today : adults only

The other day I was listening to Elgar's Cello Concerto and drinking a tot of malt. Now I am not a habitual drinker. I can go for months without touching alcohol at all. In fact, there are plenty of alcoholic drinks that I don't even like. Wine for instance. Sometimes it is wonderful, but much of the time I can take or leave it. Unlike many who don't drink I possess no moral stance against alcohol, nor am I in a twelve step programme. I just don't care for it much.

Actually there is a reason why I forswear drinking. If you have mobility issues, then reliance on a car is paramount. Couple that with the sheer amount of painkillers I tend to take, then alcohol doesn't go well in the mix. Rather than being a social lubricant, it becomes restrictive. This, I must admit has led to many a night when I have watched the evening get away from me. Even in a lightly toasted (why doesn't use the word 'tight' anymore to describe intoxication. It seems to have died out in the seventies?) state, a room full of people move psychologically and socially into a place the non-drinker finds hard to access.

Anyway, I digressed away from what I was really thinking about. That is : when did I become an adult?

If you saw me you would think this obvious, as I am clearly a middle aged man. Yet adulthood isn't really about looks. It's more about attitude. It's a concept. A friend of mine who is only slightly younger than I recently bought a house and complained about the sheer responsibility of getting broken bits of it fixed. The roof and the floor were just going to sit there in a state of brokenness until they took on the task of sorting it out. No more calling the landlord.

Which brings me back to single malt whisky. I do like a nip now and again, and keep a decent bottle or two in the house. Whisky is a defiantly adult drink and drinking it is an adult experience. You almost never see young people drinking whiskey. I imagine that appreciation of malt requires a maturity of palate. Let's face it, whiskey is pretty awful in many ways. It's bitter, very strong and has little sweetness to soften the taste. It is, all in all, a rather jagged experience.

Now I'm sure there are millions of people who have written rapturously about whiskey. I'm not going to attempt anything like that. But suffice to say that jaggedness, the sheer borderline unpleasantness, is where the pleasure lies. Whiskey drinking isn't easy. It's complex and challenging. Whiskey is one of those drinks that almost defies you to like it.

Somewhere down the line this became appealing to me. When was that?

today : girl in water

© photo by me 2007

today : oh my God I still can't believe it.

Personally I don't believe in a creator. None of the organised religious doctrines add up to me. There are always unbridgable gaps in logic. I guess that's where faith comes in. In my teenage years I flirted with religion but even though I tried quite hard, just could never bring myself to make the leap of faith. I always wanted more answers before I made a decision.

Now that doesn't mean that I am closed to religion. What disturbs me slightly about the new atheism is that it seems to be predicated on actively disliking religion and even (as Ainsley Hayes accuses Sam and Josh in season one of the West Wing when they talk about gun control) hating the people. Dawkins rhetoric is inflammatory, such as aligning religious education with child abuse. And I don't disagree with that it some ways. Anything that removes choice from a person's repertoire by making it taboo is to be frowned upon. Clearly Dawkins' mission is to promote atheism as a proactive ideology rather than a passive, disinterested stance, and his language does the job admirably.

Yet personally I can't quite bring myself to dislike or even disrespect the vast majority of Christians, Muslims or whatever that I know. I even recently met a Wiccan (although I think that he wasn't really a practising Wiccan, given that I knew more about his religion than he did. I think it was just a pose). I guess in this way my feelings are similar to when I was a teenager. Only this time I can't quite bring myself to make the leap of lack of faith.

I've touched on this before but what makes me uncomfortable is the increasing level at which religion is derided as a matter of course. Yes, I am deeply uncomfortable about the more fringe elements of the radical right. in the USA. But I am willing to bet that most American Christians are either fairly decent people or don't know any better. Few of them possess the malevolence of money grabbing preachers or racist talk show hosts. Similarly, I don't know a practising declared Muslim or Christian who isn't wholly focused on their family and pretty much wholly committed to being...well, nice. And it's the niceness that I find appealing about religious folk. However bizarre and illogical their belief in a creator, the moral framework that religion gives them generally means that they at least, try to be pleasant.

Ultimately, whatever your opinion of religions themselves, there are more religious people who don't use their belief in a creator as a reason or a pretext for war than those that do.

today : oh my God I can't believe it

It's dead trendy these days to be an atheist. I'm not talking about the kind of passive atheism of the regular non-churchgoer (which could maybe best described as mere disinterest), but since everyone's been reading Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion, it has now become fashionable among the kind of dinner party intellectuals who read popular science books to declare their disbelief in any kind of creator in between insisting that Rudy Giuliani's Zero Tolerance wasn't really the cause of the decline in crime in New York, but that the introduction of abortion 20 years previously was the key factor...because statistics prove it.

Dawkins brand of zealous atheism is an interesting and odd phenomenon. Perhaps he is expressing, and crystallising, the feelings of many people, but this outbreak of atheism is basically a lot of people declaring allegiance to a negative. How odd would it be to write a book and attach an 'ism' to, for example, people who dislike cheese. Unfromagism. Or everyone who doesn't support Man Utd. Antifergusonism. In fact it's quite a good game to invent negative ism,. abonoism: don't like U2, antiastrosim : don't believe in horoscopes, aterrapiazzism : lack of belief that the earth is flat.

I wonder if the whole 'new atheism' is a rather serious phenomenon. After all God has been on His last legs for almost a century. But the current times (end or not) are battered by the breakers of belief. What with fundamentalist Christianity on one side and fundamentalist Islam on the other, with a myriad of bizarre beliefs inbetween, perhaps iteration of faith in the visible is some kind of reaction to the irrational nature of the forces that are shaping and threatening the world.

today : When the hammer falls

Little do they know but in a few years they will probably be dead

Like many men of my age, I am acutely aware of the fact that bits of me are wearing out. It can lead to accusations of hypochondria, which I counter by waving my disabled credentials at people. In fact, further proof comes from the fact that the NHS would not spend the money on fixing me were there nothing wrong: ergo I can't be a middle aged hypochondriac but actually ill. So I am about to face a pretty major operation to fix my ankle and allow me to walk again without excruciating pain. Naturally, I am worried. There is a significant chance the operation may fail, leading me to never walking again. And that is before I start to think about the fact that operations can go hideously wrong and kill people, as well as MRSA and the like.

But the main worry I am having is being incapacitated for several months. I will be more or less unable to move. This means that despite my better instincts I will probably give in to the temptations of boredom and switch on the TV during the day. I am not looking forward to it, because daytime TV is definitely the worst invention of modern times.

I don't remember the beginning of daytime TV in the modern sense. The earliest I recall is Afternoon Plus, which I am pretty sure featured Judith Chalmers before she turned orange (she was in black and white in those days, so I can't be sure). This must have been from when I was a small child in the early to mid seventies. Afternoon Plus featured the usual housewifey interest items such as yoga, cookery, how to sew curtains and becoming emotionally stable in a fraught, loveless and deeply unsatisfying marriage with only small doses of Valium. Later, there was Crown Court. Still one of the best shows ever on TV. It was cheaply made on one set and, in playing out single court cases, had a small cast. I remember being utterly gripped by it all. In fact I can't fathom why it hasn't been revived. Not only are court cases essentially gripping, but a show like this would fulfil a public service remit - seeing as, in this country we know more about the US legal system than our own.

Fast forward to the present day. Afternoon Plus kind of still exists in the shape of This Morning, which features a range of housewifey interest items from yoga all the way to cookery. But elsewhere the schedules have been consumed by a bunch of self replicating clone shows that are all different spins on buying, selling and cookery. In the case of buying and selling you have two choices : antiques or houses. One glance at the morning's TV schedules reveals :

Grand Designs, Trade Secrets, How Clean Is Your House?, Property Ladder, Location, Location, Relocation, Relocation, Selling Houses, A Place In The Sun, DIY SOS, Homes Under The Hammer, Escape to The Country, To Buy or Not to Buy, Cash in the Attic, Bargain Hunt, Sun, Sea and Bargain Spotting Car Booty, Flog It

Oftentimes these shows are on consecutively. So that the daytime becomes an infinite vortex of valuations, makeovers and 'character' auctioneers. The BBC ones like Flog it or Cash in The Attic also endlessly drag out the action, so there is a valuation, a reminder of the valuation, another reminder of the valuation when the thing gets to auction, a couple more reminders of the valuation during the auction, a declaration of the sold price (with a valuation reminder on screen just to be sure), a reminder of how much the item went for, a pointless guessing interlude where the presenter wonders how much the running total is so far, followed by a voiceover reminding us how much we were after and how much short or long the prices are so far, followed by, at the end of the auction, another guess at the possible total followed by an announcement of the total and how much short or long it is of the target amount. In short, it is TV for people with Alzheimer's.

The shows are presented by the kind of people whom, in the past would have made half a living writing shallow articles for Womens' Realm and the Readers Digest Monthly. On daytime TV they are the 'experts'. The valuers are mainly antiques dealers who have watched too many episodes of Lovejoy, and many consider themselves eccentric. Now we all know that the worst thing in the world is someone who considers themself eccentric, wacky or in any way a 'personality'. They are, without fail, the shallowest and most annoying people you could ever meet. Why do they end up on telly? Is there not a person somewhere in TV land who has the nouse and the balls to just say no to these people? It seems not. It seems they roll out the red carpet and give them money.

It's like handing out guns to terrorists.

The house shows are just as bad. In fact they are pernicious and evil as well as being tedious. The nation is in the grip of a neverending obsession with house prices, which in part is fuelled by the obsession pumping out of the corner of the living room all day every day, In the past people who bought a house, bought the house and then proceeded to remake it in their own image. It was a long term project. These days there seems to be some idea that people want to buy a house straight out of a magazine (or a TV show). The TV shows fuel this expectation. In effect the cost of upgrading a house in your own image, rather than being spread over several decades, is put onto the initial buying price of the property. In the past people bought a house to live in. Nowadays people don't talk about houses and homes, but 'The Property Ladder'. Making money from property is apparently the main objective of purchasing a house. I know people who literally sit at home with a calculator working out how much they have made each day from the rise in the value of their house.

The thing that the house shows don't do is actually explain that house prices can (and will) go up as well as down and that there is no inevitability in an inexorable rise in 'prices' (when these people say prices, what they actually mean is values, but the underlying concepts of economics are generally beyond these preening buffoons). When the hammer falls on the property bubble we will look back on these endless shows as quaint reminders of the time when we all thought the party would never end - a bit like those charming home movies of people barrelling around in open top cars and throwing beach balls to each other during the inter-war years.

So what will I do with my time when I am incapacitated? Probably listen to the World Service and do jigsaws.

today : to lose one leader...

Whoops, dem libdems shoulda listened to their uncle saltydog two years ago when they were warned not to chicken out from choosing simon hughes as their leader. but, of course they did, given that it turned out he was gay n'all. so they went with the safe pair of hands that turned out to be so safe, not even the safest of safe-lovin' voters would vote for them. of course, they've gone n done it again. flatlining poll numbers mean nothing, especially on the back of a tory bounce created solely by a media who were cheesed off that they didn't get to write their 'brown's faltering start' stories (with a little help from brown's spin doctors, whom, fearful of their jobs post tony, decided to spin brown a little too hard until he fell off of the slippery rotating disc like some Jeux Sans Frontieres contestant dressed as a giraffe and carrying a bucket of jelly).

so they are back at sq 1. only now hughes is a party elder and unwilling to run. i don't blame him, maybe he didn't want all the homophobic innuendo and 'investigations' that would come his way, as they would any openly gay party leader.

for all the reasons i have stated before - quick recap, the party system needs a centre to stop us from becoming ridiculous like America and to hold the magnetic centre between the left's tendency to become shouty student activists with right-on piercings and finicky right on-ness, and the right's tendency to want to murder non-whites and lurk around the doors of Netto stealing money off the poor, plus who will people in Cornwall vote for? - the libdems need to get their act together, and quick. Ming was pretty useless as a leader, but Kennedy wasn't. I wonder if he's got his refuelling under control? Y'never hear about it. They need someone, if not openly gay, but really liberal, to make Cameron look like the establishment wolf in family friendly clothing that he is, and to remind labour that authority and authoritarianism are not the same thing, despite being close to each other in the dictionary.

today : no need for satire

Sometimes there is no need for satire

today : 2 o' clock

© photo by me 2007

today : excuses excuses (and ouch!)

It is unusual for me not to post for a week. However, an operation on my bad ankle has made it very difficult for me to type. Why? you may well legitimately ask. Surely your fingers are not affected adversely by a procedure on your ankle?

Your logic would be sound, because my fingers are not affected at all. But, as I cannot get up the stairs to the computer, this point would be immaterial.

today : clouds at dusk

© photo by me 2007

today : unrewriting history

I am pretty sure that weddings count as normal social occasions, and the one I attended at the weekend seemed such. Yet for me it was not normal. Friday I knew that I was going to struggle, as a stress fracture in my foot was causing me a lot of pain. Also, due tot he fracture, a slight over-reliance on my other foot over previous days was giving me trouble too. Both my feet are painful and afflicted by various problems. Only this was one of the times when it was just worse. Both were injured and both were agonising.

Waking up early Saturday morning I pretty much couldn't walk. By this I mean that the pain meant that I could barely put my feet to the floor. Actual movement was next to impossible. Yet I had a wedding to attend. I am extremely fond of the bride (yet another of my favourite women mystifyingly marrying someone who isn't me) and did not want to miss her special day.

I climbed in the car and set off for the 300 mile drive from where I live to the venue in Scotland. Upon arrival I decided that I would simply try and do what I always do, which is to make it through and just ignore the pain. I tried. I really did, but ended up leaving before the wedding breakfast and driving the 300 miles home.

When I made the decision to leave I made light of it. I wrote the history thus:
"It's fine. I'm just having one of those bad days. I'm oh-so glad that I came. It was a lovely wedding. I'm ever so sorry I can't stay longer..."
As well as the fact that we disabled people tend to live on little enough money that even one night in a very well appointed country hotel is just another unpayable debt; so staying late and therefore staying over was out of the question, it wasn't really fine.

Yes, I was having a particularly bad day: in more pain than usual and less able to ignore it. But this normal social occasion was simply out of my reach. It started with standing around in the bar chatting. What can you do but sit down, and therefore be under the conversation of the other adults and too immobile to to join in with the kids?

After the ceremony, which was delightful, there were the photographs. Two steep flights of stairs were easier than walking a hundred yards to a lift, so I negotiated them. The photographic set up was in the middle of a lawn, accessible by some more steps or a steep grassy bank. Everyone wandered onto the lawn, accepting canapes and drinks from the mingling waiters. I stood, leaning against a low window sill, and watched the guests head across the grass to where the photographer wanted them. I then watched the waiters go by, taking the canapes and drinks to the assembled revellers. They walked by me far enough away that I wasn't in their focus, but too far away for me to hail them without shouting. The photographer walked past me and went back up the steps to a balcony, where he ran through his little script, gathering the guests in groups for their photos. Then he moved people to the other side of the lawn where more groups were photographed on the steps of a summer house.

The waiters took more drinks out onto the lawn. Clearly the photographs were finished but the guests were encouraged to mingle on the grass for almost another hour. After about 10 minutes I headed inside. The party was happening 100 yards from me and I had nowhere to sit down. I shuffled my way to the lift (ironically there were stairs to get to it) and went back upstairs. I decided to wait in the dining room. So I found my place and sat down to wait. After a minute or two a nice hotel staff member informed me that the dining room wasn't yet prepared and would I mind moving next door to the ballroom? So I stood up again and walked to the ballroom to wait. About another half an hour elapsed before the other guests were ushered back indoors. As they arrived, someone started up some music and an emcee began to instruct how everyone to dance a traditional reel. This was a prelude to the post meal entertainment - which was to be a Ceilidh.

It was at this moment that I decided to leave. The flow of social activities for the day involved nothing I was physically capable of joining in with. Nothing that did not, or would not, cause me more pain. The steps and getting to the lift had increased the level to about an eight and a half out of ten. The endorphins were kicking in and I had no appetite.

What actually happened was that I borrowed someone's room key and went to lie down. I knew it wasn't going to work, in terms of getting me physically back in the game, but I didn't want anyone to think I had left impolitely, without appearing to try. I really didn't want there to be a fuss. I have been to enough weddings where some guests try and make the day about themselves rather than the marrying couple and I think it selfish and appalling. I also absolve the bride or groom. Neither was in any way responsible for my position. They had to be attentive to everyone there, and neither of them is my personal assistant, advocate or Mother. I stayed in the room for two hours or more, until the meal and speeches were over.

The fact is that the history I wrote when I left was mostly false. The service was pleasant, but every other part of the day was nightmarish for me. I am used to being in pain. That's just a regular thing. But the real reason I left was the absolute feeling of exclusion. There was this party happening and every part of it was predicated on being able bodied. Going up and downstairs, mingling on the lawn, dancing a reel, being turfed out of my seat for not being like the other guests, even getting to a room (had I booked one). I was, by necessity, abandoned on the sidelines. I ended up with my nose pressed against the window, watching life happen inside. I may as well have just not been there. And as far as records show, I wasn't. The photographer simply hadn't thought to change his routine so I could be included, so I was just left out. The world of this normal social occasion could not handle someone abnormal, so I was ignored.

It was only luck that meant as I was leaving he was too. I grabbed him and insisted he took a photo of me with the happy couple. Had our paths not intersected, then I would have been excised as well as excluded, like some disgraced Soviet general being airbrushed, or a mad cousin hidden in an asylum so as not to bring shame on the family.

Body at Amen Corner

© photo by me 2007

today's phrase : "Snap Election"

Process stories are one of the laziest types of journalism. Not only do the people who write them don't actually have to have a basis for them, but they also don't have to leave the office.

A couple of weeks ago there was some real news. Not only is this case something that it worth investigating but (to be cynical) it would have sold papers and pandered beautifully to many of the press's agendae. Yet it happened 300 miles away from London and received only scant coverage. Meanwhile the press are hyped about a snap election. Just to clear things up in case any journalists might want to know, I am not planning to visit Ulan Bator anytime soon, although I reserve the right to decide to do that if I want; whether in the next few weeks or sometime in the next year or two.

Actually I would not be shocked if there was a quick election. My evidence for thinking it is becoming more likely is that twice in the past month I have received letters from the locval council making sure I was on the Register of Electors. It's as is they are trying to get it done quickly.

today's phrase : "investor panic"

What is the difference between your credit card company ringing you up and insisting that you give them back some of their money and walking into a bank and asking them to give you back some of your money? What is the difference between people divesting their savings from a bank and city traders divesting their investments in the same bank? Well, according to the talking heads I've seen spread like salmon paste all over the media in recent days there is a difference. Ordinary people who are worried about their hard earned cash are panicking, whereas city investors who are selling their shares are making strategic investment decisions. Credit card companies who get money back from their creditors are simply looking after their interests, whereas pensioners taking their savings and putting them somewhere else are over-reacting.

Since Thatcher's share owning democracy idea took hold (which was a very clever monetarist strategy, combining as it did the two holy tenets of Monetarism, the privatisation of public assets and the control of the money supply by incentivising investment), ordinary people have become a little more savvy about money. The media is packed with financial news correspondents and we can watch Bloomberg or whoever all day. Why is it such a shock when ordinary people start behaving like corporate money men?

todays phrase : The Dark Arts of The Scrummage

I like watching rugby union. I really do. But the current world cup highlights the two main problems with it as a sport.

The first is the way that it is talked about. It strikes me that it is a relatively simple game. Okay, there are some finicky rules, but no more than in American Football or Cricket. But the correspondents who cover the sport have long had a habit of creating a dense and impenetrable mythology around the playing the game that is wildly disproportionate with the actual game itself. The best example of this is the endless referencing of ' the Dark Arts of the Scrummage'. I have heard this phrase used many many times but never alongside explanation. Dark Arts are, by their nature, secret and hard to fathom. Yet I have played rugby and find that scrummaging is fairly simple. Any 'Dark Arts' are to do with perpetrating violence on the opposition. Similarly, there is a ridiculous focus on positions. A rugby team is separated into three parts: the forwards, the backs and the linking players. Yes, there are subdivisions in these areas and certain players are given specific tasks or possess specific skills, but there is some idea that it takes years, nay, decades for a player to develop in a role. The game has four basic skills, running, tackling, passing and kicking. Some players are there to tackle, some to kick, some to run, some to do combinations of the lot. Yet commentators talk in a jumble of jargon and vague allusion, rather than describing the action and providing insight.

Perhaps the worst habit of commentators and pundits is the absolute refusal to criticise the game or the players. Any given commentary comes across as an awe struck, almost homoerotic paean to the players and the game. Hyperbole is the default setting. Good things are portrayed as marvellous, heroic acts of genius. Bad play is smoothed over with an uncritical eye.

Apart from when a tackle is missed or kick is imperfect or a knock is committed by one particular class of player.

Before I go on I must declare my potential special interest. I am, in the main, a follower of rugby league. For among the commentators and pundits there is a glaring bias against any player who has transferred from the 13 a side game. The current recipient of this vilification is Andy Farrell, the former GB Rugby League captain. Farrell was signed away from League with a silly money offer to switch to Union. From the moment he swapped codes he was pilloried in press box*. The same happened to Iestyn Harris - who is still the most naturally gifted Rugby player of his generation. Wales took him on and then totally failed to play to his strengths - isolating him in the centre position and then slating him when he didn't single handedly win them every game.

In one sense the union folk can't be blamed. They spent a hundred years seeing their best amateur talent poached by the professional game of league. When Union turned professional they enacted some payback. But the pundits need to get over it, and themselves. It's been ten years.

The other day I heard a discussion on the BBC about the world cup. The pundits were talking about how Union defences have improved in the decade since professionalism, and how this can lead to tight, close, games. Scotland were accused of playing a recent match that was boring to watch. Andrew Cotter, a BBC commentator, presented the argument that because Union had drafted in coaches from League (Phil Larder, Sean Edwards, Ellery Hanley and the like) it was their influence that has created this climate in which games were boring. i.e. that when a Union match is so tedious that it is beyond even the weasel words of the commentators, it is the fault of Rugby League.

The basic fact is that Rugby Union, a fine game to play and watch, is spoiled by the fact that it is still utterly dominated by class. The reason former League players are hated is nothing to do with the actual game, but the fact that they are from the North. The reason even the most inept and boring game is talked up into something awe inspiring is because this is a matter of prestige. The boys public schools where Rugby is the national sport are based on the idea of superiority and leadership. They exist to perpetuate privilege. How can they not play the best sport ever to the best ever standard.? They are the natural heroes of the nation.


*Now that injuries have left Farrell playing fly half against South Africa this week, I am prepared for the obvious. If he plays well, it will be down to the team rallying round him. If he doesn't then he will be at fault for any defeat. In fact in the three days leading up to the fixture, I am considering just unplugging all media, given that the usual pundits will spend that time wittering the same old nonsense.

today's phrase is "Feral Beast"...

...as ascribed to the press by Tony Blair.

Whatever has happened to poor Madeleine Mcann, there was an inevitability about her parents being placed under the microscope of suspicion by the press. I was quite surprised that this hasn't happened much earlier. After all, it is statistically acceptable to start investigating the people closest to the crime. If they are the innocent victims of a kidnapper I have boundless sympathy for them. What else could they do but try and keep the search for their lost child alive?

I guess people in the media self-censored and didn't raise any questions about the McCanns' account for a long time. But this was always going to last for only so long. The more time Madeleine remained missing, the less the press had to write about - and a press with no new facts on a story will do one of two things. Either they will drop the story, or they will start searching for (and sometimes inventing) their own new facts. The beast needs to be fed, even if the food is as insubstantial as marshmallow or candy floss.

The moment the McCanns allowed themselves to be filmed lighting candles in the church they were set up for a fall. Perhaps they don't care. Perhaps they are prepared to take the innuendo and potential lifelong stigma for the sake of their daughter. I think I would be. But the press knew that this was potentially not just another sad tale of a missing child, but a truly sensational story (and that however it turns out, they have their story anyway). If the nation has been systematically deceived for four months then the whole thing will simply explode. The press will have a field day. I bet they are preparing for just such an eventuality even as we speak. The beast not only has to be fed, but needs to stock up the larder for lean times ahead.

today's crap record that is quite good is...

Glass of Champagne. Sailor's 1975 hit record was a pretty poor pastiche of early Roxy Music - bascially a re-write of Virginia Plain with most of the edges filed down. It had the Brian Eno style synthesisers, the mannered Ferry-esque vocals and the driving beat - all stolen from Roxy.

As such it was crap inauthentic rubbish. I like it at the time because I was 8 years old, in much the same way as I liked the British Sha Na Na -isms of The Rubettes or Showaddywaddy.

Yet it was still quite good.

today's phrase : 'It should be BANNED!'

The idea of banning stuff has become more prevalent in recent years. The Labour government have retained their 70s and 80s Trotskyite predilection for proscribing things that John O Farrell describes so well in the early chapters of Things Can Only Get Better. Fox Hunting and Smoking are the headline bans, whilst, oddly, Alcopops and Cannabis have managed to escape. I do think alcohol will be the next thing under attack, and predict that it will gradually become taboo over the next decade or so.

But the press and the general public are calling for bans all the time. Whenever a problem arises, much of the 'national debate' is about whether four by fours or knives or cheap flights or swearing or pretty much anything should be banned. Partly, I think, this is a response to the perceived over-liberal mores of modern society. If anything is different these days, it's that change occurs quicker and that people find out about change quicker. It makes them uncomfortable.

When the call for a ban comes from those in power, it is another way for people to try and address complex issues with simple answers that might well play well in the press but become sticky when enacted. When I hear someone wants to ban something I am instantly suspicious. The irony of it all being that the left wing in Britain is not half as liberal as it may seem.

today's phrase : "Must Have"

To categorise something as 'must see', 'must hear',' must buy' or 'must own' is the derigeur way of trying to elevate whatever money-making product you are trying to flog into something more important than just another consumer choice. To actually make it an imperitive for us to own something requires a level of pretty much 100% cynicism. But then again, who can blame the cynical marketing folk? The level of consent from the buying public is staggering. Consumers do their job for them, by perpetuating the myths of 'must have' amongst each other. Children bully and abuse each other for wearing shoes that are one minute out of fashion. People laugh at each other for NOT spending half a weeks wage on a plain cotton T-shirt made by a three year-old Chinese child but stamped with that crucial deigner label.

Nothing is must have. Houses, clean water, food maybe - and I'm not talking salted lemons, goose fat or fresh cranberries.

today : Jane as a metaphor

I can't really blame the local media here in West Yorkshire. Today they will offer a mawkfest, after the death of local heroine Jane Tomlinson. It might even seem as if they are relishing the moment - although I am sure that the people involved won't mean it. It's just that they have the professional challenge of covering this particular story.

Jane Tomlinson was a metaphor. She stood for all our wishes that, in the face of pain and death, we might be able to stand up and fight and not give in. She also shored up the nice belief that the power of human 'spirit' can out-wrestle the fragility of the human physique - at least for a time.

today's word is : 'Sexploits'

Whilst every one else in the world has a sex life of varying degrees of mundanity, Big Brother contestants and other minor celebrities indulge in 'Sexploits', which of course is just like the sex lives of everyone else except more exciting and glamorous by dint of them revealing the details in the tabloid newspapers in exchange for a few thousand quid.

today's phrase: "A Unique Experiment"

Used when describing the latest barrel-scraping, ridiculous, pointless and boring set-up for whichever is the latest 'reality' show to hit our TV screens. You can even apply to join up .

today : orchestral manoeuvres in South Kensington only.

Well done to the BBC again. The fact that it still maintains a commitment to the Prom Concerts each summer is splendid. And of course, now there are loads of Channels they can put on entire concerts for people like me to enjoy watching. However, at a certain point in recent seasons it's become the thing to hold a Proms in the Park event, which happens in several sites over the country.

The problem? Well, the people who organise these things seem stuck in some kind of world where everyone outside South Kensington (or Knightsbridge if you are a pedant) wants their orchestral music to be the 1812 Overture with real cannons, second rate tenors singing Nessun Dorma, some selections from Andrew Lloyd Webber and the odd inoffensive ballad singer like Ronan Keating or Will Young accompanied by violins. In short, outside of London, Orchestral music is a quintessentially Radio 2 Experience rather than a Radio 3 Experience.

Y'see, the common provincial folk Oop North and in the wilds of places like Wales and Scotland still need educating in the high arts. Not for them all this Abstract Art and long pieces of Shostokovich. No. They are simple folk who respond well to Impressionism and Romantic music with tunes and all that - provided they are cut down into nugget size pieces and accompanied by one of them sophisticated picnic hampers.

As a music festival The Proms is peerless in its scope and size. Yet not one of the concerts is held outside the Albert Hall. And if the BBC is to fulfil its remit, then spreading it around a bit is what should be happening. I am not asking for 100 major orchestras and world class conductors playing at the end of my street, but Britain has many fine concert halls and a couple of world class concerts that are accessible for the likes of me each Summer would be nice.

today : the five percent

Boris Johnson was close to the mark when he commented on Liverpool's tendency to be mawkish about it's own misfortune. Perhaps it is the Celtic influence on the culture that makes the city's upper lip not quite as stiff as the rest of the country. Open grieving and shows of collective emotion are just not very English.

Having said that, there is nothing wrong with a community pulling together in times of crisis - perhaps we should have more of it.

The moment when Liverpool fans paid tribute to the family of Rhys Jones was genuinely moving. However, the thing that I don't like is the fact that football no longer pays its tributes with silence, but applause. Which is sad for two reasons. Firstly, standing in a place amongst a crowd of many thousands of silent people is one of my favourite things. It is a strange, mysterious hyper-sensory experience. The second is the fact that a minutes applause is the direct response to the fact that football crowds attract the kind of people who annoy the hell out of us in general society - the ones who always have to point at themselves at the expense of others, the ones who will break social rules just to feel important. After one too many silent tributes were ruined by drunken idiots shouting obscenities and chanting, the protocol was changed.

Today I was almost run over by a guy in a Range Rover who was rat running my street at about 50 mph. The street is narrow and has cars parked on either side. I was crossing over to get to my car and he just didn't slow down. Despite the fact that I am clearly disabled and struggle to walk he simply expected me to get out of his way and made no move to slow down. At great pain I jumped out of the way as he sped past close enough that my walking stick clattered against his bumper. Angry, shocked and shaken up I gesticulated at him. His response was to stop, back up and get out of his Range Rover to hurl abuse at me. His first words were "I was fucking nowhere near you!", which kind of gave him away. How did he know I wasn't simply waving at him in a friendly manner, or gesticulating at a neighbour. The point is that everything about this guy screamed attention seeking. His Range Rover Sport was orange with a personalised plate. When he got out he was smothered with gold and the latest trendy overpriced designer jeans and sunglasses.

After a little exchange of abuse and threats on his part and verbose insults and threats on my part (imbecile, ignoramus, go home and wait for the police to arrive because I'm calling them in a minute) I made him go away without getting myself shot or stabbed. Little did he know that my experience as a school teacher stands me in good stead when dealing with bullies and idiots. I know how to stand up to imbeciles like him, can avoid making threats and can wind situations up or down pretty much at will, as well as being able to think almost as quickly as Jack Reacher. He had a memorable reg plate that even gave away his name and my thought is that he didn't really want to deal with police, which I promised. That's because he was exactly the kind of person who might have nine points on his licence for speeding or a bunch of unpaid parking fines for blocking up disabled spaces and narrow alleyways. He was clearly one of what I call The Five Percent - that one in twenty people whose arrogance and self-absorbed nature means they exist simply to piss the rest of us off with their attitude and attendant behaviour.

These are the people who cannot resist shouting out in a stadium full of silence. These are the people who graffiti their names on ancient monuments. These are the people who hate speed cameras because they should be allowed to drive as fast as they wish. These are the kids in the class who are more interested in challenging the rules than in following the curriculum. These are the people who park in the disabled space, who push to the front of the line, who drive down the hard shoulder or on the pavement, who go the wrong way down a one way. All this because, of course, they are better people and deserve to be noticed. Look at me! They need to feel above the rest of us (hence the Range Rovers), even as they know they are probably on the step below. The five percent are the cause of 95 percent of all our woes.

today's crap song that is actually good is...

...Rock me Gently by Andy Kim. Not only did the song completely rip of Neil Diamond, but Andy Kim himself seemed to physically rip off the Diamond - there is even a website dedicated to the fact. However, despite being crap, the song is actually very good.

today :The "National Debate"

Let's have a national debate. Actually lets bloody not have one. I'm sick of them. Every politician, every special interest group, every spokeperson seems to want to engender a national debate on whatever issue is cresting the the news wave that day.

The latest one is, of course given recent news events, a national debate about teenage gangs and gun crime. The things is that the people calling for a debate seem to understand the word debate about as well as teenage gang -bangers understand the word respect i.e. like bad meaning good, they perceive it to be pretty much the opposite of what it actually means.

When politicians call for a debate, what they are really calling for is nothing to happen. If they wanted a real debate they would set aside the one sentence solutions and sound bite sops and actually explore the notion that they might not have all the answers, and that a dialectical approach to opinion forming is actually the the way to go. Instead, they offer fixed lines of thought, reductive analyses of issues and skate the surface of any discussion with a level of skill that makes your average whirligig beetle seem like a drowning, flailing beginner.

Of course, the point isn't to have a debate. It's to not have a debate. The point is also to use debate as a tool of stalling and procrastination. Let's have a national debate. No. Let's instead demand that our politicians take some decisions and enact some solutions.

It's amazing how the complex, difficult topics with complex difficult causes and complex difficult solutions are always put out to debate. Is this because perhaps, they are just too difficult and complex for them to understand? therefore the increasing use of the national debate as a rhetorical device, which feigns action, considering, listening to the public, coming up with solutions etc whilst DOING absolutely nothing useful.

today : A hungry Donkey

My friend Jo, for reasons that she keeps to herself, absolutely adores donkeys. Perhaps it is because they are humble, simple creatures and apparently unable to connive like humans. Anyway, in honour of her I am posting this picture I took of a donkey that lives near me.

today : I go shopping

So there I was in Tesco's - looking for a 2" by 2" paint pad to do the corners of the ceiling if you must know - and suddenly this little kid appeared. He was maybe three and a half - perhaps under three. He was enchanted by the plastic tractors displayed on the end of the row. He picked his favourite and, grasping it in his arms like a goalie, brought it towards me and plonked it down on the smooth tiles of the floor in front of my feet.

"Tracka!" he announced.

That Supernanny crouch that you're supposed to use. Well, I physically can't do that without falling over and creating an embarrassing incident, so I just stooped a little and adopted that over-enthusiastic, over-enunciated voice usually used by TV presenters in bright orange dungarees who are pretending to be blossoming sunflowers or crashing waves.

"That's a fantastic tractor!" I replied.
"Grape Tracker!" the kid agreed, and then beetled off back to the end of the row. He returned with an even larger fire-engine.

"Fire Endie!" he announced, parking it beside the tractor.
"Do you know what noise a fire engine makes?" I asked, adopting the Carol Chell voice again.
"Nee naah!! the boy intoned, whilst spinning on the spot with his arms out.
"Yes!" It made me laugh that he was illustrating a fire engine by impersonating an aeroplane or a sycamore heli-twirler. Like many things that small kids do, it was perfectly logical.

The little boy looked over his shoulder and noticed his Dad. I'd not thought about the child being abandoned or lost. I just assumed he was amusing himself whilst his parents looked at garden furniture or lawn sprinklers or something. The boy's Father had been browsing at the side of a wide aisle not six or seven yards from our fire engine game and was pushing a barrow that contained some light garden tools. The boy picked up the tractor and took it back to the shelf.
"Bye." he said to me.

As he reached the shelf his Father, as if he had just noticed him, headed towards his son.
"Put that down! " he shouted. The boy stopped midway through putting the tractor back on the low shelf and looked around. The father walked up to him and clouted him on the side of the head.
"I said put that down!" he roared, clouting the boy again, this time open handed on his back. The boy almost fell over and then, after the blows had registered, burst into tears, which he tried to keep silent. The father took the boy's arm, gave me a sheepish look and they hurried away.

today : New car, caviar, four star daydream...what-ever

Be afraid...be very afraid. It turns out that the people who are in charge of our money don't know what they're doing. Or more exactly, they do know what they are doing, but they are blinkered, short-termist, bonus driven fools with the average financial restraint of a student with their first Visa Card.

If the only way to increase your bank's earnings and get your massive year-end bonus is to lend money to people who can't pay it back, then -duh - sooner or later you are going to start hitting snags. Y'know, like, those people you lent money to despite the fact that they couldn't pay it back? Well, it is with shock and surprise for us to let you know. They couldn't pay it back. I tried it once, and the friend to whom I lent 50 quid to is no longer a friend. We drifted apart.

Of course, I just had to swallow my misplaced trust and get on with life. Unlike me, other people who get in trouble because they plan too optimistically i.e. Peter Ridsdale, (from whom I also drifted apart) the US banks simply go to the government for a bail out. And of course, like some giant bank of Mom and Pop, the government hands over bags of unmarked bills to salve the problems of their errant friends and cronies.

My real worry is that this is happening in a time of relative normality, stability and growth. A little fall in the average value of American houses and whoosh!. The big news is that the banks have been sailing this close to the wind ALL THIS TIME. It makes me wonder what might happen is something really bad occurs. A dirty bomb in London or New York, an earthquake in California. What would they do if the 5th largest economy in the world suddenly broke off and fell into the sea?

If it all goes completely and totally pear shaped how many of THEM will lose THEIR jobs and homes I wonder?

today : Guest Blogger Alisande Nuttall asks : "Didn't you have the amnio?"

"How come you didn't have an abortion?" isn't usually the first question a mother expects on introducing her new baby to neighbours colleagues and acquaintances. For more than one in a thousand of us though, this is as commonplace as "what did he weigh?", "are you feeding him yourself?" and "ahhhh, bless" is to the rest of the new parent population.

The question is not intended to wound. It comes spontaneously, usually wrapped up as "did you (or didn't you) have the amniocentesis?" and/or "did you know?", but we can hear it loud and clear whenever we introduce our new baby who has Down's Syndrome.

As new parents needing companionship, support, and to be recognised for our ordinariness, we usually accept the comment gracefully, hiding any sense of shame or outrage if we can. We know you were caught off guard. We know you probably haven't had a good reason to examine your prejudices before. We know that prenatal testing sets up an expectation of termination. We try to overlook it. We may even answer as requested, when you go on to add "and er, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you?" We see you need to evaluate who was at fault here and to what extent. If we knew in advance, then obviously we won't be needing much sympathy. If we didn't, but were past our mid 30s, we might deserve a little. If neither of these apply then its ok to be very, very sorry. There but for the grace of God....or so it seems your script is running.

The good news is that, as life goes on, we find you are often worth the investment of time and courage and selflessness that it takes to educate you. We remember when we were as well-meaning but ignorant. We allay your fear that support will always be a one-sided transaction from you to us. We show you how wonderful our child is and how much we have come to love them. You make the effort to let us know that you can see. We congratulate you on your healthy children and show that we are genuinely pleased for you. You stop feeling embarassed. And by the next time you go for prenatal testing, we hope you have learnt that it is not a cure-all, that it may raise bigger questions that it answers and that whether you have it or not, cannot affect whether your baby already has Down's syndrome.

©Alisande Nuttall

today : 1 & 1/2 hour party people

I had one of the worst nights out of my life at the Hacienda. Mainly that was because I was there with a rather motley and potentially interesting group of people that was spoiled because it was dominated by one or two egotistical characters who were entirely focused, not on having a good time, but obtaining drugs. This meant that as driver, I had a car full of people whom.rather than actually going to the Hacienda, were insistent on driving round insalubrious parts of Moss Side trying to find ecstasy and dope. One of the drug-seeking guys in the car had literally no money and spent the journey trying to con his 'friends' out of cash. He did this by offering to go into petrol stations to buy drinks and crisps and cigarettes and not returning change, as well as just randomly asking people if they could lend him some cash.

After a couple of hours no dope or ecstasy was to be found. So we finally got to Whitworth Street, parked up and queued up to get in. Of course, there was ecstasy aplenty for sale inside, which was good for the rest of us because we could jettison the drug seekers and do Hacienda style stuff like getting on the dance floor or pointing out Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook, as they propped up the bar drinking Sol.

After one and a half acid-house filled hours, news began to filter through that one of the younger members of our group was somehow in trouble. He had collapsed and was being treated by the first aid. His girlfriend, a 17 year old Sikh girl, panicked. Her parents didn't even know she was out of the house, never mind off her face on drugs with her boyfriend in a club a long way from home.

Luckily her boyfriend had just danced himself into fainting and after a few cold drinks and a walk up and down outside with the security he was well enough to go home. Another girl in our party had taken E and a tab of acid and freaked out throughout the whole long drive home. Some of the others thought this was hilarious and their own trips consisted of them behaving like silly children on e-numbers rather than E. Driving, I was sober and drug free, and hated every minute, and everyone of them.

ilkley moor/drystone/cloudy dark blue/cloudy pink

© photos by me 2007

today : one more random thought

The Three Musketeers. Why are they always portrayed using swords when, as Musketeers their weapon of choice should be the Musket, which is a gun? I can't remember one of the Musketeers ever shooting anyone, so they should be known as The Three Swordateers instead.

today : 8 random thoughts I had today

>Scottish football doesn't interest me at all. And because I like football it interests me less than anything else I am not interested in.
>It's about time for a Cocteau Twins revival.
>I think the first 3 episodes of Heroes were pretty good, but I can see myself getting a bit bored by episode 10.
>The only exciting way to report foot and mouth disease is to show footage of slaughter houses and dead cows.
>Had it been released twenty years ago, the song Yeah Yeah by Bodyrox ft Luciana would have revolutionised music as we knew it.
>There are very few light green coloured cars
>If I won lots of money I would buy a house. Then I would buy some Corots for the house. The landscape sketches are the best and relatively cheap.
>Dolcelatte or Gorgonzola?