RIP Tommy.

There was something viscerally appealing about Tommy Cooper. He embodied, for me at least, my two basic questions, ‘who am I?’ and ‘where am I?’ and an answer, ‘It’s OK.’ At first sight they’re questions I know the answer to or at least I know an answer to, but they’re always still there on the tip of my tongue like the hovering name of a forgotten friend. At least that’s what he portrayed. I’m intrigued that the merest imagination of him, his ‘not like that, like that’, raises a smile from some deep pool, like lifting the sword of our Arthurian legend; the success, the only success of personhood. He was “To be or not to be”, our Hamlet tipping between courage and disaster with a little laugh and continuing. And there with him in the midst of his outrageous fortune we see all that we can ask of ourselves, to continue with a little laugh, to be. Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler wrote the lines, “It’s amazing. In the wink of an eye you finally see the light. It’s amazing when the moment arrives you know you’ll be alright.” The sword that will protect you always is clear of the rock to become newly owned. This is knowledge that can only be known in retrospect and, it must be said, can be forgotten too. So thank you Tommy, it is given to few to be able to die in public. So lets all remember, “Ashes to ashes, for richer for poorer, may the force be with you, because you're worth it.” RIP.

Who's Bad?

As this blog is for the more discerning reader who won’t have watched it I’ll Streeeepify the inaugural meeting of last night’s new Celebrity Big Brother series and the F Listers’ first taste of champagne since their dreadful lawn mover accident went viral on You Tube in 1997.  Mr Starzan Stripes kicked off but, being old and confused, soon got lost in the toilet. A perky Eastenders young lady, born in episode 3 to Dot and Jim and presumably now resting in prison or a canal, joined, followed by two blond Hugh Hefner play twins and a similarly shaped page three girl. Mr Stripes and the play twins like most Americans faced with our quaint English reality appear brainless so far but it’s early days. A Welsh gay rugby player; where do they find these people, a young fey nob and a TOWIE resident. And then the recent failure par excellaunce of  X Factor, Frankie Cocozza, the McDonalds easy eat patty in the Big Brother bun. Frankie is trying to write himself into our consciousness as the ‘bad boy’ of pop. He began tastefully enough by shagging the majority of his holiday camp female staff members whilst his mate tattooed their names on his bottom, a feat that in my imagination is damn nigh impossible, so kudos to the guy. His inability to sing, his bad whipped diesel hair, his bad behaviour have in fact been so bad he’s single-handedly managed to reset the definition of bad, so expertly reversed by Michael Jackson, back to bad. Yes Frankie, you have to be good to be bad. Anyway it’s nice to have the word back so thanks for that. Then the peck over after program where an underdressed fairy god mother with a microphone wand conducting a pompous panel of self promoting pratts and an audience of norms, so pleased to have been selected they whoop with delight over someone saying ‘the’, assess the meat. We now have an immediate use for our newly reclaimed word. In fact bad doesn’t even cover it. In fact by the end I’m beginning to feel I am that person trying to tattoo girls’ names on Frankie’s bouncing bottom. Who’s bad?

BH I’d betr DS.

It seems Merrell Streeep has set the tone for 2012: Belligerence. Yep bile.co.uk will be my new home. So OK when do teenagers’ sensory organs kick in? I mean when does their sensory outputs begin to affect the teenager as a whole, as in bodily action. They’ve like got a set top box but the cable’s missing to the TV. They can turn a bedroom into a bombsite and moan they can’t find anything. They lob their mobile phone around like a bar of soap, which I grant you is a similar shape, but considerably less expensive. Not a day goes by without the familiar clatter of an iPhone hitting the deck. Does Sony-Eriksson realise they need to drop test their products by slinging them from the top deck of a bus onto the concrete in front of another one?  Sensory awareness of household necessities like washing up, vacuuming, cooking, clearing and cleaning just dribble out of their open unconnected socket, elbowed into obscurity by a five year old Sheffield Wednesday goal or the latest Hollyoaks sit-trage. In fact life can be plotted as a series of, “Bloody hell I’d better do something” moments where the oil tanker of unconcern hits the rocks of impending oily sea birds disaster. It begins when shitting your nappy turns from a pleasure to un-pleasure and becomes. “Woow quick, where’s mi potty!” The next, assuming the parent provides every necessity FOC, is GCSE’s. Whilst it’s quaintly touching that teenagers have such faith in educational osmosis there comes a time, usually days before the exam, where mere presence proves insufficient and they realise effort is involved. The next of course is their degree. Here their own personal state sponsored mortgage provides for their advancing needs of beer, drugs and clubs etc until such point that another ‘BH I’d betr DS’ moment kicks in. Somewhere along the line there’s one or more sexual encounters that also provide a similar moment. Next the long process of romantic solidification throws up moving in, engagement, marriage and kids, and it’s back to, “Woow quick, where’s the potty!” And then of course there’s death where it changes slightly to, “Bloody hell I could have done something.”

It’s how we are.

 So a bat and a ball cost $1.10 and the bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Well 50% of Harvard students said 10cents. It sounds right but the proper way is to say if X equals the ball cost then X + (100+X) = 110cents. Thus 2X = 110 – 100 = 10, therefore the ball costs 10/2 = 5cents. Apparently we’re plagued with many falsehoods like this simple example. Students were asked to read a list of words, Florida, golf, retirement, pension, and when asked to walk along a corridor walked slower, like they were ‘old.’ When their computer screensaver was set to floating dollar signs they became more selfish and insular. Presumably if it was set to clips from hit musicals they’d become more friendly with Dorothy. We are apparently led by the nose or ‘primed’ by numerous influences we barely notice. No doubt Merrell Streeep’s father was a keen collector of Nazi memorabilia, but I digress. Linx ads for example don’t focus on its pleasing aroma or its capacity to seal up your sweat glands, they know young lads want a shag, dream about having a shag and imagine shagging 24/7 so they show the open epithelial duct of shagarama heaven, collaterally pimping for the whole female race, whether they like it or not. Shop windows are only there to pre-moisten your buying juices before you enter. Honestly if you could avoid shop windows, TV ads, glossy magazines etc etc etc you’d find yourself wanting for nothing: well apart from sex, warmth and food. And when the guy who won the Nobel Prize for this research was asked, “So what can we do about it?” replied, “Well nothing much, it’s just how we are.” 

Just Another Day.

After the gales woke me up all night they blew over our recycle bin dumping bottles and converting our empty cans into far-flung wind chimes all over the neighbourhood. It was a pleasant sound so I left them to it. Plan for the day was to insulate our airing cupboard which required the purchase of an 8’x4’ sheet of Celotex insulation board. Considering the 60mph winds I decided, seeing as even the short journey from shop to car might lead to me showing up on some air traffic controller’s radar, it would be better left to another day. I had lunch. What the hell I’m retired, that’s a busy morning for me. Sod it this isn’t going anywhere, I’ll slag off Merrill Streeep. She’s nut squashingly crap at acting. You can see the stage directions running through her mind, “OK Merl baby, three paces forward, move head right, smile, look unsure, raise hand. Cut. No no no, a smile is where you show your teeth, no not like that, like when you’re pleased, remember  being pleased? Oh, OK well it’s like when you trod on that baby and its head popped off, yeh, and you smiled yeh? Like that.” Anyway we just watched Mama Mia because Man U was losing 3:0 to Newcastle. That film is toasted exploding gonads crap! So what if they had a ball making it, I enjoy a good defecation but I don’t film it and put it on in cinemas with surround sound! Wasn’t she in ‘The Hours’? Honestly NEVER go to see that film unless you’re considering suicide and looking for a reason. I know she could play Ilse Koch – The Nazi SS Bitch of Buchenwald who made lampshades and handbags from prisoner skin and really did squash prisoners’ nuts. Anyway Merrell has given me great pleasure over the years like a piñata, a hanging effigy you beat with a stick till it bursts and sweets come out. It’s not all bad.

The RC Party.

Well Christians, what can I say? A party of RCs’; onomatopoeic or the closest I’ll ever get to a Republican Convention? First of all let me say we love our Greco-English neighbours, they could be Gerald Durrell’s inspiration for ‘My Family and Other Animals’, a wonderful combination of love and space to be their unique selves. A veritable Harrods cheese board of characters, a cornucopia of fruitcakes. They do though invite the local Catholic un-dead to their parties. Like being Tardis-ed into a Republican Convention I am struck dumb, unable to expend even the slightest percentage of lung function in conversation. I genuinely can’t explain it. It’s as if my life flashes in front of me full of the pitfalls I’ve been perpetually struggling to avoid. Niceness. The wonderful farcical contradiction is that Jesus was not a believer. He may have been a profit, a teller of God, a beautiful human being but he wasn’t a believer; he made it up as he went along. Every day it was like ‘wow this life is amazing!’ not ‘Yes I grew zuccinis’ in the states and you know if you leave them too long they grow this big!’ or ‘that colour would look lovely in our lounge.’ Jesus didn’t do that. You can strike me down dead this minute if Jesus, like me and Mothermouse, wouldn’t have been up in the smoking room with the kids within fifteen minutes of arriving. “Who are those loonies downstairs?” “They’re gathering together in your name.” “What!! You’re kidding me. I’ll go down and throw over their table of tasty nibbles.” “No, stay and tell us, how is heaven these days?” “Full, don’t even think about it.” No, Jesus was as meek and mild as Brian Sewell. He wasn’t into tasteful terracotta décor, he brought the dead back to life, which incidentally isn’t even allowed in Star Trek to this day. He was tempted and, unlike Maradona, came back a better player. He was crucified and, unlike most savaged celebs, didn’t resort to a stint in the Big Brother house. He rose majestically from the dead like Take That. He was mega. OK I’m being holier than thou but at least I’m enjoying it.

NYE WMC 2011/2.

So New Year’s Eve at our local Working Men’s Club. I feel fraudulent in that my membership is hours away from being two years out of date, I’m retired and before that I got paid for enjoying myself which doesn’t really constitute work. This is born out by the first round of Bingo. To everyone else is appears to be a pleasant, engaging pastime but to me it was, well work, and unprofitable work at that. So we installed at our table at 7.30 and by 8.30 when the band came on we were already talking about the need for pacing. The band, ‘Jack of Hearts’ is led by Jackmouse who is in turn led by Jackmouse’s ego in the form of a permanent wide brimmed black hat, which gives him the appearance of a guitarist suspended from the claws of a hovering crow. Now music-musician-audience is a delicate triangle especially in a WMC. One wouldn’t for example play a selection of the Third Reich’s Greatest Hits at a bar mitzvah. Likewise one shouldn’t hire a blues band to play a once a year NYE gig, especially one who’s trumpet player thought little of playing in a different key to everyone else and a mix engineer who couldn’t hear the low frequency feedback reminiscent of a passing tube train inches below our feet. I’m torn: I know the months of hard work, practice and the odd fight required to put a band and a set together but that counts for little with an audience that don’t. An audience only wants what they have fondly imagined to be fulfilled, and Dock of the Bay wasn’t it on NYE at the WMC. Thirty minutes of mild unrest and back to Bingo and its variants, Dingo, Pingo and Jingo. Margretmouse proudly whipped out her dibber and it was eyes down to watch your stake disappear. Fag breaks become more frequent as I avoid both the bingo and the band. Half way down the left wall is the Fat Controller/bingo caller behind a tinsel dais. As he proclaims the miracle of counting to the crowded hall a young girl on a spot lit stairway hitches up her knickers in a matter of fact way whilst kids of all ages entertain themselves as their parents drink with one hand and lose with the other. The Fat Controller, like many of the men, is 13 stone from the back and 16 stone from the front. He is chair of the committee, President of the proceedings. The doorman, tasked to keep non-members out is by this time pissed as Canute and letting anyone in for 50p. I talk to a chap at the fag station who has come back ‘up north’ because people are unfriendly ‘down south.’ After ten minutes I know why. I go back inside. The band is playing, the subway train is still passing and the trumpet player is still blasting out eastern semitones to a Jimi Hendrix cover. The evening is also ‘bring your own food’, which proves a god send for passing the time. Margaretmouse, as is her wont, has brought cheese, ham, pastrami and roast pork rolls, bottles of gherkins and funeral onions, at lest that’s what my parents called them, tortillas, bread sticks and, well we never did get to the bottom of her bag. By now it’s twenty to twelve, I’m sober but coughing like a drain. The Fat Controller has had enough of the band and orders Jackmouse to sling his hook. And he’d changed his shirt for the second half, shame. His evening has not gone as he had fondly imagined. The FC, in an effort to raise the mood to a midnight climax, then put on a sounds of the sixties medley featuring The Supremes. We joined hands, sang Old Langsyne and went home. An enjoyable evening, but not as we’d fondly imagined it.