End Of Year Arse-Wipe

Like my natural propensity for forgiveness, blogging hasn’t come easy this year. I’ve struggled. Not so much with ideas or subject matter – there is always some kind of fat that my mind is chewing over – but with inclination; the desire to write and by writing, sharing. “I can’t be bothered,” are the 4 most common (non)spoken words that the little voice inside my soul has thrown out at me this year. Can’t be bothered. And if I did write something who would be bothered to read it? Is it worth my time and effort? Will anybody miss it if I don’t write about it. Will anyone miss me if I overdose on Yorkie bars right now and drive my metaphorical 18 wheeler off the petty minded cliff edge of social media?

This is a bit of a turn around. When I first started writing this blog back in the heady days of 2006 my answer to most of the above questions would have been, “of course no one will miss it if I don’t write about it; of course they won’t miss me, mad fools that they are; and no, no-one really will be bothered to read anything at all that I write BUT I don’t care, I want to write it so I shall – if nothing else it will entertain me.”

And therein lies the problem, I fear. I am no longer entertaining myself. But like a starving tramp scouring the floor for dropped popcorn I still feel a duty to turn up at the theatre just in case I find a hot dog.

To be honest the last half of 2014 has been so unremittingly crap I haven’t wanted to write. I haven’t wanted to engage with the stuff that has been happening. Couple that with an estranged relative who has quite viciously taken against me and this here blog and feels I have no right to write about things that directly affect me if they also happen to affect her and has basically condemned my outpourings here as a feeble minded attempt to garner sycophantic approval from a bunch of faceless, equally needy and nerdy peers and you have the recipe for a perfect storm. Or at least a very wet weekend which makes you not want to get out of bed or do anything very exciting at all.

If I was in any way consistent I would stop writing. I would stop this blog and disappear.

But I can’t. I can’t quite give in. Instead I fudge and mither. I seek a halfway house. I try and instigate a cotton-wool rebellion. Softly softly not quite catchy monkey. I throw a hand grenade but make sure nobody is around to get hurt before I pull out the pin. This is not the spirit in which this blog was bathed at its inauguration.

But there you go. Older and wiser and all that. Certainly a darn sight more tired.

And a darn sight more underhand. For a very brief rundown of current events do visit here (most of you who are regular readers will find you have the correct access rights)… the general hoi polloi, however, will be unable to follow.

Sorry for the cloak and dagger stuff but some of it is quite sensitive and I really don’t want to be dealing with the inevitable fall-out from Estranged Relative (who is like the Argentinian Government to my blog’s quite innocent car registration number*).

Not sure if that makes me Jeremy Clarkson or Richard Hammond. Probably more likely to be James May.

So, going into 2015 there is some major booty that needs kicking (or otherwise dealing with). In the midst of all that though there might be the off-chance of acquiring a flattering girdle which may offer an attractive backdrop to some of life’s more sombre moments. But, like helium, so much of it is up in the air at the moment that it’s just not worth buying the balloon until things become more definite.

I will, however, try and reinvest this blog with a little more spirit and vigour in 2015. I will try and reclaim it for myself and go hang the dissenters. Because, maybe, just maybe, life it too short not to.

*Or possibly even the Mel B to my chirpy Micky Flanagan...

Crossing The Thin White Line

I've written frequent posts about Nigella on this blog. Originally because I quite like the cake-making queen of tease and then later because I was quite happy to acknowledge that she was good for my stats. Even now "Nigella Lawson hot" is one of my biggest referral terms and with her name once more in the headlines I'm receiving more hits than usual.

Are these new visitors seeking edification and information? Or just a nice picture of the curvy brunette spilling o-er her cups? I suspect the latter but that's by the by.

I kind of feel I owe Nigella's current predicament some kind of comment even though I'm sure she would rather I kept my nose out of it (no joke intended) as at the end of the day the accusations of cocaine abuse are nothing at all to do with me.

But of course this hasn't stopped the world and his dog offering a multitude of opinions on what are as yet unproven accusations by her embittered and estranged husband. Do you think he might be biased in his attempts to discredit her?

Part of me thinks that this story is not at all in the public interest. What goes on behind the closed doors of a marriage should stay behind those closed doors. But then I daresay Mr Saatchi would like to have used the same argument when the infamous throttling story hit the headlines. Though of course he did this in a public place not in the privacy of his own home. Or should that be "allegedly as well as"? And to be honest, domestic violence should never remain hidden away in the dark where it can be allowed to grow and spread like a virulent fungus.

But being a public figure, of course, makes almost anything at all that happens to a celeb "in the public interest". For me the idea of "public interest" has long taken on a moral dubiety but we'll leave that aside.

I hope the accusations of Nigella's cocaine use are false. I haven't read them, I must admit, or even watched the news. And yet somehow, via social media and gossip, the gist of the story has spread. I find it hard to believe that a ten year cocaine habit could have gone unnoticed and gone uncommented upon for so long. Mr Saatchi claims he has only just found out. What a truly dreadful husband he must be then. (1) Nigella turns to drugs (I surmise) to make life with him more bearable, (2) he's so dreadful he doesn't even notice and then (3) he increases his dreadfulness by bringing it to the attention of the tabloids and throws the kids into the mix at the same time. What a wonderful husband and father he must be. Even if we could waive aside the sundry acts of domestic violence.

Cocaine is a distasteful drug. It makes arseholes out of all who use it and bigger arseholes out of those who are already arseholes. Nigella has never struck me as being an arsehole. Of course, I could be wrong - I don't know her after all - and chasing the white rabbit could validate the myth of Nigella's constant munchie-runs to the fridge for midnight snacks as perpetuated by her many cookery programmes.

But I'm hoping Mr Saatchi just can't tell his icing sugar from his Esnortiar. Despite being married to Nigella for years he doesn't strike me as the kind of man who spends much time in the kitchen but would certainly have seen talcum powder being smudged across a glass topped coffee table from time to time. Any white powder at all is going to produce a big knee-jerk reaction from him.

Personally, next time I would recommend he try Tetramethylenedisulfotetramine.

After all, if Nigella has a rat in her kitchen, what's she gonna do?

Releasing Your Inner Vile

Just as parents in olden times warned their children not so stray from the forest path or to accept sweets from strangers or to go into a strange man’s house to look at some puppies so the modern parent must burden its offspring with some more up-to-date caveats. Cautionary notes based around imminent celebrity – because there are so many 15 minutes of fame flying around these days a kid has to be pretty abnormal not to have an agent or a regular day time interview slot on some plebeian television “magazine” show.

These celeb rules can be condensed into:

Never get involved with Radio One DJ’s, especially those that do a lot of charity fun runs.

Never be part of a kiddie band if you harbour any pretension of being taken at all seriously as a musician when you are grown up.

And lastly but not least, do not ever sign yourself up to be Alan Sugar’s next young apprentice.

I quite enjoy the adult version of The Apprentice. Mainly because the contestants are akin to the painted wooden ducks on a fairground shoot ‘em up. They are dislikeable in the extreme. They are hate fodder. Pretentious, loudmouthed, arrogant, over-reaching, self-deluded arseholes to a man and to a woman. It is OK to hate them. Hell, they don’t even care. Their goal is earn so much money the negative opinions of us lesser mortals becomes merely a source of amusement to them.

But I don’t feel comfortable hating the kids on Young Apprentice. And yet I do. I do truly, truly hate them. For all the same reasons listed above in their adult counterparts. How shocking to realize that the traits of arseholedom can be seen to flourish at such young and tender ages.

All the arrogance, bile and contempt for every human being around you except for the one who’s got something you want is there, written large in their mannerisms and the way they conduct themselves... combined and augmented by the patronizing, callowness of those too young to fully grasp the way the world works but old enough to grasp the mistaken belief that they do in fact understand everything and understand it better than anybody else on the entire planet, so get out of my way and let me do what I want to do, you nobcheese, all you are required to do is to tell me that I am eternally, megalomaniacally right... now buy me a new Angry Bird themed iPad and shut the fuck up.

What kind of parent allows their kid to be a combatant on a show that makes the boys in Lord Of The Flies look like Rupert The Bear and Friends?

These kids are fearfully adept in their vileness. I sometimes wonder if they are kids at all. Surely they are adults masquerading as kids? No kid can surely be that callous and Machiavellian in their manoeuvring?

I certainly wasn’t at their age.

But I figure it all comes down to this: self belief.

To be truly vile, to be truly poisonous to your fellow man you need an above average sense of self belief. To be a King Bastard or a Queen Bitch you gotta believe in yourself worse than the kids from Fame. Because if you have any sense of self doubt, any inkling that actually, maybe you’re not half so great as you tell people you are, you just cannot stamp all over other people and walk away from it unscathed. Self belief cancels out conscience. Conviction tramples the little voice of reason in your head into oblivion.

Self doubt makes you a better person. It might make you a crap businessman but it makes you a decent member of the human race.

And for that reason alone I hope my kids never have enough self belief that they’ll ever want to be Alan Sugar’s next investment monkey.

And as for Jim’ll Fix It, well, that’s been off the cards for a long while.