Private Dick

I’ve been feeling a little glum of late. A little uninspired. Every week I’ve got to the point where I’ve thought: this is it, old boy, your mojo has gone; it’s time to hang up the blogging hat and call it a day. I’m not feeling the love like I used to.

I haven’t written about it and I’m not going to go into it here. To write a post about how I’m finding it hard to write posts seems horribly, embarrassingly self indulgent. And although that would be totally in character I have to draw the line somewhere.

There are many reasons for my glumness:

Change in home life – the eldest son started at secondary school, the youngest starting school for the first time, Karen back in full time work and me changing my work shift completely so that I can be finished in time to pick the youngling up from the school gates. We’re all tired and frantic and not yet settled into the new work/life routine.

My novel is getting nowhere and I have temporarily lost the will to send out postal submissions or bum-lick my way up into the higher colonic echelons of Authonomy.

I also applied for a dream job and didn’t even make it through the initial paper-sift.

Police Community Support Officer.

It fairly rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?

Everyone I spoke to said I was made for the job. Even my boss. Ideal candidate material.

I spent more time on this particular application form than I have on any other. It was a work of art. I cogitated. I mulled. I thought about what I wanted to say and made sure what I said matched the job profile.

I had high hopes.

It sounded the perfect job. Not precisely a proper policeman but as near as damn it and without the responsibility of nicking / coshing / handcuffing / rubber-bulleting some ne’erdowell through the hallowed doors of justice. I would have been a bobby on the beat. A big friendly policeman (PC McGarry number 542). Dixon of Dock Green. H-evening all, madam, may I h-assist you in carrying your shopping home?

Walking about, outdoors, meeting people, in uniform. Who knows where it could have led?

But as always it led nowhere. I didn’t make the grade for interview. I wasn’t good enough to be not a proper policeman.

I feel properly gutted.

The only option I have open to me now is the one that all ex not proper policemen have before them... that of becoming a private dick.

Some of you will no doubt say that I am already halfway there...

No More Holidays Ever

I have come to the conclusion that it will be more conducive to my sanity and overall sense of contentment if I never ever take a holiday again.

No more days off. No more long weekends. No more weeks luxuriating in the otherworldliness of not being at work.

No more day trips, no more travelling abroad, no more completing lengthy DIY projects at home.

Just work work work from now on and forever. Ad infinitum without a break, pause or cessation.

I realize this new ethos of mine will be hard on the wife and kids but for the sake of my fragile mental health it must be so.

My reasons are thus:

I am back on an even keel. I’ve re-established that balance of ambivalence, insensitivity and self-delusion that enables one to get up every day and go to work and kid yourself that life is fine and dandy and you can keep this up forever and ever amen.

It wasn’t easy. I had a wobble. I teetered on the slippery edge of the pit of depression. I felt it’s cold, merciless maw sucking at my feet on Tuesday.

Why?

I had a lovely day off with my wife on Monday to celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary. We spent the day in Stow. We pottered about without the kids. We had a gorgeous meal at a fabulous eatery (The Talbot for those of you close enough to investigate for yourselves). We found a terrific vintage / antique shop wherein I bought a classic leather jacket that fit me perfectly (I am now waiting for the temperatures to cool again so that I can wear it). The sun shined. We were happy and at peace. We got to thinking that this is how life should be always. It was perfect.

And then I returned to work and the whole happy-shiny facade came tumbling down around me. Reality bit. I tasted dust and ash. I had to turn my face away from the sunshine of freedom and press it back against the iron-pocked grindstone of earning-a-crust.

It nearly destroyed me.

It’s the drop, you see?

The screaming descent from that wonderful carefree high to the brimstone earth’s-core low of back-to-workness.

It’s one hell of a mood swing. And I just don’t think I can cope with them anymore.

If one day can do that to me, imagine what a more lengthy period of holiday will do?

I’ve got 2 weeks off in August! It might just kill me!

So I’ve decided. No more putting myself through that cold hard climb to recovery. No more dragging the comatose corpse of my vital mind back out of the darkness of post-holiday-induced depression.

I’m on a even keel right now. I’ve hauled myself out of the bottomless waters of the ocean onto my fragile little raft. I’m nicely afloat. I’m flat-lining; avoiding the peaks and troughs of fortune and misfortune. I want neither too much wind nor none at all. An eternity of white skies with just a touch of breeze is fine.

No more holidays. No more living life the way it ought to be lived.

It’s a matter of survival.

It’s a matter of staying alive.

Wish me well. Maybe when I retire we could risk a visit to the pub for a celebratory drink?

However, I’m not promising.

My New Career

I have prevaricated. I have delayed. I have walked the tightrope of indecision strung a mere inch above the mile-wide safety net of inaction.

I have moaned but done nothing.

I have abided with a great pain but refused to throw the one ring into the fiery chasm of Mount Doom.

I have complained about the weeds but refused to grasp the nettle.

Well, enough!

Something has snapped inside. My sanity chip has toggled back and forth so many times over the last few years that I no longer know which mode I am operating on and, to tell the truth, I don’t think it matters anymore.

I am bending my will towards finding a new job. The time has come. The sea-change in my soul might have been a long time coming but it is here at last and I am hoping that, by announcing it here so publically, it will give me some steel in my spine to see the plans through to the end.

I am considering literally anything at the moment.

Top of the list currently is Community Beat Officer for the local police force. Something outdoors and community based with the emphasis on building up a good rapport with the locals (as opposed to getting them banged to rights for a heist that they swear they didn’t do). I know. You are laughing. What the hell do I know about mixing it with a sneering bunch of fraudsters, scheisters and ne’er-do-wells? Well, weirdly enough, on my CV where I fill in my “relevant other experience” I am already onto the fifth page. I've had some pretty interesting experiences over the last 25 odd years during my time in full-time employment; I've seen a few things, I can tell you. I’m bloody made for the job.

But in all seriousness the idea of the job appeals. It’s outdoors rather than being office based and this is definitely a mode of working that is more me. The only fly in the ointment at the moment is that the local police force are not currently recruiting for such posts... but I am keeping a hawk-eye out ready for when they do.

Another idea has been nursing. Again, before you laugh, I would point out that I worked 10 years in a nursing home before my current job and enjoyed the environment greatly (though I acknowledge this was largely down to the great people I worked with). Training can be done on the job and it is a profession that is recognized internationally and has merit as such.

Other than that it really is just a case of polishing the old CV and getting it out to an employment agency. I’ve been told that the job market locally is “buoyant”. Maybe it’s time to float my boat on the seas of fate and see what I snare in my net?

Whatever, I can feel a yen to move pressing itself hard upon my neck and shoulders and driving a spear point into my kidneys. I’m 43 this year. Given the current pension climate I probably have a good 40 years employment left in me, maybe even 50.

43 could well be the new 18 and time to get a toe-hold on a new career...

8 Out Of 10 Cats Pay Their Tax The Hard Way

It is a measure of how much I detest the Tories when David Cameron's slating of the devil makes me instantly have sympathy with him.

Unless you've been living under a rock, on drugs or just in a different country for the last few days you can't fail to have heard or read about the big hoo-ha involving UK comedian, Jimmy Carr, and K2.

Yeah, that was my first thought too: he hasn't exactly got the physique of a mountaineer.

But it turns out K2 is some clever-clever, smarmy, rich man's tax dodge. I'm not sure of the ins and outs because whenever I read financial information all I hear in my head is farting noises but the basic premise seems to be that rich bastards pay their money into an account in Jersey and then the people running the account pay the money back out to them as "a loan". And because it is classed as a loan rather than a wage these mega-earners don't have to pay the statutory 50% tax rate on their stratospheric earnings.

All perfectly legal as Jimmy Carr and other K2 members have been desperate to point out.

So 'legally' the UK has missed out on something like £45bn per year on missed tax payments because of schemes like K2. Or £45mn. Or 45 drachma. One of those.

This is not funny when the likes of you and me are struggling to make ends meet and the government and tax office and the banks seem set on nobbling the poor, the middle wage earners and small business men in general.

K2 would be a great idea if we could all take advantage of it. The unfairness lies in the fact that it is a club that only the obscenely rich can join.

David Cameron (hardly short of a few bob himself) has condemned Jimmy Carr as "morally wrong".

Now up to that point I was bitterly disappointed with Jimmy Carr. I mean, how could he co-present such politically satirical programmes like 10 O'clock Live, lampooning the misdemeanours of others, when he himself was effectively ripping the entire country off?

But Cameron's condemnation just sticks in my craw worse than the whole K2 bunch. Are we to believe that Cameron knew nothing of this? That all our deeply respected politicians had no idea that such schemes existed and have done so for years and years? Are we to believe that they themselves have never partook of such perfectly legal tax dodging shenanigans?

It seems to me that Cameron's comdemnation comes only on the back of the recent media coverage. Up to then he was happy to have us all ignorant. Isn't that morally wrong too?

Jimmy Carr has today apologized for a "terrible error of judgement" over K2. He was asked by his financial advisor if he wanted to pay less tax without breaking the law. He said yes.

Well, bugger me, but who wouldn't?

The problem isn't Jimmy Carr or even K2 or it's directors (who are surely more morally repugnant than everybody?)... the problem is the long standing loophole in the law that allows such schemes to exist and to flourish. These schemes and loopholes are not new developments; they've been around for decades.

And whose fault is that?

The politicians and the bankers.

Frankie Boyle Tweeted this morning that if he'd been called "morally wrong" by Cameron he'd put it on his [tour] posters. I'd be tempted to put it on a T-shirt and wear it with pride.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

I wonder if my employer would care to loan me next month's wages rather than paying me...?

Trouble is, with my luck, they'd expect me to pay it back...

With interest.

Anger Management Glasses

Anger management classes are all well and good but, really, who has the time? Who has the inclination to sit in a room with a bunch of sweaty people who twitch and snarl every time someone gives them a funny look or grabs the last Garibaldi?

What you need is instant intervention! A personalized buffer zone between you and the object of your justified rage!

I would therefore like to present the patent pending Bloggertropolis Anger Management Glasses (funny nose and fake moustache come fitted as standard).

Simply don these pacific spectacles and instantly see the target of your fury transformed into an object of pity and sympathy – thus circumnavigating the murderous anger that could potentially see you incarcerated at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for the rest of your natural.

Mother-in-law constantly sniping at you and making disparaging comments about how you are raising your kids / making your gravy / baking your cakes / exercising your right as a British citizen to cross-dress in public? Don’t viciously rearrange her expensive vajazzle with a Moulinex hand blender (after all, you’ll need that for the crème brulee later), simply slip on your Bloggertropolis Anger Management Glasses and see her transformed into the needy, unloved child that she really is who was never allowed the pony she dreamed off when she was 5 years old and who was laughed out of the WI in her mid twenties for her grainy scones and her unrisen baps. She does not deserve your resentment; she deserves your compassion and your understanding!

Some loud-mouthed white van driver with a pot belly and nicotine stained lips cut you up on the way to work? Don’t involve yourself in a Dukes Of Hazard style car chase around the industrial estate that ends with you creaming his face all over the bonnet of his car with a handy piece of lead guttering that you keep in the boot of your Peugeot for just such occasions... put on your Bloggertropolis Anger Management Glasses and see him for the inadequately genitalled, illiterate, going-nowhere, cirrhosis suffering nobby-no-mates that he really is. Does this man really deserve your anger and all this passionately expended energy? Surely it is your pity that he really craves? With your Bloggertropolis glasses firmly in place you can at last give it to him!

Colleagues giving you the run around and trying to drop seven kinds of excrement onto you from a great height to cover their own malodorous shortcomings? Don’t push them face-first into the paper-shredder and get mediaeval on their wriggling arses with a staple gun... simply whip out your Bloggertropolis Anger Management Glasses and see them for the pewling, cowardly, passive-aggressive spoilt brats without a shred of true professionalism that they really are. Why waste a good Tippex mouse gouging out their eyeballs when you can empathize with their failed showbiz parent upbringing that saw them on the talent scrapheap at 15 and knocked-up with 4 kids by the time they were 19 with no hope of ever regaining their previous good looks?

Ta da!

Bloggertropolis Anger Management Glasses saves the day once again!

Anger managed!

Bloggertropolis Anger Management Glasses are available for pre-order from Bloggertropolis for the blinding price of £39.99 per pair though a discount of £70 for two pairs is available for married couples.

Disclaimer: Bloggertropolis accepts no liability for sight impairment, retinal damage or moustache allergies that may result from over-exposure to Bloggertropolis Anger Management Glasses and most certainly accepts no liability for any criminal prosecution that may result from the failure of the glasses to prevent outbursts of violent rage in the face of gross stupidity, ignorance and pettiness originating in the people that you choose to surround yourself with.

Liar Liar

First and foremost I’d like to point out that this post is not just a lame excuse to publish a saucy picture of the fulsomely lobed (cerebrally, naturally) Victoria Coren. OK? I would never stoop to such transparent tactics.

Am I lying? Well, just look into my eyes and tell me.

Am I? Am I?

You see, in my continued quest to ramp up my monthly earnings (and thus keep the wolves from my door) I have been reviewing all sorts of options to make a little bit on the side. To earn a little bit more. To acquire a little extra tin.

I’ve followed the normal roads of enquiry: a second job, the “work from home” ads in the Classifieds, selling stuff I don’t want on eBay, selling stuff I do want on eBay, selling stuff I need on eBay (do I really need 2 lungs for example?), the white slave trade and prostitution... but I either don’t have the energy, the time, the legs or the clean bill of health from a trustworthy GP to make these options viable.

So I’ve been looking into the B list. The B list is made up of dodgy, cat in hell’s chance, money making ideas. TV competitions. Pub quizzes. The Lottery. Betting on the horses. And, finally, playing poker.

And it reminded me that some people – some quite high profile people like the blondesome brainiac that is Victoria Coren – make a decentish living playing poker. I used to think the poker playing world was made up of swarthy, cut-throat types who wear sweaty white suits and those weird green visor thingies to try and hide the look of abject constipation in their eyes but Victoria Coren (courtesy of Google Images) and, indeed, the BBC’s Hustle assure me that actually the poker playing fraternity is made up of honest-to-God salt of the earth types who might actually surprise you with their choice of University degree.

Therefore this could plainly be a viable career move. And I reckon I could pull it off. I mean, I can keep my face straight whilst screaming inside with the best of them (I’ve been a local government employee for nearly 14 years).

The only problem is I don’t know how to play poker. I have never learnt. Whenever poker games appear in James Bond movies I shuffle uncomfortably because I just don’t understand all that 3 pairs, royal flush, aces high bollocks. I’m just guessing that the rules are nothing like Snap.

But I think I would be rather good at poker nonetheless. Because when it comes to card games at least (not so good with sneaky Friday nights at the pub) I am a damn good liar. I can remember playing Liar Liar* as a young twenty-something and outfoxing everyone. (Liar Liar is the game where you have to get rid of all your cards by announcing you have, for example, 3 twos – you then put down your 3 twos face down. The trick, of course, is to put down 3 cards (or however many) even if you don’t have enough of the same numerical amount to make a grouping. If people call you – by saying Liar Liar – and you are proven to have lied you have to pick up ALL the cards that have been previously put down.) I was a natural and people would frequently miss when I had lied and mistakenly accuse me of lying when I had in fact told the truth – thus earning the forfeit themselves. God, what a card-sharp, I was.

Those were the days.

Pity we weren’t playing for money. Or playing strip Liar Liar with Victoria Coren... those photos would go down a bundle on eBay.

So anyway... I can lie like a barrister when I have a deck of cards in my hand. I just need to be taught the rules of the game.

Any poker aficionados out there willing to take on an apprentice? I’ll split my winnings 70/30? Come on, that’s got to be a good deal! Money for practically nothing!

Victoria, if you’re reading this, I’ll make it 60/40 but you might have to lose a few items of clothing... (and you know I’m not lying).

Call me?

*Also known as Cheat.

I Know Nothing

One thing life has taught me is that the easiest way to be unhelpful to people you don’t like is to feign ignorance. To shrug your shoulders. To look apologetic and say in a wheedling voice that you’d really like to help but the issue in question is totally beyond your current scope of abilities.

If you want to be particularly passive-aggressive about it you can add: “Ooh, I don’t know a thing about this and I fear I will only make things worse for you should I try to lend a hand.”

Once this tactic has been employed I can quite nastily go about my business watching rather smugly while the mother-of-all-foul-ups occurs as the hapless victim struggles with their task without the miracle-cure knowledge that I have jealously guarded and retained for myself.

For years I thought that such tactics were just merely sneaky, lazy, cowardly and undeniably fun but small victories in a world where little people like you and me get shat upon regularly from great heights by big people who don’t even notice the rank smell they leave behind them as they pass over the surface of the earth.

But it turns out that, according to an episode of QI that I recently watched, such a tactic is actually a prime example of Socratic Irony. Making out that you are dumber(er) than you actually are. Playing the fool. Playing the ignoramus. Apparently Columbo is a classic modern example of Socratic Irony at work. The bumbling, stumbling detective who seems to have a haphazard and dishevelled grip on the facts.

I now feel that my normal modus operandi has been elevated somewhat by its dazzling association with Classic Greek Athenian philosophy. I don’t know whether this makes me feel very proud or fills me with chagrin. Clearly I have been exercising the higher echelons of my intellect rather than just taking the easy way out. Rather than just laziness my nonchalant responses indicate a deep understanding of elenctic method. This does wonders for my self esteem.

But I can’t help but feel I have been casting pearl before swine.

Those around me have been thoroughly ignorant of the cleverness of my tactics. My methods, in short, are too damned smart for them.

So my question is: is that more ironic than the method of elenchus I have been employing? Or less?

Just who is the joke upon?

*sigh*

Suddenly I have a maddening headache in the pupil of my glass eye...

Sir Richard Branson Giveth And Sir Richard Branson Taketh Away

I had an email from Virgin Media on Friday. One of those “hey we’re your best mates, we are, and to illustrate this we’re going to give you an amazing deal to show how much we love you, bud, pal, matey, mucker, fellamelad”. I read the email with the kind of indifference that only a longstanding Virgin Media customer can muster and it transpired that dear Old Uncle Rich – Sir Richard Branson to you – was about to “more than double” my broadband speed but for less than the price I was currently paying. And he was going to do it because I was such a loyal longstanding customer. Because, let’s face it, me and Rich have been going steady ever since he took over NTL half a decade or so ago and renamed it Virgin Media.

Well, it was a nice start to the weekend if nothing else.

Cue Saturday morning. Another email from Sir Rich arrives. This one less chummy and rather more apologetic in tone. Turns out Friday’s email was a mistake. Mr B apologized profusely, nay cheesily. It was sent out by mistake. They were sorry. He was sorry. But there would be some good news for all loyal Virgin Media customers in the next 2 weeks. Honest. About something else. Something else equally as good. Probably.

Yeah right. Another Virgin mobile phone offer or extra sports channels on Virgin Media TV, I should think. I’m not a big fan of shot-put, Sir Richard, you can stick it.

But this whole debacle got me thinking. The poor sap who pressed Send on all those emails (because surely I wasn’t the only one who received such a missive) must be up to his neck in hot water right now. That’s assuming he still has a job, of course, and that Sir Rich didn’t drop-kick him out of a hot air balloon somewhere over the Atlantic. And someone – some graphics design geek – obviously created the email in the first place. Which says Virgin Media were planning this broadband upgrade thing for some time but then just decided to change their minds.

Was it something I said? Or didn’t say? Was I supposed to have replied to Sir Rich’s original email profusely oozing my thanks and attaching a tasty Polaroid of my freshly oiled up genitalia? Did he consider my lack of response to be a singular act of monstrous ingratitude and consequently cancel the broadband upgrade?

That’s rather petty, Richard.

Or was the whole email a scam? An act of in-house sabotage from a disgruntled employee? Sir Rich has banned his marketing team from downloading stuff from the SKY BSB web site and they’ve hit back with an email to drop Sir Richard in the shite?

Hmm. To be honest, that scenario doesn’t work for me. If you were a disgruntled employee you’d send out a far worse email than “we’re going to double our customer’s broadband speed for half the price”. It would be along the lines of “hey, did you know that Sir Richard Branson molests disabled baboons in his personalized spaceship paid for with your hard earned money?”

Now that’s the kind of email that would have made my weekend a good one.

But no.

So, a double-dip disappointment on the Virgin Media front, then.

*sigh*

Situation normal. Thanks Rich.

The First Step To Becoming

I love my family.

I love my house.

My relationship with my wife is good.

None of the important stuff is broken.

It's important that I state this.

Because I am not happy. And (I'm sure she won't mind me saying) neither is Karen.

We are tired. We are stressed. We are poor. We both work damned hard - both in terms of our official employment and our "work from home" activities that we undertake to try and bring extra money / success to the household. We've spent the last 4 years trying to break even. Instead it just feels like we've busted our balls to continually fall short. We go out to work, undertake jobs that take away more than they give just to earn not enough money to make it all worthwhile.

We've both reached the point where our minds and emotions are flagging up that, Houston, we have a problem. We can't go on like this. Or rather we could. But we don't want to. We need to pull the nose up before we cream ourselves into the tarmac.

I'm not a big fan of New Year's Eve. In fact some of you will be aware of how much I loathe the enforced optimism, the Bacchanalian positivity that seems to go viral for one night only and rarely changes a damned thing. I don't go a bundle on New Year Resolutions. They're all gas and no solid.

But this year, right now, I want a sea-change. I want a sea-change for me, Karen and my family. I want us to be happier, breathing easier, Heaven forbid actually having some enjoyable downtime instead of having time off only to recuperate from the ravages of toil. I don't want us to be doing jobs that make us so continually unhappy that the unhappiness itself becomes normalized and a component of the four walls that surround us.

I don't know how we do this. I don't know where we go to even start. I'm aware that the global economic climate isn't geared up to facilitate such a move right now. But there has got to be a better way for us to do things. Other paths. Other routes.

I'm looking for the signposts.

I'm looking for the Way Out.

And if we fail to find it, we may have to redraw the map ourselves...

I Applied For A Job At MI5

Once. A long time ago.

Before I was lucky enough (cough cough) to land my current job in whose warm bosomy bower I have slept peaceably for the last 13 years.

Not sure what drove me to it. I remember seeing an advert in a national newspaper announcing that “the 5” (as those of us in the know call it; those of us not referring to it as MFI) were recruiting. And further more they were recruiting non-graduates which is precisely what I was at the time.

Perhaps my life was lacking excitement. It was certainly lacking travel, a fake Russian accent and a Parker ball pen that not only transformed into a MIG fighter but had a little naked lady in the end whose clothes fell off when you turned the pen upright.

I thought, sod it, I could be a spy. I could serve Queen and country. I could take photos of top secret documents with a mini camera hidden in my cravat or my diamante cufflinks. I could sleep with loads of gorgeous foreign women and rifle their leathery attaché cases whilst they slept afterwards in post coital bliss, I could. I really could, I thought. Blimey. I’ll fill in the application form right now and send it off.

I sent it off.

I heard nothing back from MI5 but MFI offered me a job selling bedroom furniture to couples who wanted to luxuriate in post coital bliss. I suspected they were sleeper agents so I told them to go and get stuffed. Ha ha.

Thus ended my career as a top British spy.

I watch Spooks now with a personal sense of chagrin. But also, it has to be said, with a sense of smugness. Because despite the wildly comic imagineering above I know that there is nothing very glamorous about being a spy.

From what I’ve heard (and I will never reveal my sources, damned infidel of the capitalist state) The 5 are as prone to budget cuts as every other Government department. The chances of getting a nudey-lady pen is about as likely as Cameron and Clegg sucking each other’s nipples live on national television. And quite frankly if the money was available I’m sure we’d all much rather take the pen.

Real spying is tedious, dirty, lonely and more likely to drive the spy into an anorak and uber-geekiness than into the arms of a busty Russian spyess whose name is so complicated to pronounce you end up with a tongue like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s left bicep.

And yet Spooks continues to captivate me.

Even though I know they are selling the dream of MI5 rather than the reality.

I love the gadgets. I love the fact they can seemingly tap into and control everything from the internet, mobile phone networks, weather satellites and the internal wash cycle on your Zanussi washer-dryer just with a little tap of their youthful upwardly mobile index fingers. I love the moral dilemmas they go through every week; how they justify not only risking themselves but others in their quest to keep the rest of us safe. I love the pained looks they give to camera just before they do something totally immoral and inhumane. Once again with feeling, dahling, once again.

And I love the glamorous women. We’ve had Keeley Hawes. We’ve had Hermione Norris. And now we’ve got Lara Pulver. All legs, lethality and brooding brunetteness.

Marvellous.

Do I regret my application to The 5?

No.

And nor do I regret that they turned me down.

Real spies are non-descript and anonymous. They are never glamorous. They catch the Tube and the bus. They catch pneumonia and the shits from eating crap food in dodgy bedsits. They are poorly paid and over-stressed. They have to beat their consciences into submission with alcohol, narcotics or the psychological disorder of your choice.

I’m happy to employ myself in the fantasy and leave the reality to the fish and the cold sharks of society.

But just remember: I do it for you guys. To keep you safe.

Now pass me another Vimto, bartender. Shaken, not stirred.

Power

Power is a funny thing.

It’s not something we would all automatically put at the top of our wish-lists(unless we were megalomaniacs) – I’m sure freedom, good health and more money would all be first choices for most of us and we’d fling those down without too much thought.

But don’t they all in a way represent power?

Power to do what we want, when we want and with whom we want?

Maybe power is the wrong word? Maybe what I am really talking about here is self-determination? The power to choose every aspect of our lives for ourselves. To not compromise. To not negotiate. To not have to settle for that which we know, for us, is less than perfect.

I’ve been thinking about self determination a lot over the last few days and have decided I want it at the top of my wish-list. Or at least in close second place - maybe keep good health in pole position because it seems damn silly not to but, yeah, self determination... it’s up there with the big boys.

More money would certainly be nice. More money would be great. To not have to work for the man (or the woman) ever again would be fantastic. Freedom too is a fantasy ideal of utopia. To do whatever I like without recourse to anybody else. I’m going to do A, B, and C with no questions asked.

But let’s face it; more money and true freedom don’t really exist. No-one is truly absolutely free. And loads of money just creates as much of a prison as no money at all.

No, self determination is the key. And for that you don’t need money or the shackles of society being cast off.

You just need the right mind-set and the will to take it for yourself.

You need to know what you want and what you don’t want. And I have been thinking about that a lot over the last few days recently too. There are certain environments, certain people and behaviours that I just cannot make peace with anymore.

I know what I don’t want. I know what I can no longer stomach. I know what makes my soul sick.

Now it’s time to discover what I do want. It’s time to acquire good health for my soul.

And self-determination seems a bloody good place to start.

Suicidal Tendencies

No, don’t worry. I’m not thinking about attaching a hoover pipe to the car exhaust and gassing myself. Or indeed casting myself into the River Leam with my clothes left by the roadside accompanied by a note reading “goodbye cruel world”. (Given the Leam I’d be more likely to die by poisoning than drowning anyway).

I’m talking about that urge that most of us get at one time or another to stick your head above the parapet. To go “over the top” in World War I parlance. To deliberately step into the gun sights of assassins that you know are just waiting for an opportunity to take a pop at you.

For years, man and boy, I’ve been one of the shrinking violets. One of those conscientious people that, if alive 200 years ago, would have doffed their hat to Dorcas Lane and spoke in hushed tones of the quality toffs that lived in Candleford. I’d like to blame my working class upbringing. I know my place and all that crap. But actually that’s rubbish. When I was a kid being working class was already about cocking a snook at the middle and upper classes and speaking of them scathingly in the snug of the local pub.

But nevertheless I was brought up to respect those in authority over me. Not just to respect but also not to question. That’s quite a telling distinction.

I’ve never been able to rid myself of that whole thought process – that mind trap – until recently.

I don’t know what’s happened over the last few years – well, I do: I’ve had kids, finally got my University degree, had experience of running my own fledgling business – but suddenly that invidious bit of mind programming has been broken. The algorithms no longer work for me.

And the inherited fear that was part and parcel of that mindset has also dissipated.

I’m suddenly thinking so what? I’m suddenly questioning not just why but also why should I? Why me and nobody else?

And best of all: isn’t there something better? Why not do what I want to do?

It’s a heady brew all this jumping around with a big target painted on my chest. Years ago my natural sense of self preservation would have had me diving into the nearest Anderson Shelter. Now I want to just shit down the air-hole of everybody else’s.

I’m starting to realize that in some [bad] situations you actually have very little to lose if it all goes tits up. So why worry? Why care? Why take it?

Dangerous thinking.

But don’t worry. I might be mooning at the enemy troops out here in No Man’s Land but I have no intention of putting a pistol to my own head either.

I’m just saying that the smile on my face is a knowing one. Not an insane one.

Laters.

On The Prowl

You’ve had the same meat, week in, week out for the last God knows how many years. The same meat cooked the same way, with the same sauce. Vanilla vanilla vanilla.

You get to the point where you fancy a change. Something a bit different. Something a bit spicy, perhaps. A bit exotic. Something that resurrects your old enthusiasm for the dish. Reminds you of when you were young and it was all fresh, new and exciting. Before the ennui set in. Before you became over-familiar. Bored. Before you had to fake it.

How was it for you, dear?

Yeah. Yeah. Great. Are we done? Good, ‘cos I really need to sleep now.

And you hit the z’s knowing full well you’ll have to go through the same charade again tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that.

Unless you do something. Unless you find, I don’t know, ingredient X. A new flame.

Well, I’m on the hunt for ingredient X. I’m on the prowl. And all offers will be welcomed, considered and one might even be accepted.

I’m not quite sure what ingredient X is but I know it has some of these components:

a) A better wage. No point making a change unless I get more money.
b) More kudos. That would be nice. No more poop-scooping or shoving buckets under leaky urinals.
c) Less crap responsibilities and more good responsibilities. Hell, we all want that but that doesn’t devalue the demand.
d) The ability to leave work at the office at the end of the day and not get rung at home, without fail, every holiday and 2 out of 3 weekends.
e) A better class of workmate. Could write oodles here but can’t, if you see what I mean.
f) I’m prepared to bargain-plea with most of the above but a) and e) are non-negotiable.

Trouble is, for all my hunting skills, my flint headed spears are finding scant prey to be launched at. New job opportunities are a bit thin on the ground.

I know that, in theory, this means I should turn back to the bony carcass of my existing job, make peace with it, cuddle up to it like we’re a couple of old spoons and be reconciled.

But. I. Just. Can’t. Do. It.

I’m sick of the same old bitter meat. The same old bitter meat topped with poisonous gravy.

I fancy an Indian. Or an Italian. Or a Chinese. Hell, even a vegetarian moussaka would do the trick. Anything.

Anything but this.

I’m shrivelling up. And I’m going to lose it if I don’t use it.

So I’m on the prowl.

On the prowl for something new. Something exciting.

I just need a decent shot at it.

Just one.