The Tories Want To Kill Us All (And Make Us Pay For The Funeral)

History will record that George Osborne’s main career aspiration was to become a fifth-rate, Walter-the-Softie version of Joseph Stalin.

In the geographical absence of gulags and salt mines and being too media savvy to machine gun en masse an entire social class of dissenters (just imagine the Twitter-hate he’d get for that), George’s solution is turn the rights of the modern working man against him; to subvert the last gasping vestiges of the Welfare State and choke the last breath of life out of any human rights declaration of the last 200 years in order to return us all to the dark glories of the workhouse and a more bizarre rule of lassaiz-fare... where people are encouraged to fend for themselves without government assistance but with the government still wanting to take a good cut of the profit.

Not satisfied with pushing the retirement age back a couple of years (and undoubtedly it will get pushed back even further until aged 98 I will have to resort to selling my own body on street corners just to be able to afford a cheap moussaka from Lidl), there are now plans afoot to dispense with the old system of employers providing sick pay for their employees.

The idea being floated by George "Uncle Joe" Osborne (the Chancellor Palpatine of the Exchequer) is that worker's themselves should provide provision for their own sick pay out of the wages they earn.

Speaking as someone who at the moment can't even afford to pay pension contributions towards financing my old age ("don't worry," says George, "you've got at least another 80 years working life ahead of you - plenty of time to save for a retirement you'll never reach") I can tell you now that if deductions were forcibly being made out of my earnings in lieu of potential future sick pay awards I would simply not be able to afford to live and therefore going to work in the first place would become a pointless endeavour. Going to work would only remain viable were I never ever to become sick. Or to be exact, were I never ever to take a sick day even though I might genuinely be exploding with typhoid or - in the dystopian Victorianesque future that George is undoubtedly masturbating over - smallpox.

Essentially, my simple theory posits that the Tories are trying to kill us all. By "us" I do, of course, mean just the non-wealthy workers who don't have enough money in their Government bailed-out bank accounts to successfully lobby their favourite political party to adequately represent their own singularly selfish viewpoint over those of the moral majority.

The modus operandi of our murder is simple. Worked to death with longer hours 7 days a week, taxed to the hilt to pay for the privileges of the rich, sick pay only if you can afford to make the contributions, no sick pay at all if you can't, work work work until you drop or until you get your "congratulations on your first centenary" letter from HM The Queen (whichever comes first). Thus huge saving are made - no sick pay and no pensions payments made because I guarantee that should anyone actually make it to a pensionable age they'll be so worn out and exhausted by 80 years' hard labour they'll be dead before the first e-payment is made into their bank account. The 7 ages of man will be truncated to: baby, child, man, workhorse and fertilizer.

And who will benefit from all these savings?

The poor? The repressed?

According to the Tory worldview they do not exist. Instead the country is full of fat, lazy, ne'er-do-wells who are only in dire straits because an over-indulgent government hasn't done enough to encourage them to stand up on their own two feet and make their own way in the world.

In other words, we're back to the old "spare the rod, spoil the child" guff which has always been used in ages past to justify naked callousness and simple cold-heartedness.

Which when you are trying to hold down three jobs to put food on the table for children whose whereabouts and welfare you can't monitor anymore because you're always at work trying to pay for the sick pay you daren't take is not what you want to hear from some over-privileged buffoon in a suit whose idea of poverty a few years back was having to include the mortgage for his paddock on his taxpayer funded expenses...

Murder is going to be done, my friends. Murder is going to be done.

The D Word

Not a great week.

Certainly not conducive to producing posts of scintillating literary value. So finally I have an excuse for not doing so.

First off, my best friend's mother died suddenly last Sunday. I don't have all the details yet as Dave is understandably maintaining radio silence but I can imagine the immense emotional run-a-round he and his family are currently going through. Dave's mum played quite a major role in my life in my twenties and early thirties. I was at her house most Saturday evening's visiting Dave and have fond memories of firework's nights that seemed to last forever and watching cable TV before it was quite so commonplace. I was geeky and awkward when I was younger (much more so than I am now) but Dave's mum had an easy laugh and a constantly sunny disposition. To meet someone who laughs at all your feeble jokes at a time when you are desperate to build up your confidence is a real boon. I was made to feel part of the family and was ribbed as such - but in a way that made me feel safe and included. That she is gone now seems unnatural and impossible. She always seemed larger than life and irrepressibly vibrant. My thoughts are with Dave and his family for their huge loss.

Second, Karen and I seem to be heading into the above territory for ourselves. Karen's mother, a long time sufferer of Lupus, after strokes and other debilitating side-effects, announced on Wednesday that she's finally had enough and "cut her peg". Basically, after living the last couple of years taking only liquid food by tube, being unable to walk and talk, she has now decided - quite understandably - that enough is enough. She is refusing all medication, all food and as much water as she can comfortably do without. She's made up her mind that this is the end and there is little anyone can do about it. I believe she has been psychiatrically assessed though don't think the results have been announced yet. However, having seen her yesterday it is evident she is very clear about what she is doing. She is after all a qualified doctor herself and very intelligent. She is aware more than anyone around her of the direct consequences of this course of action.

The visit was hard going. Karen's relationship with her mother is difficult to say the least and not my place to detail here. Her mother is frustrated by her inability to communicate as fluently as she'd like, she's uncomfortable, in pain, tired and not entirely satisfied with the nursing home they moved her into on Friday - but she's aware that, after her shock announcement, remaining at home was going to be an impossibility.

Anyway, the visit went better than Karen and I had thought it would - she was in better condition than we imagined but, of course, this will deteriorate as the lack of food and medication begin to bite. Nobody likes to ask "how long" but that is the question that is never far away. We took the boys and they coped admirably with, what must be to them, quite a scary sight: a very old human being who looks both human and not, who frequently groans out loud, not from pain, but from anger and frustration and who is unable to reassure them about what she is going through. It is a scary situation for anybody - and I worked 10 years in a nursing home for the elderly so am reasonably used to it. We said our goodbyes - unsure if they were final or not; unsure of how many more we could reasonably expect - and then tried to make the best of the trip down to Cookham by taking the kids for a walk along the Thames before getting fish and chips and heading home. Karen and I will try and head back down in the week unless events demand a more immediate response.

So that was the week that was but that I wish was wasn't. And why I haven't been so alacritous with updating this blog. Bear with me, people, this is a bumpy ride.

Book End

Despite not having wall cavity insulation the family homestead is always a toasty sanctuary even in the deepest cold of winter.

This, I am sure, is down to the sheer number of books that line our walls and bookshelves. Both Karen and I love books and, when we threw our lot in together, we found that we both gained through the other’s avidly acquisitional nature the equivalent of an entire rain forest’s worth of books.

I swear to God we have so many books it is probably not worth us ever buying new wallpaper. You can’t see the bloody walls so why bother with a nice bit of William Morris?

Although I’ve shed a few books over the years (half-hearted attempts at life laundry) I have on the whole always regretted such endeavours. A book is for life, not just for Christmas. They are old friends. Old haunts. Places of comfort, recovery and healing.

And when a book is particularly good I always plan in my heart to read it again. To pass that way at least one more time.

But you know what it’s like: there’s always a backlog of new books to get through – a most pleasurable chore if ever there was one – the chances of me re-reading the majority of my favourite books is a slim one at best but I’ve always lived in hope.

It is surely a sign of increasing agedness that that hope is beginning to wane.

I’m actually re-reading an old favourite at the moment – the first in a series of 14 that I plan to plough all the way through in an orgy of escapism – a book I first read 22 years ago. The final part was only published last year – a couple of years after the author’s death. This huge epic tale was the last story he ever wrote so it all gives my return to his world a certain frisson.

To sink into a familiar world with characters who are old friends is as comfy-making as drinking hot chocolate in bed and watching an old movie. It is good for the soul. And it makes me think how right I was to hang onto these books and not pass them on or sell them or throw them out. And it confirms in me the stance that I shall never be parted from these books because I would love the opportunity to read them again one more time.

But then it hit me.

If it’s taken me 22 years to re-read the first am I ever going to re-read them again? In another 22 years? In my sixties? If I’m lucky I might manage another rendezvous in my eighties but, really, how likely is that? I might be reading The Lady at that point – and that only for feeble titillation purposes.

I was a young naïve man when I first read this book. And now I’m a middle aged slightly learned man. Certainly I’m grumpier and more cynical.

And life seems shorter.

Too short to read all the new books I want and certainly too short to re-read all of the old ones.

I have to face facts: there are books within my horde that I am just never going to get to read again – no matter how much I might wish to and no matter how much I might try to never buy a new one (that would just be a fool’s labour).

But still I can’t bear to part with any of them.

They don’t just keep the house warm, you see… they keep me warm too.

Large Print

Even those who view eBooks and Kindles with suspicion, hostility and derision will, one day, come to see them as having an invaluable saving grace. Though this brave proclamation does very much depend on the vanity of the Kindle-hater in order for it to come to pass.

See, time was, many moons ago I worked in a nursing home for the elderly. It was without doubt or the word of a lie the happiest time of my life career-wise. Even the many sad departures of the inmates did little to dent my blind, arrogant comfort in my own youth and immortality. I was young and untouchable (sadly a rare condition in this day and age).

But one thing did give me a little wobble at the cellular spiritual level.

Large print books.

The home had its own collection which was augmented by a travelling library. Awful abridged Catherine Cookson-esque tomes with print the size of the shop sign outside Specsavers. Stories of days gone by, stories of balls, horses, steam boats, emigration to the Americas and the redemption of cross-class love during the futility of war. And Wooster-ish men with nicknames like Chippy or Tiddler.

One day, that little voice in my head used to say, you’ll be reading books like that. You won’t want to but you’ll have no choice but to ‘cos there’s no way they’ll have large print sci-fi or large print fantasy. All you’ll have is ladies in ball gowns and men in tweed jackets with shrapnel in their left leg called Rupert. The men are called Rupert, by the way, not the shrapnel.

And you won’t die of old age but of shame. There’ll be no way to hide it. The books are so big and the print so large everybody will know. Everybody will know that you are reading large print OAP “period” romance and quite probably re-reading the same sentence over and over again due to the onset of dementia. And that will be worse because it means the shame will be forever fresh and you’ll never ever get acclimatized to it, instead you will discover it anew each time you re-read that single sentence. Over and over again. God, this print is a bit big. And who the hell is Tiddler? Oh God. Please tell me I’m not... oh God, I am... I am... I... ooh this looks an interesting book. I may as well give it a go to relieve the boredom. Here we go, chapter one, page one. Tiddler? That’s a funny name for a hero... Is it a kid’s book?

And so on.

Enter Kindle and its ilk stage right.

You can now set the text size to positively cinematic and only you need to know. You can read whatever you want, however you want. Pot boilers, Pentecostal treaties or porn. Nobody can tell what the hell you’re reading and you look cool. You’re own little private reading world. And best of all Kindle always knows which page you’re on so even if you don’t know that you’ve already read page 43 Kindle does which gives you some hope of eventually getting to the end before you, er, get to the end.

Marvellous.

And sales of Catherine Cookson may even very well go up as the younger generation decides to bite the bullet early without fear of discovery and ridicule...

It’s a win-win situation.

Sorry. I said: it’s a win-win situation!

Back

I spat the dummy and now I'm sucking it back up again.

I had a hissy-fit, I was hasty, I erred in anger.

Or something like that.

Giving up Bloggertropolis has been harder than I thought it would be. It's been like having an arteficial limb that has seen me compete in the paralympics suddenly ripped off and denied me.

Plus my wife has pointed out that (a) Bloggertropolis is a weird kind of family annal that we and the kids can look back on when Karen and I are old and grey and the kids have booked us into the Tombstone Express Nursing Home and remember the good old bad old days and (b) I am advertizing myself as a writer - flaunting my novels and poetry - and it rather undoes all that good marketing if visitors to this blog then find I'm "no longer writing" anymore.

So with apologies I am kind of back.

My other writing projects will continue (Lord knows I have another novel to write even as I continue to push The Great Escapes of Danny Houdini onto unreceptive agents) but alongside them will be Bloggertropolis. Probably not as it was before. The posts may be a little more infrequent and out of the blue. But continue they shall.

And it feels right.

I am going to have my cake and eat it.

And if that's a hissy fit, well, I love it.

I'm getting all diva on yo' ass and there ain't  a thing you can do about it.

Except, er, maybe not read my posts...

Whatever Happened To My Ergonomic Butt?

Some people might put it down to my being thin. I’m one of Pharaoh’s lean kind, as my Nan would have said. I’ve always been slim. No excess fat. No padding. No upholstery.

The package is the product.

But by all the gods of DFS I cannot sit on a park bench for more than 30 seconds before my butt starts killing me.

I mean, real got-to-scoot-about-a-bit-right-now-before-my-buttocks-implode agonizing pain.

Is this normal? Is it just me? Because I am very aware that there other people – kids, young mums, oldsters, etc – who all hang around the park and seem able to deposit their derrieres onto the benches for upwards of an hour at a time and sit there smiling and laughing as if they have just immersed their assorted buns into a giant vat of soothingly cool Nivea skin cream.

They don’t fidget or grimace or wish they’d brought some kind of floatation device.

So there must be a marked difference between their butts and mine. It doesn’t come down to trunk size or the firmness of the pillows... ‘cos some of those old folks are so skeletal they’re in danger of falling between the slats.

Somehow my buttocks are missing the comfort chromosome; the rest-easy gene.

Park benches must obey some kind of ergonomic design plan but I seem to be the exception to that particular rule. My butt is outside their design envelope. My pert cheeks are in ergonomic exile.

I am plainly not meant to take a comfort break in a park or ever, ever be seated in one.

Harrumph!

It’s really not fair.

And the police wonder why I hide in the bushes...

A Nerd’s Penance

In a move sure to alienate my remaining 9 readers I must here apologize to Red Dwarf.

I wronged you.

Back in your heyday I was proud to be a Red Dwarf geek. I watched religiously. I used the word “smeg”. And I wore your T-shorts with unironic pride. Smoke Me A Kipper I’ll Be Back For Breakfast was the one I was most proud of.

But during series 7 things went awry. The writing duo split due to artistic differences. Chris Barrie left meaning that Arnold Rimmer – always the lynchpin of the show for me – disappeared. I felt you lost your way. And because of that I never gave series 8 a chance. I was too quick to spot faults or take you to task over some comedic departure. And as for the 3-part special a couple of years ago... I got as far as recording Back To Earth but never watched it. I caught a glimpse of the middle episode and it all seemed too wrong. It all seemed too lazy and obvious. A storyline that treated the viewer with contempt. Like Bobby appearing in the shower in Dallas.  And the cast looked old and haggard. They looked like the residents of a nursing home dressed up in Dizzee Rascal’s cast-offs. Even Kryten had a paunch. I stopped recording and hit delete.

Red Dwarf was dead to me.

The nerd dream was over.

But this year, in an effort to teach our eldest boy about comedy and the joy of the classic British sitcom, we started working our way through the various boxed sets that I own. I had the complete Red Dwarf – minus the final 3-parter – and thought that the early ones at least exemplified all that was great and good about a classic British underdog sitcom.

To my surprise series 7, when we got to it, wasn’t as bad as I remembered it. And as for series 8... well spin my nipple nuts and ship me off to Alaska... series 8 was rather good. Considerably fine in places.

I’d misjudged the show. I can see now that, at the time, I’d become too precious about it. Too unyielding in my expectations. Sure Rimmer was a loss in series 7 but the Kochanski storylines added a bit of depth. And everybody’s return in series 8, although originally seen as a cop out, actually worked. Rimmer and Lister sharing a prison cell actually returned the show to what it had always been about. Banter. Dialogue. Not special effects and huge studio sets. Just the cut and thrust of insult and counter-insult.

Why did I not see this at the time?

I took a chance and bought the final 3-parter. We all watched it with baited breath.

Sure, the crew all looked old and haggard. But that kind of worked. They’d aged and mellowed. The script reflected this. And bugger me if Craig Charles, as Lister, didn’t even actually do some proper acting in a few of the scenes. Tears and wobbly upper lip and everything. And the Blade Runner pastiche worked too. The homage elevated the story and gave it some drive and purpose. A fitting final curtain call as curtain calls for sci-fi sitcoms go.

For those of you who are scorning this post... just take an honest look at yourselves. I bet a fair few of you were there in the early years. Watching. Laughing. Red Dwarf was our sitcom. It was our show. Sure we outgrew it, moved on, no longer thought it was nerd-cool enough. But for a time we had a bond.

All I’m saying is, it might be worth giving it a second go. A review.

If I still had my Smoke Me A Kipper T-shirt I’d be wearing it again today. And though the pride might be a bit self-conscious it would, nevertheless, still be there.

I want to lie shipwrecked and comatose, drinking fresh mango juice...

You Have Lovely Eyes But I’m Not Expecting Sex

A friend of mine told how an old workmate of his, hitting retirement age, got himself
into trouble one day whilst carrying out some work he’d been contracted to undertake in a
suite of offices. Apparently he told one of the female workers there that she had “lovely
eyes”.

I must admit my initial reaction was, “there are far worse things he could have said”. My
mate’s reply was, “yeah, he could have told her she was effing dopey”.

I could see this conversation was going nowhere productive fast so I let it drop but
mentally it stayed with me.

Part of me thinks Mr Contractor was plainly of that generation that considered it
normal if not a man’s right to comment positively on a gorgeous filly’s attributes. I’m
sure he meant nothing lascivious about it and imagined himself as being rather charming
and gallant. But another part of me can see the other side of it. He was a stranger to
the office – an outside contractor – and his comments were over familiar and totally
outside the scope of his works... which I’m sure were along the painting and decorating
lines rather than “let me sell the wonderfulness of your own body to you Gok Wan style”.

And old boy or not he cannot fail to have noticed that things have moved on in the world
and people conduct themselves very different these days compared to the Carry On
shenanigans of the 1950’s and 1960’s. He plainly made the girl very uncomfortable and she
complained about it as was her right. And Mr Contractor got the type of dressing down he
wasn’t expecting.

Does this scenario sadden you or not though?

Is it sad that we can’t offer free, gratuitous compliments to the people around us? Lord
knows there’s plenty of people around happy to bestow the fruits of their negativity upon
all and sundry at the merest drop of a hat. Why can’t we offer niceties and good wishes?

The trouble is, I suspect, that deep down, such compliments as Mr Contractor was offering
weren’t entirely free and without imposition. Even if he were the most decent upstanding
guy in the world if you peel back the layers of civility and courtesy I’m pretty sure
you’d get down to the dirty little nub at the core.

Sex.

It’s a sad fact of life that guys tend to not show an interest in a woman unless he, on
some level, fancies her. You might disagree. You might argue. I’ve had this fact of life
told me by several different women who were quite blasé and even accepting of it and I
was hard pressed really to refute their claim. Most men I’ve met have merely replied,
“yeah?” to the accusation in a tone of voice that unmistakably says, “so what?”

So when a man you’ve never met before offers you flowers or smells your hair and asks if
you are or if you aren’t... it’s because deep down he wants to get into your knickers.
He’s looking for the compliment to be well received. He’s looking for that blush response
and a slight coquettishness. Maybe even a giggle and a bit of badinage. He’s looking for
an opening. He’s looking for that little green light which will lead him to imagine that
he is undeniably, irrefutably “in”. He’s still got it. He’s still The Man.

The chances of sex occurring is, of course, for most people absolutely minimal. But it is
sex that is at play undoubtedly.

And in this day and age to do the subliminal sex-thing is bloody dangerous. We, of
course, all know it as flirting.

But you know what? I think flirting should be a privilege of having got to know someone.
I realize context is an issue here and behaviour in a nightclub or a pub is vastly
different to our everyday living and working environments... but on the whole, flirting
should only be done with someone that you’ve already got to know. So you both know how
far you can push it. So you know where the boundaries are. So you are both comfortable
with each other. There needs to already be in place a foundation – an association – that
goes beyond simple caveman boy-girl attraction.

And in this context flirting is fine, healthy and can inject some enjoyment in what is
probably otherwise a very dull day.

If flirting came in a tin is would have the following printed on it: Men! Don’t try this on
strangers, you will merely come off as sleazy.

Flirting still occurs in the modern world but the rules of engagement have changed. And
changed for the better in my opinion.

See, if I tell you that you have lovely eyes I am merely solidifying our friendship. I
don’t want sex of any sort. I just want to buddy you up.

However, if I tell you that you’re effing dopey it’s safe to assume that you are not on
my buddy list at all.

Cresting The Brow Of The Hill

It is with a sense of low level panic that I write this post. A slow sense of dread has been creeping up on me of late. I’m not sure why it’s slow or even creeping because I can’t run that fast anymore and I’m sure my hearing is going.

Mortality is starting to fart its stale odour into my face.

I’m starting to feel old and, worse, see the traditional effects of old age start to work on me. I feel like a chalk cliff who knows that the waves pounding at its base aren’t going to go anywhere and are going to stay there for the long haul and keep grinding away until all that is left of me is a little tiny nub that not even my totally utilitarian Maths teacher would use to write out a quadratic equation.

Let’s look at the evidence.

My sleep pattern has completely changed in a matter of years. Gone are the halcyon nights when I’d put my head down and be out for the count for a good 8 hours+, all the way through, not a peep out of me until morning. Now I wake several times a night, more often than not with a bladder that is not exactly bursting but nonetheless refuses to hold onto its minute charge.

My back twinges when I do physical activity and twinges when I don’t. I’m terrified my spine is going to do a 911 – only without the unwanted intervention of a couple of passenger jets.

Food. Food is becoming a problem. Should I be faced with an all-you-can-eat buffet now I’d probably turn my nose up at half of it. Bacon gives me painful wind. Certain beans appear to want to pummel my duodenum as they pass through it. Mixing 2 types of meat within 24 hours seems to recreate the Clash of the Titans in my gut and onions (which I love) guarantee that any waste material will soon be motoring out of my sphincter like money out of my bank account. Yes. That fast.

Mere years ago I could eat anything. Anything at all. I had the constitution of a ox. Give me another couple of years and I’ll be wanting all of my food mashed and will swap a knife and fork for a straw.

And don’t get me started on my eyesight. I know I wear glasses so have problems anyway... but bloody hell. Subtitles need to be big print. Any kind of electronic text on the telly – Ceefax (does that still exist?), digibox menus, etc – seems to blur and morph like the word verification most of you guys use on your blogs. And don’t get me started on the back of DVD boxes. Most of the time all I want to find is the running time before I choose to watch something (‘cos I like to be curled up bed with a large print book by 9.30) but (a) I can never find it and (b) when someone points out its location the print is too small for me to read. Too small! And bringing the box closer to my eyes only makes it worse! I’m supposed to be short-sighted, for Heaven’s sake!

And yet, the one positive through all this is that I don’t look old. I don’t look 42. I look ten years younger. Clean and healthy living, see?

But what good is this if I’m wearing out fast on the inside?

I don’t want to be the best looking bloke in the care home!

There are only so many bed baths a day that a good looking guy can take...

All Hail My Hair

I’ve never expressed my love for my hair before but I feel it is time to get personal and say the words that are sprouting in the deepest chamber of my heart.

My hair, I love you. More than that I am grateful to you for sticking around for so long.

I know 42 years doesn’t sound much. Certainly not when Canadian Redwoods can live up to a thousand years and Bruce Forsythe’s grip on life seems to be eternal. But if I’m honest I didn’t think you’d make it through my twenties.

My dad showed distinct signs of male pattern baldness in his early twenties – receding hairline at front, sides and rear. The monk’s pate soon revealed itself.

I felt that Fate was surely waiting in the wings to cruelly crop my luscious tawny brown curls. It would only be a matter of time.

In my late teens I made the decision to grow my hair long. I’ll make the most of it while I’ve got it, I thought. And for the next decade I wore my hair down to my waist.

It thinned a little I’ll admit. I braced myself for that first small tell-tale hole in the carpet to appear.

But it didn’t. It wore thin. It got a little threadbare. But full depletion never occurred. I outgrew my long hair. In my thirties I got it cut and went for a more respectable, shorter, office friendly length.

I feared this sudden change in volume and weight might trigger off a seismic follicle reaction which would see my locks leaping off my head like hirsute lemmings.

But no.

Here we are over ten years later and – though various stray fibres make escape bids daily in the shower or on my comb – largely my riah has remained securely in place.

And now I’m getting my hopes up. I’m beginning to get confident that maybe my lugs are here for the long haul. That me and my quiff are destined to share a worm-eaten box together in God’s good brown earth, destined to be examined and carbon dated by a hologramatic version of Tony Robinson in the year 2678 (a date that I have just typed in at random).

I know that the odds are stacked against me: work stress, youngest boy about to start school next September, eldest boy approaching teen-hood, my complete and utter contempt of Grecian 2000... all agents of the dreaded demon of depilation... but I feel that the roots of my hair run deep. We are bonded in ways that are unbreakable. Unassailable.

Not even Delilah herself would dare mess with my mane.

My ruff is too rough to be ravaged by mere Philistines.

So take a good look at me, Old Age! I’m coming for you permed and preened like Jon Bon Jovi in his heyday! Look upon my locks and weep oh poor denuded ones!

Hair today. Hair forever.

Amen.

This was a public service announcement brought to you on behalf of my hair. Thank you for bristling.

Clapped Out

So, my celebration of all things Middle Aged and mature only lasted until Wednesday of this week.

My enjoyment of the view from the brow of the hill lasted but a transient moment before I lost my footing and found myself hurtling down the other side towards degeneracy, using my perfectly formed buttocks as a makeshift toboggan.

As said Daryl Hannah put it in Bladerunner – “accelerated decrepitude”.

How did this come to pass?

Two reasons.

The first, which due to the secrets act both official and unofficial I can’t reveal to you in any detail, has had me shifting, carrying, humping (not in a good way), erecting (ditto), deconstructing and painting pretty much constantly for the last 5 days. The first two days were a nice workout. After that it became a war of attrition which the recuperative powers of my body started to lose alarmingly. I found myself thinking, I’m 42, I’m not a spring chicken anymore. I know, I know. 42 is hardly one foot in the grave but really, when you compare yourself to twenty-something colleagues it is hard not to find oneself in a downer.

The second reason is linked to the first in the sense that the first has exacerbated the problem: painful feet. Agonizing feet. On one foot I seem to have a callus forming on the underside of my little toe. So much so I fear it is developing a hard-shell and will soon be harvested by Rick Stein for one of his Cornish seafood eateries. On the other foot I have a bugger of a corn on the side of my second-to-little toe. It is generating so much pain and heat when I walk on it that I am considering taking up fire-walking by way of achieving some kind of relief.

I am, of course, following a treatment of corn removal plasters purchased from the local chemist. Each day I pull the plaster off the corn sticks it’s head out a bit more – a bit a like a tortoise coming out of hibernation. It feels like a biggee. A deepee. So deep in fact that it reminds me of those hollow drill things that archaeologist / geo-physics people use to take core samples from the earth that go back to Iron Age ground levels. When this beauty comes out it is going to have my pre-natal stem cells perched right on the end of it and possibly a good dollop of bone marrow to boot.

In the meantime I am hobbling about so much like an old man that my wife has taken to wincing whenever she sees me – which may explain the dark sunglasses she wears whenever we are out together and the fact she usually walks on the other side of the road to me.

Ho hum.

Well, she’ll be sorry when I draw out my pension next week – she can go and buy her own surgical stockings. And if she thinks she can borrow my false teeth again to eat toffee she can just forget it. I’m going to speak to the Matron right now and demand separate rooms!

Bah humbug!

Officially Middle Aged

That’s it. I’m at the brow of the hill. I’m looking down at the giddy descent into old age.

The sign post that I am leaning on whilst I catch my breath says “Middle Aged”.

How do I know this?

Matt Smith told me. Steven Moffat told me. The BBC told me.

In short, Doctor Who told me.

Years ago, I would have been all over Amy Pond (played by Karen Gillan) like (to quote Sandy Cheeks from Spongebob Squarepants) ugly on an ape (Gorilla Bananas: no offense intended). She would have ignited day dreams and night dreams so hot and puerile that the script writers of The Inbetweeners would have recoiled in horror and told me to grow up. Luscious lips, long red hair, long legs and a lust-worthy Scottish accent. I mean, can you imagine anything sexier than being bossed about sexually by someone who sounds like a rebel from Balamory? I dinnae care what ye wannae doo – jus’ git doon there an’ git busy, yer filthy, dirty little Sassenach...

Yes, ma’am!

But the flames have not been ignited. I look at Amy Pond and I see the lips and the hair and the legs and I think, Christ, I hope she’s warm enough; I hope her mother sent her to work with a nice thermos flask of hot soup and one of those high fibre bars with chunks of fruit in it. She’s so young. She ought to have a chaperone on set. I hope she’s being looked after properly. I hear her accent and I hear my gran from Scotland asking me if am doing well at school and would I like another Werther’s Original?

I have reached that age when I am automatically filtering out girls like Amy Pond from my fantasy directory. I am rubber stamping her in my mind with the words Not Age Appropriate.

But more than this, what tells me most of all that I have embraced middle age is the discovery that my fires are now being ignited by the older woman. Because while Amy Pond might not be wetting my whistle, River Song (played by Alex Kingston) most definitely is. My whistle is positively drowning in wetness.

Sorry. Possibly too much info.

River Song is magnificent. River Song is sexy. Wild hair. Décolletage that could conceal an AK-47 and a few hundred spare rounds. Beautiful lips and forever arching upward eye brows. And most of all an attitude that exudes knowing confidence and a sense of being more than comfortable with herself.

Like I said: magnificent.

What sums it up best for me is after regenerating in last Saturday’s episode into the River Song we all know and love she took one look at herself and oozed, “ooh, it’s all going on down there isn’t it...? I feel so... mature.”

Mature in that second, in the way River Song enunciated it, became profoundly OK. It became sexy and desirable. It became exciting and fun. It became wicked in the very, very best way.

So yeah. I’m on the brow of the hill. And I’m leaning on that sign that says “Middle Aged”. But only as a precursor to pole dancing with it.

Does anyone care to join me?

Howlin’ Mad Murdoch

Being of weak moral persuasion and a sucker for an old git in distress I found myself having a turncoat moment this week when I saw and read about the custard pie being thrust into the face of Rupert “Dr Evil” Murdoch.

I know he’s an avaricious, power grasping, devious, underhanded media mogul who cares little for the little man on the street other than how much spare change he’s willing to throw at his scurrilous newspapers and his satellite channels. I know he probably didn’t ask too many questions about how his minions acquired their scoops and exclusives other than “how little money do you want in your redundancy pay-off if you don’t get the story?” I know he looks like Arthur Askey in a baseball cap.

But, come on, guys. He’s 80 years old! He’s probably attached to a colostomy bag. He probably can’t remember the names of those closest to him (which is why he said of Rebekah Brooks – “my priority is to look after this one”). He’s probably being fed a diet of Viagra pills just so that his aides have something to keep him wedged upright under his desk with when he attends board meetings.

He’s an old man.

Sure, in the past I have spat at the mere mention of SKY. Sure I have wiped my metaphorical arse on the pages of The News Of The World. Sure I have lampooned all that he has stood for.

But a custard pie in the putz of an old man?

Is that an appropriate protest? Is that an appropriate way to display displeasure?

Isn’t it like Regan pulling Gloucester’s beard in King Lear? Ignobly done?

I know, I know. How much more ignoble have Murdoch’s minions behaved in their phone hacking activities? There can be few things lower than sifting through other people’s personal grief just to sell a few newspapers.

But even so. A custard pie in the face of an old man? It’s just not cricket, is it?

I don’t doubt the custard pie thrower (Phanton Flan Flinger – remember him, TISWAS fans?) thought he was striking a blow for us all.

“I was doin’ it for justice wun I? Doin’ it for you’s lot and all the uvvers that Murdoch and his team ‘ave trampled all over. Power to the people!”

Except he wasn’t, was he? He was doing it to get on the telly, for self publicity, to get (ironically) into the newspapers and (if he had any kind of business acumen) to publicise a new chain of pie shops that he’s about to open.

This whole thing has been enough of a circus as it is. And while I’d be quite happy to see Rebekah Brooks flung about in a skimpy leotard and fishnets on a trapeze (with me lying on the safety net down below) I don’t really want to have to witness Horlicks the Clown (standing in while Co-Co is on sabbatical) lowering proceedings even further with a short crust pastry base and whipped cream from a can.

Can we have a bit of dignity please? It’s been in short supply all round through this fiasco and would make a really nice change.

The Road Reluctantly Travelled

Is it normal to take the long way round on your journey to work?

To delay the inevitable?

I can remember, years ago, back when my pass badge was shiny and the photo printed on it featured a young man bristling with enthusiasm and a full bead, that I would march to work with a spring in my step and a skip in my stride. So much so that one day a motorcycle traffic cop, a builder and a Native American Indian in full head-dress accosted me in the street and asked me to join their colourful band of deep throated singers.

I declined but now I’m wondering if that was a wise career move.

Because the spring has been replaced with a shoulder droop and the skip has been replaced with a foot drag reminiscent of someone who’s been hitched up to a chain gang. For those of you who are familiar with the work of Charlie & Lola... I have developed a “Lola walk”. The kind she employs when life is particularly bad. When she’s lost her satchel or ripped her Lelli Kellys.

And I am starting to take the ‘long way round’ to work.

It started with a few detours around the block. Alternative routes that covered more or less the same ground but from a different direction.

But then I started to become more adventurous. I started pushing the temporal envelope, pushing the flexibility of my start time. I started going all round the houses. Started trying to listen to entire album’s worth of music on my MP3 player (bear in mind that the journey at its quickest takes a mere 15 minutes). Started searching for old ladies to help across the road and refusing to go into work until I’d found one. In the end I had to improvise. I had to dress up as an old lady myself and help myself across the road. Have you any idea how long it takes to cross a road when your colostomy bag isn’t properly fastened?

Now, I fear, I am taking things too far. I am booking trains to Manchester and wondering if I can get in a bit of shopping before I head into the office. I am eyeing up flights to New York because I figure that paying my respects at Ground Zero would be an honourable way to start my working day.

Is this normal?

Is this behaviour indicative of some, as yet, unnamed malaise?

Answers on a job application form to the normal address, please.

Gimme Some Of Your Attention

As I get older I am getting more intolerant.

Shit-intolerant. Stress intolerant. Niggle intolerant.

I confess as I wend my way through the narrow, dark, dank passages of life it is the little things that annoy me more. Which isn’t to say the big things don’t bug me. They do. But they’re so big I can philosophize about those. Make them part of a theme of moaning that actually gives my life journey a bit of impetus.

But the little things trip me up. Make me gnash my teeth. Make me spit feathers.

A ridiculously pimped up car is one of those things. And I realize that by definition a pimped up car will always be ridiculous. You know the type I mean. Hub caps with chrome spokes that look like something off Ben-Hur’s racing chariot. Fins on the back that look like they’ve been designed by a Great White shark but applied by Harry Hill’s tailor. Windows so black you suspect the occupants have coughed up all the tar from their lungs at a single sitting.

Now I know what you’re thinking.

These idiots have a right to spend their hard earned money how they like. I mean, it’s not easy selling drugs to kids these days or keeping your bling up with the Jones’s. Why should it bother me?

It bothers me because the drivers of these prattmobiles cannot drive past another car or pedestrian without slowing down or gunning the engine so loudly it sounds like a consumptive bull elephant.

They want people to turn around. They want people to crane their necks and eyeball the daft-punk homage to moulded plastic that they have created with their ill-gotten gains and they’re GCSE in woodwork.

They want to be noticed.

And I refuse to notice them. Refuse to.

Well. Strictly that’s not true. I refuse to acknowledge them.

Call me petty. Call me silly. But when one of these souped-up cock-wagons rolls past I deliberately turn my back on it and look the other way. I have also been known, on occasion, to randomly select a blade of grass from the verge before me and admire it intensely and theatrically as the baseball capped driver behind me desperately ups his rev count in an attempt to snare my attention.

It’s not happening, mate. I’m in love with photosynthesis. On your bike. Oh, and by the way, your exhaust needs sorting out.

And thus they drive away, their curses and imprecations drowned out by the high decibel dirge that invariably emanates from their in-car speakers. Some R&B bollocks sung by a woman who can’t sing a simple “oh” but has to sing “oooo-eer-urgh-ewww-oo-o-o-oh” instead.

They might look happy as they nod their heads in time with the music and take a toke on that scaff-pole sized spliff.

But really they’re crying inside.

Crying, sobbing and bleating: “Why is he ignoring me? Why is he ignoring me?”

And that makes me pimptastically happy.

With bloody great fins on.

Hiccups And Bile

A ragbag post this as due to a poor night’s sleep (due to a bad stomach) my brain feels like it’s been given the full works by Colonel Sanders.

I arrived at work this morning and realized that I wasn’t as popular as I once thought I was the moment that someone else got the “mwah mwah dahling” hug and air-kiss treatment while my greeting was very much an afterthought. An “oh hello there I didn’t see you beavering away beneath that rock and now that we’ve made eye contact I’d better acknowledge you just to maintain appearances” sort of look.

I responded with an Inspector Zen-like look of subtlety and European enigma but I suspect I merely looked like I was fighting to keep an unhealthy amount of flatulence safely contained within my gut.

Which funnily enough, I was. It was something I ate. A homemade chicken and bacon pie last night. I’m fine with chicken. I’m fine with bacon. I’m fine with pie. But for some reason, now that I have clocked over 40 years on the ol’ age-o-metre, I find that my stomach is starting to rebel against some really bizarre and nominally innocuous food stuffs. I mean what could be less offensive than chicken and bacon? (I, of course, address this question to all non-vegetarians in the audience – thank you for coming; do try the veal.) I’ve eaten both for years but suddenly, over the last 12 months, my colon has decided that as a combo the 2 taken together are poison. My guts swell up and produce gas which my body refuses to let go off and I am in pain as a consequence.

My wife, when I tell her of this, looks at me with eyes that speak volumes of the years and years of IBS she has suffered and I can hear the words “now you know it feels like” sung by invisible angelic voices over my right shoulder. The guy over my left is pulling his pants down and farting.

I suspect I may be clinically insane at this point in my blog.

And then to top it all I seem to have been embroiled against my will in a row with another work colleague from another department for reasons I can’t go into here but suffice it to say I am innocent of all wrong doing (apart from nicking a biro from the stationery cupboard once a number of years ago). Sadly I am being held responsible for things I have no responsibility for and this person is refusing to take my calls, emails and offers of free pens.

I am not someone who co-exists with ill feeling at all well but have done all I can to clarify my position so I am content to let the hurricane exhaust itself on the beach before I venture out to sea again with that particular sailor. No jokes about Seaman Staines please.

And lastly, whilst examining my blogging stats in the way one examines one’s navel, I noticed that one of the search terms that has driven traffic to my blog over recent weeks has been “hiccups and bile”.

How very apt.

Monday is it? Time for some Boomtown Rats, I reckon. Ta ta.

Am I An Old Perv? No, Don’t Answer That

So it’s Saturday and I’ve been sucked into kid’s telly and I’m watching Dani’s House with my boys and I’m marvelling at how the girl that used to play Tracey Beaker has (seemingly overnight) blossomed into a hot young chicklet and the TV gets turned over because other household members (how dare they usurp my ownership of the remote control) have decided that 3 back-to-back episodes of Dani’s House is 2 episodes too many (hey not my fault if the BBC resorts to lazy scheduling at the weekends).

“Hey, I was watching that!” I cry.

“I’m sure you were, you old perv!” Comes the reply.

What? Old perv? Me?

I’m about to spew out the kind of retort that would have had Oscar Wilde creaming his fustian trousers when I stop short.

Am I an old pervert? Is the accusation well based?

Because suddenly I’m aware of a whole body of evidence stacked up against me, most of it (it has to be said) penned by my own hand. This here blog.

Post after post extolling the virtues of various TV stars. Katie McGrath, Alice Roberts, Lucy Griffiths, Cheryl Ladd, Emma Watson, Julia Sawalha... the list goes on and on.

The trouble is, right from a young age, I had an eye for eye candy. At 9 years of age I was heartily in love with Charlie’s Angels. All of them though Cheryl Ladd was definitely my queen bitch.

And this penchant for giving the glad eye to TV babes continued through my teen years and my lonely twenties. But it was fine back then. Acceptable. It’s what lonely guys who can’t get a girlfriend do. Er, so I’ve been told.

And then I hit my thirties and, gulp, despite getting myself all-girled-up I’m still casting a roving fantasy eye over the TV and the cinema. But hey. That’s us men for you. And, by Jove, you women too ‘cos I know from reading around the blogosphere that you lassies are also prone to a bit of butch visual confectionary.

It’s normal. And I’m at pains to point this out because it is my only defence.

But now I’ve just tiptoed into my 40s. And suddenly the balance has shifted. It’s starting to feel uncomfortable. Back when I was younger fancying a young bit of stuff on the telly was acceptable. Hell, Juliet was only a teenager and Romeo (so I’m led to believe) only in his twenties. And when I hit my thirties, well, if old goats and young lambs were acceptable to Jane Austen why should it bother me?

But now I’m in my 40’s and my 50’s are beckoning from the other side of the hill the fantasy element is beginning to become untenable. It’s beginning to verge on socially unacceptable.

And yet TV and the media are geared up to sell us sexy young things. We’re hit with it every day. It’s hard to resist.

I mean take Hermione from Harry Potter. Even Jimmy Carr makes gags about when it became acceptable to admit that you fancied her.

So. My question is: does acknowledging the beauty of much younger women make me an old perv? Should I perhaps be retraining myself to tune into eye candy of a different, much more mature sort? Should I be composing paeans to Thora Hird, Anne Widdicombe and Gillian McKeith? If I start mooning over them will that make me less of a pervert?

Or one that is far less easily understood?

Answers on the back of a lad’s mag to the usual address please...

Party Animal

Time was I’d be invited out onto the town and I’d spend the intervening hours anticipating the good time I’d undoubtedly have. The wine. The women. The song. The dancing in a suspended cage with only a sparkly boob-tube between my nips and the strobe-lit elements.

*cue sound of a stylus being ripped across a record*

OK. OK. That’s not strictly true. I’d actually spend most of the time panicking about what to wear, what I’d say to people (especially if they were of a female persuasion) and how I’d cope with the inevitable sense of despair and failure when I went home yet again without having managed to get myself a snog / shag / girlfriend.

*cue the sound of a stylus being tearfully lowered onto any record at all by The Smiths*

But what I didn’t do is what I frequently do now:

Which is spend my time miserably calculating how many hours of sleep I’m going to lose and how much more tired I’m going to feel the next day and how many early nights it will now take subsequent to the night out for me to fully recover my (already flagging) joie de vivre.

‘Cos to be honest I’m dead on my feet by 9pm most nights and there has to be something really good on the telly for me to stay awake and engaged past 10.

These are the combined effects of middle age, parenthood and a tendency to be anti-social in the first place.

It’s tempting to say I have never been a party animal. But going out for a drink with friends last night (on a work night? How daring!) has proven to me that, in fact, I am a party animal. I’m just a party animal of a certain type.

The type that looks like a kicked to death hound-dog the next day. The type whose bloodshot eyes resemble those of a dancing bear who has been slagged off by Bruno Tonioli for messing up the bogo pogo. The type whose snake breath could strip the bullet proof coating from a Chieftain tank at 50 paces.

The type that is, to put it plainly, not a happy bunny.

So. Post-drinks lesson learnt: partying is for spring chickens and not for old goats.

*sigh*

Excuse me, people, I need to go back to my sty and wallow...

Fudge It

I don’t consider myself a political animal.

And hey, I’m proclaiming that like it’s something to be proud of; in today’s world I suspect it’s probably not. But it is the truth. Sure I have opinions and gripes and an all encompassing faith that all politicians – despite the idealism they cherish in their youth – are essentially self serving, hardnosed, money grabbing staticians who have little or no understanding of the true nature of the common man’s reality. But essentially my understanding of politics is limited to what I see on the telly (Mock The Week, etc).

So with this piebald worldview in mind I soaked up the new UK budget with the usual sense of sourness and then some.

Due to all the scaremongering in the newspapers (entirely deliberate, I’m sure) this budget had taken on a real “do or die” feel. Deal or no deal. Some fat banker calling the shots while Uncle Noel pretended to be concerned and on your side.

Would they lower the threshold on child tax credits? Would the money Karen and I rely on to keep Tom at nursery and therefore both of us out at work still be there or would we be looking at one of us having to become a stay at home parent and still not earning enough money to pay all the bills?

Yes and no. We got a reprieve but the reprieve, the more I think about it, is going to be short-lived. I don’t profess to understand all the ins and outs, all the pie-charts and venn diagrams of who has lost what fortune and gained what pittance... but it seems to me (and this is backed up by common consent) that the cuts over the next few years are going to be disastrous for a lot of people. And my sector of local government is liable to be one of the ones hardest hit.

As usual it seems to me that the people at the bottom of the heap or those that are at the end of their tether are the ones who have been smited the most.

On a personal note, I’m not surprised but certainly not happy about them raising the retirement age. It little affects me but my father is desperately awaiting a knee-cap replacement operation – however, they won’t operate until after he has retired. This is due to be next year. He’ll hopefully squeak under the bar before the retirement age is changed. Otherwise he might find an extra 12 months tacked onto the end of his – already painful – wait. There’s bound to be other people in a similar position. I’ve long reconciled myself to probably having to work until I was 70 – and for many people that is the ideal; staying active is far healthier for you. But you know what? It’s always nice to have the choice. I think the choices for us all are going to become more and more limited as the next few years roll out.

All this is small fry, I know. Cuts have to be made. The debt must be shared. But as others have pointed out, if you cut a tree back too much you risk stopping it growing altogether.

And it seems to me that the trouble with the Tory’s is they’ve always been a little too free with their machetes when faced with the prospect of other people’s trees.

Chop chop. Slash slash. Do you like our new army helicopters?

Hmm.

I’m now wondering whether it’s worth my while planting any acorns at all.

Behold The Great God, Bladder!

I’ve heard it told that the older you get the more you are at the mercy of your bladder. Your waterworks – either the need to pee or a distinct lack of pee action – start to rule your day, your thoughts and your, er, movements.

Now I am not at that stage yet myself. I’m all tickety-boo in the genitourinary stakes. I can withhold or blast forth ‘pon a whim and hit a gnat (should I be venting outside) at 50 paces. Unlike Severn Trent I am not plagued by burst water mains or seasons of drought that result in a full hosepipe ban.

But I am aware that for others, my seniors, taking a pee-pee is sometimes of a pressing nature.

Now this being said I still have a duty to lock up the toilets in the building where I work at 5pm. Even if the Library are open until 8. The reasons for this are twofold. 1) Once the café is shut (at 5pm) we no longer have a legal requirement to keep the toilets open to the public. We used to but 2) when the toilets were previously left open on our late night openings there were invariably trashed, smashed, vandalized, violated by horse-sized poos, spattered with blood / broken glass / toilet paper, used by druggies to smoke, shoot, imbibe, photosynthesize, osmose and partake of rum chemical cocktails or used by amorous couples with no sense of romance whatsoever to grind, spoon, get jiggy, have-it-off, bonk, shag, have-a-quickie, and otherwise fill their boots with each other’s wanton flesh in the ammonia stained cubicles that have made our building famous.

Our poor loos were, in short, being used in a manner that they were never intended to be used for. So we started closing them at 5pm. We’ve been doing this now for nearly 4 years. And there are signs everywhere informing people of the impending 5pm loo embargo. It’s not like we’re shutting the door on someone’s colostomy bag without prior warning.

So it was with distinct displeasure that while I was performing my duties last week I got a verbal mauling from some old geezer wanting to “point Percy at porcelain”. “I’m sorry,” I told him, keys jangling earnestly in my hand, “but the toilets are closed at 5.” I even pointed at the sign on the wall to prove that I was not making it up and nor was it anything personal.

The man growled at me. Growled. Well, I’m assuming it was a growl and not the sound of his bladder bursting. “God,” he said. “I wish I had a job where I could close up at 5.” And with that he stormed off before I could even attempt to apologize for his lack of convenience or point him in the direction of some other facilities not 2 minutes walk away.

I must admit my first thought was: you old cantankerous git. Finish at 5? Finish at 5? I finish at 5.15, ahem. But that’s not the point. I am on the emergency call-out list and frequently get called back to the building to deal with alarm problems in the evening, late at night and the small wee (ha!) hours of the morning. So in a sense I never finish at 5 because I’m never bloody well off duty. Hence I like to make my escape as quick as I can at close of business each day and get home to see my wife and kids while I can and not be hovering around the toilets until 5.30pm or later extending the toilet service to bladder stragglers.

Now on occasion when someone is nice to me or is pregnant or is under the age of 5 and with a desperate parent in tow I will sometimes allow post-5pm peeing. But courtesy and politeness are an essential ingredient to this transaction. Rudeness gets you nowt. No please, no pees.

So take a lesson from this folks; should you ever come to Leamington Spa and visit the building wherein I work, the only p you’ll ever be required to part with when you want to spend a penny is a please. I don’t care how angry or swollen your bladder is. I don’t care what plagues it threatens to send forth from your nether regions – locusts, frogs or fiery ammonia – your bladder is not my god and I shall never ever worship it.

Just to make it even more clear: remember, I’m the one holding the keys to the toilets.

Hail to the King, baby.