All together now.

I’m guessing you know who Gavin and Stacy and Dr Who are but don’t know what a blutkit is. Am I right? OK I just made blutkit up so it’s a bit unfair but you’re still very likely to know the other three. Now go back two hundred years and each individual would know only their neighbours, the local big nob and who the King or Queen was. And ten miles away it would be totally different. We had a cultural zeitgeist from our gene pool but zero social zeitgeist. With the advent of mass media and communication we now have a strong social zeitgeist, which roughly translated mean we all know who Smithy is. This means that a growing amount of our cognition is the same. This is “what’s occurrin’” as we say. We watch the same dramas, sitcoms, the same personalities, the same politicians, the same adverts; we listen to the same jokes, the same music and the same sound bites. My brain is becoming filled with the exact same information your brain is becoming filled with, along with millions of others. Where mass media was media for masses of individuals we have become ‘the mass’ that the media has created and bound together in its reflection. Our buying decisions, emotional responses, opinions, though appearing to be individual, are increasingly governed by our individual conjecture about the same experience. We will on mass, but individually, decide to buy iPods and Wii’s, Girls Aloud concert tickets, hate Ashley Cole and love, well Gavin and Stacy. Everyone on X Factor will model themselves on someone else, new music and films will be modelled on some existing hit, and everyone from Siam to Timbuktu will want to be America’s next top model. Recent neurological research has found ‘mimic neurons’ that fire when we observe someone else doing or being touched that are associated with response neurons that fire when those thing happen to us. The same neurons that fire when we run also fire when we see someone run. So the brain has an inbuilt automatic capacity to mimic. Thus when we all watch the same mass media we will all mimic the same thing. We will joyfully repeating the same catch phrases, adopt the same mannerisms, the same facial expressions as well as the same preconceptions and ideas. And those that don’t will be perceived as odd. We are becoming variations on a stereotype. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s a worry.

Sponsor Me.

Quick, your days of opportunity are numbered! In a couple of weeks the universal excuse for doing anything that comes to mind will be gone till next year. I’m talking about, “I’m doing it for Sport Relief.” Yes, from bathing in sardines to mooning at policemen, all can be sanctioned as doing it for a good cause. If only the politicians had been smart enough to fiddle their second home mortgages on the grounds of Sport Relief we would have had no option but to just go, “Ahaa, but they’re doing it for a good cause.” If bankers had donated 1% of their millions to Sport Relief we would cherish them for their generosity. But no, avarice mitigates against such wisdom. So what are you going to do with this window of opportunity to venture outside the clamping restrictions of everyday life? As James Cordon and Barak Obama in the surprising company of Bob the Builder would say, “Can we do it? Yes we can!” Imagine if you were a builder and did a good job for a reasonable price just once for the hell of it you could utter the magic words, “Sport Relief” and all would be well. Or staple your managers tie to his chest and call him a ***** along the lines you’ve dreamt of doing for the last six months. Big smile and bingo, “Sport Relief.” But what about all your dreams of foolish challenges hidden in the recesses of your imagination? Whatever they are they can all be aired in this time of universal permission. From learning the piano to trying out transvestite-ism, just enjoy and say the magic words. I am going to cycle to Buxton for example, once I’ve got the lycra. Then of course there’s Kate Humble. I wonder if she’ll be up for doing a bit of Sport Relief? Sponsor me anybody? 

Sport Relief.

Well I’ve just sponsored James Cordon for £5 to go to South Africa with the England team. He IS Coach of the Year! And therapist too, as in his new SKLF technique of, ‘Slap ‘em with a kipper and leave them laughing at their own foibles’; a branch of the noble art I would personally gladly sign up to if it was recognised by the BACP. Eddie Isard along with the cyclists et al have done unbelievable things, the money’s been raised and the lives of malaria victims will improve. But while watching pigs and humans rooting rubbish dumps together I somehow wished it had been interspersed with video clips of drunken UK youths fighting in the streets on a Saturday night, peeing and mooning and mugging for phones. Of ignorant parents slapping their kids, addicts monged out on crack carelessly shitting themselves, of all our mighty decadent ignorance. It might show which ones are the overweight camels trying to squeeze through the eye-way to heaven. Where there was not death there were smiles far brighter than the contortions of revellers, the sneers of brawlers, the dull faceless faces of the fixed and even the transparent expressions of us couch potatoes. No, I’m not sure which way my sympathy goes. We are after all only a great civilisation watching what a great civilisation can become, and this is just a moment in a time of transition. Should I feel sorry for kids with a job of scraping plastic lipstick cases or kids with no hope of employment? Should I feel sorry for kids running around in rags or kids in designer labels who don’t run around at all? Somehow we exist on our achievements, not for income but for life itself, and an achievement is an achievement irrespective of context. From Eddie who ran further than we thought possible, the millionaires who danced, the saddle sore cyclists to the little workers learning to read, they all grew and found joy from their achievement. In England we need to make ourselves opportunities to achieve just as much as Mumbai. It’s not a one-way street. So Stiffmouse and Mothermouse will be appearing live at The Gardeners Rest pub, Neepsend Lane on Saturday, 9pm 27th March. Not for the money, for the achievement. Please come, we'd love to see you.

Nice.

Many years ago I used to go to New York Toy Fair. I think it was 7th Av. opposite the Flat Iron Building. It was a strange Dorothy-esque environment where people welcomed you into ‘The World of Cabbage Patch’ and Mutant Ninja Turtle World. I was particularly impressed with a woman who demonstrated My Little Pony’s new ‘it goes to sleep’ feature by laying it on its side. Only in America could the essence of thoughtless smiling bla bla, of “Have a nice day”, be the basis for commerce. After being immersed in several different ‘Worlds of’, us English needed numerous severe mallet wounds to regain a connection with our real one. Americans though knew it intimately; they could travel between worlds like light speed Klingons knowing each and every one was a fiction, including the one we share here on Earth. Perhaps I should invent a toy called ‘Earth’ so I could invite them into ‘World of Earth.’ It would consist of sloppy mud, broken glass and used condoms. Their love for Europe and its ‘history’ is not for all our lovely old things but for our being connected with a reality they still hanker after as they say ‘Have a nice day.’ It’s like looking at the world through the eye of a TV. In fact most Americans know the rest of the world by the places they’ve sent troops. Their holiday footage is from nose cone missile cameras of exploding bunkers. I’m thinking the safest places to live are those in low res on Google Earth. Madagascar is a cartoon character and Ethiopia is a place where strangely thin super model types go to die of anorexia. The ‘Middle East’ is apparently Europe on account it’s in the middle between Africa, big enough to be noticeable, and England, where they speak quaint American. Anyway Bethmouse loves ‘The Gilmore Girls’. It’s a new Americano er, ‘sit.’ (without the com) Nicetown USA where everyone says nice things and squabbles nicely and disagrees nicely and are nicely upset from time to time. It’s ‘Have a nice Day’ life, an easily digestible, void of nutrition McDonalds hamburger for the brain. But how do you say nice is not nice? It’s like saying “This isn’t The World of Cabbage Patch you fool, it’s a stand in a New York office block made of decorated cardboard and filled with stuffed shapeless lumps!” A fixed smile says “Look, it’s saying hello.” Waves lifeless pink stocking filled arm. “It’s not! It’s…” A salesman takes me to one side, “Guaranteed two million TV advertising in the fall; $14 wholesale, 75% mark up. ToysRus have just ordered 700,000. Order early, production can hardly keep up already. Purpose isle caps come free with orders over 200. They’ll walk out your store.” Mmm I think, $2,200. Nice.

Mothermouse Day.

Well Mothermouse Day passed off joyfully. An afternoon walk and off, gladly dressed, to Woodseats WMC for the Sunday Jam Session, leaving Bethmouse to insert the sheep’s thigh in the hot thing at 6.30. We, the audience are reminded, “It starts at 4 o’clock. What time? 4 o’clock. You mean 5.30? No, 4 o’clock, that’s when it starts. So you’re saying the time it starts is 4 o’clock? Yes.” 5.31 ticks by. It’s a just tribute to music that musicians on their day off play music. That can’t be said of most jobs. Jewels, Kev, Chris, et al play in various combinations. It’s like a folk club but where the finger is given to the audience rather than in one’s ear. Mothermouse sings an Arctics song and it’s 7 o’clock finish time; dictated by 7.30 bingo. Several pints down we bump into Sue and John outside the Big Tree on the way home. It has to be done, another one. John is not a lover of the person centred approach. They look after an eighty odd year old neighbour with enviable loving selflessness but it comes with verbal abuse. “If you don’t make a fucking effort I’ll fuck off. I’m not helping you so you can just sit on your fucking arse all day.” John continues to me, “used to be a right vicious cunt before I met her. But it gets me out of the house, you know, you’ve got to have something haven’t you, something worthwhile, make you feel good.” By now I’m feeling as good as a newt and as it’s Mothers Day I still have to cook the roast dinner. Whilst holding a deeply philosophical conversation with Bethmouse I lurch between hot thing and chopping thing, placing pans on the flaming things and slicing the sheep thigh with the electric slicing thing. It’s all rather vague in my memory, all rather automatic pilot which, luckily for me, was far more reliable than I was. It occurred and it was eaten and this morning I cleared up the flour all over the hob, the gravy liberally spilt over the worktop, and wash up virtually every receptacle we have that won’t fit in the dishwasher. MOTD2 and ManU 3. Mothermouse was well happy.

The Arrested Police.

Yesterday I received a letter from Detective Chief Inspector Tom Whitely, South Yorkshire Police. With trepidation I read the following bold type-

“Our records show that:

• You are the registered keeper of a Mercedes motor vehicle, registration number A123BCD
• A member of our staff saw your vehicle at 19.10hrs on 3/3/2010 parked at Outsidemyhouse Road.
• It was noted at the time that a detachable stereo was left attached.”

S Yorkshire Police had taken the time to look in my car at my stereo at 7.10pm in the evening, note it down, take it back to the office, type me a letter and post it (30p). This at a time when they are apparently so overrun with work they can’t intervene to stop persistent anti social behaviourists. What are they trying to tell me? “If your radio is stolen it will be your fault and we will prosecute you for inciting anti social behaviourists into anti social behaviour.”? In my defence your Honour it’s been parked there every night for eight years without causing incitement and the little button that releases the front that should render it anti anti social is broken, thus causing it to be un-detachable. Lawyers will ponder over whether a detachable stereo rendered un-detachable by a fault can be categorised as in and of itself not detachable, taking into account that its original design was to be detachable and thus making it attractive to anti social behaviourists if left attached. Now with a few notable exceptions the human race, if given the option, will sit on its arse in the warm looking out of the window at the rain and unfortunates reduced to working therein. Men in caves sat by a fire and looked out: Romans sat over under-floor heating and mused at the toils of their servants. The police it seems are following this noble tradition by sitting by their central heating watching their CCTV screens typing letters to law abiding citizens reminding them that it is their duty to stop crime. We are approaching the day when the only people the police DON’T  talk to are criminals; “they’re nasty, violent and devious and we want nothing to do with them. The public are causing these crimes by their own negligence and weakness and we will stop at nothing to eradicate such behaviour.” So if you don’t want to be troubled by the police join a gang and beat up passing pensioners and steal detachable stereos. Lets face, they’re the ones who’re making you do it. 

My First Day.

Well just started my “Earn a shag with Kate Humble” volunteering program at Graves Park Farm. Fab, even though an absurdly early start made 10.30 seem like teatime. The farming types, often misperceived as slack jawed yokels, are in fact concise and measured philosophers, having realised life need not be pursued frantically. They make hedge fund managers look like flies round excrement with insufficient brain to do anything else. I am set too watering the goats and rabbits and progress to providing silage. Skill with a wheelbarrow, the rural equivalent of an articulated lorry, is central to pretty well everything. I progress in leaps and bounds to mucking out the Highland cattle. Now the first day at anything is fraught with pitfalls. Negotiating multiple gates between cattle and sheep enclosures begins to resemble one of those TV mental challenge programs. ‘How do you get two barrow loads of shit from the sheep pen through the cattle pen without providing the opportunity for mutant procreation and/or stray ruminant traffic accidents?’ Luckily the natural world isn’t that interested in genetic mutation or j walking. I succeed and in a moment of relaxation drape my coat over a gate and carry on. After several minutes scraping sheep shit I notice my coat is gone. It has been dragged off and is now on the floor being generously slavered over by several young cows. After reclaiming it I take a glove off and put it on a post for some reason I forget. In moments that was gone too. I check the cattle shed, not there; I check the sheep shed, not there either. Dam. I feel like a fresh faced supply teacher in front of a class of chewing Y9s reduced to tearfully screaming, “Who’s got my glove!” I then notice a small slit in a wall I erroneously thought was part of the sheep shed adjacent to the glove-less post, and peer in. Three goats, a sheep and a glove. Obviously a goat’s work. But why were these four in isolation? Worried they may be pregnant or suffering from some contagious disease I went to ask an authority. “No they’re just escapers, get through anything they will.” My relief that I could get my glove back was quickly followed by the apprehension that I must now pit my whits against multiple four legged Houdinis. I win, eat that you goa…  No don’t! Lunch and a trip to feed some very spiky horned cows overlooking Sheffield airport, which is little more than a medium sized lay-by by the way, took up most of the afternoon, followed by a spot of rabbit catching to round off a very pleasant day. I can think of no nicer way to earn a romantic evening with Ms Humble.

Ahaa Spring.

Breakfast in the garden in dressing gown. Ahaa and I thought it would never come. Dave’s remembering catching flies and practicing his pounce, Domino sits, Betty flits and Britney, ever present to possibility, walks the wall. This is the season of unwary youngsters. I’ve cleaned out the festering bird feeders, chopped the Buddleia down to its ears and snipped the branches into bits for next winters kindling. We mice love the garden at this time of year; it’s like being in the midst of a new child. Everyone’s out. Dogs barking, pigeons cooing, all sorts of things are rustling things from all points of your ears compass; a crumpled crisp packet spreading itself out again in new life from some automatic memory. So taken have I been with this new outside that I’m going to volunteer to help at Graves Park Farm. I only have to be around donkeys for a couple of minutes to be six again. But my favourite is the Highland Cows, their big eyes glimpsing out from a perpetual come hither fringe. Some people pat animals but I find the only way to really meet an animal is nose to nose, that’s how they do it, and it’s very sensible. If you want to learn about someone their nose is a sign of health, how they breathe shows how they are and the entry to their soul is inches away. Speed daters would do well to follow this simple method; it’s far more effective than sitting across a table blabbing on about one’s virtues. So a morning a week mucking out in the sun will suit me fine.

And they promised me if I did one day a week for three months I could shag Kate Humble. Ahaa Spring.

Tragedy at Sea World.

So Orcas are pissed off. Wouldn’t you be if you’d been trained to kiss your mother-in-law in front of a thousand people by something the size of a vole? And to live in a ‘world’ you could circumnavigate in a second or two. And all you get is fish. It must be even worse than a job in a call centre, but marginally better than teachers who have to share their bowl with thirty odd piranhas. We’re not nice to Orcas; we love ‘em but we’re not nice to them; a bit like family. But at least they’re fighting back. I would be thrilled to see a call centre telephone answering operative grab his supervisor in his huge jaws and shake him till his eyes fall out, his brain is whisked and he needs thousands of pounds of dental work. Just reward for perpetrating misery to all concerned I say. No, we humans should stop perpetrating misery however much it makes sound economic sense. How on earth did we come by that idea in the first place? ‘How can we make everyone miserable by earning money so they can buy things to alleviate their misery?’ It’s like Bob Newhart’s description of tobacco, “….don’t tell me, you stick it in your mouth and set light to it!” The five-day week only came in relatively recently when Cornish tin mine owners wanted a good return on their machinery investment. Before that we turned up for work when we felt like it and needed a little extra wool. Wool got, we went home again. Because the average person doesn’t need to work five days a week to recoup their wool costs those mine owners set in place a regime of overproduction which requires the stimulation of avarice which requires vast amounts of advertising which causes stress and unhappiness which requires therapists which require legislation and so on. And our stock piled purchases of this overproduction require security and double glazing and frequent trips to the tip to throw it all away again which require large areas of landfill. It is in the nature of unforeseen consequences that the purchase of subterranean rolling stock should one day ruin the world. Orcas on the other hand are, with the odd exception, still quite happy with a reasonable supply of fish.

Teenage opinions.

The BBC licence fee. So what bright spark asked teenagers for their opinion? It’s like asking babies what flavour breast milk they’d like. It would condemn young mothers to hours of eating strawberries while frantically trampolining. Or a handy foldaway pogo stick for those weekends away when space in the campervan is at a premium. Anyway the BBC asked teenagers whether or not they’d like to pay the licence fee? Now the older generation, never having been asked their opinion in their yooff and consequently not having any, are amazed and amused that this younger generation have opinions about everything. In fact schools even teach learners how to have opinions. (‘learners’ is new school speak for those they child mind during working hours, an exercise in wishful thinking if ever there was one) Learners ‘own money’ is spent strictly on themselves. The thought of a communal purchase is quite alien, especially on an item as vague as a licence fee. Its source, the parent, is stimulated by pressure, very much like a calf sucking on a teat. It’s likely their image of ‘daddies work’ is of offices full of people frantically blackmailing each other for sweets. OK that may be nearer the truth than we care to admit but we do in spare moments achieve things. So unsurprisingly they don’t want to pay the licence fee, especially when the alternative is advertisements, which are not only free but stimulating reminders of all the actually useful items of personal expenditure like hair products, iPods and internet access, and the happy and beneficial results of their ownership. It’s a no brainer. And the Beeb has also shot itself in the foot with its iPlayer. Teenagers are not used to being present in real time. At school they’re playing football with Wayne Rooney in the field outside the classroom window, in the street they’re mobiling with a friend two miles away and at home they’re twittering or visiting a sneezing panda in Beijing Zoo. iPlayer makes real time TV a redundant concept. Plus it has all those stupid boring programs about wild life and global warming, politics and fish. And when any one channel is only good for thirty sends of attention why make programs any longer than a Guinness commercial. So well done BBC for asking teenagers their opinions; next week ask Icelanders if they want to pay back bank debts. 

Plrucgh.

So the NHS is calling for the next Conservative government to lift the smoking ban. This surprise announcement … Hold on a minute. I just mispelt announcement with an s instead of a c. Why do we need c’s? Take ‘resource’ and  ‘response’. They’re all susses but one’s a ‘c’. Why? And then there’s ‘clay’ and ‘kettle’. I’m thinking c’s have just snuck in to confuse everybody. Make all susses s and all ka’s k and ban c, it’s redundant, it’s a dead parrot! That would halve the number of my spelling mistakes at a stroke. Anyway, yes the NHS has projected their future spending and the country can’t afford for people not to die from smoking related diseases. Apparently non-smokers, as well as contributing nothing by way of tobacco duty also limp on to an extended high cost infirmed old age. I have a friend who’s been waiting for their remaining parent to die for years. What use is a hundred grand to someone who can’t tell a parrot from a plant pot? We would have had Prince Charles years ago if the Queen, whilst waving to the crowd from her Coronation Coach, had been puffing on a Navy Cut with the other hand. We smokers, apart from the fact we won’t last long enough to get dementia, wouldn’t get it anyway because we’re chilled and everyone know the brain only goes soggy when it’s constantly hot with stress. Other NHS initiatives include the removal of seat belt in cars and state sponsorship of motorcycles as organ imports have become more expensive. “We must focus on the healthy,” said a spokesman earlier today, “euthanasia is not an option we’d like to take. We’d rather people just die younger before they become a drain on resources.” Well all I can say is I’m doing my bit, plrucgh. We apologise for any factual inaccuracies in this item.

Turning the Teaching World

Imagine a stately home, with Lord and Lady Tosseur upstairs and skivvies beneath. One can’t blame the Tosseur’s or the skivvies for spending their childhood years learning to cope with whatever slings and arrows got thrown at them. While the Tosseurs were learning about inheritance tax evasion the skivvies learnt making soup, keeping warm and where their forelock was. Critics of the upper classes forget both sides need to learn their survival skills. It’s just that the Tosseurs skill set is different to the skivvies. Having acquired their skills they move into adulthood with their own particular view of how the world turns, and their position in it. And exactly the same can be said of the skivvies. Now a friend of ours is a teacher and her school is in disarray. Amidst the chaos the teachers are trying to maintain some sort of order in an assortment of temporary buildings and condemned portacabins. When our friend assembled her class in a cold damp cabin with the floor swimming in water she walked out and went home. Our friend is an English Miss Rosa, the woman who sat on a bus and changed America. 

Teachers these days are skivvies; part educator, part parent, part police, part social worker, with several stories of Tosseurs above them each with a particular view of how the world turns and their place in it. The Tosseurs are focused on the state and inheritance potential of their increasingly shabby stately home while the skivvies job grows and grows as they try to bridge the increasing gap between the rat infested kitchen and providing an elegant porcelain-cupped afternoon tea. When the latter finally do give up and go home taking the skills that really do turn the world with them the skills of the upper floors will prove to be as useless as a daydream. They may have the pompous posture, the pusillanimous pomp, the rhetorical powers and an inbred unawareness of reality, and the ready excuse that they were never trained to do manual work, but it won’t stop their uselessness being plain to see. Education is at this point. Teachers are not skivvies, they’re the educators of our next generation. They don’t need Lord and Lady Tosseur, just a decent kitchen. Either that or it's time to go home.