David's Great Escape.

So Ed’s made his first speech as leader of the Labour Party. He won them over with, 1/ humble origins, 2/ struggle, 3/ other people did stuff wrong, 4/ England is fab, 5/ I am your leader now and 6/ I offer a new beginning. It’s not a million miles from what his brother would have said, what Gordon, Tony and David did say, and I’d imagine what Adolph Hitler said when becoming Chancellor but without the stylish arm movement. At any rally of the faithful the first few rows are reserved for fellow politicians and the further back you go the more ordinary people see it from a distance. There’s a sort of fog that descends on these politicians from the years it’s taken them to progress the twenty five yards to front of the hall, all that experience of other politicians, of political thinking and how politics works. They applauded Ed’s speech because it ticked all the political boxes yet it’s content is as bland and futile as Miss World’s desire for world peace and an end to poverty. And just as Miss World is preoccupied with her beauty and the length of her eyelashes so too politicians consider their appeal and standing in their own beauty contest. It’s not that they aren’t intelligent, hard working and well intentioned, it’s that the process of getting to where they are has induced in them a collective delusion that they have with power great responsibility. They are the one who will shoulder the personal responsibility of millions and mistakenly gather it into a position of great importance. One after another line up to take on the role that will make them old men. It’s as if they don’t recognise their future in the hollow eyes and drawn faces of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They study history as though it won’t happen to them. But it does. It will. Maybe in ten or fifteen years David Miliband will look back and see a merciful release.

The End of Time.

I feel the world slowing. Not the real world, the human world. Humanity is slowing. How can a species slow down on its own? We will stop in real time around 2150. It began slightly with TV and mass media but really got going with computers. We began to perceive through digitised connections. We speak, it is digitised and we hear. What we hear on the phone is not our friends voice but a series of sound packets that most closely resemble the voice looked up in their phones memory store. What is transmitted is not sound but a series of store locations and your receiver reconstructs them into what you hear. In more obvious ways text, e-mails, TV and radio do the same. Algorithms in mp3 and mp4 reduce the content of music and video to the barest intelligible minimum so file sizes and bandwidth are minimised. But how does that slow the human race up? Already many youngsters speak in a slew of syllables as if it’s irrelevant whether or not you understand. Though their typing skills are amazing their handwriting is scrawny because we are beginning and will soon interface more directly with our digital gadgets. Our audio and visual senses will connect directly by digitised connections making speach and writing redundant. Just as we have a human brain on top of a mammalian brain on top of a reptilian brain we will develop a digital brain. But this digital brain will connect via unchanging algorithms much like your phone's predictive text was originated during the Second World War and you’re still using it. Already we are watching old films and episodes of Friends made ten years ago. Music is grinding to a stop. We will achieve full digital integration with X Boxes and play games as part of our real lives. Every desire will be satisfied by what already exists. As we meld with the digital we will increasingly redo what has been done until all we do will be rehashes of what has been done before by others. We will slow until nothing is new and for us time will stop. It will continue for cats and dogs and fish and for the earth, the sun and stars, but for us if we don’t have the courage to resist our digital fascination, time will end. 

Black History Month.

Radio 4 tells me we’re coming up to ‘Black History Month’ in schools. Well ain’t dat de time for celebration. Apparently black people have heroes too and in their own small ethnically challenged way have done some pretty good things, almost equal to us whites, and black children need to know this to bolster their low self esteem from being the sons and daughters of poor ignorant savages. Isn’t it good to know we can offer our pitying hand to these unfortunates one month a year and tell them about ML King, Malcolm X even Rosa Parks so they know they’ve been born into the losing side of this struggle for equality with the white man; so they know their place in society. In fact being born north of the line from Liverpool to the Wash I am probably descended from Vikings and I’d like a ‘Viking History Month’ so everyone knows I come from raping, murdering and pillaging foreigners and should be treated as such. Because in this multicultural society of ours we celebrate diversity. Stop. The middle class, middle age, middle white who thought that one up should be shot! It justifies the individual’s inclination to differentiate themselves from all those ‘diverse’ from themselves. Black people are different, Jews and Muslims are different, Vikings and Angles were different. All ‘celebrating diversity’ does is maintain differences. Only when the Vikings and Angles stopped celebrating their differences did they become the unified English we are today. So forget multiculturalism, we are one society in which we are all different. There are some people I like and some I don’t. I couldn’t give a shit what colour they are.

I miss Greece.

Greece must be a hot bed of terrorist activity. I mean I didn’t see any signs of it while I was there but if the UK with all our special measures can’t keep our own citizens from suicide bombing us, Greeks must be like lambs to the slaughter. The same with teenage violence, drugs and binge drinking. They don’t have CCTV, police patrols or speed cameras. The only police car I saw looked like he was going home for his dinner. And they sell alcohol like its, well I won’t go into that. No, Greece must be overrun with social problems. But it isn’t. Young children play in the streets in the evenings, young people have unproblematic fun, cars without a hope of an MOT, motorcyclist without helmets carrying five year olds on their knees, it all works fine. But surely it shouldn’t. It’s paedophile heaven, an insurers nightmare, drunken teenage joy riders paradise, and fertile Alkida breeding ground. It’s not. But it illuminates the amount of fear, frustration and latent anger in the UK’s social multicultural zeitgeist. On the radio yesterday a woman was complaining about the sound of children in a nearby school playground. What a freak! That is until she described the noise. It wasn’t of children having fun but children shrieking in emotional frenzy that might pass as joy but isn’t. In these little seedpods of our coming generation the zeitgeist is fermenting. It will flower into broken relationships, obesity, unhappiness and the inability to cope. Good times for therapists and policemen but not so good for everybody else.

The Pope's Visit.

So the Pope has come and gone in our absence leaving behind, “Paedophilia is an illness in which free will cannot function” or words close to that effect. As effective in a court of law as saying, “I’m a good bloke really your honour, I just wasn’t myself when I murdered my parents.” I’m left wondering why milkmen and plumbers don’t, as a result of their profession, also succumb in appreciable numbers to this paedophilic illness: Or perhaps the Milk Marketing Board are keeping a closed lid on it. And then there’s his aid who was left at home due to ‘illness’ for saying, “landing at Heathrow airport was like entering a third world country.” Yet I’m left thinking Britain will shortly be a third world country if we don’t regain some faith in the core of the Christian message. A dilemma that, as it takes shape in my mind, is strangely between politics and science. Christianity began as one man talking to individual men and women about their place in this bountiful complexity. Science, though it is tainted by our human intents, is somewhat similar, with individuals sharing their finding with others. Politics however is for mass consumption, a deal between establishment and society, and unfortunately what binds a mass together, be it an establishment or its society, is usually our lowest common denominator, fear. In this instance the Pope was the politician and his aid a scientist sharing his honest findings. The two cannot be seen together. I’m wondering if Britain’s cultural decline, and possibly Catholicism’s, is in this dichotomy. So much of what we think and do is as a member of a mass, be it fashion, music, media, poverty, illness, news or politics. And with each membership comes its own fear to not be the wonderful, perverse individual that you are. I don’t think Jesus wanted us all to be ‘good’ but for us to process the fears that withhold our own goodness. Maybe the Pope made a good point clumsily. That paedophilia is an illness, a deep animal fear of not seeding one’s genes due to an establishment denial, and that without the imposition of such fears one’s ‘free will’ or ‘beautiful self’ will be Godly. Or maybe he was just being a politician talking on behalf of a frightened establishment.

Parga 3.

I was date raped by a Canadian Club in the Island Bar. The club was a three foot bottle that Michael had laid on for his leaving party and regularly decanted into a pitcher, the type they use for table beer in the US; not whiskey. The initial slopes were gentle conversations about living in Parga. They steepened with a difference of opinion about Van Morrison with the feisty Scottish, attractive owner of the establishment. But she downed the Club like a Scot and disappeared early.  Michael, a gentle bear of a body below a sun-browned egg, drank from a thimble sized glass. I apparently did not. As the party broke up Mothermouse et al appeared from their girls night out equally damaged by three Brandy Alexanders and we all went to the Rock Bar. By now the slope was getting steep. Janemouse decided a dance was a good idea so she and I split to find an unmarked door in a back street. Behind was a large room with small lights, big speakers, few people and lots of floor. Here was a perfect opportunity to show one’s style. Being nearer 70 than 60 and on the moguls of a black run style wasn’t the right word. Janemouse fielded me from tables, walls and the other dancers. It appeared to me my reverse wasn’t working. I could do the wibbly wobbly arm waving front and side but there was no stopping me in reverse till I met an immovable object. A teacher once said dance as if you’re on the point of falling over; OK in a class but pissed it came all too easy. I was near falling over standing still. Janemouse thought leaving was a good idea. The rest was a crazy zigzag home fielded by Mothermouse who could walk straight but had her own cross to bear. So date rape, a truly despicable and cowardly offence, wouldn’t work on men; we’d be no use to man nor beast, but I might condone its use by women for getting their own back on dickheads.

Parga 2.

After an early beer, 2 Blue Bar cocktails, 3 ouzos, 2 retzinas and a brandy on my side Mothermouse and me talk about masculinity. Masculinity is bull headedness. Women name call it that like it’s a failing but that’s what it is. Some men are quiet and go about it in secret and others it’s just written on them. Some have it knocked out of them and avoid snapping a twig and others have it knocked into them and knock down a forest. A few talk about their feelings in a feminine sort of way which is pleasing to females, at least at first, but make no mistake, men are bull headed whatever the covering. It runs like root sap up into our branches. It seems to me our brains have far less room for controversy. We don’t have the capacity to flurry through conflicting confusions like women. A stick is a stick and its use is dependant on the situation. Faced with a confusion of feelings my brain blinks to a white spot like when you turn off the TV. Thread thoughts in a neat line like meat on a kebab skewer and I’m fine. But it’s a terrible misconception that men don’t have feelings. We do, we just don’t do it with confusion that needs talking about. We have a feeling and that’s it and talk about something else. Like music; you hear it till the song is over. But then it must be frustrating, like being with someone listening to their iPod with the only clue as to the song being how they tap their foot. We must work on it.

Parga 1.

Parga is on the Greek west coast opposite Corfu. It is its own little state within the country, a bit like the Vatican only with a Mayor instead of the Holy Pontiff, and like Catholicism it changes slowly. In fact the only upheaval in these numerically choppy times was more due to rain. Stefanos whose character and taverna dominate Parga life had a winter collapse. The two balconies of his taverna that shelved from the scrubby cliffs a hundred feet above Voltos bay collapsed in the winter rains onto the rocks below. His new tabled shelves are wider and stronger but still perilous. Stefanos’s restaurant is the best fish restaurant in Parga because Stefanos is a fisherman first, a cavalier second and a restaurateur third. His dry leather glove of a hand that welcomed me was testament to daily salt and ropes. Costas had moved from his usual beach bar due to a fall out, and Michael, whose bar was always a little too aloof to be profitable, is moving back to Canada with wife and winter baby. Elli who tends the sun loungers next to the stream that shyly slots the sand is as ever Elli. Five feet and nothing more with her purposeful feminine shape tends family rather than tourists, playing with babies and bringing everyone up to date with Parga news since their last visit. Mothermouse and Elli loved each other from their first conversation. These are mostly about her dealings with the pontiff, her female account of God and the workings of Parga being a constant thorn in his side. If Elli has ever been untrue to her heart and mind it’s a well kept secret. Catholics take note. An uncomfortable woman is worth a hundred clerics. So Parga where we sleep in and out of the sun bundles up our unwanted cares and posts them along its golden trail to the setting sun one more time. 

Big Brother is Dead.

I’ve just left BB to die in peace. Unnoticed by the majority its attempt to rekindle our capacity to prey has come to an end. That’s a strange thought. Other than Nasty Nick, who has spent the last ten years trying to live down his alliterative tabloid title gained from mistakenly believing BB was a game show one was supposed to try to win, all the other contestants have gladly exposed their warts and personality in the hope of lucrative post-game contracts. More importantly 99% loved and gained a great deal from the experience of rubbing against other people 24/7 without the intrusion of all our modern communicative gadgets and being able to share their ups and downs with a faceless, non judgmental voice when things got too much. This, strangely enough, is as close as we get these days to being a fly on the wall of a monastery. The only difference being God speaks with a Geordie accent. What we have been lasciviously watching these past ten years has been the progress of novice monks and monkesses towards gaining sufficient self-awareness to create a community. OK some couldn’t manage it but as each series progressed one could see the community immerging in honesty and friendship with periodic help from the ‘confessional’ diary room. In the same way that no one would have guessed a film about singing nuns would become one of the most popular films ever BB has turned out to be the monastery epic of modern television. So if you don’t want to miss out stick one of those little key ring torches on a wall opposite a comfy chair when everyone’s out and talk to it for a while. It doesn’t matter whether you think it’s God or Big Brother, just let it all out and you’ll feel much better. Me and Mothermouse have even talked to the torch once or twice with one of us being the voice of BB. Far better than Relate and much cheaper too. But then we’ve both trained as therapists, which helps. Off on holiday. By :)

Koran Burning.

All I’ve heard the entire day in the news is some US pastor is going to burn some Korans for 9/11. This has got up the noses of some Mosies. Oh and a Sikh is suing an airport for the unbearable shame of making him take his turban off to see if there’s a bomb in it. Well if I was on his flight I’d want to know. No, God must have a pretty good sense of humour to not smite these jokers down in their socks for being so stupid in God’s name. Surely if anyone joins a religion just to feel hard done to by people of other religions they should have their application form whipped away from them in the blink a smote. God would appear and suggest, “Sorry fella you’re not ready, best go join a Hell’s Angels gang; they do angry belligerence better than me.” But I will fight for my belief in you to my last breath! “Get lost retard. No, better still, Smite.” Poof. Argh! It seems we’ll always take the easy option and wear a silly hat, read ‘our’ book, prey for stuff, say the right words and blame others for being wrong. It should be that easy! So the Mosies are incensed by the, er Pasties, and the Sikhies with the Bomb sniffers. Well this week the Pope is coming to the UK where there are more Catholic factions than you can shake a stick at. God help him. Remember God is ineffable, God isn’t in words, God’s not a writer, all Gods book have been ghost written by humans.

Being in neutral.

Tonight I was assistant fire keeper at a sweat because Mothermouse has a bad elbow. A sweat, an American Indian custom, is like a church service held in a blacked out sauna. Hot, sweaty and pitch black one attempts to fill one’s awareness of all things past and present, give away one’s hindrances and pray for oneself and others. Glowing rocks from the fire, which I was assistantly keeping, are delivered into a pit in the sweat and watered to spread the heat. It was a fine late summer evening and a very pleasant experience. As fire keeper one should assume a neutral frame of being to assist the ceremony. I do neutral well. This juxtaposition of ceremony and neutrality reminds me of my conversations with another wise old friend; an agreement between us that one should not, or at least avoid as far as possible, holding beliefs of any sort. Not just religious beliefs but beliefs of who one is, who or how other people are, what will happen, what has happened etc etc, right down to the simplest day to day assumptions we make without thinking. Finding oneself stripped of all these cognitive shortcuts requires far more awareness of what actually IS happening around one. Boring repetition becomes continuing freshness. Of course one retains a transient knowledge of probabilities, but that’s all it is, transient. What IS happening is the constant, vibrant re-writer of it. I have a sense of throwing away a thousand filing cabinets full of data that has become redundant and, in the space left empty, having a huge room to dance around in. It’s an exchange I find extremely liberating. So I’m perhaps confusing to those who are into the ceremony. I conform and honour them but somehow I am the ceremony I’m really interested in. So many thanks to Pete, Steve and Carol, the fire, trees and setting sun for a lovely evening.

Heidi Plug’s Big Tits.

Just passed a Heat magazine on the fridge. On the cover is a stick thin model with massive boobies as in, “No darling these are not mummies tities they are mummies boobies” as I heard a mom teach her five year old son. Well these breasts would feed triplets if they hadn’t been plastically enlarged. I feel I aught to tell young women wishing for plastic enhancement that ‘men are stupid’. If we had a choice we would plump for a marrow in the trousers requiring a triple D codpiece. I base this assertion on the majority of motorcycles on the Isle of Man, namely 1000cc monsters capable of devouring your license on a trip to Tescos. Most would top 50mph with a sneeze. And they weigh tons. If the bike test required you to lift your bike back upright from 45 degrees no one would pass. No, men may lust for bigness but if we get it we can’t cope with it. We may walk around with the pride of owning a GSX1000R in our eye but come to park it on a slope and we need the help of several weight lifters. And when we proudly drive off under an admiring gaze we lurch forward, realise we’ve left the disc lock on and keel over trapping a leg under the thing thus requiring the weight lifters again. This has been my personal experience anyway. So ladies it’s not that ample size isn’t appreciated it’s that we become daunted by it and can’t really cope. We’re more likely to think it’s huge fun to play them like bongos, go bilabilabila between them or play 'pat-a-cake pat-a-cake bakers man' with them, which I don’t think is the full on sensual experience you’re looking for. So Ms Plug I’d go for a nice 660 SZR rather than an R1 Yamaha. They may be super sporty but not many guys can get the best out of them.

The Manx GP.

Just back from three days at the Manx GP on the Isle of Mann. Sunny, camping, crack, (‘talk’ in case your imagination has the better of you) bacon butties in the morning with crisps, coke and chocolate the rest of the day. The TT and the MGP races are a textbook anachronism. Started in 1911 they consist of 4 or 6 laps of a 37.5 mile circuit around the island, including a ‘mountain’ of modest proportions. Old pictures show riders in shoes and trousers leaving plumes of dust from dirt roads and smoking like chimneys as soon as they finish. Considering the tracks and machinery 40mph average speed was heroic. Forward 99 years and the roads are tarmac but still country lanes between stone walls, earth banks and trees, through several villages and two towns. And the bikes have changed out of all recognition, from a Brough Superior, top speed 70mph, to a Honda Fireblade’s 200mph. Average speeds have increase from 40 to 130mph. In fact the only thing that hasn’t appreciably changed is the human being; we’re still blood and bones in a skin. The course has a hundred marshalling points, each equipped with medical stuff, stretcher, radio, flags and at least five volunteer marshals. There are at least six motorcycle paramedics each capable of at least a hundred mph lap time, and two helicopters. The time from a rider falling off to arriving in hospital is less than ten minutes. During practice and racing riders cover around 150,000 miles at speeds up to 200mph. All this on roads around 25 feet wide between walls and trees. All this is not a sensible pursuit. Though I’ve been a keen motorcyclist for some 50 years and raced off road this has gone beyond heroism; it has become a severe test of lack of imagination. But I love it apart from the price that’s paid for the slightest mistake. My heart goes out to the three vans that will go home with a person missing. So what do you do with an anachronism that kills people? I don’t know.