We won didn't we?

We won! Though according to Mark Lawrenson the result was only down to England being slightly less good at losing than Sweden. Ninety minutes of listening to Mark is as depressing as being water boarded in Abu Grabe. If racism needs to be booted out of football then surely Mark, by denigrating every action of the whole human race to the point that a permanent vegetative state would seem like a blessed relief, deservers to be expelled by a well primed cannon over the hoop of Wembley Stadium. If it had ever entered my mind to be excited by the many glorious things one can do with a football I imagine I would feel humiliated. Mark along with the other ex-players in the studio appear to view the meagre efforts of my TV screen’s little running-about-ers as Christ would say, “Forgive them Father for they no not what they do.” I on the other hand am constantly amazed at their feats of athleticism and artistry compared with my personal benchmark of running about in painful boots round a muddy field to no avail. There are three sorts of people one should never ask the opinions of; ex players, pundits and non players. It’s true for any discipline with the possible exception of politics. Ex politicians, free of their previous two-faced hypocritical manoeuvring context, often begin to talk sense again. Ex players compare you with the glorious perfection of their own game, forgetting they only achieved it 0.001% of the time, pundits are like ex players but who’ve never actually played, and non-players compare you with any old bollocks their fatuous mind happens to be filled with. It’s not for nothing that it was 1966 that we last won the world cup 4-2 from West Germany, (thank you Wikipedia) forty years on from John Logie Beard’s invention of television. (I know, it’s a joke) Forty years in which to inculcate in the British public the tenets of punditry where opinion is more important than actually doing anything. There is a discrete line between the slander and rapture of the Brazilian public’s response to their team’s efforts and our own. We expect the perfection of the ex players, we overlook the inconvenient reality that punditry never addresses and most of us apply any old bollocks as we aren’t either of the other two. This has had a bad effect on our little running-about-ers who’re actually, lest we forget, simply trying to kick a ball about and win games. We are 100% behind our players- with a knife. We must learn it isn’t helpful to cheer on our lads by shouting, “Come on you lazy good for nothing overpaid ignorant racist pansies, we’ll snap your metatarsals if you don’t win every game 4-2 like you did when we actually supported you properly.”

A Therapist's Dilemma.

Last month’s ethical dilemma in Therapy today, “Therapist T suggests her supervisor S to a friend F for therapy because F’s problem matches S’s area of expertise. Fine until T falls out with F and she becomes worried what F might tell T’s supervisor S about her, which S can’t tell T about because of client confidentiality. T is thus concerned and is wondering what to do.” Ain’t life wonderful. Several therapists supplied answers all using the same magic word, ‘boundaries’, which if strictly applied would probably mean none of them would ever speak to each other again. I would like to take a different tack. What are the assumptions at play here? T was obviously initially happy to assume if her then friend F happened to mention to S what a jolly good sort she was it wouldn’t in the least affect her supervision with S. But now T, having fallen out with F, assumes F will talk dirty to S about T, which definitely will affect T’s relationship with S. T also assumes S will believe every word F says and thus consider T a bad person, probably because of the cat strangling incident. Hence T, as well as assuming her ex friend F is a two faced, flighty bitch also assumes S is a gullible dimwit. She also assumes if F does let the cat out of the bag with S, which T was so careful to disposed of in the canal, it was previously OK for her to keep all her other misdemeanours away from the light of day and the ears of here supervisor. And if T’s assumptions were correct S and F would this very moment be arranging her train ticket to Coventry. I have to say ethically that sounds like a good idea.

Me Lesbian Writer.

Apparently there’s such a dearth of lesbian writers under the age of thirty-five that the LGTB Green Goblet Prize for first novels is up for grabs. It’s just been on Woman’s Hour and I may not have remembered the details correctly but I do regularly listen to Woman’s Hour, which I believe shows some trans-gender credentials. Then again having a totally unfounded confidence in achieving the impossible is a male trait and may count against me. But I do like writing. So why no young lesbian writers when the ranks of gay guys coming out of the closet suggests its internal dimensions are that of a Tardis? Gok Wok for example, fashion guru turned cook turned slimmer of the year turned whatever his manager thinks he can turn to next is taking over the tele-visual world like an Islamic terrorist on a Fatwa. So where are all the lesbians? I mean other than on Woman’s Hour bleating about a prize they can’t give away because no one can get off their fat arse and write a book? Isn’t this, as in the days of your, a perfect opportunity for a noble knight to ride in on his white charger and save the damsels in distress? But ‘oh no yea trousered one, we do the woodwork now.’ Well let me tell you I was wearing them before you were knee high to a transvestite. It was those of my ilk you got the idea from in the first place, before you ungraciously cut us out of the loop. Well I can sew; I’ve made a cushion cover! True I can’t have babies but I’ve installed a central heating system, in fact three come to think of it. And I didn’t do them lying in a comfy bed! No sod it, sod RSI, I’m going for that prize, I can do it. I will go to the ball as an under thirty-five lesbian! If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from my wonderful lesbian and gay friends it’s that the sooner we grow out of old stereotypes the better.

You Slag!

It’s a milestone Family Pie, so called because half is southern and unaccustomed to sounding the ‘t’ in party. A milestone because Tommouse is coming with his new girlfriend, Emma, for the first time. (I muse whether I’m Jim or the flaky grandma; in The Royal Family) Either way we’re all on our best behaviour to give Tommouse the best chance of maintaining his relationship and thus lightening our burden. Mothermouse magics up a wonderful table of tastes, we eat and drink and move on to phase two, games. Having done Playback the night before I’ve come armed with a new one to play that we did in warm-up, ‘Eastenders Slag Off.’ You form a circle and pass around being ‘it’ by turning either left or right and vehemently saying, “Shut it!” in true Eastenders fashion to the next person. If at any time you want to jump to someone on the other side of the circle you engage their attention with two pointy fingers and shout, “You slag!” They are then ‘it’ and can return it back by doing the same with enhanced conviction, “YOU SLAG!”. To avoid this developing into an acrimonious impasse either one can conclude it by shouting, “Get out of my pub!” so the other must then revert to telling an adjacent person to, “Shut it!” and so on. In the proper game people drop out through hesitation or getting it wrong but we didn’t get that far. All went well to begin with as most of us are family and enjoyed the permission to joyfully and energetically slag each other off. The turn then comes to Martynmouse from Mothermouse telling him to “shut it.” He gets confused and in return tells Mothermouse to get out of his pub which then totally confuses Mothermouse who, in full on vehemence points across the circle and shouts “You Slag” with full force family finger pointing to, Emma. Mothermouse then realises she has just called Tommouse’s new love on her first visit to meet the family a slag and collapses in shame. Emma laughed but I think Mothermouse will be scared for life, especially as we’ll never let her forget it.

Nature's Little Helpers.

OK thus far my left wing stance has railed against the wanton greed of the financial sector as they strip mine our economies into individual pockets. It has seemed grossly unfair, but a recent report on our abuse of the planet makes some sense of it. Above or below our consciousness there are factors at play not immediately obvious to it. We are being plunged into austerity and we don’t like it. We are used to growth, jobs, wanting and getting, it seems like a birthright and we won’t of our own volition change it for a more meagre existence. We would think it retrograde. But if in our system of wanting and getting we create super specimens who can absorb impossible amounts of that system’s fiscal currency they will suck the system dry of its life force. It will die back as naturally as leaves fall in autumn. And as these individuals can’t use much more of the planets natural currency than any of us, however big their yacht, the planet’s currency will recover as our wanting and getting dwindles. It becomes a transient bubble of aberrant consciousness that nature, above that consciousness, brings back into line. In essence we are being saved from ourselves by financial greed causing the austerity we are objecting to. Only by this process will we reduce our usage of the planet’s resources by ~50% as is necessary for it to recover. It’s our choice as to whether we consider this a hardship or a blessing. So thank you billionaires for doing nature’s work. Strange how things work out.

A Night Out.

Come nice weather I sometimes have a night out. Mat, sleeping bag and a pillow and off into the back garden. Around midnight Britney walked over me and a little later Domino slept by my feet for a few hours. Around three the noise began. It sounded like a gurgling pigeon to begin with and went into raucous sniffling. I figured it must be a hedgehog but couldn’t see anything so lay back down, but it was too loud to sleep. Fifteen minutes and it was still hoovering round the flowerbeds so looked up and it was about three inches from my nose next to my pillow. A few more sniffs and off it went. And continued sniffing for I don’t know how long so I decided to put out some cat food for it but Dave our own black fury food hog snaffled it before the hedgehog got to it. Then Dave joined me on my sleeping bag. By this time it’s near 5am, the sky is a touch lighter and half a dozen early morning pigeons are flapping back and forth to our helipad bird table like manic tea towels. I’m thinking this isn’t turning out to be the restful open-air kip I’d imagined. So if you’re fancying a night under the stars, don’t bother, it’s like an all night rave out there.

Selling Face.

It’s today! Face Book is being sold at $38 a pop and Mark Zuccaberg et al are going to make so much money their personal tax bills of around $1.5 billion will pay off 25% of California’s current deficit. It values the site at around of $104 billion, more than many multinational companies actually producing things. That means in these dire economic times there are still enough deluded people willing to stump up that huge amount. Who are they? What are they thinking? Current profits from Face Book are around $1 billion, 1% of that valuation when most companies expect to produce around 10%. That means Face Book will require strategies to extract a further $9 billion a year from its users. Now I don’t know about you but I dip into FB to hear from friends, which is rarely more than marginally interesting. I don’t go there to buy things. I use it because it’s free and there’s no intrusive advertising. Where Google search earns money by providing me with results from companies that pay the most per hit Face Book doesn’t provide anything like searches, adverts, cheap deals etc. The intrusion required to earn that extra $9 billion will definitely turn me off. It’s on a knife-edge for me as a user as it is. It may have 90 million users but their allegiance to it is paper-thin so a viral whim, a change in fashion, another smart bedroom boy etc could kill it off with a mouse click. But on the bright side say it continues to make $1 billion a year. It’s valuation would then sink to ~£10 billion, and somewhere there will be losses of $90 billion that will feed back into the banking system and cause us more austerity. And Mark and thousands like him will, perfectly legally, walk away with our money in their back pockets. Each and every one of us has become the lender of last resort to a finance system gone mad.