Conversation with Britney.

Britney is our resident Lauren Bacall in ginger, every pose a languorous expression of royal intelligence. Here for example is this morning’s conversation.

“Hello Britney.”

You’ve taken Dave to the black table. We all know.

“You OK Brit?”

You remain under suspicion comedy man

“What you looking at me like that for?”

think about it

“Oh yes sorry, I’ve taken Dave to the vets to get his teeth done. You’re fine. Bloody vets, they’re like the American healthcare system.”

And

“And what? Do you want some milk?”

If I wanted milk I’d take you to the fridge. No I’m here sitting in front of the cat flap, you work it out.

“What?”

 you locked the cat flap so he couldn’t get out

“Oh sorry I locked the cat flap so he couldn’t get out, here.” (unlocks cat flap)

There you go.

I’m not sure. You’re a bit too close. We know the tricks you know. Betty may be neurotic bless her but she’d worked you lot out years ago; Dreamies out of the blue, slowly bending over to give us a stroke in an ominous manner> Remember the rule, ‘We come to you.’ Always been always will be. Just back away and we can both get on with our day>

“Oh sorry, here.”

Thank you.

(Five minutes later)

“Back in?”

look out the window dumb ass, it’s raining.

Brexistential.

Midnight news and the spokesman for the road haulage industry is saying he asked the Brexit gov sec for ‘clarity’ on a no-deal Brexit. And the Brexit gov sec asked, “What exactly do you mean, clarity?”  I think he went on to say there would be no problem on the UK side but it also depends on the EU. Well ‘der!’ I may have been half asleep and not 100% sure what existential means but post two years of negotiations one would expect at least a slim idea of what the other side’s response will be. I’m now fully awake and realising the EU really don’t want the UK to leave. Not because of some familial affection but because they’re fearful for their club. They don’t was to lose membership. Like Greece found, we have entered a Hotel California. Back in 2016 we thought we just needed to pay the bill and check out but now we’re finding the price of leaving also carries existential costs that the EU won’t tell us. ‘Sure your lorries can queue up at Dover but we control the price of landing in Calais.’ In response Brexiteers are forced into saying, ‘Hang the price we’re going to leave anyway!’ It’s the only way the UK can throw the deadline back into the EU court. Of course the haulage industry is concerned but the UK are not negotiating with them. So now the EU is thrown into counting the existential cost to them. And it’s considerable: a founder member, a large economy and a large scientific and security contribution. And it’s all about inflexibility. Germany has a long history of amalgamating disparate groups. It took over a century to form the country from antagonistic feudal Germanic fiefdoms, it put huge energy in amalgamating east and west and was the major driving force in forming the EU. But the wider it grew the more disparate the countries have become. There are now major differences in living standards, attitudes to money and politics, population density and even reputation. Maybe the EU rules are based on an old German idea of amalgamating broadly similar fiefdoms and outdated in a modern Europe. And that’s what Brexit is about, updating Europe. Vive la special case.

How the USA gave up Guns.

Joe’s brother’s daughter died in a school shooting. The kids marched but the NRA and public opinion stood firm. It was like if you weren’t personally affected like Joe guns were your only protection in this crazy world so you loved them. In his head he went through countless ideas of how to change things. Laws couldn’t make it happen, the government wouldn’t and protests didn’t change things. OK forget guns and focus on ammunition, guns are no use without ammunition. He remembered Stuxnet where US malware blew up Iran’s centrifuges. Could he do the same for munitions manufacturers, malware their machines to make cartridges that blew up your gun? It turned out US bullet manufacturing was antiquated; they just used machines with an on/off switch. It would be easier to get them for lead poisoning. But there was a part of that plan that persisted, that if guns blew up in your hand due to faulty ammunition people would think twice about using them: it would feel like Russian roulette only American. In the end he turned to Trump. He was always talking about fake news and tweeting ridiculous things. So that’s what Joe would do. He rang around everyone he knew who had been personally affected by the shooting and from there other shootings and other people. Everyone he rang agreed. Pretty soon he had over a hundred people from all over personally committed to the project. Each had a different start date over a three month period, one or two at first, then five then twenty. They all began to tweet about guns blowing up in their hand. No one knew the cause, could be the guns or the ammunition. Some posted pictures of bloody hands or face, an eye blinded, a kiddie with burns. It was happening all over the country, a twitter storm, Youtube videos, Facebook posts. The more the NRA denied there was a problem the more fresh instances cropped up in new places. The public became jittery. Guns could harm you if you used them?! Of course not every shot, most fired fine, but you could never be sure if the next one might. OK it was fake news but nobody could get to the bottom of it. Even people who said it was a conspiracy weren’t believed. How could all these ordinary real people from all over the place be tweeting the same problem? Ammunition sales plummeted. People still had their guns but stopped using them, ‘just in case.’ Homicides fell by 50%. People talked, felt safer, the news picked up on the stats and drew conclusions. Little by little guns lost their appeal. People began to look at guns not as protection but personally harmful. (much like cigarettes)

And that’s how Joe got rid of guns in the US of A. Of course this is a story, Joe doesn’t exist, but best keep just quiet in case he does.

Our Haddon Hall Trip.

Yesterday Mothermouse and I visited Haddon Hall and artisan fair. The Hall is a 13^th, 14^th, 15^th and 16^th century building with one wall dating back to 1100 and elevated gardens some thirty meters above a lovely meandering river. What isn’t meter thick stone walls is 2½ inch oak doors and high leaded windows. This would become important later. Between hot sun and heavy rain we wandered the tented artisans and then the hall itself. Dates are one thing but staring at a 3 inch solid oak worktop worn clean through by 16 generations of servants brings a richer meaning. We wander through the banqueting hall and oak panelled galleries with massive hanging tapestries and end up walking through a heavy oak door into the simple elegant gardens. Mothermouse spotted a small summerhouse stacked with chairs and as it was raining we decided on a rollup in said building on said chairs. We continued down to the lower garden looking for the exit. As no solid oak doors were open we wandered back to the one we came out of. This was also shut. Slowly our minds assembled the facts, an impregnable building on the one hand and a 30 meter shear drop on the other and the staff packing up ready to go home. In a flash Mothermouse was on her mobile Googling Haddon Hall’s phone number. She explains we’re in the garden and, yes with the house on our right, good, and gone down the steps, OK, and we’re standing by the pond. “We don’t have a pond.” It transpired Mouthermouse had phoned Haddon Hall Care Home. Back to Google. Man answers, “Lucky we answered it” in a jocular if somewhat irked tone suggesting he’d already got his coat on and it was a long walk back through the banqueting hall, long oak panelled galleries etc. He opened a door and quizzed us on what exactly were we doing in the summerhouse for so long, and probably thinking we might well be escapees from the similarly named care home. Even now, a day later, I don’t know what we’d have done if he hadn’t answered. I know smoking is bad for you but I’d never considered dieing of exposure in the back garden of centuries old castle. 

Why the West is Failing.

Must listen to BBC R4 8pm tonight. Imagine an overbearing parent who, through numerous prods and pokes, convinced you you wanted, at age eleven, a stamp collecting set when you really wanted a bike. He was proud of his achievement because he liked philately and happened to have a spare stamp collecting set in a drawer and felt bikes were horrible oily mechanical things. Convinced, you half-heartedly stuck down penny purples and made planes from the empty pages. The current truly rampant manipulative use of social media is such a parent. Facebook et al are fundamentally conduits for the act of being overbearing. “You don’t really want that, you want this.” Like the old game where two people interleave hands and repeatedly pull out the bottom one and place it on top. That’ll make more sense if you do it saying the phrase. Western governments have institutionalised being overbearing, deciding what people want and foisting it on them. It’s now a fundamental part of our social fabric, and like that old hand game we’re going nowhere, achieving nothing of value and giving out stamp collecting sets to people who make paper planes out of them. That visceral motivation you would have got from a bike is missing and we’re all just going through the motions working ever harder towards objectives as nebulous as, well Brexit. Have now listened to above program recounting Oswald Spengler’s 1918 prophecy, the fall into decadence of every empire in history. Unfortunately it does seem inevitable. Initially a society has common youthful energy. In time it displaces that common energy with individual fragmentary comfort. In so doing it separates into those who acquire ever-greater comfort and those who don’t. Greater comfort assumes the greater increasingly disassociated power that separates the fabric of common energy. That fabric becomes weak and divisive, its energy consumed in internal nonsense. It can’t compete with other’s common youthful energy. It becomes insular, dictatorial, seeing its only salvation in isolation. It becomes that overbearing parent suppressing its youth, its only chance of a comfortable old age and a fresh start. 

Sympathy for Trump.

OK we went on Sheffield’s ‘Fuck-off Trump’ march on Friday but the man’s had a hard life. When I was five in bliss on our landing riding my new scooter he probably got cufflinks befitting the son of a multi millionaire. When I was twelve adventuring on my second hand bike he was probably riding his ranch on a top-notch pony. At fourteen, I contemplatively fishing, he hunting dear triumphantly. At sixteen me struggling with self-image and girls and he having his pick of the most beautiful, I weak and spindly, he strong enough to beat up any guy. At twenty-one his father gave him a million dollars to make is fortune and my dad wished me luck. All in all we learnt different things. He could have what he wanted and could acquire the best, and I had to work, learn and struggle with old moto-crossers, people and myself. He was educated by privilege and I by Mr Green at my secondary modern. I’m not romanticising the nobility of struggle rather its potential for growth, fulfilment and the pure pleasure of it. I’m not enviously bitching about Trump’s silver spoon wealth rather the paucity of his education by privilege. How could he grow when pre-given everything? Where is the pleasure in not attaining it? How can you feel fulfilment when you can just grab the pussy of existence? He was born on a bleak mountaintop where only ego, needing nothing but itself, can survive. And the rest of us, born much lower in uncertain yet fertile valleys, have the potential to flower. No Trump has had the worst of it by far but still doing his best to achieve worthless trophies and bully fortune to his uneducated will. He might still be, albeit unconsciously, trying to find out what the rest of us know, how to struggle with insecurity, exams, overdrafts, real relationships and true fulfilment, and the pleasure in achieving them.  

Reading for the Sake of Nothing.

We all have internal dialogue. At best we use it to formulate solutions, do I go here or there for a holiday, or worse to endlessly pursue imponderables, or even worse to emote over ourselves and/or others. Social media externalises this pursuit. It provides a vast ocean of opinion to swim in. Someone loves Jeremy Kyle someone else hates him. She said this, he aid that. He’s doing this, she’s doing that in an endless stream of fruitless stimulus, fruitless because opinion is the inverse of education. It’s how someone feels about the third law of thermodynamics. How do I feel about the third law of thermodynamics? What the fuck is the third law of thermodynamics? Why don’t people ever talk about the other two? Well the first two are simpler. Yes but they’re still important, aren’t they? Yes but is the third breakable. Breakable? Does it impose a false limitation? I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. No because you don’t have the education dumb ass. So opinion is a great way of building a house on quicksand: Easy but a waste of time. Personally I’d rather spend an evening with a calculator than a person full of opinions, which are essentially the real fake news. I’ve heard Hitler is still alive and living in the Philippians. Really. And 9/11 was done by devilishly cleaver Islamic terrorists. Really! Not by the US and the owner of the twin towers? Oh god no. Excuse me if I get my calculator out. Social media might have been fed by misleading Russian or otherwise fake information but the real damage to our society is its capacity to opinion-ise our state of mind. Once we’re opinion-ised we can be fed any garbage the movers want. So take it easy, just keep scrolling down, the page is endless.