In search of the underdog

Nick Clegg says that the Tories in Scotland are 'irrelevant'. This may well be true but ha! Talk about forgetting where you've come from, two weeks ago and the Lib Dems were 'irrelevant'. I can't stand politicians - obviously, since I can't stand most people - but it's a little galling watching Nick Clergg, who I once saw completely underwhelm a huge meeting against the Heathrow third runway, make the jump from non-entity to political powerplay superdemon, with an attendant rise in smugness clustering around like flies surrounding a man with shit on his head.

It's apparently a very British thing to love an underdog, just as it's very American to love winners and get drunk on weak lager and shout about it. Why that is I couldn't say, not that that's going to stop me from trying. It might be because the British are so used to winning things, like wars and football well you know naval battles and whatnot, that we automatically side with the underdog out of sympathy - which would suggest that Americans are basically massive losers making up for their massive loserness by supporting winners. On the other hand, it's possible that we are such losers that we automatically identify with underdogs because that's what we are.

Perhaps we prefer underdogs because this country is so class-ridden that most of us are underdogs from the moment we're born (the radical's perspective) or perhaps it's that we're just bitterly jealous of anyone who sullies themselves enough to make it in the world (I don't know what perspective that would be). I don't have any clear idea of what it is we see in underdogs; perhaps we admire their pluck, their courage to keep going when they're clearly going to lose - Eddie the Eagle springs to mind - their courage to be known for being a total loser their entire life. Having said that, Eddie might say that in some way he won, because he won the hearts of a million British people who were like 'fair play to him having a go at something like that, I'd shit myself', and also to be fair he was the best ski jumper in Britain by a fair distance, so not a loser at all in fact, when you come to think about it.

I don't think we admire pluck, I think we like underdogs because they don't make us feel bad or at least any worse about our miserable lives, which is why, as soon as they stop being underdogs and start being overdogs, or whatever they become, hot dogs maybe, we drop them like a hot potato and cast around for someone else more underdoggy.

Dropped like a hot potato's a funny term isn't it, I mean when was the last time you picked up a hot potato? Not, of course, that it's not possible to pick up a hot potato, I'm sure that it is, I'm sure in olden days sailors used to pick up hot potatoes on the docks all the time, or something, and possibly caught hot potatoes in the process.

So where does the term underdog come from? It could be from greyhounds, but they rarely seem to be under, more to the side or just behind. Could it be that Britain's favourite animal metaphor is to do with the receptive dog in coitus? Perhaps the British only like people who are getting fucked by the top dog, but then how does that fit in with the traditional idea of the underdog being someone who comes from behind? What else could it be, underdog, a dog that used to go underground that everyone liked? Maybe it's related to dogging, that favourite British past-time, maybe Britain loves underdogging, no, I don't think I'm going to pursue that line of thinking.

Of course underdog could come from dog fighting, as in the dog that submits (under) the top dog, but in that case the underdog would be the loser, whereas underdog tends to mean the least fancied before the event, the David going up against the Goliath, and in fact there's an implied meaning of underdog that they often go on to win, otherwise they're just losers.

So I don't have a clue. A bit of research did turn up this attempt at etymology, but apart from being extremely tenuous, it's totally unreferenced and seems to be, more to the point, nonsense.

Memories of marathons

Marathon day in London. The TV coverage, with its relentless focus on the 'fun' and the 'heart-warming', makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that most marathon runners are data processors from Swindon, or website designers from Slough, the kind of people who would have had 'you don't have to be mad to work here but it helps' signs up in the 1980s and nowadays probably fill out Frankie Boyle gigs, because they're so fucking edgy. (A wild, rather stupid stereotype, but that is the kind I go for.) Obviously lots of different types of people run marathons, although perhaps they do they all have certain deficiency of intelligence in common. Still it's difficult to imagine cynical people running marathons - the kind of excitable positive mental attitude you need to think it a good idea to trash your joints for 26 miles seems to preclude dour miserables/realists like myself.

On watching the TV coverage, looking out for several idiots people I know who have apparently gone in for it, I couldn't help noticing that a lot of runners weren't really running it so much as, well, trotting. Of course when you're out for a 'fun' run (and how rarely does an oxymoron actually so obviously concern morons) actually running is not an essential item, as much just getting round by any means necessary and thereby raising loads of cash for wonderful causes. Raising the question of why people will only seem to donate to charity if someone is ripping their ligaments in half, but never mind, fun fun fun!

This year's event saw several world records broken. One man got the world record for fastest marathon dressed as a baby. He seems pleased, as does the man who won fastest leprechaun (I am not making this up), but jesus they let anybody in the Guinness Book of Records nowadays.

I have three major memories of the marathon. The first is from 1985 when my mum took me campaigning against the abolition of the GLC. We went around telling mostly unimpressed spectators that if the GLC was abolished the marathon probably wouldn't go ahead the next year. 'Don't be ridiculous,' one lady told me flatly, and the fact that she was proved right may have had some substantial impact on my subsequent political nihilism. Of course it is equally possible that years of trying to fire up an unwilling public for left-wing causes - for what was ostenibly their own good - left me bereft and unwilling myself.

When I worked at The Times staff there hated working marathon day probably more than Christmas Day - the roads around the Wapping plant are snarled up for miles with stupid people cheering on other stupid people, and most of the staff couldn't drive to work. As a cyclist it was not particularly difficult for me, although I did have to dodge the old Bill, leap a few barriers and sprint between runners across the Wapping Highway. The Highway has the rare accolade of the marathon running both up and down it, due to the torturous route it takes around docklands, and of all the vistas in London to have to pass twice, well it's an amusing choice.

When I worked at the tube, marathon day was an amusing tale of seeing fresh faced, excited joggers going out in the morning, and then watching them shuffling back in the afternoon, with carked ankles and twisted knees, helped along by some devoted family member, their happy finish line endorphin grin slowly peeling off as the weeks of agony ahead became apparent.

Other memories of marathon include the Marathon chip shop in Chalk Farm that somehow openly sold beer after hours in the 1980s, long before it was fashionable, where the chips were a strange shade of purple, and where marathon I guess referred to the drinking sessions. Every drunken tale rescued from that deviant establishment was always much more drunk than anywhere else. There was also the chocolate bar Marathon, which with a bag of crisps and can of coke was largely my school lunch for years. And let's not forget the parathons, when really strong acid trips go wrong.

Google Analytics Analysis

Who knows about google analytics? It's a tool website people use to measure traffic on their websites. I of course couldn't possibly measure traffic on my website, since it's so astronomical it is uncountable. But I check it anyway, now and again, to see if my blog has reached more people in a day than I could reach just by yelling out my window. Typically the answer is no I get quite a few hits and then an awful lot of them bounce right back off the page, presumably people who are looking for something else, or don't speak English, or wouldn't recognise good writing if it magically appeared on a computer screen in front of them. So the bounce rate, which doesn't much fall below 50% of visitors, is a sobering corollary to the individual visitors number beside it.

Yesterday wasn't a bad day, St George's Day being a topical theme and popular google search and I picked up a few people who'd searched for "St George's Day+racist". Most of them bounced straight back, as per usual, but what I didn't understand was why, when I myself searched google for St George's Day+racist, to see how high the post was in the results, it was so far down the list I never even found it. So these people had trawled google, painstakingly sifted through the great stinking piles of website nonsense out there, took a fine toothcomb to acres of chaff, finally unearthed my blog's small nugget of golden wheat, and then didn't even read it.

Which seems odd, but not as odd as the people who came to here after searching for criticalbills+blogspot? Five of them yesterday, of whom four bounced straight out again. What the hell else are they looking for apart from this blog? Or did it take one person (you can comment if you like) five goes to realise that they had actually found the right blog. Maybe all the new writing baffled them. Maybe getting rid of the embedded pornotube player confused them. Maybe, and this is what I'm really leaning towards, maybe google analytics sucks big bouncy bollocks. Anyway, if you're here, by whatever means you got here, thanks for dropping by.

Happy St Racist's Day!

St George's Day. It's a funny old thing. No-one seems to know when it is, or how to celebrate it. The Irish get pissed for Paddy's Day, the Welsh cook leeks (or something), the Jocks probably get pissed as well for St Andrew's Day or possibly play golf, but what do the English do for St George's Day? Well, traditional celebrations include a Guardian article mentioning what a hilarious coincidence it is that St George, patron saint of Little England, was - wait for it - a fuckin forrina; others mark it by bemoaning the lack of a proper celebration for St George's Day; others use it as a prop to write a blog post loading a gratuitous and unfair slur of racism upon St George's Day; others seem to like dressing up; no-one appears to have thought of using it as an occasion to maybe slay a few dragons, but it's early days.

On the face of it there shouldn't be anything racist about St George's Day. St George wasn't racist, being from Turkey and all that, and the dragon he supposedly slayed and princess he saved might have been from Libya. [That article features the interesting subplot that the Emperor's wife was so impressed by George's Christian martyrdom that she too became a Christian martyr, which is a funny thing to do when you think about it.] It's only that English people are assumed to be racist, hence Englishness is, but of course that's just bad press, those thugs running around saying outrageous things just to get themselves on telly. English people are no more racist than any other set of people arbitarily grouped together to make thinking less hurty.

Things get more complicated nowadays because the downtrodden English do have a point about their culture being subservient to all the new, better, more cultural cultures that have turned up over the years. But the chalice of English culture is so poisoned by the racists that even to start arguing that point makes people think you might be a closet racist hiding behind a politically correct thesis. And what the hell is English culture anyway? Shakespeare? Blake? It's not capitalism, thought up by a Scot; it's not colonialism, despite all the guilt, cos the whole of Europe was doing that; nor slavery; it's not multiculturalism, because that would be ridiculous; I hope to God it's not morris dancing, but it may be; it's certainly sucking up to America, but that's not much of a thing. Maybe this is why the racists have colonised the day, because they're the only ones who have a clear idea of what it means to be English: small minded, thick, violent, racist, closetly homosexual, that sort of thing.

Campaign promise

'I'll tell you how it started. I thought I knew it all you see, I thought nothing like that could ever happen to me. So when they came up to me at school and they said: "Ere sonny, do you want to join the Conservative party?" I thought nothing would happen. I thought I could handle it. I could take it or leave it. At first it was just now and again, a little meeting once a week. I liked how it made me feel. It made me feel important, as though I was somebody. Then I started going to more meetings and I even started doing a bit of politics on my own. Reading all about it. I fell out with my family over it, always arguing about tax and spend and capital punishment. They wanted me to stop but I told them to stay out of my life. Then I went to university. That was when I got into politics really badly. All day every day. Sitting in the union bar arguing with the Labourites then off to the debating hall twice a week for a massive debating binge. It started affecting my grades, so I switched to studying PPE to cover up. Then I became a councillor and finally an MP. That was when I hit rock bottom. I was lying to everyone: my family, my constituents, my accountant, the media. I couldn't maintain the pretence any more. I'm here to tell you all, don't make the mistakes I made: Politics screws you up!'

Louis Theroux: America's Medicated Children, BBC Two

Good old Louis, gonzo-bumbler, gauchely uncovering great scoops - like for instance that Max Clifford tells lies, or that Jimmy Saville is a fucking weirdo; Charming Louis, from a famous family: son of Paul Theroux, brother of Marcel Theroux (who I've never heard of), and also apparently brother of Jon Ronson (although that one isn't openly admitted); Posh old Louis, fag to Nick Clegg of all people at Westminster, who apparently lives in Harlesden; Yes, Louis is back, bumbling around some more, being nice to people and thereby getting them to let down their defences and tell him, nice Mr Louis, the TRUTH, not like those horrible journalists who crash in and get everyone's backs up.

What this amounts to this time is Louis staying over or just knocking around with three American families who have chosen to medicate their troublesome kids. We have 10-year-old Hugh, ratty, superior and friendless, prone to the occasional threat of suicide; 15-year-old Kaylee, whose brother had also been medicated but had grown out of it; and most shockingly of all, six-year-old Jack, a sweet-looking lad, who's been kicked out of school and spends his time in what we'd call a educational unit trying to make Tangram pictures without flipping the fuck out. Darling heart Louis, no matter how hard he tries to give everyone a fair shot (or at least enough rope to hang themselves) and not to let his prejudices shine through, spends an awful lot of the time saying things like: "Do you not think that perhaps he's just a normal kid, and you're just a shite, lazy parent?"

For what it's worth, that is what most people watching are thinking as well, and although Louis did quite well at not making people defensive, as well as showing he'd done more than cursory research into the kids' extensive diagnoses (OCD, ODD, ADHD, Asperger's, Bi-polar), there were times when you were glad that he did just come out and say: "Six years old is a little young for medication no?" Louis hung out with the kids and they seemed OK, although certainly troubled, but of course when he went back to the parents and pointed this out he was told: "Well you should have seen them without the pills" or in the case of the Jack: "No, that wasn't a freak out, but I can set him off for you if you'd like." Alas ethical reasons prevented that, so we ended up taking the mother's word.

And that was where the programme let the side down: It was fair enough for Louis to be absorbed in not overly challenging the families, but there was nobody else to put the case more concretely that the children maybe shouldn't be medicated, or at least not routinely. The parents certainly were aware of the controversy - in the case of the family who were all medicated, (even the dog, although not the daughter) the mother was highly educated and very articulate about the choices they'd made - but that didn't stop you from thinking that there was much, much more going on under the surface. The parents and also the doctors were well rehearsed in their pro-medication arguments, some more convincingly than others, but people who face the same questions over and over again often have their answers down pat, without it making their answers true.

So it was uneven telly, watchable, certainly, but it failed to really say very much, other than: this is what is happening (we know); there may be medicating going on to help parents control their kids or to avoid parents facing up to their own behaviours (this we know); there may well be medication for kids that is actually necessary (this we know although we may be sceptical to the point of not knowing it); we don't know if this is what is going on in any of these cases (this we um knew, or didnt know, well we're none the wiser). Certainly when you hear that one of the kids is diagnosed with the dystopian-sounding oppositional defiant disorder, you can't help but think: wait, are they medicating for opposition and defiance now? In interviews it seems that Louis was much more convinced by the possibility for medicating kids than it appears in the show, but the complete lack of alternative suggestions (as well as hardly any time given to the risks of medication) and the lack of footage of the unmedicated kids left at best half a story untold.

Your Two-a-day

Someone finds what is maybe the new iPhone 'in a bar', sells it to Gizmodo, they break it open and peek inside, before splashing big on the internet (and driving a fuckload of traffic their way), Apple ask for it back and grass grows and trees blow in the wind.

All this mentioned for no other reason than this comment on Metafilter.

Ash Tuesday

I've had a new idea, which is that I am going to post on here once a day - this is not going to happen, but i am going to try and write something for posting as often as i am able, which is quite often at the moment. This is inspired by hearing that when you run a blog - although I more walk a blog, or possibly shuffle along a blog - it is quantity not quality that's important, a sad indictment on the world in which we live, I guess, and a very typical indictment as well.

Anyway, for my first of no doubt millions of somewhat ropey but definitely existant blog posts I wish to mildly mention the absence of planes from English skies due to the eruption of a volcano in Iceland with a name so mental it sounds like the sort of thing an alien would jibber at you after snorting far too much ketamine. Thanks to this force of nature there has been not a single contrail to mar a beautiful succession of azure skies for the last week; a curious impression that perhaps it's a bit quieter round here lately; a lessening of the global CO2 whatsit for a bit; the warm glow that comes from the likes of Mr Ryanair getting a jetplane up the backside; and the smug satisfaction that comes of being too skint to fly anywhere this easter and not getting stuck in some holiday idyll with no money and having to sleep on the beach.

There are apparently millions of people stuck on easter holidays that they don't want to be on anymore, easter having long past, and the Royal Navy are being called in to go and collect them; Dan Snow, who - I can safely say, having once subbed an interview with him and his dad - is a bit of a twat, has tried and failed to "rescue" people from the dungeons of Calais, sort of like the Scarlet Pimpernel, except not; schools are shorn of their teachers and their pupils; complete peace and quiet for the residents of far West London and similarly unbenighted places; and impending doom for airlines, oh the horror

It is difficult to have sympathy for the people stuck on holiday, although no doubt there are people conversely stuck not on holiday, and also people from nice places stuck on holiday in Britain, although you haven't heard much about them in the news. But the people on holiday, well no doubt it is awful having to stay for three weeks on Tenerife when you were getting tired of it on the fifth day, but they rather remind me of that vision of hell - which the briefest of googling has informed me is likely to be Dante's - where the gluttons have to eat cake all day, even as they puke it up, and the cokeheads have to snort coke even though their noses are bleeding profusely, and the holidaymakers have to stay making holidays even though if they get anymore sunburnt they're going to become radioactive, and anyway they spent all their money on presents on the way to the airport and now they're eking out an existence living on stale bread that the shoddy restaurants on the strip chuck out at the end of the day, and making friends with the tramps that they told the police to remove in those halycon days before the planes were grounded.

In other developments the International Air Traffic Association called for a better response, which everybody ignored (ba-dum!), and plane companies claimed that they could have flown in the ash cloud anyway what the hell was the problem you idiots, and even the officials who grounded all the flights said perhaps they shouldn't have, which makes the whole thing even funnier than it was in the first place, just as a new belch of ash from the Eijeeiufkjnfakjnfliua volcano threatens to smother Europe again.

I'm off out now to enjoy the beautiful clear skies and even possibly take a photo over London, to show my grandchildren I guess, and I hope everyone takes note of the important lesson here, which is that it is possible after all for environmental protest to stop aviation, as long as it's well targeted, media savvy and takes advantage of prevailing circumstances.

late extra: I did actually go out, although without a camera cos it was getting cloudy anyway, and I distinctly saw several planes flying north-west above London, contrails like knife scars across the sky, and this despite the news saying that Southern England airspace is not open until tomorrow. So make of that what you want. I smell conspiracy. And kerosene.

'Is he from the future?'

'No, I think he's from Swindon.'

Police said Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age, would not reveal his country of origin.

What I especially like about this story is at the end it says: "Mr Cole was taken to a secure mental health facility in Geneva but later disappeared from his cell." So obviously not that secure a mental facility.

BAN THIS EVIL RAG NOW

HORRIFIED teachers are having to hand back worthless newspapers to pupils after confiscating them - because printing unsubstantiated hypocritical bullshit is still legal.

Worried school heads last night joined the families of teenage victims John Smith and John Lewis in backing calls to ban The Sun, real name The Scum Sucker.

The demands came as the known UK death toll rose to five.

Meanwhile the Government was blasted as it emerged a ban had been delayed for SIX MONTHS.

HOTLINE TO HELP YOU

If you have a tabloid problem or need advice call the Frank helpline on 0800 77 66 00

John Smith - father of 19-year-old chef John who died on Monday with pal John, 18 - said it was "shameful" that ministers had not yet acted.

Grieving John, 54, said he wholeheartedly backed the call to ban The Sun.

He said: "I'm convinced that because it's legal, my son thought it was safe.

"If they'd banned it maybe these two deaths wouldn't have happened."

Head teachers joined the call for a ban after a conference heard the paper was a "growing menace" among schoolchildren.

Mick Brooks, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "Our members are raising awareness of The Sun's dangers, but the Government must recognise there is a real issue with this paper spreading utter nonsense."

Mike Stewart, head of Westlands School in Torquay, Devon, said it was "totally unacceptable" that the paper can be bought over the counter.

And he warned that teachers would have to HAND BACK any stashes confiscated from pupils - because the tawdry rag is still legal.

Powerless

Official guidance issued to teachers warns them that holding on to pupils' property could breach their human rights.

Mr Stewart said: "Both teachers and police are powerless to do anything about it.

"Items can be confiscated, but because this paper is still legal it would have to be given back at the end of the day and that's disturbing.

"This tabloid is highly dangerous and must be banned."

Shattered dad John added: "We've heard of children as young as nine reading this crap. Because it's legal, it's readily accessible.

"I could read it on the internet and get it delivered tomorrow.

"A friend's son said he didn't know anyone who HADN'T read it, so it's a huge problem.

"I understand a report that recommends banning it is just sat somewhere.

"It's shameful that young people are still dying. Politicians need to do something. We don't want anyone else to suffer like we are suffering."

John's mum Jane said: "Apparently kids are even reading these papers in the playground.

"John's not the first person to die from this paper, yet nothing is being done. How can that be right?"

John's mum Jacqui backed the Smith family's call, saying: "Let's stop this happening again."

Home Secretary Alan Johnson was blasted as it emerged that a decision on a ban had been delayed SIX MONTHS.

Tabloid trash ... just one molecule makes The Sun - illustrated above - different to DDR (a dirty dish rag). DDR's formula is rag+filth. The Sun's is rag+filth+inflammatory and inaccurate bullshit. Its chemical name is 4-theluvofgodmakeitstop (4-FS).

An official review was launched last October, then postponed when the scientist in charge quit in protest at the sacking of chief media adviser Prof David Nutt.

The committee has still not reported, meaning any ban is still months away.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling accused the Government of "dithering".

He said: "There's no excuse for not acting sooner. We should be able to ban these papers temporarily until there is a proper assessment."

Top cop Tim Hollis, media spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said banning The Sun would send out "a clear message" about its dangers - and give police the power to take action against agents.

The Government says it cannot ban the paper until the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Facts reports on its dangers.

John and welder pal John died hours after reading The Sun on a night clubbing with friends in Scunthorpe, Lincs.

Police investigating their deaths said four people - two men aged 26, one aged 20 and a 17-year-old youth - were still being questioned last night.

LORD Mandelson added insult to injury yesterday by admitting he had never heard of the paper.

The Business Secretary, below, later backtracked, saying: "Now it's been associated very tragically with the deaths of these two young people, we will look at it speedily and take any action needed."

Sunday Market Forces

As I was up early Sunday, I thought I'd roll down to Brick Lane, mooch about in the morning and perhaps collar a replacement bike, since mine fell victim to what appeared a minor fault but turned out to be terminal, as though a loved on had been carried off by a cold. Walking through Old Street I was struck, as often happens, by the fresh sheen of gentrification on the otherwise grimy and unprepossessing office blocks and warehouses. The rich are on the march around here, moving back into the city, recolonising what had been abandoned to the poor, and so pushing what community has endured off its moorings, out into the sub-suburbs. Community takes a long time to build up and a frighteningly short time to extinguish. For vast swathes of the city, both opulent and impecunious, community doesn't take much hold, people endure on for years without developing much attachment to their manor, or their neighbours, and are so used to this unrootedness that they think little of what community they do manage to partake in.

So the rich move in to areas that were once poor, and of course by stereotype we know that the rich engage in community far less, having more to occupy themselves that doesn't require neighbourly interaction. So the areas lose what local character has stayed on, beyond that conferred by the architecture or long-standing establishments.

And so to Brick Lane, the Sunday market along Sclater Street, a historical treasure trove where for hundreds of years immigrants were first sent to test themselves against the cold heart of London, before admission to the greater part of England. And there I find, against all the odds, a thriving stronghold of character, a tiny but strong pocket of undiminished east London, bulging with quite unselfconscious owsyerfather cockney accents, genuine, solid gold. And although they can't be unaware of the closing tide of the trendies - gentrification's outriders, who have more or less claimed Brick Lane for coffee and vintage clothes stalls - and although within a few hours the area will have turned from a flea market to a bohemian enclave, for the time being east London remembers itself as the hard-done-by cousin of the trendy north and west.

I'm in Sclater Street, where the stolen bikes are propped by malevolent looking 20-year-olds; a man with one leg sits on the kerb with his hand outstretched; stalls profer such meagre wares that they could not, even on a market day of fantastic good fortune, possibly provide enough income to pay rent on a nearby warehouse conversion; where all of a sudden a brief snatch of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues blares out from a CD stall, clear bass booming in the spring sun, the lyrics casting their own take on the ragamuffin environs; up the road is the real flea market, people sat on rugs on the pavement selling whatever they've mustered up, third world scenes still undisplaced by the new concrete bridges carrying the new railway that has suddenly cut through the area, regeneration carried by train, how much longer can this free space endure, so unfashionable and neglected and unprofitable.

Up in Hackney later, in Dalston, I sit at my mate's flat and look out the window on the sunny afternoon, drinking tea and enjoying the hope of spring. We chat and swap stories, a social visit. In the wide, tree-lined street young men jump out of a car, confront other young men on a motorbike, knives are drawn, big knives, the kind that would stab right through you, some of the youth chase others up the road, a motorbike helmet is left on the ground, a pair hurridly attempt to start the bike, others return shouting: 'are you mad? are you mad?', capture the bike, the car drives off, no-one is stabbed, no-one lies in their own blood, and all is quiet again on the sunny spring afternoon. What of gentrification? How many trendy blocks and tube stations can you build, or failing pubs can you convert to middle-class emporiums?

The swiftness of the incident, and the swift vanishing of it entirely, are profoundly unnerving, the street looks as pleasant as you could hope for, and the menace only remains in the mind. The next-door neighbour, well-to-do though down-to-earth, is shocked - 'what the fuck,' she says to me, 'what the fuck was that about?' - she's shocked, but both her and I know that this goes on, there's no surprises, but to know is another thing than to see.

The police arrive, too late for the party, drive up the road which now bears not a trace of its tumult. They have nothing to offer and nothing to do. They ask me questions, but I have nothing to tell them.

When I leave I see the car at the end of the road, I see four boys sitting inside, they have their butcher's knives with them no doubt, at the ready, ready to disturb the pastoral late afternoon once again; as the sun sets in glory over the city, they have them at the ready, at the flick of a switch they can bring them to bear.

Plastic People In Peril

"the best little club in the UK"

When are we going to take to the streets demanding cheap drugs and decent clubs?

We need to stand up for what we believe in

Ten Rules For Writing

Ten rules for writing fiction, written by yer honest-to-God writing luminaries: Hilary Mantel, Michael Moorcock, Michael Morpurgo, Andrew Motion, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Philip Pullman, Ian Rankin, Will Self, Helen Simpson, Zadie Smith, Colm Tóibín, Rose Tremain, Sarah Waters, Jeanette Winterson; Apparently its been causing a stir on twitter and whatnot, which makes me feel old, for some reason.

There is a lot of good stuff in there but as is my wont I shall now pick upon a few negative shards that caught my gaze.

A lot of them feel the need to repeat that one about "if you want to be a writer, well you just have to write", which seemed at first hearing, many years ago, to be helpful, if very glib, but upon turgid repetition just seems glib. What if I said I wanted to be a good writer, instead of just a writer, would you then think it helpful to tell me "oh well you just have to write well"?

Lots about how you should never use adverbs or any ornamentation, which is very good advice for certain kinds of writers, for instance people can't decide that sort of thing for themselves thanks very much. I have never understood saying take out all the adverbs. What kind of writer thinks that a whole class of words is out of bounds? When the hell do we get to use adverbs? That kind of thing stinks of the fashion for spare writing, which is all well and good but is just a fashion. It's not bad advice for the many people who tend to overwrite, but my take on it would be that person should write, reread and rewrite until it sounds like something they like, not mechanically cut out of the adverbs, or words with the letter w in it, or some other sacrifice to the gods.

David Hare, amongst other odd trinkets of wisdom, offers: "Never take advice from anyone with no investment in the outcome," which seems a monumentally strange thing to say in a column made of um advice, but what do I know.

An alternate life, where I studied politics

Some very undeveloped thoughts on the state of democracy

Here an Obama adviser suggests that the Labour Party in the big cities is controlled by tight cabals who restrain the rise of maverick, radical politicians such as Obama. Quite apart from whether Obama is a radical, this raises questions about the potency of democracy in this country.

The transparency of the process by which individuals rise up through party ranks to positions of power is vital to the health of democracy. It is what allows us to say that democracy exists at all, since it clearly is not vested in the opportunity to vote once every five years. Instead it is vested in the possibility that anybody could, theoretically, rise up through a party machine to face an election. The party members who favour their platform, here represent the citizens who are not members of a party, in much the same way as MPs stand in for the rest of us when voting on law, until the politician gets to face a proper election. Finding out that this process is strangled by close-knit gangs of small-time politicians is not exactly surprising, but it informs against taking the existence of robust democracy seriously, since so much of it is already carved up between a small, unrepresentative cliques.

This is important, because the perception that democracy functions is vital for the health of society. The less a society is perceived as fair the worse the nature of its citizens' contributions. So if people believe, against some pretty impressive evidence, that democracy is thriving in this country - as opposed to power being concentrated in the hands of a tiny set of tycoons, moguls and lawyers - then they will probably be more inclined to contribute and co-operate with society in its basic functions. Less likely to cheat, steal, hurt others, help the police and so on.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps most people really do cheat as much as they can, perhaps they are cynical as to the motives of politicians - and I mean really cynical, not the faux-cynicism which is endemically fashionable but which lacks the finesse of true evidence-based disappointment - perhaps people won't co-operate less in a dystopian police state, since they already fail to co-operate now in the weakened "democratic" society of today. Perhaps it is only the power of the state to capture and punish criminals that stops us all from being criminals. But if that is so, what does that tell us about our alienation from our surroundings, and the true rotten state of affairs that passes for modern society.

On the other hand, perhaps people do believe in society and do find that they co-operate willingly because they believe that society is at least attempting to achieve fairness. If so then having genuinely participatory democracy is vital to engage and maintain that belief and prevent it getting sucked into cynicism. And genuine participatory democracy cannot begin to flourish if strangled by cabals. But then of course the cabals couldn't exist if people genuinely participated in democracy. So what kind of system do you try to bring about, which will encourage people to get involved, neuter complacent cynicism by offering genuine opportunities to contribute, and cast fresh and enduring light on the murky practices of professional politicians.

How do you get people to sacrifice their time to participate, and stop them being satisfied merely in complaining?

History Lesson

Marx said: "History repeats itself; the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

Santayana said: "He who cannot learn from history is doomed to repeat it."

I says: "Since farce is preferable to tragedy, it appears incautious to learn too much from the past."

quotes subtly altered for purposes of making post look cleverer than it is

The sauce of bad jokes

What did the fish say to the chips?
Ketchup later! Tartar For Now!!

Punk CCTV

As I was going along Holburn

As I was going along Holburn,
trying to find a bookshop
I found one Photo & Digital Shop
but no bloody bookshop

As I was going along Holburn,
trying to find a bookshop
I found one Photo & Digital Shop
two bookies
but no bloody bookshop

As I was going along Holburn,
trying to find a bookshop
I found one Photo & Digital Shop
two bookies
three greetings card shops
but no bloody bookshop

As I was going along Holburn,
trying to find a bookshop
I found one Photo & Digital Shop
two bookies
three greetings card shops
four sandwich shops
five restaurants
six public houses
seven off-licences
eight banks
nine building societies
and ten mini-supermarkets

but no bloody bookshop

Bill's demands

Today I came home and found that the local council had sent me ten (10) letters. Recently my girlfriend, somewhat inadvisedly, chose to contact the council entirely of her own free will and tell them that since she was now living with me I was no longer entitled to the 25% discount. I have no problem with paying the extra, by the way, especially since she will be paying it, but contact with bureaucracy is an activity that should be treated more or less the same way as watching Strictly Come Dancing - only when you have absolutely no choice - and the law of unexpected consequences is never more apparent than when you ring up some labyrinthintine public body for nothing more than a quick chat, and find yourself being charged for the outstanding fees for the disposal of the body of someone who died in your house in 1923.

This time the unexpected consequences have not yet amounted to much, but today ten (10) letters arrived on my door, addressed to both me and my girlfriend, which in itself is a slightly worrying development. I took them upstairs to peruse at my leisure. All seemed identical, so I opened one at random. It turned out to be a council tax bill for 2006/07, updated to take account of my girlfriend's arrival, which, for the record, happened in 2009. Fortunately, since the date of the new increased charge was September 2009, as noted on the bill, there was no additional balance due for 2006/07. Nor was there any additional charge for 2007/08, nor did 2008/09 have any outstanding arrears, neither did 2005/06, nor 2004/05, not 2003/04, not even 2002/03, which was after all, as you will remember, autism awareness year, nor 2001/02 - although the breakdown of charges this year did include £134.12 for what is noted as the Greater london council, which attentive readers will remember was abolished in 1986 - and especially not 2000/01, despite the hoo-haa over the millenium bug. Only 2009/10, that is the financial year we are currently in, saw any additional charges. The other 9 (nine) letters are perhaps a council measure in support of the post office workers, in which case I heartily endorse it, or perhaps a surfeit of envelopes that needed to be used up before new ones could be bought, or perhaps the council just felt that I'd like to know exactly how much too much money I've paid them over the last ten years for the privilege of living in a pokey one-bed in a - by official government standards - socially deprived area.

What do i do about this? Apart from, obviously, write a blog entry probably expressing not much more than I am short of things to do today. Do I complain, or perhaps merely point it out to the council that they could probably cut these very council tax bills, admittedly minutely, by the simple expedite of not sending out ten (10) when one (1) would do? Is there any point? Soon the council recycling truck will come and take back these 10 (ten) bills and perhaps some other lucky soul can be the recipient of the council largesse.

My car, ma

I was taking a sunday stroll down a suburban street, nice day, trees rustling their leaves in a summer breeze, when I looked up and saw two cars falling silently out of the blue sky. No-one was about and I watched rapt as the cars fell, one ahead of the other, both rightways up, wobbling as they fell. I looked up in the sky for a plane or somewhere the cars could have come from, but there was nothing to see, just a thin cloud far up in the distance. Only then did it occur to me that if I didn't pay attention I might get crushed by one so I started ducking around trying to judge the trajectory as they closed in.

Where I was standing a small road forked off from the main one, a scratch of grass separating them, and a wooden shelter sat in front of me on the grass. The first car hit the ground on the small road some way away. There was a ferocious noise, heavy and deep and gut-wrenching, but which it seems slightly pointless to use a metaphor to describe - the best I could think of might be the sound of two cars hitting the ground from a great height - followed by a succession of smaller, higher-pitched noises, like cymbals accompanying an orchestral epic. It was metal versus tarmac - a well-matched battle, both left in a bad way - and then bolts ripped from their fixings, glass shattered and sent spinning into the road, a searing smoke and the burning of things that shouldn't be burnt, and then the quiet.

Dust settled, glass stopped tinkling, bits of car came clattering and then to rest, smoke sailed on and up on the breeze. Perhaps, the thought occurred to me, I should check whether there was anybody in either of the cars, and see if they were alright. I looked up the main road and a small car was driving towards me. There was something strange about the way it moved, jerking through the gears and yet never getting up much speed. As I looked inside I saw a huge, fat guy, eyes drenched with medication, hunched over the steering wheel, looking worried. He drove past without acknowledging me.

Now people appeared, out of their houses and who knows where and starting gathering around, ringing other people, and probably the police, on their phones. There was talk but I was suddenly worried that no-one knew about the cars, that it had all been my imagination, and that they had all gathered here for some other reason, so I didn't say anything. Then I asked one woman: "Did you see the cars?" and the pause before she answered was long enough to make my heart flutter. Then she said: "Yes," and put me out of my misery. "We should ring the police and tell them about the plane," I said to the crowd, imagining a plane with its doors hanging open, cargo dropping away like gifts being showered by a benevolent god. Then I said: "Mind you they're probably going to Heathrow anyway."

Some pretty pictures of life, the universe and everything One pretty picture of some stars Thanks expiring picture links

(from)

(from)

Arsenal undo Celtic knot

Down to the Emirates for the tie given the unlikely subtitle "The Battle of Britain" by the souvenir floggers. With Arsenal two up from the away leg, it needed a Celtic goal in the first 20 mins, which was in the event never on the cards. Celtic turned up in an away strip of fluorescent green and black hoops, giving them the look more of a swarm of radioactive insects than a Champions League worthy football club. Like radioactive insects, they worked hard but were more or less put to the sword by Arsenal's sharper interplay. Eduardo missed a couple of sitters and got what looked from the other side of the ground like a soft penalty, and which apparently was a blatant dive. When he took the penalty you knew he was going to be cool, but he was so cool the goalie had practically packed up and gone home before he bothered to kick the ball. Crowdwise the Celtic obviously had a lot of life in them, the Emirates roused itself barely a few times; in response to the Scots' "Shall we sing a song for you?" the Londoners couldn't even be bothered to sing much of "Shall we score a goal for you?". There was a song to the old Adebayor hit (Sloop John B) which ended "We've got Arshavin, fuck Adebayor", but I failed to pick up what the first bit was, doth endeth my career as terrace scribe (but where my ears fail me, google shall prevail - it starts: "He's five foot four/He's five foot four"); the best bit of wit was when the Celtic crowd were lustily leaping up and down in their fluorescent tops - reminding me of when I watched a I think Croatian side here and their fans jumped up and down, shirts off to a man, for more or less the whole game - anyway the Celtic were leaping up and down in celebration of I guess not being in Scotland for a few hours and the bemused Arsenal crowd responded by singing: "Jump up/If you're 4-0 down." Which was nice.

A brief mention of last night's "organised hooliganism" down at West Ham - Millwall, but rather than a return to the old days it seems to have been a ruck for old time's sake. I don't think the two teams have played each other in the last ten years, so perhaps their two "legendary firms" were just reacquainting themselves with each other. Certainly there was no hint of knuckle in the bourgeois environs of Ashburton Grove, even with Glasgow in town.

like just some cool shit on the internet

The magnetic power of Bran Flakes

Tom Swifties, he offered in an amusing self-referential way, ah no um hang on

Old guy makes chairs

Cassetteboy has a blog

Thats right!!! Cassssetttttebbbboooooyyyyyy - he/they of the spectacular "Harry Potter & the under-AGE blow JOB!" and much much more - now has his/their very own blog

Progressive Conservatism

David Cameron on the politicians-are-scum revelations

I got as far as: "Our philosophy of progressive Conservatism – the pursuit of progressive goals through Conservative means . . ."

Talk about being all things to all people. We want to change things by keeping them the same. We want radical preservation. A transformative status quo. War is peace. Politics is PR. Satire is redundant.

The Unloved, Channel 4

Samantha Morton, the British Oscar-nominated actress famously reticent in interviews about her chaotic Nottingham upbringing, which included spells in a care home and with foster parents - and who is also, incidentally, the mother of my mate's daughter - turns to directing to tell a small part of her story in the semi-autobiographical The Unloved, a script co-written with Tony Grisoni. Eleven-year-old Lucy is taken into care away from her violent father (played by Robert Carlyle), a inadequate bully, who beats her with a belt while asking her "why are you making me do this?". "Can I live with my mummy?" she asks social workers a few times, without receiving much of a reply, although when she skips off and visits her mum she gives her the bus fare back to the home, without much more explanation.

For the most part Lucy is a quiet witness to the normally dimly lit world of kids in care. And while Morton shines a light into it, there is no sense of overdramatic inflammatory or sensationalist; it is a dark world we are near, but Lucy only skirts it, so the film skilfully avoids dropping into ghetto glamourisation. So while Lucy witnesses her room-mate, the mouthy 16-year-old Lauren, going shoplifting, sniffing Butane, getting abused by one of the carehome staff, and then finally going on the game, it is all abstracted, as if only revealed as what a quiet, shy 11-year-old girl can understand. Morton herself has said that the film is a diluted version of her experience.

It is a testament to Morton's film-making discipline that the whole film is underplayed to such good effect. Rather than striving to shock, it almost strives in the opposite direction, to downplay the reality. This helps make the film inherently believable. Nothing is never played for shock value. Instead the film is centred by - as well as centred on - the quiet, calm, withdrawn prescence of Lucy; the camera constantly refers back to her: Lauren is subdued by the police - cut to Lucy - Lauren sniffs on butane - cut to Lucy in her bed - Lauren is abused in her bed by Ben, one of the care home staff - cut to Lucy running away from the home - the other care home staff attack the "nonce", suspicious but without proof of his wrongdoing - cut to Lucy, who we know knows, and who always tells the truth when asked, looking on. This scene is one of the most satisfying of the film and illustrates precisely the disciplined, tight, unexcitable style Morton has gone for. Instead of Ben getting his comeuppance, we only see beginnings of his comeupance, in the same way that we only see the beginning of Lauren's slide into the abyss. Morton has said that one of the early seeds for the film was her realisation that a prostitute murdered in Nottingham had been in a care home with her.

The centring of the film of Lucy gave it a meditative quality that was amply reflected in the superb cinematography. The framing, the choice and the sequences of shots were all fantastic. Perhaps this is because there was little of the quick cutting which has become so ubiquitous, perhaps it was because of the director's choice to underplay the drama in order to get at the heart of the child's experience, perhaps it was just the choice of director and cinematographer. The Telegraph may somewhat disparagingly call it "Baftaland" but it is the first time for a long, long time I can remember being so moved by the pictures on screen, and again becoming aware of the potential for beauty in film. The final shot, with Lucy sitting on a bus on her way back from her mother's, while the sun plays across her face as the bus moves through the streets and a song that maybe Spiritualized's The Ballad Of Richie Lee plays in its entirety, was straight out of the Kubrick canon, and all the better for it.

A lot of comments I've read by people on the internet today have just complained that nothing happened, or it was over-long, or the story didn't move anything on. Which is depressing, but all the more reason to be grateful that Morton stuck to her vision, rather than letting someone else direct it for bangs and whizzes.

Choice caring quote: “Film-makers go into kids’ lives, stay for six months, give them lovely catering every day, make life a dream, it’s all cameras and da-di-da — and then they disappear, leaving a gaping hole. If I was going to make a Ken Loach-style film, maybe I might have needed the raw material, but I’m the raw material here.”

Overheard: the worst date in the world

The 476 bus from Stoke Newington, Sunday afternoon

"Yeah I went to sleep," the girl says

"You always go to sleep. You want to get drunk more."

"Hmmm. You wouldn't like me when I'm drunk. I get annoying."

"Me and my friend were in a pub in West London the other day and the people sitting next to us got up and they both left half-pints behind, so we drank them, and then we went round drinking other people's drinks that they'd left behind, and we got wrecked, oh well not wrecked, but we had a lot of drinks all for free, and then this girl left half her dinner so I was like 'are you going to finish that' and she said no so i got half a cold roast dinner as well, it was brilliant."

"Hmmmm."

"I've got hundreds of CDs, I hope you like CD shopping cos we're going to spend at least an hour in the CD shop."

"I don't really buy CDs anymore, I just download stuff."

"Do you know about Olympic weightlifting, the bar right in the Olympic weightlifting weighs 20 kilos on its own, so you know if you're lifting 20 kilos on each side, thats 60 kilos, thats like a lot more than I thought I was lifting, soon I'll be able to bench press my own bodyweight."

"Hmmmm."

when it's over, it's over

Is Dalston the coolest place in Britain? Not any more

Cyclism

So the sun arrives and suddenly my cycle to work is innundated with friendly cyclists. As if recently returned from their winter migration, they clutter up the traffic lights like a murder of crows. And murder it is.

Because most other cyclists, especially the unpractised, fair-weather ones who have magically appeared on the road, festooned with fresh-out-of-the-shop luminous cycle accessories, are infinitely more aggravating than cars. Cars have one basic, predicable motivation - to kill you - and you stay out of their way on that basis. But cars can more or less move only in two directions and from a stop have surprisingly slow acceleration. A bike, on the other hand, is quick away, but more to the point can veer in any number of unpredictable directions and has the added bonus of the ability to just topple on top of you at any given moment.

Surely, I hear you cry, I am going too far; surely the parade of cyclists taking back the city from the menace of 4x4 planet wreckers is a good thing; surely a healthier nation is a happier nation; surely there is a camaraderie between the pedalling classes that I, as a thoughtful, concerned person, would wish to celebrate. Well, maybe, if they take some cycle proficiency tests and get out of my bloody way.

It is not as though I am one of the lycra-clad, Italian frame, all-over Campagnola brigade. My bike is often no more zippy than an overweight elephant trailing across the savanna, another overweight elephant atop. I am not a snob, I don't think, I just want to be able to get where I am going. And cycling in the city, at least during the winter, has a certain libertarian bent, a small anarchistic, individualist marker against a world of mass transportation and crowded tube platforms. The arrival of the hoardes upon their bikes, much galvanised by the bombings of 7/7 (for which, thanks Al-Qaeda, a small part of western civilisation you didn't intend to do in, I presume), has curtailed my small rebellion, and now I am in danger of becoming yet another bike in the crowd.

Cycling is still, just, a rebellion, which is why, alongside miserable jealousy, motorists get so irritated by bikes. I am very much of the view that a man on a bike can do no wrong in a inter-traffic scenario. I dimly remember a quote from the House of Lords where one good Lord said words to the effect of: "Whilst being driven around, I constantly observe cyclists on the road who jump red lights [check], ride on the pavement [check], ride without a helmet [check] or lights [check], pay no attention to the highway code [check] and further to this malignant attitude apparently are of the belief that they'll never have to face arrest or punishment [check]." This is the rebellion. The argument about red lights is a particular favourite in the Lords, but is a total red herring. Red lights are for cars because they cannot be trusted to go anywhere of their own accord without crashing into each other and killing small children. Bikes, on the other hand, can weave in and out without recourse to flashing lights and authoritarian strictures. This is not to say that cyclists can't get it wrong, but the ideal is summed up neatly on a sign on the canal path in Hackney: Considerate Cycling Permitted. Because cyclists, unlike motorists, are not cocooned away in what they have come to believe is an extension of their front room; they are out in the elements and face the world directly, not sheltering behind windscreen wipers and the old yell out the window and speed off routine.

Some say, having realised that it is perfectly safe for cyclists to jump red lights, provided they do it safely, that they shouldn't because it annoys drivers so much. Of course it does. Drivers are like the sheep of the hills, while cyclists are like the foxes.

This is the rebellion; you motorists are taxed, your every misdemeanour is filmed and then sent to you with an £80 bill, you're getting fat, you can't help but pay absurd prices for petrol, and then some smug twat on two wheels zings past the lights and zips off down the road, flashing their arse in the air at you - yes he's flashing his arse IN YOUR FACE FATBOY!!!

Drivers are often prone to complain that cyclists are smug. And the truth is, most of them are. Even I, who has never had a driving licence and, mainly through abject laziness, has more of a carbon thumbprint than carbon footprint, even I am prone to the hint of murderous rage when I see someone parading their bike around with a ONE LESS CAR sticker or (especially) flag. So much so that I even considered designing a car bumper sticker than says "One less smug cyclist". Alas I worry that someone even more depraved than me might think to stick them on those ghost bikes, the white monuments to cyclists killed on the road; this I suppose shows the limit of my misanthropy.

So I hate most cyclists, although I make an exception for dead ones. But I really hate cyclists who don't have gears. The trend of the last few years for cyclists to dispense with gears, flashing about on admittedly aesthetically pleasing, if somewhat neutered machines, has engendered much debate amongst cyclists. The form over function debate has got not so much an airing as a long, slow hot air balloon ride; although the single-speed merchants claim utility in that dispensing with gears is cheaper and leaves less to go wrong. Of course not having a bike at all leaves nothing at all to go wrong.

The first time I ever saw a guy riding a single-speed bike I asked him: "How the hell do you get up hills?" "London hasn't got any hills," he sneered at me, proving there and then both the idiocy and the smugness on which the entire single-speed edifice rests. Of course London doesn't have any hills, unless you count all those hills which are in London. It is true that if you limit your ride to the parts of London which are relatively flat you may be get away with it, although whatever money you save in not buying any gears you'll soon pay out in exorbitant rent.

In fact there are two types of one-gear buffoons - the fixed gear and the single-speed. The fixed gear, or fixed wheel, or fixie if you really need your head smacked with a D-lock, dispenses not only with the gear but also the freewheel, which means the crank of the pedal and the turning of the backwheel are inoperably connected. The pedals will go round if the wheel is going round and vice versa, which seems a recipe for disaster but some riders, no doubt spun out on cheap Moroccan hash, claim that it allows them to be one with their bike. It also allows the cyclist to brake using force from his feet, by pressing against the turning of the crank. Thus some fixed-wheel bike riders have dispensed not only with gears but also brakes, which in Darwinian terms is what you call an evolutionary dead end.

The other style of single gear bike is the so-called single-speed, which takes all the aesthetics of the fixed gear but allows the back wheel to freewheel, thus making it precisely a marker of fashion victimhood. It is no coincidence that the epicentre of single-speed bikes in London is Hoxton, aka the London Borough of Fashion Victims; you can safely be extremely wary of any phenomenon which increases in ratio to its vicinity to Shoreditch.

One of the most glaring, literally, elements of the single-speed trend is when the riders "accessorise" their bikes, with wacky colours, matching wheel rims and other self-aggrandising minutae, all in a vain (again, literally) attempt to individualise their bikes, in alas the exact same way as a thousand other inadequates. Disparaging these wheeled art installations, as they irritate their way from Commercial Road to Kingsland High Street, could occupy me all day, but it did give me an insight into my ordinarily fractious relationship with cab drivers. For, at a guess, what I think when I see the single-speed glarecyles, is what cabbies think when they see any of us cyclists.

Poems for my mum

1

My mother said to me son I'm proud for you to be a man
But don't you wait for me, cos I'll be running on
And when the day came she was there and then she was gone
Don't you wait for me, cos I won't be around

We were talking about how you pass your values on
The only thing that you can give your children
Some of hers were crooked, and I left them alone
Some of them were golden, and they shone in the sun

And I now I go out walking in the places where we walked when we were young,
Hoping to find something of the child that's gone
But nothing comes of nothing, so I guess that I am done
Don't you wait for me, cos I'll be running on

2

October
bastard month that it is,
I lost my mother in its raging winds

Leaves wrap the pavement
and the days struggle for breath
and the cold comes, I dont feel the cold
just a bitter edge on the air
a nip, a bite, sneaks in
makes itself at home
and the crooked corridors
and the waiting for the lift
can stop for now

I will spend my time looking at the view

3

She's lying on the bed
She's dead
you know she's gone,
you know she's gone
but still there's the hope

They've got her on a hundred machines,
you know what it means
you know she's gone,
you know she's gone
You felt her go,
You were at your friend's and the call said
Come back to the hospital,
You knew she'd gone

A seizure they said,
and that feeling's called dread
but you knew she'd gone,
you know she's gone
as you rode your bike, you felt her spirit rise
you felt her go,
you felt her leave
you know she's gone

but there's the hope
it keeps you in the ward,
keeps her on the bed
plugged in and made to breathe,
made to beat her heart
you know she's gone,
you know she's gone
but there's the hope

you know she's gone

Then Monday comes
and there's no hope,
they want to turn the machines off
and now she's gone
you knew she'd gone,
you know she's gone
but when they come to turn it off
it rises inside
saying No! lets keep her alive,
lets not let her go
there's the hope
always the hope

but you know she's gone,
you know she's gone
but there's the hope

and now she's gone
and before you leave you go to give her one last kiss
you knew she'd gone,
you knew she'd gone
and now she's gone

4

And now you'll cry in all the oddest places
On a plane, on a boat, in a park
in the oddest places,
but not at the funeral, not at the grave
instead in a restaurant
with the sun streaming in through the windows
the little boy cries for his mum
who always came and now she doesn't come no more
I'm sure it's not for want of trying
that she doesn't hear the crying

she would but for her dying

Everyone Will Leave At Exactly The Same Time

David Byrne, Royal Festival Hall

David Byrne is basically your favourite funky uncle. In a very cool artrock band in his younger days, when you were just a nipper, he now seems to potter around some swish and bohemian part of New York's West Side doing effortlessly interesting things - travelling the world, writing film soundtracks, designing bizarre bike racks. You hardly ever see him, but when you do its always a pleasure and he's always brought some quirky and original present for you.

This year he's brought a band dressed all in white - to match his hair, I suppose - and a setlist culled from his collaborations with Brian Eno; the second to the fourth Talking Heads' albums, 1981's brilliant and groundbreaking My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and their new effort, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today - whatever the hell that means - whose vocal parts and instrumentals pinged across the Atlantic between the two auteur's emails until it was finished. The band - drums, bass, keyboards, Byrne on guitar, a percussionist with practically a village of things to bang and rattle - were accompanied by three dancers, who pirouetted and sashayed across the stage in a dreadfully modern manner, including an expressive episode with some office chairs, a lot of frolicking hither and tither, before at one point the male dancer vaulted over Byrne's head.

Of course you know that Byrne is not bringing the usual rock gig trappings - for a start he's playing the rarefied Royal Festival Hall among other rather well-to-do venues on the UK leg - secondly he chats amiably and unpretentiously to the crowd at several points. "If you want to take photos on your pocket cameras, feel free," he told us joshily, "but you in the balcony, bear in mind that your flash may not reach all the way down to the stage." Some of what he told us was interesting: when introducing MLITBOG's Help Me Somebody he mentioned that the album used a lot of were then known as "found vocals", which later became known as samples.

The setlist leans towards the new material at the beginning, but with I Zimbra as the second tune, Talking Heads material is never far away. For the first half-hour it seems very amiable, although a little restrained; the crowd sit back on their well-holstered seats and enjoy the spectacle, but roundabout when Crosseyed and Painless gets underway, played at a fair clip, the crowd suddenly surges towards the front and the stalls get the party underway, although for us trapped on the balcony, it doesn't work out quite as well. A brief sojourn to try and get into the stalls didn't come off either.

The music is of course given superb treatment and its great to see him in such great voice. However, there seems to be little wavering from the canon. The songs were all played exactly to the letter, and while the band knocks out the edgy-funk with supreme finesse, they never seem to settle into the grooves, preferring to cap the songs at the same length as on record. This seems to me to be a bit of waste, because no matter how funky a rhythm is, if you can't lose yourself in it, it aint funky enough. Most especially, there are no segues; each song stands on its own, the band takes a bit of applause before striking up the next one. This slightly uptight element is definitely in keeping with Byrne's generally slightly uptight demeanour, as is his jerky dance style, the snakelike fits and pounces, preserved from the Talking Heads days, if a bit softened round the edges. And he does wiggle his bum at the audience as well.

But the band, and the tunes, or at least the old ones, are fucking funky. The new material, like most of Byrne's stuff post- more or less Stop Making Sense, is cheerful and bright. A cynic might imagine that in about 1986 Byrne gave up cocaine for religion, but what do I know. Somehow the chirpy stuff, nice as it is, never reaches the heights (or depths) of the old gear. For instance a tune like Heaven, which gets an airing, as slow, beautiful and major chord laden as any of the new stuff, somehow manages to avoid the slightly anodyne, inconsequential, daytime radio feel of his more recent offerings.

The encores, including Take Me To The River and a the non-Eno but seemingly inevitable Burning Down The House (with DB in a tutu), wrapped up a strong and welcome performance by an art-rock legend. But while the RFH acoustics meant the sound was crystal clear, I'd still swap that overcomfortable venue for a shoddier sound in a smaller, sweatier hall. Those in the stalls no doubt got a fair bit more out of it that I did, the lucky conts.

These two have more details and some nice photos, but anyone who says that it was better than the Stop Making Sense gig must be crazy.

What's in a name

Labour sources were pointing the finger at the Unite trade union, which is riven by splits

Air pressure

"My aircraft disintegrated around me at Mach3, 78,000ft"

Phrases to make your heart sink #253

"It's set in stone . . . at the moment"

Crack House, by Harry Keeble and Kris Hollington

Wrote this off the cuff thinking it had just been published, alas only nine months late . . .

Harry Keeble is the pseudonym of a British police officer who led the Haringey Drug Squad for twelve months in 2000. Det Sgt Keeble's modus operandi was, uncommonly for the time, a direct one: He led his small team, often but not always accompanied by the police heavy mob, the SPG, the TSG, through the reinforced doors and blacked-out windows of 100 crackhouses in Haringey, arresting those that he could, confiscating drugs and closing them down, before as often as not returning weeks later to close them down again. This policy wasn't particularly an attempt to imprison the dealers, those arrested frequently got off, or received short sentences. Instead, the militancy was merely aimed at disrupting the crack cocaine industry, breaking the grip that the villains and addicts had gained over the area's residents. This went against the received wisdom - that rather than bother with street dealers, you need to cut off the big dealers - and it did take an inordinate amount of effort. At times Keeble estimates that he was shutting down three crack houses a week, plus smaller operations, involving planning and briefings, early morning and late evening raids, followed by hours of interviewing, searching and booking those captured. But the drop to zero of black-on-black shootings in Haringey in the wake of his campaign, and the dramatic decline of muggings and shootings in the area, provides him with ample justification for his tactics.

Keeble's descriptions of the raids themselves, the people that he comes across, the response of the top brass and the more general descriptions of the effect of the crack epidemic since the early 1990s make this a gripping read. Keeble is no boneheaded cop; university educated, he provides a reassuringly enlightened view of the world he barges into, and the history of police relations with the community around him. He has a good word to say about Bernie Grant, surely a police first. While he of course sees contentious issues, for instance the death of Roger Sylvester in a police cell, from the police's point of view, he manages to come across as about as reasonable a copper as you could hope to find arresting you at three in the morning in a dingy Tottenham squat. Alongside his story he tells those of some of the addicts: the teenage girls driven to prostitution by an overwhelming desire for crack, the yuppies sucked into the dark world through a combination of exotica and arrogance, the street dealers, whose dream of making big money out of drugs frequently turns out to be yet another pipe dream. The story, co-written with crime writer Kris Hollington, vividly brings to life the slums and slum life lurking only minutes away from leafy suburban London.

The book, and especially the depictions of the depravity to which so many addicts have so quickly fallen, provides a sobering tonic for those advocating legalisation of all drugs, as a leader in the Economist did last week. Faced with this sort of evidence, it would take a frighteningly brave politician to decriminalise cocaine. And Keeble gives no quarter towards that view: he believes that the war on drugs - so often written off even as we spend millions more pounds on it - can be won, that if we raided crack houses with as much vigour as he and his small, underfunded team managed, strangling the supply of crack on the streets, we would save the lives or souls of the junkies, and protect and improve the lives of ordinary residents hugely.

But what appears self-evident from reading the book, that "the drugs war can only be won by constant and forceful vigilance", becomes less so on on further reflection. The vast majority of destruction caused by drugs is hugely aggravated by their criminalisation. Crack itself was created by criminals looking to make their coke sell quicker and for more money. Take the criminals out of the equation and who is going to turn young girls onto crack in order to turn them into prostitutes, as he describes? Who is going to be unleashing wildly inaccurate machine guns in quiet London streets to gain control of a crack house, as he describes? Who else but criminals would cut open the belly of a drug mule who has died after a bag of coke burst in his stomach, retrieve the rest of the drugs and then leave him in an alley, as he describes? Crack is a devastating drug, no doubt, but the argument for criminalisation falls down when taken to its logical conclusion. Alcohol, for all its destruction, for all the madness, illness, violence and depravity that it has engendered, remains legal. Consider the gin craze of the 17th century - the introduction of a new, foreign, powerful concotion, wreaking ruin wherever it took hold. Sound familiar? Yet no policeman, not even Harry Keeble, would suggest that we need to make alcohol illegal. Not because alcohol is incapable of being abused, of destroying lives, but because criminalisation would be entirely counterproductive. The same is true, it is increasingly apparent, about drugs, even cocaine, even crack. Yet this book, as exciting at times perhaps as a lick of the crack pipe, made me think again, if not change my mind.

Amusing jobs

I'd imagine writing the entry for 'world' in the CIA factbook might have been diverting

Simple mathematics

In a town outside of Neabridge the restaurants were battling for declining custom. Some tried advertising, some tried special offers. As things got worse, many took to attacking their competitors, by badmouthing them, sending threats and attacking delivery drivers. The winner out of the uproar was the supermarket, who were now selling hundreds more microwave meals than previously. Careful investigation discovered that the manager was the root of the problem, by secretly encouraging the restaurants to expand. How did that work, he was asked. He told them: "It's simple mathematics. You have to add take aways to multiply division."

Amnity

When I was younger
I tried to be what I was not
Now older
I try not to be what I am not

Sometimes it is harder

Perhaps I am now what I am not
or am not what I am

Perhaps I have changed
perhaps I have lost
what I am
perhaps not

Would all of the fame
be worth all the cost
of what I am
and what I am not

Encouragement for Lent

or angel; anon poem

Its not a poem, its some very naughty prose

Today I took my hangover to the shop and I bought some oranges
39p each these oranges were
and 3 for £1
But they were small oranges, the kind that should be 29p each and 4 for £1
The other day when i bought them I was unhappy about the price
But as it is the local shop, & I wanted the oranges, I bought them

Today when I was looking at the oranges I noticed that there were some big ones there as well
The kind that should be 39p each and 3 for £1
The big ones aren't normally as tasty as the little ones, but they are bigger

I dont know how much extra pleasure one gets from a bigger orange
Once you are eating an orange, you are eating it
It is just one orange
It may be academic whether the segments are 10cm or 15cm long
Nobody goes home and says today I ate 45g of orange
I dont think

Anyway today I bought two big ones and one little one
The two big ones in order to get full value for my money
And the little one to enjoy the flavour of
On my way back I reflected on my choice
a careful balancing act between logic and absurdity
I peeled the little one
Its flavour was insipid
And no more restorative than a bunch of damp leaves

Later on I considered if there was such a thing as a non-careful balancing act

Security v Liberty

From Slavoj Zizek's The Plague of Fantasies, preface to the new edition

In the last years of the Communist regime in Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu was asked by a foreign journalist how he justified the constraints on foreign travel imposed on Romanian citizens. Was this not a violation of their human rights? Ceausescu answered that these constraints existed to protect an even higher and more important human right, the right to safety, which would have been threatened by too much free travel.

All relative

Here is the website of Sam Pablo Kuper, a cousin of mine, who didnt let on of his internet presence, meaning that I only found out about it while partaking in the unbecoming yet irresistible habit of googling myself. I havent read it yet except to note that Sam uses even longer and flasher words than myself, which I shall hopefully be rectifying imminently, after a thorough bathing in the refreshing waters of my thesaurus.

Educative

Its not a joke, but I found this Jerry Seinfeld quote interesting.
"School is not learning, it's exercise. You don't remember anything that you learn but the act of trying to learn is mental exercise and that exercise builds some sort of muscle that you can use."
From

Yes, this casino really is called

Moron go

Victoria observations

Having no cash and no credit cards and therefore no lunch, I stop for a while in the street on the edges of Belgravia and take in the gentle caress of winter sun. Not hungry yet, but no doubt I will be soon.

A couple, the man with a child on his shoulders, approaches their 4x4 parked in front of me. The child demounts, showing off his grey public school socks, pulled up to his knee. I consider how egalitarian I am not to feel any resentment at their obviously inordinate wealth. The man, a substantial chap, speaks to his long, thin, Scandanavian wife. She tells him: "We've had a lovely lunch, please don't spoil it." They threaten to bicker there and then in the street. The wife takes her expensive platform shoes around the car and gets in. He knocks on the window. "Stress," he says to her, although whether it's his or hers isn't clear. He walks off. As she drives away she beeps the horn twice, and waves out of the window. He waves back, his back turned, as he walks down the street.

Past me walk three men. The oldest is also the fattest, a grand specimen of wealth, who walks lamely with a hospital crutch as a walking stick. His fellows seem inadequate beside him, insubstantial and unreal. Only he, with his solidity, seems to have any reality. The other two, although clad in garments of no doubt reputable manufacture, seem cheap and low quality. Doubtless they have indulged in too much exercise in their lives, and not enough eating. I have never before considered that eating to become more real may be a perfectly well-adapted habit, instead of the mark of psychological inadequacy that we are led to believe. Despite, or perhaps because, of its long-term damage - principally gout and other diseases of the rich - it seems to be a perfectly rational response to the winds of the soul that threaten to blow us away at any moment.

Outside the restaurant at which I have inappropriately dumped myself there sits a large M-reg Rolls Royce. As the owner returns to his car he tells a interested passer-by: "1973. She's 36 years old." A year older than me. A beautiful work, no doubt, with a couple of dents in the bodywork for authenticity. She looks a bit clumsy, nowadays, as though the doors don't fit as well as you'd expect. In motion, it is a glorious sight, of course, born to occupy the road, but time has not been kind to the designer's vision. As he drives past, I catch a glimpse of the front wing, which reminds me of nothing so much as a London cab.

Back at the office, I immediately feel hungry.

On the train to Brighton

Mid-morning, not a lot of people about. Each traveller has his own little section of seating. A yout steps on the train and goes through the interlocking doors to the next carriage, leaving the door swinging. I get up to close it, sharing a friendly look of mild exasperation - "the young, eh" - with the old guy across the aisle. The train leaves Blackfriars. As it squeaks its way through London, with the enthusiasm of a teenager sent to write thank-you letters to his delapidated aunt, the door swings open again. My neighbour takes it upon himself to close it, and once again we share a friendly look of mild exasperation - "doors, eh." After East Croydon the train begins to speed up, and the door, suffering from a clearly inadequate latch/keep configuration, starts to swing open sporadically. I close it, and catch my accomplice's eye once more - "latch/keep configurations, eh." He closes it, and catches my eye. He closes it another time, and catches my eye once more. Suddenly, I am concerned. There is no more to share, yet the eyes continue to pass on mild exasperated glances. But there is nothing new. Yes, we are two concerned citizens, yes we are both responsible adults, in a world of malevolent children, yes we are both capable of closing a door, but that's it. The glances have conveyed their intent. They are gently gliding into the realm of the unnecessary, the unusual. I move to close the door again but this time my eyes are suddenly intently fascinated by a dog which cavorts in a field by the tracks. What kind of dog is that, I practically say out loud. Oh, its a border collie, how incredibly unusual. It's his turn to shut the door, the sharing of the glance is restored. As we near Brighton I start to worry: do I have to say goodbye to him? We've shared glances, it is true, a few more than strictly necessary, it is true. Do I bid him adieu? Is a final glance appropriate? What if he doesn't think so? I feel pressured, hemmed in by the twin poles of polite behaviour and innate misanthropy. I feel like an episode of Seinfeld. Perhaps he'll get off before Brighton, I think to myself hopefully. But at Preston Park, the penultimate station, he makes no move to gather his bags, nor to put his coat on. He merely leans over, shuts the swinging door and once again a glance is shared. At Brighton station, I pause, thinking that if I sit here long enough, he'll have to leave first and he can offer the goodbye glance or not. I don't mind, I'll be happy either way. But he takes too long gathering his stuff and the carriage empties and I can no longer justify sitting in my seat, so I leap up, pass him without a glance and follow the arse of the pretty girl with too much slap down the platform and into Brighton.

1010101010

Lights on
Lights off
Lights on
Lights off
Lights on, lights off, lights on, lights off
Lights on
Lights off

Wax on,
wax off
Wax on
Wax off
Wax on, wax off, wax on, whack off
wax on, wax off

Your mum
your dad
your mum
your dad
your mum, your dad
your mum i've had
your mum, your dad

Jack's on, Jack's off
Jack's on, Jack's off
Jackson jacks off, Jackson jacks off
Jack's on, Jack's off

Off the buses

Some years ago I remember seeing on a billboard outside a church this slogan: “Why pray when you can worry and take drugs?” I like that slogan. It is short and pithy and, more to the point, it offers something. Compare to this weeks’s much heralded atheist advert: “There probably isn’t a God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life. And make it sharpish, you weasely inadequate, because the non-God squad will be knocking on doors, making sure that you aren’t worrying, or non-God forbid, praying.” Maybe its just me but “now stop worrying and enjoy your life” seems to be the sort of thing a stern matron says to you, just before she dunks you in a freezing bath.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s just that I first heard about this campaign when it was bathed in approval by Polly Toynbee, who strikes me as the classic prescriptivist liberal, going around telling people what they must do to be as self-satisfied as she is. Maybe it’s just that telling people to be stop worrying and be happy, maybe, just maybe, isn’t as helpful, considerate or constructive as it may appear, God or not.

Rubbish poem

The rubbish men come
& swear & spill the rubbish in the street
& break glass

they feed their giant rubbish truck
an odd animal, which eats from its behind
& then they're gone
leaving the detritus of the detritus
that they've took away

And then comes the street sweeper
with his brush & cart
& look of placid disgruntlement

Such a seamless operation
you'd think they must be acting in concert
But the sweeper has never met the rubbish men
& knows them only by their litter
He's told on Monday go here
on Tuesday go here
and as if by magic, the streets are paved with rubbish

Sometimes he hears them in the next road
hears their shouts & broken glass
sometimes he catches a glimpse & thinks
this rubbish really stinks

Chin up

I met a Chinese guy the other day
We argued about politics
I told him: You are lied to by your press,
He said: Are you are not? And I said: Yes.

He asked: Why should we take lectures from you,
on feeble democracy,
the recent record is a shambles,
the people have no credit

Is it democracy that invaded Iraq?
That plundered & pillaged through an ancient nation?
Ah, I told him, 2 million marched against that war
& he laughed
Marching is all your democracy is good for
How did you let it happen?
You marched & then thought that was enough
I've marched, now no longer in my name, this war can go on just the same

But what do you suggest we did, I pressed
Well, could you have managed any less?

But we punish our rulers
they cannot escape their mistakes, I claimed
Ah, I see, he replied
so Blair who takes the blame
goes off to find fortune & fame
he'll not feel the credit crunch
perhaps spiritual credit, but I've a hunch
he'll buy it off with a rebirthing lunch

You cannot criticise us, my Chinese friend told me,
mainly because you know fuck all about us,
as do we about you
you believe your media
as we believe ours,
but we're not so arrogant to believe
that ours don't lie to us

overhearance

"So you see round here, the Bengalis, the Gujaratis, Punjabis, they all smell, I mean sell smack."

Suf is m

No-one eats your daily bread for you
No-one performs your acts except yourself
As death is hurrying toward you so address your life now to meet it
Every moment of your life is under the eye and judgment of God
Hatim al-Assam

A new day

"Bitch may be the new black but black is the new president, bitch!"
Sir Tracy Morgan Esq

funniest line of the day so far

I, for one, welcome our new competent, informed, professional, and intellectually curious overlords
courtesy of

Ideas Factory

These just get better and better. Todays is the Backwards Dictionary: one that arranges words alphabetically from the last letter backwards ... damnhandy for when you want a list of words ending in dom, oon or ier. Get to it my pretties!

Overheard overhead

"Yeah all the adults who want to be down with the kids are doing it."

"What's it called?"

"Weblog, or drivel for short."

Ah the good old days

Chris Morris rings the Sun

Get Your Gloat