In The Cinema Everyone Can Hear You Scream

Apparently the next big thing in the world of cinema is going to be 4D. A speculative truth (at best) that various cinema moguls would like to convince us of.

Essentially 4D is a fully immersive, interactive experience where your cinema seat is made to shake and veer during car chases, you get pummelled with air during onscreen whirlwinds, you get hosed down during rainstorms or deep sea dives and you get blasted with the odour of stale alcohol and garlic when the leading man / lady moves in close for a tongue sarnie.

To be honest, there’s nothing new about this gimmicky approach to movie watching – most kids’ entertainment / holiday resorts have some sort of 4D cinema these days where we willingly pay an exorbitant fee to allow our kids to be waterboarded whilst watching The Smurfs because it stops them whinging on about wanting an ice cream for all of 20 minutes. But family holiday resorts is where 4D should stay in my opinion.

There is nothing cinematically immersive about having your seat shaken so hard you end up wearing the popcorn of the person sitting next to you or hearing the neurotics in the front row squeal every time a hidden air cylinder blows a couple of bars of pressurized cold air up their trouser leg. If anything this totally removes you from the film; it shatters the pleasurable suspension of belief that you have lapsed into in order to enjoy the movie and places you undeniably back into a darkened room with a bunch of people who will immediately become your sworn enemy should the fire alarm suddenly go off and you find your way to the exit blocked.

Books don’t need 4D effects. I didn’t need the smell of wet dog to assail me when reading The Famous Five or to hear the jiggling of female flesh when reading Game Of Thrones. And I imagine I would not need to have my hands manacled and tied behind my back to get the full effect of 50 Shades Of Grey. Though you might need to do that and threaten the lives of my children in order to get me to read it in the first place. Such artificial devices would break the spell that reading a book – submitting yourself to an imaginary world – weaves. It is the same with cinema. The only senses that need to be catered for are sound and vision. You can never fully recreate the entire gamut of physical sensation that the characters onscreen are being subjected to as part of the plot – so offering the audience piecemeal approximate sensations is not going to add anything to the movie at all. If anything it will detract.

And to be honest if you really need your seat to be shaken for you during a moment of cinematic jeopardy in order to feel the correct emotional response then you plainly have major empathy problems and cinema is not for you anyway.

Indeed, anything that involves being around lots of people or dealing with any kind of quantifiable human experience is not for you - you’d be much better off getting your kicks in a vacuum where nobody at all will be able to hear you scream and I can watch the end of the effing film in peace.

Black Friday

I rarely indulge in “reality shopping” these days – if I can call it that – preferring instead the one-click delights of the virtual shopping basket that allows me to specifically search for a desired item without being distracted by other items on the shelf and without having to immerse myself in the body odour zone of the other shoppers at the check-out till. In truth I’ve become so conditioned to armchair shopping that I have forgotten how to physically browse for goods. I doubt I could even orientate myself around an alphabetized DVD display these days so used am I to typing in the first four letters of a movie title and then choosing the correct one from a drop-down menu.

But at this time of year I break with my usual habits and find myself wandering aimlessly through shopping malls at lunchtime looking for that flash of inspiration that will transmogrify into the perfect present for Auntie Doreen or Uncle Engelbert – basically forcing myself to think outside the tick-box.

I’m happy to report that my fellow shoppers have been polite and courteous to the point of not obstructing me or fighting me for the goods. I’d go so far as to say they’ve largely ignored me, so engrossed are they in their own lives and their own retail forays. This is how it should be,

Today, of course, is Black Friday. Yet another American tradition that has crossed the Atlantic to infect these shores with its salacious money-grubbing ways. Apparently it has something to do with Thanksgiving*, something we Brits don’t as yet celebrate but let’s give our American brethren time (*and not a reference to the way the Ferguson Police Department celebrate the commencement of the weekend). The excuse, of course, is that we are all immersed in the global market these days so ‘special shopping days’ like Black Friday are no longer confined to their country of origin. Whatever. I must confess I have partaken of some Black Friday deals online but the thought of queuing up for real outside a store akin to a rehearsal for the Boxing Day Sales does not float my mercantile boat. I just don’t want to be jostled by a crowd. It’s never enjoyable. And it’s worse when you are fuelled with the stress of trying to beat your fellow shoppers to the last turkey in the butcher’s shop window.

Apparently the police have had to be called out today to various supermarkets up and down the UK to exercise calming measures on the ferociously competitive crowds and there have even been injuries and some arrests. People have been knocked to the floor and trampled for the sake of a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and others have been kneecapped for the prize of the last Frozen sing-a-long robotic doll. That’s not strictly true but although the details are fiction the overall picture is fact.

I can’t help feeling a sneering sense of despair that we – us normal, everyday, average consumers – can resort to such bestial behaviour for the sake of a few bargains. How quickly the thin veneer of social order is scraped away when someone waves a cheap box of mince pies our way. The pictures of the various online debacles resemble wildebeest fighting over the best place at the watering hole, not caring if their neighbour is spilled into the mouth of a patiently waiting crocodile.

It is appalling behaviour. But sadly not uncommon. I can recall a friend of mine once telling me of a furniture warehouse that was closing down in town. On the last day they gave away the remaining stock for free. A great opportunity, you’d think, for poorer families to benefit from some rare business largesse. Not so. The poor families were elbowed – literally – out of the way to enable entrepreneurs with vans to load up as many freebies as they could to resell at a later date at 100% profit. My friend was so disgusted by the behaviour of those around him he walked away empty handed by choice.

It’s the same kind of mind-set at play at these Black Friday riots. Screw thy neighbour in the manner you suspect he is going to screw you.

I’ve heard people theorize that shopping is a modern extension of the hunter / gatherer skills that are deeply imbedded within our psyche. I think this kind of behaviour disproves that theory. Hunter / gatherers were successful only because the activity was cooperative. Kicking an old lady to the floor for a tin of spam is uncooperative to the point of psychopathic behaviour.

At least when I shop on-line and buy the last item in stock I’m only being antisocial and unknowingly selfish.

Positive virtues by comparison.

Urological Graffiti

It’s possible that my youngest picked up some American slang from some TV show or other, or possibly one of the computer games he plays and made the connection with John and toilet.

I’m theorizing wildly in the hope of justifying my part in an act of gross geological vandalism.

We’d gone to the Peak District at the beginning of our summer holiday and despite the weather being surprisingly good we’d elected to spend part of our trip underground away from the benevolence of the British sun investigating one of the many cave systems that honeycomb the area.

We were spoilt for choice but in the end Treak Cliff Cavern lured us in with reports of it being the last working Blue John mine in the world. It was suitably impressive and we had the usual local-lad-come-good-vacationing-Uni-student tour guide to see to our geological interpretative needs as we were sashayed past stalactites, stalagmites and amorphous rock formations that resembled everything from a witch on a broomstick to a huge melted breast. In fact melted breasts appeared everywhere to my mind but I’m working through that with the help of a counsellor and a colourful set of Rorschach test cards.

About half way round I was assailed by my youngest who, by way of Brian Blessed whispered tones that shattered the sonic receptors of any bats in a 5 mile radius, announced that he needed the toilet. Urgently. Urgently to the point where a sudden deluge was imminent and the chances of reaching either the entrance or the exit were posited as nil. This was further emphasized by the mini River Dance that he then enacted out to the backdrop of a million years of ball-achingly slow phantasmagorical rock formation.

I admit, I thought I’d pulled a flanker. I thought I’d got away with it. I guessed / hoped that the tour guide had not picked up on the urinary distress calls and when he moved the group on to the next interesting lump of ever moistening rock I kept me and my youngest back. Once it was sufficiently dark and quiet I bade him let loose with his little cup that forever runneth over and kept enough distance to avoid splash-back but remained sufficiently close to ensure he didn’t disappear body and anorak down a hidden pot hole.

Shoes shaken adequately dry we then re-joined the tour group further into the cave system whistling a tuneless song of complete innocence.

Nobody was none the wiser.

Or so I thought.

My wife later told me that while we were busy with business elsewhere the tour guide had alluded to our absence in almost dramatic tones along the lines of “oh gosh, we seem to be missing a couple of people, I do wonder if they’ll be along soon… cough, cough…”

I’m just thankful that my boy managed to spread his jet relatively quietly and the group weren’t treated to the sounds of a sudden waterfall thundering out of nowhere in the neighbouring cave. That would have been much harder to deny.

As it is, if you are a visitor to Treak Cliff Cavern in about 2000 years’ time and one of the stalactites has a distinct yellowish cast to it… I hereby apologize profusely for vandalizing in 30 seconds what nature took eons to create.

But jewellers take note: it’ll make somebody a smashing wee pendant.

End Of Holiday Disbelief

The best part of a holiday is the few days right before it all begins. When you feel invincible at work. When you feel shielded from the vagaries of life and the arsedom of other people because, you know, in a few day's time they are not going to matter. Because you will have removed yourself completely from their mundane sphere of influence and you will be in a country far cleaner, freer and greener. And life will be full of possibility again and the business of living. As life should be.

Which isn't to say that the holiday itself isn't magnificent. The gadding about, the sightseeing, the being somewhere new with other people who are also only passing through. All of us unwitting but good natured passengers on each other's journeys. Most of us will only pass this way but once. And that makes it more special.

But all too soon you get to the last day. And work looms. And you wonder how 2 whole weeks can possibly have flown by so quickly. You even made an effort to savour every day. To grab hold and will time to slow. To be conscious of every passing hour. But you only keep that up for the first few days. When the novelty of being outside normal routine impinges itself upon you without any effort required on your part to embrace it. But even being free becomes a habit. And a few days in you let go of the time-brake and the holiday freewheels down the hill of your life and as it picks up speed you just laugh the louder, despite knowing that when it reaches the bottom of the hill you will grieve the fact the ride is over far too soon.

And then you reflect back to those days before the holiday and realise you were right. You were absolutely right. Those few days before the holiday were indeed the best. Because you had all this wonderfulness ahead of you. It was all waiting there. A gift you kind of knew you were going to get but you had no idea how big it was going to be or quite how it would affect you. Good memories are huge and affect you the longest.

The last 2 weeks have been brilliant. We have enjoyed a stay in the Peak District, visited good friends in Weston-Super-Mare and had a fantastic day in Legoland. We have eaten well and indulged a little. We have enjoyed ourselves as a family immensely. Perhaps more so because of the stress of the time leading up to it. Being happy and carefree on holiday seemed a distinct impossibility when the dark hours bit. But in life you take the good times when you can. It's a good survival technique.

I took a break from blogging too. It wasn't a conscious decision. It just happened. So plainly was the right thing to do.

But tomorrow I am back to work. And I am standing in front of that cliff looking up at it knowing that as soon as I start climbing it will be fine. Muscle memory will kick in and it will all seem effortless and right and even, to a degree, OK.

But right now I wish I was still in the middle of the green field at my back with the edges indistinct blurs at the very periphery of my vision.

I can't quite believe that the freewheeling is over for another summer.

Credit

I got my first credit card when I was 18.

And that was the beginning of the end. The end of living life my grandparent’s way. Their ethos was very much if you haven’t got the money, you go without. I don’t think my grandparents ever owned a credit card. Ever. They had a cheque book and if they wanted cash they got it over the counter at the bank. And if there wasn’t enough in the account they didn’t draw it out. And that was it. If the bank ever sent them credit cards when it became de rigueur to have a bit of plastic in your wallet I never saw them use one. Aside from their inevitable mortgage, they were deeply suspicious of virtual money and ATMs. Undoubtedly it was a generation thing.

And, of course, ironic. Banks have for centuries dealt with virtual money and the idea of a “promise to pay”. The countries of the West are built on this ethos. On spending money that they haven’t got. It is the basis of all speculation.

When I got my first credit card no real harm was done. I was single, living at home with parents who hardly fleeced me for housekeeping money and so I had more cash that I sensibly knew what to do with.

I frittered it away on books, movies and music – and later travel. And it was fine ‘cos when that bill landed on my doormat at the end of the month I had enough spare cash floating around to pay it all off immediately.

And that’s the ideal. That’s how using a credit card should be.

But later in life – much later – paying stuff off all in one go became impossible. It became the norm not to do it and those halcyon days of settling my account without a second thought became a novelty. The honeymoon period between my flexible friend and my salad days was well and truly over.

When real life kicks in – when you’re standing on your own two feet – it’s all too easy to fall into the credit trap; the overdraft pit; the snare of buy now pay later and then keep paying and paying for a very long time.

And if you are canny you do the credit card transfer dance for a while. Or “debt consolidation” as it is sometimes called. Lumping all your outstanding debts into one big sum that you bung on an interest free credit card deal in the vain hope you’ll get most of it paid off before the interest finally kicks in.

Of course, all you’re doing is “promising to pay” the vultures who are happy to sit and wait and let your meat tenderize itself as the pressure softens you up. And the longer they wait the juicier you’ll be.

It’s the law of the financial jungle.

This year, however, I made a decision – a resolution in fact – to get myself out of the credit trap. To consciously and conscientiously budget each month. To pay off debts without accruing more. To not dip into my overdraft but to stay in the black.

So far, 5 months in, I’ve managed it. My debts are being whittled down, bit by bit – they’ll be with me for a year or two but they’re shrinking, losing volume and threat. And my overdraft is a 5 month virgin, i.e. undipped into and I mean to keep her that way.

My credit cards are, by and large, becoming orphaned. More, they’re becoming strangers.

We used to be so close but now I can see it was always an abusive relationship. I’m only sorry it took me so long to realize that and do something positive about it.

Now that I’m away from the situation I do hope that one day they’ll learn to forgive me and move on.

I know the fault was mostly mine but I can’t help feeling that, in their very nature, they colluded in my weaknesses and led me on. And despite the protestations of the banking history of the world I can’t help thinking that my grandparents had the right idea.

Virtual money never leads to virtual riches. It only ever opens the door to very real debt.

If The Cap Fits...

So having taken the kids to Cadbury World and finding myself channelling a couple of comedy legends (a weird hybrid of Jim Carrey and Eric Morecambe) I thought it would be simply hilarious to pull a face on one of the rides that you simply have to go on while you're there.

No. You really do have to go on them. There is no way to get from one part of the factory to the other except by bizarre toyland tram-car through the disturbing dimensional rift that is Chuckleville.

Being an old hand at Cadbury World I knew there was a camera positioned halfway through the route that takes candid snaps of interlopers as they crawl their way through the alien landscape of chocolate bean land that you then feel morally obliged to buy and hide away in the loft (kidding yourself that this is the only copy and the good people of Cadbury World burn all the negatives).

Wouldn't it be a jolly jape, I thought, if I was gurning like a good 'un at the moment the flash went off and oh how we'd laugh when it came time to pick up the photos?

It having been a number of years since I last played the Comedy Club I was missing the uplifting shot in the arm that is reactive laughter so I thought, what the hell, I'd go for it. It might even cheer up some of the Cadbury staff who looked like they'd been injecting chocolate like a cheap form of botox.

We went on the Chockie Bean public transport system. The camera flash went off. The picture was taken. And we went to collect our photo.

To quote a Danielle Dax album: "Comatose Non-Reaction".

Nothing. Na-da. Not a titter.

"Hmm," I thought to myself, "Either the good staff at Cadbury World are one paracetamol away from suicide or I'm losing me touch."

I'd pulled my best blimmy and put my glasses on upside down and everything. That should have had them rolling in the aisles.

Instead there was not a dickie-bird.

When I got the photo back I could see why.

There was utterly no effing difference in my appearance from when I look "normal" to when I was pulling the face that Jim Carrey would have paid good money to be born with.

I looked exactly the same.

I'm not quite sure what that says about me but I have no doubt at all you'll all be queuing up to tell me.

Me And Tel

I had cause to be in Windsor a few weeks ago (full frontal family assault on Legoland) and, being rather partial to a cheap Italian (I just cannot afford Monica Bellucci; lovely girl but too high maintenance), the family and I repaired to the local Bella Italia to enjoy a late evening, post Legogasm, meal.

Nothing unusual in that; the brood and I often fine-dine in such kid family establishments and have been known to sample their various incarnations up and down the country.

This time though we were in especial company.

I’m not a huge follower of Sir Terry Wogan but I know enough to have chuckled at his less than charitable (but wholly accurate) verbal drubbings meted out to various Eurovision entrants over the years and I believe he had a TV chat show a few years back and may also be relatively familiar with radio broadcasting. So the opportunity to dine with Tel (as he insisted I call him purely by raising an eyebrow my way) was something that I just could not pass up. And his wife (at least I assumed it was his wife) did not seem to mind us inserting ourselves into proceedings and, in fact, carried on eating as if nothing untoward had happened at all. Looking back on it now I wonder if she did actually see us.

And Terry too for that matter. Conversation was rather sparse - unusually so for the normally silken voiced retired BBC star.

Of course, that may have had something to do with the fact we were sat at entirely different tables but you can’t let a simple thing like an uncooperative seating plan spoil a good anecdote.

Technically I have eaten a meal with Mr Terry Wogan.

And I can tell you he had the best seat in the house – window seat, overlooking the façade of Windsor Castle – seemed to be on good terms with all the waitresses and had the biggest ice cream sundae I have ever seen in my entire life. Lord knows we’re not fast eaters but the Wogans were still masticating and quaffing long after we had requested the bill. Our Tel must have the appetite of an ice age glacier and the constitution of Pete Doherty.

Anyway, I resisted the negligible urge to inveigle him in conversation just for the chance of a kind word and an autograph… I was with my family and needed a night off. If he wants a signed photo he’ll just have to approach my agent like everybody else.

A Tale Of Two Toilets

Not sure why these two separate memories should have pushed themselves to the forefront of my thoughts today but rather than fight it I am going to do as all the best plumbers do and just go with the flow.

Back at the tail end of 1999 I realized an ambition I’d had since my teens and went to Egypt. Although the whole thing was an organized tour I went on my own which was a big thing for me at the time. The furthest place I’d been to on my own to before then was Weston-super-Mare and, believe me, despite the sand and the dodgy food, there is little comparison.

My one all-abiding memory of Egypt isn’t the pyramids, or Saqqara, or The Valley of the Kings, or even the limbless beggars that lined the streets of Aswan.

It is of the toilets in the Cairo Museum.

After a weeklong Nile cruise I had three days in Cairo. The Museum was a must and it didn’t disappoint though I will admit that by this point of the holiday I was mummied out. I had also succumbed to ‘gypy’ tummy. The first spell had hit me at the Son Et Lumiere show at the Philae Temple a few days before but a quick necking down of a couple of Imodium tablets had set the potential avalanche like concrete.

Unfortunately, all this did was ensure the infection stayed within my gut where it wore away at the halting effects of the Imodium until, days later, at the Cairo museum, that particular train of matter decided it was going to make a break for it no matter what chemical cocktail I attempted to throw at it.

Thankfully, the Cairo Museum toilets were near at hand. I recall at knee-clenched wait in the inevitable queue before the cubicle became free. I dived in, already sweating uncomfortably with the effort of holding back both time and tide and was immediately faced with the single desolating sight of my life.

No toilet paper. Nothing. Not even a newspaper.

I must have staggered out of the cubicle looking like a very unsuccessfully desiccated mummy. And instantly met my saviour: a young Egyptian toilet attendant who without a single word but an understanding nod handed me an entire roll of toilet paper all to myself.

When I was done I gave him the most money I’d given to any of the locals on the entire holiday. Money well spent. Wherever he is now I hope his gods are smiling on him.

My second toilet memory is the ridiculous to the above’s sublime.

‘Twas a day visit to Dover. Part of a weeklong family holiday to Canterbury and environs. I’m not sure why we elected to have a day in Dover as my memory of the town was that it was rather drab, rather dirty and rather smelly. I was possibly not seeing it in its best light.

Part of the trip saw us at some kind of terminal. I’m not sure now whether it was for ferries or boats or whether it was just some kind of all-purpose visitor centre. I do know it was as far South-East as you could go without dipping yourself into the sea and we had a decent view of the coast. As with all visits to places new – and the undeniable thread to this post – a trip to the lavatory was necessitated by a can of coke.

In the cubicle there, on the edge of England, the very cusp of Europe, I came to face to face with the most astounding example of human organic graffiti that I’ve ever seen.

Picture if you will an entire toilet roll wedged down the bottom of the toilet. Packed so tightly that the softening effects of total submersion in cold water had been unable to destroy the toilet roll’s shape. Now, picture if you will, the kind of poo that a horse would have been shaken to produce harpooning the cardboard centre of the loo roll down its entire length with a good four inches to spare emerging from the top and indeed from the very surface of the water. It looked like a postmodern representation of Thor’s hammer.

My overriding thought at the moment of confrontation was simply: how?

How had somebody physically achieved this singular feat of faecal protest? Did they poo first and then fit the loo roll snugly over the top like some kind of grommet? Or did they install the toilet roll first and then ease the poo out inch by agonizingly slow inch, micro-managing and fine adjusting the angle of approach, ensuring the nose cone was lined up perfectly before fully opening the bomb bay doors and letting her loose?

As with my adventure in Egypt, philosophizing ultimately had to be put aside: I had a burning desire to “go”. Thankfully this time it was merely a number one and, after a quick hosing, I left the sculpture all but intact. There was no point flushing, believe me. That monster was going absolutely nowhere.

I often wonder about it even now and for all I know it’s still there… pinning this country to the Eurasian plate like a tin tack through a giant post-it note.

It would be a fitting addition to the Natural History Museum’s permanent collection should they ever be scouting for one.

Toilets, eh? What amazing adventures one can have in them. It’s often the best penny you’ll ever spend...

Midday Express

I went for a lunch time meal with mates the other day.

We tried the new Wagamama’s that had opened in town a month or two ago.

My experience of noodles up to this point had been constrained to the dry stuff that you buy in supermarkets and boil for about 10 minutes or the occasional visit to a Thai restaurant. I figured Wagamama’s fell somewhere between the two with its noodles being cooked by professional chefs but cooked in a kitchen belonging to a restaurant chain as opposed to a little Thai family who emigrated here in the 80’s and opened up a family run restaurant in a shoebox.

I was quite impressed by the Wagamama experience. There was an energy about the place that you don’t normally find in restaurants. The waiters and waitresses were visibly busy. As opposed to being invisibly busy where you cannot see them but charitably suppose them to be about the business of another diner.

The food was good but as this is not a sponsored post I am not going to wax lyrical about their fresh spring onions or the tenderness of their chicken breasts. Instead I am going to focus on the tables.

Wagamama’s in Leamington has long trestle tables that span the entire width of the eating environment. Down the centre of this table glides a metal dividing pole with a small strip light installed into the top of it so that one side of the trestle table is divided from the other by close quarter lighting from above.

Maybe to those of you who “do lunch” regularly this is old hat. Those of you who are more cosmopolitan possibly eat from loveseats suspended 8ft above lotus flower strewn water and consider the novelty of long benches and tables to me as being rather twee. To me, however, it was new. And unfortunately my diseased mind could only conjure up one reference point with which to normalize the experience.

Midnight Express.

The bit where Billy Hayes has been locked up but gets a last visit from his girlfriend and attempts to connect his slobbering, sobbing lips with her pert breasts through about two inches of bullet proof, knife proof, definitely penis proof glass.

Mentioning this out loud probably explains why the conversation between me and my two female colleagues stalled momentarily.

This aside I was impressed by the amount of young kids that were about the place merrily tucking into steaming bowls of eastern-esque cuisine.

Haven’t us proles come a long way since I was a kid?

Back when I were a lad (by ‘eck) it were a big thing to eat out at a Berni Inn let alone somewhere that sold sushi and noodles and expected you to mop the lot up with a pair of chopsticks.

Such marlarky was for rich toffs – those who holidayed in places other than Weston-super-Mare and Scunthorpe and instead pushed the envelope out to the continent and ate at an El Berni Posada in Spain.

The world has very quickly got a lot smaller.

Though, of course, this could entirely be down to an optical illusion caused by the size of the tables...

Public Death, Private Murder

One of the places we visited during our recent stay in deepest Gloucestershire was Slad. It was very much an off-the-cuff visit that we made at the end of the holiday on our return journey home as we knew beforehand that it was a tiny little village which sported no more than a church, a few houses and a pub. Hardly a tourist hotspot and not really worth an entire day out.

However, it was the birthplace and final resting place of Laurie Lee, one of Karen’s favourite authors. Most of you, I’m sure, will be familiar with the title Cider With Rosie even if you have never read the book.

I wasn’t expecting much from Slad to be honest.

But to be even more honest it was one of the most beautiful, peaceful places I have ever visited. There was a gentle calmness about the place which soothed the soul.

We found Laurie Lee’s grave with ease, pottered about the village – barely more than a single street – and then settled down for an ice cream at The Woolpack.

I was a little nervy of the pub if the truth be told. Karen had told me about one of the memories Lee had recounted in his book which centred around one of the village lads meeting an unfortunate end after a night of drinking in this very pub. Having travelled to New Zealand and returned much wealthier, said local boy was rather full of himself and, much to the chagrin of the those he’d left behind who’d never travelled much further than Pitchcombe, he proceeded to spend the entire night boasting and I daresay belittling the relative parochial mentality of his old childhood chums.

His pride met with fist and blows at closing time and the locals, having sweetened their own worldly inadequacies with the gift of a good kicking, left the poor chap unconscious in the snow.

He froze to death and was found dead the next morning.

The police investigation drew only shrugs and silence and there the matter ended – except for those in the know, of course. I’m sure Lee must have ruffled quite a few nervous feathers by including the story in his memoirs.

Thankfully I have not (as yet) travelled to New Zealand and decided I would keep my past holidays to Egypt and America under wraps... just in case. After all the pub could well still be a local tavern for local people.

As it was we were met with good humoured friendliness and a kindly, non-curious acceptance given that it was plain we were complete strangers (there can be no more than 20 people living in the entire village).

I think we spent a couple of hours there. Doing not very much at all. Just enjoying and soaking up the atmosphere and dreaming.

For all there were telegraph poles, chip and pin machines and modern cars parked about the place, it felt as if Slad had somehow been loosed from the normal constraints of the passage of time. Change obviously comes slowly and by small increments to this tiny little village. Even the adverts on the pub waste bins were for R White’s Lemonade. I haven’t seen that advertised publically in years.

It was a good place. Life felt wholesome there. Honest. More simple.

Of course, these are all just first impressions made in the space of a single moment. For all I know there was a bondage club in the house next door and the woman at the end of the road regularly hosts parties where car keys are thrown into a fruit bowl where peaches of all nationalities have never rested but have instead been bounced off the walls and a rubber sheeted four-poster with the kind of passion that one only sees in French art house movies.

But somehow I don’t think so.

Laurie Lee sleeps peacefully in the church yard over the road and Slad is still very much his dream.

Rattletrap

What I know about cars can be restricted to three spheres of knowledge:

1) How many wheels a car has.
2) What colour a particular car happens to be (provided I can see it, of course – I don’t do telepathy or foretelling).
3) What the purpose of the airbag and the seatbelt is.

Other than that, talk of engine size, fuel mix and torque ratios means absolutely nothing to me (oh Vienna). And I am not, in truth, interested in finding out. A car is a car is a car.

But today my wife and I have bought a new car. A new second. A Peugeot 206.

Our last car was a Peugeot 106 so I am assuming from this that our new car is 100% bigger and 100% faster but I might be wrong about this.

Our old car has served us well. It was 7 years old when we bought it and has lasted another 7 to this present moment in time. It has taken us to Wales and back numerous times. It has taken us to Legoland Windsor no less than 5 times. It brought Tom from the hospital to our home when he was a mere few days old.

It has taken me to work when I didn’t want to go. Picked me up in the rain when passing. Taken rubbish to the dump. Taken us to the cinema, shopping, friend’s houses and, all in all, assisted us in various errands.

But our recent holiday has killed it.

Barely half an hour into the outward journey the trim on the right side fell off. On the second day the hand-brake snapped and we had to call out the AA. On Friday 10th, in the depth of Cheddar Gorge, the exhaust – much loosened by a malicious branch a few days earlier – virtually fell off. We had to get it stapled back on by a kindly Cheddar mechanic (no cheesy jokes please) and avail ourselves of a Kwik-Fit fitter in Stroud on our homeward journey to get a new exhaust fitted.

A galling expense when the plan had always been to trade the old girl in for a new one in September anyway (or rather, sell her for scrap – but we never said that out loud lest we hurt her feelings).

So. We decided to listen to the omens. To obey them. September may be a month too far. The old girl might well expire before we get a chance to put a bullet through her crust.

And so in a whirlwind of activity that saw us purchase the current copy of Autotrader and thumb tenderly through its Top Gear-esque innards we had a new prospective car lined up in a matter of days.

We went. We saw. We test drove. We liked.

Today we paid up and drove home our new wheels leaving our old girl on the forecourt awaiting her last journey (to the knackers’ yard). We have opened every compartment, pulled up every seat. We have reclaimed lost Pokémon cards and bits of Lego that have probably not seen the light of day since Christmas 2006. The bits of crisp and mouldy tuna sandwiches will be our gifts to the scrap dealer and our fragrant offering to the god of cars.

I pray he takes our old girl to his bosom and gives her long and straight celestial roads to travel during her journey through the afterlife.

I don’t know much about cars...

...but I know we loved and appreciated our old 106 very much.

Goodbye, girl.

I'll Give You A Klout Around The Ear

I haven't, if I'm honest, got Klout.

I haven't got it and I don't get it.

I have, at best, a tolerate / hate relationship with Facebook. When I think about it too much I feel my lips pull up into a sneer as I calculate the myriad ways that this whole particular social networking platform is spiritually and morally wrong. When I don't think about it at all I post funny pictures and status updates with comedic value.

Occasionally I'll let Twitter be my bitch. But I treat it mean and keep it locked up in the basement for most of the time. I'll cold-shoulder it for weeks on end before gracing it with a brief caress; before I brush a finger across its erogenous zone. And then, just as its about to come, I'll drop it.

Screw you, Twitter. You love it.

But Klout foxes me.

I keep getting Klout requests and notifications and I cannot for the life of me work out what I am supposed to do with them. I can't even work out if I'm meant to be pleased that someone has Klouted me. In common parlace I'd say probably not; I ought to be pissed off. But people are sending them to me in the same spirit as a poke on Facebook. And even I know that a good poke is good for the soul.

But what the fuck is Klout?

Can someone please tell me?

I click on the links when someone throws a Klout my way and, yes, a page opens in my browser that looks rather glossy and slick but I cannot see any direction at all as to what I am supposed to do next. Other than to shrug my shoulders and think to myself, "OK, that's several hundred nanoseconds of my life that I'll never be able to devote back to internet porn" and then I close down the window.

I'm guessing Klout is some kind of competition. A popularity contest. I'm guessing the idea is to build up some kind of influence on the internet and Klout gauges just how much clout one has accrued.

But it also seems transparent to me that other web sites don't give a shit what Klout says so having acres of clout on Klout is going to benefit me a fat load of diddly-squat.

Will it get me a table reservation at The Ivy for tomorrow lunchtime? No.

Will it get me onto the film set of Doctor Who and into the knickers of Alex Kingston? No.

Will it buy me credit enough with my bank manager than I can resign from my job with instant effect and never have to return next week to it when my holiday ends? No.

In that case I am not interested.

The only clout you're going to get from me, Klout, is the back of my hand.

Airplane

If I seem quiet over the next 7 days it is because – with my wife’s gracious consent – I am trying something new.

I am trying something I have never done before. I am experimenting.

It may or may not involve dressing up in a weird costume and hiding in the wardrobe, re-enacting choice scenes from Fifty Shades Of Grey.

Upon reflection, I suspect it won’t.

For the next week I am not going to be here. I am going to be even more virtual than I have been previously. The family and I are taking a week’s holiday away from the ol’ homestead (our eldest is already experiencing X-Box withdrawal symptoms) and heading out of town. For the next 7 days we are house-sitting / cat-sitting for friends down in Nailsworth – a gorgeous part of Gloucestershire that feels like someone has cut out a small segment of Wales and transplanted it into England.

Access to the internet might be scanty. We shall have some, no doubt, but I don’t intend to be slaving away at a computer keyboard composing masterpieces for you all to read whilst I am on my holiday. Instead, using the old noggin to forward plan and utilising the nifty little scheduling tool on Blogger, I will be publishing a couple of posts via autopilot. Please don’t blame me if the plane crashes.

I will try and check in and reply to comments (should there be any – I find it never bodes well to assume), but if you find you are not on the receiving end of the kind of immediately witty reply that you have come to expect and adore then I hope you can understand why. It may take me a day or two to get back to you... but get back to you I shall and I shall endeavour to make it worth the extra wait.

It feels kind of weird to leave this blog to fly alone. To leave it to the mercy of you guys – my passengers.

I do hope I can trust you all not to misbehave while I am absent.

Please leave the aisles as clean as you found them and I want no smuttiness in the toilets (especially at altitude). Any attempts to storm the cockpit and take control will be not be thought well of, I can assure you.

And please, please, whatever you do, do not play around with my flaps.

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.

Helium

You know what the best thing is about having time off from work? About having a holiday?

It's not that sweet, sweet moment when you first break-up from work and know that you have days and days stretching ahead of you when you don't even have to think about the office let alone go there. That moment when the holiday stretches before you like a perfumed cushion and nuzzles itself into your consciousness and yet you can't somehow quite grasp it hard enough to feel the realness of it - yes, you really are on holiday.

It's not that moment halfway through the holiday when you've released the hand-brake on your enjoyment of time and have finally allowed the days to run away with you; when you let them gather momentum and don't care because the carelessness and freedom to enjoy and waste time is part of what makes a holiday so great.

Neither is it that moment near the end of the holiday when you can count down the days on the fingers of one hand and their imminent loss finally makes you appreciate the preciousness of the sand that is slipping through your fingers minute by minute.

The best thing about a holiday is the very last day.

The very last day when it hits you that tomorrow you have to return to work. Tomorrow you have to pick up the reins again and hook them over your neck and shoulders and cinch them tight. When you have to take the bit back between your teeth, hop onto the hamster wheel and rejoin the futile, endless cycle of the rat race.

Because that's the moment when you see finally your life most clearly.

When you see the good stuff - the stuff that truly matters - thrown into sharp relief against the stuff that doesn't. When you can see how your life ought to be, how you want it to be and where it is all going wrong. Where in the scales rising above your head you see the people that are most important to you sailing past those who are plummeting down, down into the pit of your most contemptuous estimation.

Suddenly life is perfectly clear.

Complacency, routine, finding your feet, slipping back into the old ways, "it's just like I've never been away"... these are your enemies. These are the soporifics and the narcotics of existence that keep you where you probably don't want to be.

Shun them. Don't cosy back up to them. They are not your friends.

Best part of this holiday? Truly?

Not Legoland or The Space Centre or Enginuity as great as all these places were.

It was a free helium balloon from a restuarant that dashed itself about on its ribbon in the wind yesterday as we walked through Stratford-upon-Avon and had my youngest boy giggling like a maniac. I lost count of how many people that balloon smacked in the face - it was uncontrollable. But every one of them responded with a smile and a laugh and a wink.

That's what life should be like, right there.

Every day should be like that.

Every. Single. Day.

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...

School Trip

Our eldest boy has gone on his first ever school trip away from home. I’m not talking about a day terrifying museum staff or a day leaving chewing gum under the pews of a big city cathedral. I’m talking proper sleeping-away-from-home-for-several-nights and eating-food-that-has-not-been-specifically-catered-to-his-extremely-discerning-palate.

It is a momentous occasion in the life of a child. And a parent. It feels like that first big developmental step towards full independence and eventual adulthood.

He’s ten. In some ways he’s older than his years. In some ways younger. Like all ten year olds I suppose.

He’s bright. He’s developing a nice line in cheek that will stand him in good stead in later years.

But nevertheless you worry.

A week away from home is a long time. What if his DS batteries run out? What if he loses his asthma inhaler? What if he doesn’t like any of the 16 choices of sandwich fillings that the adventure centre offers him?

He’s a fussy eater, Goddamit. Maybe we should have snuck a few tins of tuna into his backpack along with all the “emergency crisps” and the “fail-safe chocolate bars”?

He was braver than I was at his age, I’ll give him that. My first trip away from home was a hike to farmhouse a mere 2 miles away where we stayed for a paltry 3 nights. I cried like a baby on the first morning, didn’t like the food when we got there and was convinced my room was haunted simply because the branches of a tree were hanging down right outside my window.

My boy however demanded the coach driver keep his two bags together like a seasoned traveller, settled into a double seat on the coach like a pro and immediately plugged himself into his DS like he was still on our living room couch.

I’ve a feeling he’s going to go far. Literally. Probably backpacking around the globe and making himself head honcho of the global village.

Meanwhile, the wife and I are looking around us, unsettled by the slightly emptier nest that he has left in his wake. The house seems quieter. The biscuit tin looks depressed at the reduced opportunity for human interaction. The PlayStation is sobbing like a betrayed lover.

We are seriously considering hauling a stray kid in off the street and paying him to talk over all the TV programmes we’re trying to watch and complain about the amount of vegetables on his dinner plate. If he can throw in a few pre-teen tantrums and refuse to honour the bedtime curfew even better.

Our boy has left home for the first time.

It’s only been one day and his mum and dad are already homesick.

Cheaper Not To Work

It’s half term in a couple of weeks. As a kid this would have been cause for celebration and I’d be counting down the days already.

As an adult it is a cause for concern and fiscal trauma.

Not because I don’t like spending time with my family – because I do. The days I consider “the best of times” have all occurred during family holidays or days out together.

It’s because school holidays threaten to break us financially.

It’s fine if Karen and I have holiday to use up at work. No problem at all. We all have a holiday together – or (as we’ve done the last few years) a staycation.

If we don’t we are in serious trouble. Because it means we not only have to keep our youngest boy in ‘pre-school’ but we have to put his older brother into the school holiday club too.

This costs us over £50 a day. For a week this would set us back £250 – or in this case because our eldest boy is off the Friday before the holiday because of a “teacher training day”, £300.

That’s more than I earn in a week.

Thankfully I have just enough holiday entitlement left over to cover the 6 days. If I didn’t it would still be cheaper for me to take the days off unpaid as I would lose less money giving up a week’s wages than continuing to work and having to pay for the boys to be cared for elsewhere.

This seems to me to be utter madness.

And it seems to be a particularly UK kind of madness. I don’t believe this kind of scenario exists in other European countries or, if it does, not to the same fiscally punitive degree. And I choose my words very carefully – because it feels like the state, our glorious United Kingdom, does not like or welcome kids into the protective embrace of its nannyhood. Rather, it feels like it punishes those that bring them into the world.

Now, let’s get my position clear. I’m not asking for freebies or a handout. I’m not asking for special privileges.

I’m just asking to be able to work and earn enough money to make going to work worthwhile.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

Few people work because they love it. We all need to be incentivized. And survival is a pretty good incentiviser.

If I’m not even gaining that luxury, Mr Cameron, give me one good reason why I shouldn’t claim benefits for the rest of my life and loot JD Sports whenever the fancy takes me?

Love, Luck And Money They Go To My Head Like Wildfire

My name is Stephen Herrick-Blake and I am a shopping addict.

I’ve always known it but the naked truth is something I’ve always deflected my eyes away from. I mean, nobody really wants to see the truth with all its bits hanging out do they?

It began in my twenties. A life of ease and privilege. I’m not talking about possessing the east wing of the family estate or running pheasant shoots on the family land here. I’m talking about living at home with no pressure to move out, a monotonous full time job and no social life.

Money just built up. Ridiculously. Effortlessly. I stockpiled it.

It was then that I developed that intense love affair with spending. With purchasing product. That self-esteem-boosting thrill you get when you go into a shop, point at something and say, “I’ll take that please, don’t bother with gift wrap”. A mate and I used to go to Birmingham every Saturday and hit the record shops – back in the days when CDs were new and suspicious. I’d choose whatever artist I was into at the time and buy their entire back catalogue. Albums, EPs, singles – both 7” and 12”. Once I spent so much money at a record shop that the cashier actually declined to ring up the amount on the till to save me any embarrassment. Like I cared about the street urchins holding their hands out to me on the way out, begging me for a morsel of my Burger King chicken burger bap – I’d finally got hold of that rare Kate Bush gatefold sleeve that I’d been after for months.

Summer holidays too were an orgy of retail therapy. Oh the joy of being able to mooch around shop after shop and think to myself, “I could buy something in here if I really wanted to.” And so I frequently did. Just for the hell of it. Just for the pleasure and the thrill.

It feels obscene now to look back on it. But I can’t deny that I also do so a little wistfully too.

I have to be tighter with my money now. Carefree spending is a thing of the past. There are monthly bills, there are debts that grow like weeds even when you don’t water them. But that urge – that addiction – is still there. If we go somewhere as a family, for a day out say, I can’t deny I feel a little depressed if I come back without a small purchase. It’s stupid. It’s like the day is not complete or cannot be enjoyed in itself without my spending power being exercised at some point. I don’t feel a valid member of the human race if I don’t acquire a totally frivolous item.

But I’m fighting it. I’m trying.

We did the summer hols this year on the cheap and I am financially at the same level now as I was at the beginning of them. No better off but no worse off either. For me that is a victory.

I blame my addiction on that period in my twenties when I had no responsibilities. It set a trend, see? Gave me a taste for a lifestyle that just wasn’t real and just cannot be maintained.

For all it was a lovely, carefree period I can’t help wishing my parents had kicked me out, forced me to face up the real world sooner before the pattern became too imbedded.

But that is passing the buck isn’t it? Not facing up to my responsibilities yet again.

I should have done something better and longer lasting with my money. Something wiser. Me. I should have done it.

If I had the money now the only thing I’d buy would be hindsight.

Sorting The Wheat From The Chaff

If ever proof were needed that Time is not constant you only have to take a holiday.

Two weeks the wife and I have had off from work.

Two weeks.

Now if Time were passing as it usually does when I am not on holiday then by rights we'd only be up to Tuesday of the first week. But no. Here we are at the Saturday of the last weekend. How the hell did that happen?

I guess the old maxim is true - the one about having fun and all that. Though I'd be hard pressed to tell you just exactly what it is we did do to fill the last two weeks. A shortage of coin meant that a proper holiday was out so we did lots of home days and lots of away days. Little villages in the Cotswolds, visiting friends in Gloucestershire, meals out, pootles around the park, or even just lazing in our own garden, etc. We've both filled the time and luxuriated in it.

And as a consequence Time has speeded up and whizzed by like it can't wait to get away from us.

Next week sees the end of the holiday. Next week sees the return of the alternative.

Note to self: edit self expression and emotional content here.

But one thing this holiday has taught me is that, no matter what speed setting Time seems to be running on, a happy and fulfilling life is inevitably based around spending time with the people who matter to you and not the people who don't; listening to opinions and advice from those whose opinion matters and not listening to the same from those whose opinions should be binned and, most most important of all, daring to stop dreaming and daring to start planning.

Because no matter how fast Time is running, it's running in my favour now.