here where I work (*cough*) but even the most soft hearted philanthropist among us rolled his eyes (read that as: I rolled my eyes) because inevitably this would mean us chasing our tails with the RSPCA recorded messaged, fully automated, call centred screening device. Or, “sod off and take it to the vets” as it is known for short.

Now, I’m not having a go at the RSPCA here. They do a fab job and they’re one of the jewels in the British crown. But from past experience I know that they are always heavily subscribed and naturally have to prioritise their cases. An injured magpie was not going to take priority over Mrs Brady’s Pekingese that had somehow found itself the prize fighter in a badger baiting ring. To a lot of people – not me, I hasten to add – magpies are seen as vermin.

Personally I think they are wonderfully majestic members of the crow family and I have a soft spot for them.

Which is probably what motivated me to dismiss my initial objections and get involved with trying to rescue Albert (as I secretly christened him) in the first place.

Albert, when I went out to locate him was in a very bad way. Another magpie was pecking at his head (I’m pretty sure this was not a form of CPR) and was trying to flap his attacker way rather pathetically. In fact, I’m not even sure that Albert was aware of what he was doing – the movement could simply have been an automatic response at the motor neurone level. Poor Albert’s head was pecked clean of feathers, bloodied and I couldn’t really discern where his eyes were.

In true hospital TV drama parlance: I didn’t think he was going to make it.

Nevertheless, I put him gently in a box and a colleague persevered with the RSPCA’s telephone version of musical chairs. Eventually, when we got through, the verdict was what we’d expected. No free operatives in the area, please take Albert to the local vets.

We rang the vets. They agreed to take him, though said the RSPCA was naughty to pass the buck onto them.

Whatever. Neither I nor Albert cared. He was doing nothing more than breathing and I figured every second lost was less chance of Albert being able to find his Victoria again.

I took him straight round to the vets. The vet did actually apologize – apparently she’d given me the wrong information. Vets are meant to take wildlife; but they don’t get paid for it.

Whilst I felt sorry for the vets, I felt more sorry for Albert. I could feel his life ebbing away inside the box.

The vet had a quick look at Albert and her diagnosis was: “Oh he is poorly, isn’t he?” She then took custody, thanked me for bringing him in and said she’d “do the deed”.

From this I assumed that full CPR and an iron-lung were not on the cards for Albert. And after many dedicated years of service to his country too!

I left the vets feeling oddly flat. Kind of in limbo. I felt like I should have said goodbye. Or offered to give Albert a decent burial. A horse drawn carriage and rose petals on the roads.

Our association had been all too brief.

So.

Now I know how both Queen Victoria and Rolf Harris feel.

It’s an odd feeling. One can’t quite see what it is yet.

Domestic Violence

It shames me to admit that, this weekend, I have been the victim of this.

You know how it goes. You get too close. You don’t give someone enough space. You press the wrong buttons.

Suddenly something gives.

Something snaps.

A sudden quick movement.

Physical contact is made.

You’re left reeling. Shocked. In pain...

There is blood.

After Tom headbutted me he gave me a funny look – a look that said why were you trying to kiss the top of my head when I was playing with my Duplo Police Car anyway? Couldn’t you see I was busy?

He seemed uninjured by the encounter and carried on watching Cbeebies as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile I ran to the kitchen sink and spat the blood from my split lip down the plughole and checked my teeth. Thankfully they were all still there. Just a bit wonky but that’s normal.

Today I have a pout that is both scabby and bruised. I look like I’ve been Botoxed by a scheister.

I’m sure the Scottish contingent of my family will be smiling mawkishly at this story. Ah bless the wee bairn. His first Glasgow Kiss!

Harrumph!

All I can say is, it effing hurt!

However after a quick counselling session Tom and I are fine again. We’ve talked it through using Gestalt therapy techniques and have come up with a relationship work plan which should prevent such acts of violence from ever occurring again...

I’m going to give him a bit more space when he’s playing and Tom... well, Tom, is going to carry on as normal.

Cos he’s just perfect as he is.

Another Slice Anyone?

In a fatigue-induced kitchen-based accident last night yours truly very nearly sliced off the top of his middle finger with a pair of scissors.

I say “very nearly” with a degree of exaggeration.

It’s not like I sliced down to the bone or spray painted the ceiling with a 30ft blood geyser.

But it was messy. And rather stupid.

How did I do it?

Well, I was doing my bit for recycling and was attempting to deconstruct a large cardboard box. As anybody knows a few swipes with the blade of a pair of scissors is great for parting glued or sellotaped edges.

However, not so great when you get your finger caught between the two blades one of which then jams in the cardboard and, the laws of physics being what they are, pulls its companion towards it.

Remarkably there was and still is no pain.

Just a slight numbness but this could be down to the tightness of the plaster expertly administered by my wife as I held my newly grooved digit over the washing up bowl.

Karen thinks there is the possibility that I have severed a nerve (possibly hers) but I fear this sounds far too glamorous to be true.

It’s just a cut.

Received in the battle to save our dying planet.

I’m a bloody hero, me.