Michael Jackson RIP

Now I know that there’s not much to do in Bridgend, Wales, on a wet summer’s day but come on! There was something wrong with the reaction of two middle-aged Welsh ladies when Sky News gave them free tickets to the Michael Jackson Memorial Concert this morning – read about it here. They acted like eleven year old girls at a Take That concert.

I simply do not understand all the adulation. Yes he was a good singer. Yes he was a fantastic dancer. And, yes, he was a brilliant performer. But, despite his Jesus-like performance at the 1996 Brit Awards (God bless you Jarvis Cocker – see it here), and to quote Monty Python, he was “not the Messiah” but “a very naughty boy!” This is a person who blew a large fortune. This is a person who, allegedly, abused his body with prescription pills. This is a person who definitely abused his body through surgery. This is a person who seemingly could not accept his colour or the ageing process. This is a person who, at best, acted inappropriately with small boys. Hardly a role model.

I am always amazed how the public adore those of us who are most flawed. Michael Jackson has received Jade Goody cum Princess Diana-like adulation since his sad and untimely death. I am just hoping that today’s funeral and the Memorial Concert will be the end of it. And, I hope that someone is looking after the giraffes at Neverland.

Michael, thanks for the music and I hope that, now, they’ll let you rest in peace.

One very strange side-effect of poor Michaels’ demsie is the number of people who appear to be finding my blog using the search “La Toya Jackson nude” or “La Toya Jackson naked”…..glad to see the real fans are still out there!

Male Bonding

This weekend saw my annual male bonding exercise. Six men on a testosterone fuelled display of strength, endurance and all-round manliness on a yomp around the Peak District.

This year included two of my best friends in all the world – friends from university who I have known for more than half of my life. Then there were three others who have joined the group over the years either by being a friend of a friend or by marrying into the group. They are all great guys and fun to be with. But, I still don’t want to sleep with any of them.

We spent Friday night at the YHA in Eyam, Derbyshire. Youth Hostels have changed a lot since I last used them – which was some 22 years ago. Back then the typical age range would be from about 14 to 25; you were segregated into male and female wings; there was no alcohol; and, you had to do chores to earn your breakfast. Now, our group of forty somethings were amongst the youngest of the residence; the corridors were mixed-sex; they had a bar; and, all we had to do for our breakfast was strip our beds.

That said, our room was still reminiscent of a POW camp – three bunk beds, a window with bars, and a single sink. And, the facilities were less than salubrious. The carpet in the corridor was suspiciously tacky. If you were not first up (and I was not first up) then you waded into the shower. And, you didn’t want to think too hard about why the floor of the toilet was a little damp and tacky. Men and their toilet habits. Pigs the lot of them!

As much as I love my guys, sleeping with them is not the most enjoyable part of the walking weekend. That would be the pub at the end of the walk. Indeed, my sleep on Friday night was somewhat deprived. It is never a good idea to follow a trip to the pub (during which several pints of ale and lager are consumed in order to wash down fish and chips or sausage and mash followed by some pudding that has not passed ones lips since school dinners) with communal sleeping. It is doubly not to be recommended when the walk from the pub is up a one in five slope on a very muggy and humid evening.

I pity the three women in the room next to us. I pitied me. Within just five minutes of our return to the hostel our room and the corridor we shared were, well, fragrant. Beery, sweaty, farty fragrant with an undertone of mint. The one brief attempt at cleanliness seemed to involve a communal huddle around the single sink in our room for a bout of tooth cleaning.

Isn’t it funny how different people clean their teeth? Me, myself, am one who needs to hang over the sink in case I dribble and I need to rinse and spit a lot. Some of my fellow ramblers were very adept at brushing while walking around the room.

We all then sucked in our bellies, averted our eyes to ceilings, corners and floor and undressed for bed. This involves grunting and harumphing in a deep, gutteral, manly way as if to say “yes I am dropping my trousers now so avert your eyes or, as alpha male, I will be required to beat you”. 

There was a strange array of pj bottoms, boxer shorts and briefs, with or without t-shirts. We all clambered into and onto our bunks, said goodnight (like the Waltons), and turned our faces to the walls. Turning our faces to the walls was clearly a failed attempt to convince our psyche that we were not in fact sleeping in a room with five other men. Like hiding from monsters by burying your head under the duvert, if you could not see them then they weren’t really there.

“Sleeping” is not something that I did much of that night. I did not sleep well because:

1. I was attempting not to breathe the beery, sweaty, farty fragrant with an undertone of mint atmosphere through my mouth
2. I was in the top bunk with my head closest to the door; there was a glass panel above the door through which the corridor light burned throughout the night like a searchlight in a concentration camp
3. My fellow cell-mates have shrivelled bladders or pituitary issues which required an average of two trips to the loo per man; this required the door to be banged and light to flood the room
4. Two of our number snored like troopers while another squeaked and whimpered like a little girl (clearly the face to the wall trick had not worked)
5. All beds creaked and groaned with the slightest movement and there were several wrigglers amongst our number
6. It was hot, hot, hot

It was a relief when 7.30am arrived and I was able to vacate the room to take a gulp of corridor air and wade to a shower cubicle.

Next year I will insist on my usual separate room and restrict my bonding activities to the daytime.

Where do they find them?

Now don’t get me wrong, I am all in favour of more Davina McCall on our TV sets, but, the return of Big Brother 10 is both compelling and appalling. Where do they get their candidates from? Are we truly that unintelligent as a nation?

Take last night when Karly (Scottish glamour model who likes to parade around in as little as possible and stand around on chairs a lot in the absence of a podium or pole) got involved in a discussion about languages. Karly declared that she spoke a bit of German and found the German language easier than others because they were grammatically the same (they say things in the same order). And, this was all because the Nazis had come here during the second world war! What? When? Who?

While she may have been correct about a shared origin of the two languages I think she will find that she was about fifteen hundred years or so out of time (unless you count such words as “hamburger” and the advertising slogan “Vorsprung durch Technik” and the fact that the “Queen’s English” is spoken by someone who used to be part of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha dynastic line).

She was also incorrect about the grammatical similarities. Now it is a long, long, time since I passed my German “O-Level” (these were exams that we had in the 1980s before the onset of GCSEs. The main difference being that “O-Levels” were actually worth something ) but I seem to remember something about a German grammar rule of Time, Manner, Place which meant that the English sentence “I went to school early yesterday” would be written in German as “Yesterday, early to school went I”, or, in Karly’s case “I didn’t”.

Surely this will go down alongside Jade Goody’s (RIP) assertion that Norfolk was “abroad”……..

Mind you, it is not just reality TV contestants that seem to be lacking in grey matter. I recently endured a long flight from Manchester to Corfu during which the couple sat behind me demonstrated a complete lack of Geography “that must be France down there” topped off by the statement, on hearing that we had begun our decent to Corfu,  that “Good. It’ll start getting warmer on the plane now!” And, I thought most planes were equipped with something akin to air-conditioning……

Thank goddness for Davina.

The Soundtrack To My Life

I recently created a Playlist on my iPod of some of the songs that mean most to me. While the list is far from comprehensive, it was, nonetheless, an interesting and cathartic process. I have tried to select songs that reminded me of certain periods in my life. They are songs that, when heard, conjure up memories of people, places and feelings. They are not always good memories, but, memories that have helped to shape me into the man that I am today. The Playlist is as follows:

1. Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)
2. Fleetwood Mac – Oh Well! (1969)
3. David Bowie – Space Oddity (1969)
4. Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven (1971)
5. Soft Cell – Tainted Love (1981)
6. John Lennon – Imagine (1971)
7. Phil Collins – In The Air Tonight (1981)
8. UB40 – One in Ten (1981)
9. Men at Work – Down Under (1982)
10. Billy Bragg – The World Turned Upside Down (1987)
11. Frankie Goes To Holliwood – Two Tribes (1983)
12. The Jam – Eton Rifles (1979)
13. Marillion – Lavender (1985)
14. U2 – With Or Without You (1987)
15. Sinead O’Connor – Nothing Compares 2 U (1990)
16. Beautiful South – A Little Time (1990)
17. Blur – Parklife (1994)
18. Oasis – Don’t Look Back In Anger (1995)
19. Urge Overkill – Girl, You’ll Be  a Woman Soon (1994)
20. Badly Drawn Boy – The Shining  (2000)

Other than nursery rhymes, I think that Bohemian Rhapsody was the first song that I ever learnt end-to-end. I am tone deaf and cannot sing to save my life (people still turn round to look at me on the rare occasions that I have to sing in church) but can still be found belting out Bohemian Rhapsody and banging my head in accompaniment while speeding down the M6 .

It was also one of the first videos I saw. Also, it reminds me of my first days as a student at Oxford. On my first weekend I was taken to the cinema by a certain blonde girl that I had been drooling over to watch the film of the live concert. Unfortunately, while easy on the eye, the blonde girl was shallow and ditzy and my lust was over before the concert ended.

Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” shows how much I have been mentally scarred by my upbringing and my poor self-image. It was the lyrics that resonated with me. I felt that the line “I can’t help about the shape I’m in; I can’t sing, I ain’t pretty and my legs are thin.” pretty much summed up how I felt about myself during those difficult teenage years.

Tracks 3) and 4) were amongst the first songs that I recorded manually onto a cassette from my older cousins’ record collection. I was jealous of my cousins. They lived just a few doors up the street but the family was better off than mom and dad and they seemed to have every new toy and gadget going (and they also seemed to break all my new toys), including a record player. Both boys were a couple of years older than me so I was often in awe of them (until they started to wear makeup in the New Romantic era!) and I thought that their choice in music was (note the past tense) cool. As well as an initial taste in music, the cousins also gave me their hand-me-down clothes. This also contributed to my poor self image – see track 2 again.

Soft Cell reminds me of my first nightclub/disco experiences from the age of around 16 on. It is still one of the few tracks that will tempt me to the dance floor without complaint. I have happy memories of snogging and groping strange/mysterious girls in dingy places such as Peppermint Place and Faces in Birmingham. The extended version of the track gave you plenty of time to find a girl……

The assassination of John Lennon in 1980 struck me quite hard, even though I was never really a Beatles fan back then – hence the inclusion of Imagine which topped the chart following his death.

In The Air Tonight (the version without the gorilla) is a piece of music that resonated with me whenever I was romantically depressed. Throughout the 1980s therefore. While I shared Phil Collin’s general malaise, tracks 13 through 16 are girlfriend specific. The good times were good, if brief. But, you broke my heart. You know who you are.

Men at Work reminds me of the fantastic summer before going to university. I was working at Fort Dunlop during the industrial shut down. The work was hard but the camaraderie was great. We had the radio up loud and this was number one at the time.

Tracks 8, 10 and 11 reflect my political awakening which largely coincided with my time as a student at Oxford.

Eton Rifles reminds me of the best friends in the world and student Sweaty Bops in the college beer cellar.

Blur and Oasis mark my transition from London/Nuneaton bachelor to married life in South Manchester.

Urge Overkill reminds me of my wife. When she dances, she dances just like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, but twice as sexy.

The Shining? Well, that’s private. But it always takes me to happy place.

I know that my musical choice will not impress many of you. And, I am certain that many of you will interpret my choice in a myriad strange ways. But, I do not care. These are my memories. this is my life. And, if music be the food of love, play on!

Ostrich Mentality

Some people really do like to bury their head in the sand and pretend that all is well with the world. Well, it ain’t!

Can you believe that the most complained about TV Advert during 2008 was an ad for Barnardos, the children charity? The ad was purposefully designed to shock in order to highlight domestic abuse and the impact on children. It stressed the need to break the circle of violence. Read more about it here.

You can view the ad on You Tube here (warning – if you live your life like an ostrich and bury your head at the first sign of trouble you WILL find this advert upsetting):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b1Y1CrNWgU

Surely it is better to bring such things into the open; to talk about them; and, maybe to be more aware of disturbing behaviours in kids that might point at a need for help. Help which may save them from abuse. But no. In this country people seem to be more than content to bury their heads under their duvets. If they cannot see the monster under their bed then the monster can’t get them…….

The fact that nearly as many people complained about a car ad featuring a dog because they were concerned about the animal’s welfare just goes to show that there is something wrong in our society. We hide ourselves from child abuse but stand up for the poor down-trodden animals.

Something is wrong. So very wrong. Let’s live in the real world and change it for the better.

National Shame

This Government’s treatment of the Gurkha veterans is nothing short of a national disgrace (read about it here).

These brave warriors from the kingdom of Nepal have served the United kingdom with honour and distinction for more than 250 years. In the First World War alone some 200,000 Gurkhas fought across the globe, suffering 20,000 casualties and earning over 2,000 bravery awards. In all conflicts since serving this country since 1857 there have been 26 Victoria Crosses awarded to Gurkha soldiers.

My own uncle, then an RSM in the Royal Marines (serving onboard HMS Belfast) fought alongside the Gurkhas in the Korean War and could not speak highly enough about his comrades in arms.

And yet, our Government refuses to grant the veterans unconditional equality on pensions and residency rights with other British Army veterans claiming that we would be inundated with veterans draining our resources and over-burdening the NHS. So, while we continue to turn a blind eye to illegal immigrants, have given carte blanche to members of the European Union and seem unable to stem the steady increase in economic migrants and political refugees, we seem unable to look after our own. Unable to look after those who were prepared to and indeed have sacrificed everything in the service of our Queen and country. Shame on you Gordon Brown. Shame on you Britain.

Please follow this link to the Campaign for Justice being lead by Joanna Lumley and sign the petition.

UPDATE – GOOD NEWS

Ministers defeated in Gurkha vote

The rules on Gurkhas entering the UK were changed last week The government has lost a Commons vote on its policy of restricting the right of former Gurkhas to settle in the UK. MPs voted by 267 to 246 in favour of a Lib Dem motion that the government should extend an equal right of residence to all Gurkhas. Earlier Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said the current policy, announced by the government last week, was “shameful”. Gordon Brown said earlier he wanted justice for the Gurkhas but any policy change had to be affordable.

Swine Flu

So, that old “butterfly effect” again! A pig sneezes somewhere in the ruins of Tenochtitlan and a brief Mexican wave later we have a pandemic of swine flu and a further risk to the global economy as up to 30% of the workforce dies, goes sick or stays at home to tend their loved ones or through fear of mingling with the great unwashed.

So, will this be just another damp squib like Bird Flu, SARS and the great Ebola scare of recent times, or, are we really on the verge of finding ourselves living out an episode of Survivors for real? Hell, and it’s not as if our Texan buddies need an excuse to shoot the odd Mexican that strays across their ranches at the best of time.

Conspiracy theorists are already claiming that the virus is man-made. Sceptics might also claim that it is a useful distraction from some of the world’s more pressing political and economic travails. For sure, anything that keeps Gordon Brown off our news screens is most welcome.

Well, Cancun may well be off my holiday destination list for the time being. And, I might hold my breath for as long as I can next time I am flying. But, I won’t be rushing out to buy bottled water, tinned peaches and a shotgun and holing up in an underground bunker just yet……

Recycling Madness

A red sticker appeared on my grey household waste bin this week stating that I could no longer use my HOUSEHOLD WASTE bin for:

• Paper
• Cardboard
• Plastics
• Glass
• Cans
• Textiles

I already have a brown bin for my garden waste and compostable goods.

This begs the question – what on Earth can I use my grey household waste bin for?

My grey bin used to be collected once a week. It would often be full. I am sure that I will soon be advised that my grey bin will only be collected once a fortnight. And, frankly, this will make perfect sense for it will be empty. It will be empty for I am not allowed to put anything in it which might pass for the normal definition of  “household waste”.

My problem is that all other “bins” are collected only once a fortnight and that the single “bin” that I have for each variety – blue for bottles,  jars and cans; brown for garden waste; red for plastics; green for paper and cardboard – is insufficient for my demand. 

I live in Cheshire for heavens sake, my two weekly consumption of wine means that the blue bin is overflowing even before I get to the empty tins of chopped tomatoes with basil and chick peas. It takes me two hours to cut the lawn so you can be sure that the brown bin is full. And, just a single Sunday Times complete with magazines and other inserts is sufficient to fill a green bag.

And, I resent the fact that I have to further damage the environment by washing everything out before inserting it into each of the multi-coloured bins (all of which clash terribly with the kitchen decor!) just in case the bin man was to get his hands dirty…….

But at least the cat is happy – he won’t have as far to go to get his fill of mice, rats, flies, wasps and other such vermin.

And, why do they make all of the recycling bins out of plastic? How on Earth will we dispose of them when they have worn out?

Seriously though, can someone tell me what I can put in my grey bin?

Electric Cars

So, Grumpy Gordon Brown wants us all to buy and drive electric cars?Indeed, he is willing to incentivise us up to £5,000 to make his dream of “Electric Cities” come true – read about it here.

I don’t think so.

You would have to pay me more than £5,000 to fund the disguise I would need to wear so as not to be seen driving one of these Noddy Cars, or, to fund the therapy costs if I were to be discovered. Well I guess I might consider a Tesla Roadster (0 to 62mph in less than 4 seconds and a top speed of 130mph) but I am not sure that Gordon’s generosity would bring it within my price range (>£87,000), and to be honest, I have only just ditched the Audi TT as impractical.

Now I recognise that the technology is improving but it would have to improve a great deal more to pursuade me out of my Q5. In particular there are some well-publicised downsides:

1) Charging – at the moment it would seem that it would take me a couple of hours to charge my electric car, which is a bit of a bugger if you have forgotten to plug it in overnight. It would easily spoil your cornflakes as you attempted to rush out the door on your way to that career-making meeting in the morning.

2) Range – at the moment it would seem that I would struggle to drive to the pub at the bottom of our road without recharging

3) Speed – and I certainly wouldn’t be able to outrun the police and their pesky breathalysers on the way back from the pub

4) Safety – and because they are so slow you are sure to be mown down by a Polish HGV driver texting while driving and the typical electric vehicle offers as much crash protection as a St Christopher medal i.e. limited to the power of prayer

5) Environmental impact – electric cars may have zero emissions but until we get the national grid and the power stations sorted we will all die as a result of the additional coal that needs to be burned to generate the additional electricity required

6) Sexism – not to mention that we would have stranded women drivers all over the place. It is well known that the fairer sex is incapable of changing a fuse on a plug.

7) Urban v Rural strife – yet again Gormless Gordon seems to be favouring the cities over the countryside with his Electric City dream. This is all well and good if you live in a city, but, I don’t. It may be more help if they invested in a sensible rural public transport infrastructure. My nearest bus is two and a half miles walk away, it only comes on Tuesday and Friday, and doesn’t go anywhere I would like to go, except Waitrose.

So until the technology, the performance, the infrastructure, and the design improves you will just have to eat my exhaust emissions.

This post was sponsored by Shell International.

Jade’s Back In BB (Big Brother)

This was the headline in today’s Daily Star Comic (it has more pictures than words; the words are in very big type and most are monosyllabic; and, the most common colour is “skin”). According to the Daily Rag:

“Big Brother bosses want one of Jade Goody’s closest pals to star in the new series so her “fantastic spirit can live on for ever in the house”.”

So, not just cashing in then?

I am sorry but what is it with this new Cult of Jade Goody? She seems to have eclipsed even Princess Diana. The Sun (more successful comic than the Star, with bigger and better breasts) has a whole page of their on-line site dedicated to Jade:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/jade_goody/

I am sure that Big Brother doesn’t have to worry though. I am fairly certain that they will not have to make do with just friends of the Essex girl. Of course they could wait for that elusive window of opportunity and film the show on the rare occasion that her husband, Jack Tweed, is out of jail. If they also filled the house with 16 year old boys and taxi drivers for Jack to beat up I am sure that the ratings would be out of this world. But no, I am fairly sure that Big Brother will somehow manage to get Jade back in person. Not through some Jurassic Park type experiment in DNA. Not through cloning  – surely that would hasten the end of the human race as the average household pet would have a higher IQ.

No. Given the overwhelming emotion and energy that surrounds the Cult of Jade, I am fairly certain that this Easter weekend will see the Second Coming of Jade. She is sure to rise from the dead and take her rightful place at the right hand of Davina McCall.

Please, please, please let the girl Rest In Peace……….and give the rest of us a break at the same time.