BY JUPITER...!

Dianne Oxberry bringing us the Weather from Jupiter (?) on last night's BBC NorthWest Tonight...

40 minutes tinkering from 5.00am just to bring you a bad visual joke...

I know... I know...

Three disparate and incompatible devices, one with an operating system from the dawn of time. It really wasn't worth all the effort, was it?

SCARY STUFF

I wanted to write something really scary for you for halloween night, but I ran out of time, and, to be honest, I also ran out of ideas. Well, any that hadn't already been done far better than I could have done them, anyway.

Fear, you see, despite being a healthy way of reminding us to get ourselves away from our predators, is also one of the most sickly, sweet and devious of the mind's tricks that it can play on us.

We might think that we're struggling to write a few original words, or trying to recollect where the idea that we thought we'd thought of was when we first read about it, but all the time the fear is whispering into our subconscious, suggesting that this is perhaps the first sign that we are losing our mind, that the slow drip-drip of decay is tearing at our memories and our abilities and peeling away at the very heart of us, slowly shredding our notions of what is, in fact, us.

Is it disease, sickness, or old age tapping at the door to claim us...?

You could, of course, argue that the world is currently scary enough without anyone choosing to add anything to what it is already up to. You could, after all, be just walking to your car, or putting out the milk, and find that there's a bag being put over your head to whisk you away to a fate worse than, but not necessarily excluding, death.

Slowly... Painfully... Wretchedly...

Those children that are rat-a-tat-tatting on the front door may not be children at all...

Are they, in fact, far more terrifying dark demons in human form bearing the most malicious of intentions...?

The sinister, faceless terrors that have no name but which we all know are really there if you're unlucky enough to run into one at a moment when you are at your most vulnerable...

Are the strange glowing lanterns, and the mild-mannered extortions just a ruse, a disguise worn along with the horror masks to lull us into a false sense of security before the claw hammer fells us...?

Still, if you're reading this alone, in a dark house, late at night, and you've just had the slight sensation of a draught which you think has just wafted across the back of your neck, causing you to suddenly shiver for no real reason that you can think of, or something has just made the surface of your drink ripple unexpectedly, just remember that the unknowable shocking hordes of the "them" are in the house with you right now, lurking in the darkest corners of the shifting shadows, and when you go to take a sip of that wine, or that coffee, or that hot chocolate, they are just below the surface and waiting to pounce, just as they'll crawl all over you the minute you shut your eyes and try to get off to sleep.

You can convince yourself that it's all just in your imagination, that there's nothing lurking just underneath the surface waiting to leap out at you... and you might even be right...

If you're lucky...

Otherwise... otherwise...

Those strange noises, those odd, unexpected creaks and groans, and that unsettling sense that there's somebody upstairs... they're all true, and they're all going to get you, and there's nothing that you can do about it other than hide under the blankets and hope that they're not really there and, if they are, that they'll not notice you shivering and trembling under there, hopelessly pleading silently that they'll just go away and leave you alone...

But when they rip back the covers and look you right in the eye... You'll know...

You'll just know...

You'll be looking right into the face of your very own demon, the one you made for yourself.

Goodnight, sleep tight, and remember that the bugs will bite.

GREAT GREY MASS

I am just SO very tired…

I don’t know if anyone else gets this, but it’s like there’s a great big ball of something - you might call it fog, you might call it goo – lurking just in the front of my brain and it seems to be preventing me from doing anything very much at all.

Every time I try to think about anything else, about writing, about the idea of work, about my imminent break, it just sucks the energy in like a black hole (only I see it as grey…) and my progress reduces to a crawl.

This is why my wordsmithery appears to be petering out, just in case you had been wondering...

No...?

Fair enough... I suspect that I couldn’t be bothered with me any more either, if I were you.

Stupid! Stupid! Now I’m just feeling sorry for myself, aren’t I...? And that will never do.

Luckily, the “professional” part of my brain, that tiny spark containing the work ethic so drummed into me as a young ’un, does seem to be able to navigate around this shapeless mass and allow me to function, although the price seems to be that it uses up all of the energy and leaves me too drained to do anything much outside those requirements.

Meanwhile, the great grey mass is just there, distracting me, blocking me, and preventing me from doing the several things that I really, really should be getting on with, given the time-sensitive nature of so many of them.

Have you ever been so knackered that even writing out a cheque to pay a bill seems like such bloody hard work…?

Ah well, I guess that it’s just one of those “First World Problems” that you hear about which wouldn’t even be an option if I had top deal with real suffering like so many other people do.

Maybe that’s part of what’s feeding this though. I’ve been feeling pretty low anyway, what with the way that the world seems to be going, so that every bleak little story seems to somehow chip away at me and diminish my optimism – something which, as you all know, there has never been a surfeit of.

But then I realise that even using a phrase like “as you all know” is an utter nonsense as my presence upon this planet seems increasingly tenuous and without meaning anyway.

Sometimes I think that I could just drop off the world and it would barely be noticed for several months. Like one of those desiccated corpses that they sometimes find in apartments that appear to have been abandoned, eventually the world, so busy with getting on with its own lives, might suddenly pause and ask itself “whatever happened to…?” long after it actually ceased to matter any more.

I have become, as the saying goes, irrelevant.

There I go again! Feeling sorry for myself... Again!!! This really will not do.

Meanwhile, I can’t afford to be so listless and melancholy.

The Beloved seems to be having a crisis of confidence of her own, which does, at least, give me purpose, given that I have to look after her and be as supportive as I can… although summoning the necessary energy from somewhere is a struggle.

Still, given that her great grey mass trumps my great grey mass every time, at least on my scale of who’s most important hereabouts, I’d better just try and battle on, eh…?

But, Christ…! I am really just SO very, very tired…

HAS ANYONE HAD AN INKTENSE EXPERIENCE?

So... after my relentless probing (well, a Tweet or three, and a query or two on FizzBok) it seemed that nobody (well, nobody in my - admittedly limited - social circle at least) has yet had an Inktense experience...

Perhaps I ought to explain...?

I recently found out about these "new" (well, to me, at least) drawing implements, and have been thinking of getting a set and trying them out. After all, I used to quite like drawing with inks, and the idea of a "solid" ink that might act a little like a pencil seemed rather intriguing to an old lapsed scribbler like myself.

I did seriously consider popping into the Pencil Museum in Keswick recently, just to buy a set, but sanity prevailed and, whilst I remained on the lookout for another Art Shop in the area, I wasn't lucky enough to find one, otherwise I might already have treated myself to a holiday gift which I would have either proved myself horrifically inept at handling, or just left in its bag to gather dust like every other one of my bight, spontaneous inspired purchases.

Since then, of course, I've found that I could just, like everything else nowadays, buy them online, but that does rather remove the option of the Art Shop experience which was, once upon a long ago, actually something that I did sort of quite enjoy.

Rather than just splurge the thirty-odd quid, however, (because they're not the cheapest of investments - but then art materials seldom are...) I thought that I might ask around amongst my "artistic" contacts to see whether they'd tried using them, although, as with a lot of things that I try and do via Social Networking, my questions went all but ignored, leaving me to believe that this shiny new idea for a scribblin' medium might not yet have caught on.

Either that or - as I have often suspected - I really have got to the point in my miserable, wretched little life where nothing that I say or do matters to anyone at all, which seems fair enough, actually, considering how little interest I generally show from my side of this two-way street.

Anyway, in a last-ditch attempt to get some kind of response, I'll ask again what I asked in those other places and hope - probably in vain - that somebody, somewhere has some sort of insight...

Meanwhile... Have any of you lovely artistic types tried drawing with Derwent's Inktense Watersoluble Ink Blocks yet...? I'm trying to decide whether to give them a whirl, so some actual "real world" feedback would be nice if you can offer it... 

(I'm kind of assuming that they'll be a little bit like pastels, only more "inky")

LOST SOULS

Sometimes it feels as if I'm staggering,

Aimlessly through life, like a lost soul.

It's as if I'm constantly looking for something,

But don't know have a clue what it is at all.

I see all of the people around me,

And they all seem to have solved this life's clue.

They all act like they've got so many people to see,

Places to go - and lots of great things to do.

Because humanity lives in this great big ocean,

We’re all swimming or drowning or looking for dry land,

Yes, humanity lives in a great big ocean,

A sea of souls where all you need is a helping hand.

We’re all swimming against the currents,

That we all create in our own minds,

Believing that it’s a cruel world,

And letting the dogs eat those left behind.

But then I learned that everyone’s suffering,

Although some hide it better, that’s all,

They’ve learned not to show that they’re hurting,

And be seen through like a glass wall.

Because humanity lives in this great big ocean,

We’re all swimming or drowning or looking for dry land,

Yes, humanity lives in a great big ocean,

A sea of souls where all you need’s a helping hand.

Yet living in this great big fish bowl,

Means plenty will see us when we fall,

But whether they’ll stop and they’ll catch us

Depends upon whether we’ve played ball.

You see, some folk they’ll never quite fit in,

They’re not happy going along with the crowd,

And in a world of staggering conformity,

That sort of thing’s just not allowed.

And yet humanity lives in this great big ocean,

We’re all swimming or drowning or looking for dry land,

Yes, humanity lives in a great big ocean,

A sea of souls where all you need’s a helping hand.

Back when we first crawled out of the swamp

We all clung together to cope,

Now we’re living lives of splendid isolation,

And tapping out tiny beacons of hope.

But on some days nobody's biting,

Most times I'm a forgotten man,

And when everyone else is living their lives,

I'm just filling-in this empty span.

Because humanity lives in this great big ocean,

We’re all swimming or drowning or looking for dry land,

Yes, humanity lives in a great big ocean,

A sea of souls where all you need’s a helping hand.

Because humanity lives on this great big ocean,

We’ve been swimming or drowning or looking for dry land,

Yes, humanity lives on a great big ocean,

A ship of fools where all you need is a good friend.

(Sometimes I can really hear the tunes in my head, although, having no musical skill whatsoever, they can never get any further than that... So, instead, I bung down a few lyrics, call it a poem of sorts - doggerel, I suppose - and blat it out there in the vague hope, perhaps, that someone else might pick up the baton... Not, of course, that I would ever really expect that they might ever want to do so...)

BBC GENOME

I got more than a little bit excited when I read about the new "Genome" project launched recently by the BBC (http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/). It sounded like it might be rather my sort of thing, given that I'm a total sucker for anything involving old TV and radio programmes, especially those produced by the BBC which is, despite its various recent troubles, still quite possibly my favourite institution in the whole wide world.

Oh, I might have more regard for some of the other institutions, you understand, but I believe that it is the BBC that has provided me with the most joy over the years, despite the fact that they never saw fit to put me onto their payroll.

Quite right too.

I'd probably have been utterly hopeless.

Anyway, the point of the Genome project is to provide access to the archives of the Radio Times and opened the floodgates for the nation to wallow in nostalgia and, perhaps start to fill in the gaps in the archive where individual episodes or entire series are "Missing" to use the vernacular, by indicating to the world what is currently "Lost" if they just happen to have a few old tapes of TV or radio programmes knocking around.

"Missing" is, of course, a euphemism for "Junked" or "Misplaced" or "Wiped" and refers to the huge act of cultural vandalism that took place whenever expensive videotapes were re-used back in the 1960s and 1970s because it was in the Public Interest to save money when it was the licence fee that was being spent, and when storing such ephemera was not considered cost-effective when such things, especially in a bright new era of Colour Television, were unlikely ever to want to be seen again.

Within a decade, along came home video and the sudden resurgence of interest in old television from a generation for whom the words "another bloody repeat" (one of my dad's expressions) would have little meaning, and interest in the culture of the past - a place which was already becoming "another country" - was booming.

But the work of a generation of actors and comedians had already been decimated (and more) by the time that happened, especially during an era when, as the makers of the new versions of some lost "Hancock's Half Hour" episodes mentioned on the radio a few days ago - a producer might just go and grab the first available tape off the shelves and record over it.

ITV are not without guilt in this area as well, by the way, as many of their series have huge gaps in their archives, too, not least two personal favourites, "Callan" and the first year of "The Avengers". Interestingly, ITC's film-based output is a lot more fully preserved, not least because much of it was made available for overseas sales, and film was generally more marketable than videotape because it was a more "universal" medium.

Anyway, one of the bigger "selling points" for this new project, as far as the news media and the general public was concerned, anyway was the ability for people to look up what was on TV on the day that they were born (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29647931), or in relation to other significant dates in their lives - as long they fell between 1923 and 2009 anyway.

So, thanks to the new BBC Genome project, I now know that I was born during the Fourth Test, on the morning of the fifth day of an England v Australia Test Match which was being played at Old Trafford... (a game, incidentally, described as having been "the dullest of draws") and suddenly things in my life actually start to make a lot more sense, given that I'm a Manchester Lad with a bit of an unhealthily obsessive interest in Test Match Cricket.

Perhaps ironically, within a week of this project being announced, a couple of missing episodes of the ITV series "At Last, The 1948 Show" turned up in David Frost's family archive... which at least proves that the hunt goes on, and that occasionally something "new" (Well "old", obviously, but you know what I mean...) will turn up.

Now I do love a good "find" - it gives me hope that other "Lost Treasures" might yet prove to be somewhere out there after all.

I could also burble on and complain about my "At Last The 1948 Show" DVD now being out of date, but, under such circumstances, that might seem churlish. It's probably simply best to just enjoy that fact that something that once was lost is found again, and wonder what's going to turn up next.

1460

I happened to look at my "PageView Counter" for the month the other day, just as it was reading "1460" (many thanks), and was suddenly struck by what a very, very familiar number it seemed to be to me. It seemed to have some quite "significant" resonances,  but I couldn't quite work out for the life of me why...

After mulling it over for a little while, I decided that it was most probably the last four digits of a once "vital" telephone number which had long become obsolete in my life, from the days of the old 3-3-4 and later 4-3-4 dialling code format which was used in my part of the world when that was my part of the world.

In reality, I suspect that 1460 was my grandparent's telephone number once, for far more years than I can imagine, and so very long ago, and that it's still locked into my mind somehow as an "important" number, even though it might not have been so for more than twenty years.

But I suppose that we've all got similar kindsa of numbers stashed away somewhere in the backs of our memories, those vital little numbers which have since become redundant, but which sometimes resonate when those digits coincidentally appear.

Like when you dial a quick check on a number that left no message, but it seems somehow very familiar but you can't quite work out who it is, or why a similar but different number should make you think (or hope?) that a particular person has tried calling you.

So many hopeful numbers were stashed away during my teenage years only for them to later crush me with despair when they never actually called.

Every so often I have this same problem with dates as well.

The calendar will point to, say, October 22nd, and I'll find myself thinking that something about that date makes it feel as if it is important in some small way.

Now it's most probable that I had a dental appointment, or some crappy pointless deadline for a long-forgotten job, or an interview, or an exam, or something else like that that seemed really important upon that date several years ago, and I knew then that I had to remember it, but somehow it's lodged into my mind as a significant date somehow, even though it isn't any more.

Unless it is, of course...

In which case... "Oops!"

I wonder whether this sort of thing is going to become less of a "problem" for a generation growing up with electronic calendars which are pinging them constant reminders of the things that they no longer have to just remember to do, and where all of their telepone numbers stored in a device that's remembering it for them...?

Will we ever get to the point where nobody actually feels the need to remember anything at all, because we have become so reliant upon machines to do all of our remembering for us?

And what happens then if the machines suddenly stop, and we no longer bother to scribble these things down in something as drearily analogue as a notebook, just in case the batteries run flat...?

On the plus side, though, it might save future generations from that slightly anxious moment when a particular date gets mentioned in conversation (assuming that they still have those, of course) and their mind immediate rushes to its Panic Room and starts screaming out the message that it is "sure that there was something important I had to do today..." only to find out that it was six years ago, and most probably didn't really matter all that much anyway...

STUPIDLY CHUFFED

I know that it's ridiculous and massively shallow of me, but this moment made me feel stupidly chuffed when it happened a couple of weeks ago.

I mean, I am totally cynical about the whole "Celebrity Culture" thing, and find the Twitterverse depressing in so many ways but, for one brief moment in time, my world and that of bloody SIR ROGER MOORE (!!!) briefly touched in a tiny, tiny way.

SIR ROGER bloody MOORE!!!

Bloody hell...!

29 YEARS

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

That was Welsh for “Trevor” you see.

It was twenty-nine years ago,

(And I was only twenty-one you know)

That I got the notification,

Of my father’s departation,

From this world to the next,

Which left me feeling vexed,

At the office in the Art School,

Who’d made me feel such a fool.

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

That was Welsh for “Trevor” you see.

Now just a fortnight before,

There’d been a message on their door,

To ring home urgently,

Which cut to the heart of me.

So I went and made the call,

But there was nothing wrong at all,

I’d feared for something bad,

But ended up chatting to my dad.

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

That was Welsh for “Trevor” you see.

There’d some kind of mistake,

The kind that secretaries can make,

They stuck that message to the wall,

Asking me to make that call,

So when it seemed to happen once more,

My jaw it hit the floor,

Because just two weeks later on

It seemed it was happening again.

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

That was Welsh for “Trevor” you see.

Only this time it was true,

They “really thought” I should try to get through

To my family at home,

On that grotty old payphone,

So I rang and heard the worst,

And into tears I did burst,

Before being helped out by my pal,

Then driving home for the funeral.

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

That was Welsh for “Trevor” you see.

October’s not great for me,

Three such anniversaries, you see?

Lost my mum, my friend, and my dad

To a month I now think of as bad,

So if you think I get a bit obsessed,

Or more than a little depressed,

Just think about what I’ve lost,

And why I’m counting the cost…

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

That was Welsh for “Trevor” you see.

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

My dad was “Trefor” you see.

PLASTIC-TROUSER GIRL

Plastic-trouser girl,

She’s my

Plastic-trouser girl.

The mornings are getting darker,

The temperature’s begun to fall,

Water’s thrashing against the window,

It’s hardly any fun at all.

But my girl needs to go out,

And stand around in the worst of it.

Because she has a train to catch,

And commuting’s really… a bit rubbish really.

Plastic-trouser girl,

She’s my

Plastic-trouser girl.

But she has her solution,

To keep the dampness out.

Upstairs I hear her dressing,

With lots of thrashing about.

There’s thudding and swearing and hollering

Which leaves me in little doubt.

Soon she’ll be coming down the stairs

Fully armoured for going out.

Plastic-trouser girl,

She’s my

Plastic-trouser girl.

Now you may have strange notions,

About wearing Polyurethane,

But having that many layers on,

Rules out thoughts of antics obscene.

Wrapped up against the elements,

With layer upon layers galore,

She’s confident she’ll be toasty warm,

When the rain begins to pour.

Plastic-trouser girl,

She’s my

Plastic-trouser girl.

Standing on the platform,

Painfully waiting for her train,

She’s snuggled up inside her clothes,

Almost oblivious to the rain.

So when she finally gets to work,

And drips upon their carpet,

There’ll be an ordeal of extrication,

But at least she’s not got wet.

Plastic-trouser girl,

She’s my

Plastic-trouser girl.

So when the wind it starts to blow,

And the leaves begin to whirl,

She’ll reach into a certain cupboard,

To find plastic clothing to unfurl.

Whilst mother nature in all her fury,

Tries hurling raindrops at the world,

Standing defiantly and smugly,

Will be my plastic-trousered girl.

Plastic-trouser girl,

She’s my

Plastic-trouser girl.

THIS ONE'S A DOOZY, TOO...!

After pinning two of my favourite "Peanuts" cartoons to some recent postings, I thought that I ought to add the third one that I scanned on the same day, not only to feed my compulsion towards achieving "completeness", but also because it is, quite frankly, a bit of a doozy, and speaks to me about aspects of my life that I'll have to leave you to just imagine, but which involve writing and managing to say the most inappropriate things at the worst possible moment.

I'm almost certain that the ten-year-old me would have gone "???" at this one and skipped along to the "Joe Cool" pages, but the beauty of Charles M Schulz's genius is that aspects of his work can be returned to and viewed completely differently when you are older.

It's sophisticated stuff, you know...!

CHARLES AND JAKE

 I do believe that words like “Genius” (alongside “Brilliant” and “Hero”) are bandied about far too easily nowadays, but I have recently been re-introduced to two creative people whose work might just qualify them.

The first is Charles M Schulz, whose cartoon work I briefly mentioned in passing yesterday, but it does deserve another mention, because it is utterly, to use the vernacular brilliant.

About eight or nine years ago, I was lucky enough to be visiting Santa Rosa and that just happens to be the home of the official Charles M Schulz museum. Naturally, and in an appropriately “Charlie Brown” manner, on the one day we were actually there, the museum was closed for the day, but, as is the American way, the shop was open, and I treated myself to a large format book about his life and career, a book which was (naturally) chock-full of examples of his “Peanuts” strip cartoon and, as is the way of these things, I was soon roaring with laughter and the content of these four-panel masterpieces of storytelling and observations upon life.

I promised myself there and then that I would track down more of his back catalogue, got into the car, drove off to Bodega Bay, and then did nothing much else about it.

Then, last week, because I was looking for something “light” to read to help me to get to sleep, I noticed my five slim Coronet paperback editions of selected “Peanuts” cartoons sitting on the bookshelf in our bedroom. I’ve had these books since I was probably about eight years old and, whilst I haven’t exactly been reading them every week, I’ve dipped into them from time-to-time, although it must be at least a couple of decades since I’d last done so.

Anyway, not to put too fine a point on it, all five books were devoured, and I’m once again truly astonished at the genius of the man at getting so to the heart and truth of the human condition in such a seemingly simple (although it isn’t) and direct (although it can be quite subversive) manner.

I’m certain that most of the jokes must have sailed over the head of the eight-year-old version of me. After all, I wouldn’t have had a clue about things like baseball or ice hockey or philosophy at that age, so I probably just laughed at the funny little cartoon people, got bewildered at some of the references, and hung onto those books in preparation for my brain to grown “adult” and “sophisticated” enough to appreciate them more fully.

It’s been a long wait, and I’m still not completely convinced that I’m there, yet.

The other creative genius that I’ve recently rediscovered is Jake Thackray.

Regular readers will know that I’ve dabbled a couple of times lately with my own bits of doggerel, the style of which might have been more than a little influenced by both the work of Ian Dury and my vague memories of Jake from my little black-and-white portable TV that I had in my bedroom as a teenager.

Apart from that, and a slight resurgence of interest when an acquaintance of mine did a poster for his appearances at Stoke Art College in the early 1980s, Jake and I had rather lost touch.

In fact I’d pretty much forgotten all about him until I heard of his death in 2002, at an age not too many years older than I currently am, my response to which was greeted with an almighty “Who’s that?” which struck me as a bit of a shame even then, and I was determined to find out a little more about this most obscure-seeming of performance poets.

Well, because it’s me and I am a bit of a procrastinator, it’s taken me more than a decade to decide to follow up on that, but, having trawled around on the interweb a couple of weeks ago looking for some of his work, and having had a particular DVD recommended to me, one which has now been delivered, I have to report that the rumours of his genius are completely and unequivocally true, at least as far as I’m concerned.

As a word-wrangler and story-teller, his songs are a sheer delight – they’re mostly very funny, too, whilst occasionally being thought-provoking, poignant, or downright angry and political.

I know that some of the references, and some of the lyrics, remain unapologetically “Un-PC” to modern ears – a lot of this stuff was performed on the “Folk Club” circuit way back on the early 1980s after all – and maybe that’s precisely why some of his performances on TV have remained buried in a vault somewhere for all these years.

There have been a lot of performance poets down the years. Household names like Pam Ayres, Mike Harding, Ivor Cutler, and John Cooper-Clarke and, to be honest, I’m surprised at how familiar I am with so many of them, despite my regular claims that I don’t really “do” poetry.

Perhaps it’s just that I don’t read poetry… Who knows?

Or maybe it’s just because, at an early age, whilst watching late night telly in my bedroom, a man called Jake managed to get one or two of his silly little songs to lodge inside my mind and make me appreciate the sheer fun that words can bring.

Despite being a regular stalwart on television shows throughout the sixties and seventies, Jake Thackray never had the glittering showbiz career that he perhaps deserved but might not have wanted. Rather sadly, instead he descended into alcoholism, and died in relative obscurity at the beginning of this bright new century, and, although modern poets like Ian McMillan have tried to champion his cause, he still seems destined to remain something of a cult pleasure only to be appreciated by the lucky few who have stumbled across his work.

But his frankly rather brilliant songs and his poems are his legacy, and they are well worth a listen if you get the chance.

HOW DAYS BEGIN

I sometimes think that how days start out does tend to indicate just what sort of shape they’re going to end up having.

Take, for example, the morning a few days ago when I’d already woken up having had that dreadful night of the “Cold Shoulder” experience which I may already have mentioned.

Well, having successfully negotiated the routine parts of the day, I'd headed home with my plans in place to get through another day of spinning pizza watching and decided to kick it all off by going into the kitchen and brewing up a nice cup of joe.

I’d just made myself my morning cup of coffee and, in the spirit of saving the earth's resources just a little bit, I clicked off the light at the bottom of the stairs (because I’ve lived here long enough to be able to do that) when I became aware that, as I'd taken a step or two upwards, the end of the scarf, the one  that I’d decided to wear to try and keep my dodgy neck muscles toasty and warm, had plopped into my coffee mug and begun drinking it up.

“So, I thought, “That’s the kind of day that it’s going to be, is it...?” and rather grumpily removed the soggy scarf and headed upstairs.

And yes, it turned out that it was indeed that sort of a day.

The sort of a day that even picking up one of my old volumes of "Peanuts" cartoons to read at bedtime fails to lift. I have but five slim Coronet paperback editions which I was either bought or otherwise acquired in the early 1970s, and I recently just picked one off the shelf at random and was pleasantly surprised at just how unutterably brilliant they are - in a slightly melancholy way.

Reading them again last week, I can't help but think that most of the jokes sailed right over my ten-year-old head, but I suppose that's the beauty of them really.

Meanwhile, I caught the end of "Desert Island Discs" whilst I was driving around the other day, and, whilst I failed to remember the name of the composer being interviewed, she talked in such a media-friendly, soundbite-y kind of a way, that I began to suspect that it was all scripted.

After all, I wondered, would anyone really say "...his beloved Leeds United" in normal conversation....?

My "Media Sense" was tingling...

Anyway, whoever she was, she did mention the best piece of advice that she was ever given, and that was to write every day, which I suppose applies to words as well as to music. Even if it's rubbish, and you just want to throw it into the wastebin, she maintained, it keeps you in practice, and is a good thing to do because you're always going to prove to yourself at least that you are still able come up with something new.

This pointless piece of prose was therefore brought to you in precisely that spirit... and consigned to the wastepaper basket otherwise known as "Lesser Blogfordshire".

LAST FRIDAY EVENING

I don’t want to shock you or anything, but last Friday night, after work, I actually went out for the evening.

I know… Rather incredible, isn’t it…?

The truth is that my Beloved has an exclusive collection of rather lovely chums who, on occasion, she will meet up with to have a natter, drink a bottle of wine, eat some nibbles and, in all probability (although I have absolutely no evidence for this), complain about that rather strange bloke that she chooses to share her life with.

Anyway, for some strange reason – possibly because I hadn’t actually met this particular friend in person for maybe half a decade – on Friday evening she invited me to tag along, presumably just to add whatever idiotic remarks I could to their evening.

After a week of battling with a computer that seemed to prefer to show me “spinning pizzas of death” whenever it fancied “a bit of a rest”, I was rather in need of getting away from the Beast, and, because it finally gave me an excuse to wear my nice new coat, and my slightly less new (but otherwise publicly unworn) waistcoat, I got into the car, and headed out towards a particularly trendy suburb of town for the evening.

Battling my way through the rush hour traffic, I arrived a smidgen too late to rendezvous with them at their meeting point, although I was rather happy at the fact that I’d managed to actually get a space on the free car park after manoeuvring around in the rather tight spaces for a few minutes.

Then, I lurked outside the cheese shop wondering whether they were running late until I got a text message announcing where they had gone to eat, and so, my suspicious lurking suddenly turned back into merely waiting, and the various good folk on that particular High Street could breathe their collective sighs of relief and move on with their own evening business.

Hah! So self-obsessed!

To be honest, I doubt anyone even noticed I was there…!

So, I walked into the restaurant of choice and met them and, hopefully, didn’t disgrace myself too much with my grungy appearance.

My Beloved was ordering at the Bar, so I went over and sat down with her friend and, after that all-too-familiar couple of minutes of awkwardness that I get whenever I’ve not actually seen someone for a while, when the panicky rush of blood to the head makes me talk like an utter arse, things settled down and the evening unfolded pleasantly, despite one of the staff throwing a knife at me at one point.

Food was eaten, chat was chatted, and they drank some wine whilst I stuck resolutely to the soft stuff – although even that proved problematic when the bar “ran out of syrup” (?) for the Diet Coke and I had to fallback on a rather panic-stricken second choice.

Later on, we left, at around 8.30pm, and just as the place was beginning to fill up with the “interesting-looking” people looking for the dubious excitement of  “night-life” so I think that we got the timing just about spot on.

Well, for me at any rate… As to my companions, well, maybe they would have preferred to dance until dawn, who can tell?

Instead, we gave my Beloved’s friend a lift to her exciting new house, dropped her off, and got vaguely lost for a while in an area of Manchester with which I thought that I was once familiar, but which actually did its level best to bamboozle me.

Still, road signs prevailed… I begin to wonder whether, in the “Post-Sat-Nav” era (not that I have one), road signs will eventually be considered to be redundant?

I hope not because, without those familiar blue signs claiming that there was a suitable motorway thereabouts, I might still have been driving around now.

As to my evening of venturing out, well, I think that it was rather successful, on the whole, and, perhaps, worthy of trying again in the not too distant future.

Naturally, I have fretted and obsessed about the content of my conversation and banter throughout the evening, and wondered, in the dark corners of my psyche, whether they would have had a far better evening if I’d cried off, but those are just the normal responses of my inner fears, and are probably best ignored.

Equally, I do find myself wondering about what I actually said all evening. I can remember the general thrust and parry of the conversation, and most of the idiotic nonsense that I was spouting, but the detail escapes me.

For example, I can vividly remember making a point about the misappropriation of a particular word, and emphasising that that word actually means something quite specific and is often misused, but I can’t for the life of me remember in what context I said it.

Naturally, I’ve asked the Beloved but, I suspect wisely, she probably wasn’t paying any attention to a word I was saying.

Quite right, too…

[Note to self: I know I’ve not been out socially for a while, but next time it might be worth remembering to take a notebook to help me remember that sort of stuff… I did used to, you know.]

COLD SHOULDER

So, my shoulder’s been a little stiff of late, but I’ve been putting that down to lugging the Beast back and forth to work all these months.

I can’t lie on my left hand side for any length of time any more without there being consequences… but if I lie on my right hand side, the left arm doesn’t seem able to find itself a comfortable spot.

This, as they say, isn’t the worst thing to have to put up with, but it’s not great either.

I, of course, put it all down to that abstract “catch-all” I’ve been using recently - “Just part of getting old” - but my Beloved dismisses such talk from her youngish, brightish, whatever the opposite of “better” half is, and tells me not to carry on with that kind of talk.

She is right, of course…

But sometimes the fates are gonna gitcha…

So there I was, late in the evening, not really managing to sleep when I rather foolishly turned over onto my left hand side, crushing my arm beneath me and generally forgetting the lack of wisdom that such a position indicates.

The usual numbness started to overtake me but I ignored it, only for a sharp pain to manifest itself in my neck.

Like an idiot, I decided that this was probably just a blip, and it would most likely just go away in a second or two and, instead of leaping up and bellowing “Ow! Ow-ow-ow-ow-OWWWW!!!” like some kind of Drama Queen, I lay there letting it hurt me for about thirty seconds until I relented and did the whole “Ow! Ow-ow-ow-ow-OWWWW!!!” thing anyway.

Sigh!

This was, quite obviously, a major mistake because I ended up lying there in complete agony for hours, totally unable to find any position at all in which I could feel at least vaguely comfortable, and allowing the Chimp running the night-shift in my brain to remind me of all of my mother’s spinal horrors, my father’s struggles with his spondylitis, whether I’m getting rheumatism or arthritis, the fact that I hold my “Tappity-Tap” Kindle far too long in a particular position, and all of those “shock moments” when I’m changing gear in the car, or opening up the tea caddy, or trying to do something “masterful and manly” like turning on a tap, opening up a bag of crisps, or taking the lid off a jar of jam.

Eventually, I got up and heated up the wheat bag in the microwave to apply some heat treatment and add some much needed support to my neck.

That didn’t work.

Well, it sort of did, but didn’t, if you get my meaning.

Then I stumbled through the darkness and hauled an old beanbag out of the chaos of the attic room to provide additional support to my pillows, and tried once more to get comfortable whilst running fantasies through my head about either dying or getting a “proper” massage.

My own particular Chimp is a strange and peculiar creature.

Anyway, after about another hour of this, I eventually gave in and sought out the paracetamol and, eventually, drifted off into a few hours’ sleep, waking with the prospect of a few days of stiffness and discomfort on my left hand side.

So what am I doing wingeing away about it to you lot, then, eh? Well, to be perfectly honest, I don’t really know, but… well, in the absence of anything else to talk about, I suppose we all fall back upon our aches and pains, gripes and grumbles from time-to-time.

After all… it’s just part of getting old, isn’t it…?

“SHUT UP!!!”

THIS IS HOW YOUR WORLD ENDS*

This is how your world ends,

This is how your world ends,

This is how your world ends,

This is how your world ends.

The deadly Ebola virus

Kills thousands of African poor.

Almost no-one really notices

Until Americans kick down death's door.

Everyone is scared to death,

Yet they're prepared to fight the fight,

“We've all got to act so carefully...”

But then a nurse gets on a flight.

(You wouldn't believe it, you really wouldn't...)

This is how our world ends,

This is how our world ends,

This is how our world ends,

This is how our world ends.

There's fascists in the streets,

With messages that sound “just right”,

No “reasonable person” would disagree,

Though they’re talking utter... spite.

“My country first” they'll bellow,

Like your mates might down the pubs,

Find a particular group to blame,

Then go after them with clubs.

(It's all handshakes and friendly grins until they take you outside and shoot you...)

This is how my world ends,

This is how my world ends,

This is how my world ends,

This is how my world ends.

Extremists lopping heads off,

Just to make the point,

That their belief is better than yours,

And they want to run the joint.

Terrorising everyone,
So we dare not cross their path,
Complaining that we're bombing them,
Was enough to cause this wrath.

(Not that I want to justify or apologise for such barbarism you understand....?)

This is how the world ends,

This is how the world ends,

This is how the world ends,

This is how the world ends.

(Add verses of your own and repeat ad nauseum until the end of time – or about next Tuesday by my reckoning)

*Another tub-thumping potential addition to my set-list for when I decide to become the next performance poet in the Billy Bragg mould... Now all I need is someone who knows their way around a set of bongos or a set of maracas to accompany me on this potentially embarrassing quest...

AUTUMN COLOUR 2014

I am rather struggling to come up with anything new to write about at the moment, but I suppose that it is worth mentioning that one of the reasons why I wanted to go up to the Lakes last weekend was to get a look at the autumn colours, although it turns out that we were probably just a tad too early because, after the rather wonderful September we had, the trees seem to have been hanging on to their greenery just a little longer than is usual this year.

Nevertheless, here's a couple of snapshots from our Saturday spent on Derwentwater and walking back from Keswick which have just a hint of the autumnal rust about them...

ANOTHER WEEKEND IN THE LAKES

We'd really, really needed something to look forward to.

Well, at least the Beloved had, given the monstrously busy time she's been having at work recently.

So, because we really do like to at least TRY to get up to the Lake District at around this time of the year - usually a couple of weeks later, to be fair - I went ahead and booked us in for a couple of nights at our usual Bed and Breakfast haunt to give her something to look forward to during the chaos of September.

That was the easy part.

Rather naturally, she began to "come down with something" during the week but struggled through regardless and made it to the weekend.

Meanwhile, I made it through to the end of the week by suffering my "computer crisis" on Friday and packing up with all of the consequences of that still bubbling through my mind.

I only had to return to the house once after departure, as the text message arrived asking me to go back for the Beloved's phone charger, but that was enough to kick-start a chain of events which did not put me into the calmest of moods.

As I climbed back into the car, getting filthy looks from the new neighbour for daring to park up - however briefly - outside her house, the heavens opened and the monsoon which had lurked above my house all day finally let itself go with as much force as it could muster and what with that, the terrors of negotiating the various idiots doing the "school run" without any care and attention, and a possible sighting of my long-ago "Ex" (a person whom the prospect of accidentally running into still troubles me), my mood had blackened even before I met the Beloved from her train.

This, combined with the many traffic accidents causing multiple traffic jams on the way up north, and the less than promising statement from the Beloved that all she really wanted to do was to go home and go to bed, did not make for the most promising of starts, especially as our continued delays made me wonder if we'd be able to get to our destination before the local pub had stopped serving food, and whether they would even have any tables available anyway.

Still, after our four-hour ordeal, we made it, and, whilst this weekend was not ultimately one in which the Beloved had the energy to do any "proper" fell walking, we did have a nice boat trip around a lake, a couple of hours just sitting and watching the world go by, and a lovely Saturday evening meal in a very good local restaurant, although we were troubled to discover that our favourite little tea room seemed to be no longer with us.

However, all that, combined with our meandering return on Sunday, stopping off at various towns along the way home, was pleasant enough to ensure that it did, at least, feel like a proper break and that we even managed to relax a little which is, of course, very valuable in itself, and made the whole venture seem far more worthwhile than it did at certain moments when we were sitting on the car park that calls itself our motorway network last Friday.

COMPUTER SAYS "BANG!"

I work on a computer for my living. The computer does not belong to me, because it belongs to the company which bought it for me to use, but I feel a kind of possessiveness over it because we've been through rather a lot together since it was unpacked from its box two years ago after the first of our office burglaries.

It survived the second of our office burglaries when other machines did not, more out of sheer luck than anything else, so it is now, by some margin, the oldest machine in the office.

Not unlike myself, really.

Last Friday, because I had plans for the weekend, it made sense for me to work from home and to work "earlier" than I otherwise would, so that I could get away and hopefully avoid the worst of the weekend traffic.

Anyway, at about noon, after a good, solid four-and-a-half hour stint, I received an email from our administrator at head office and was in the process of reading it when all hell broke loose and the screen started flickering madly whilst not displaying anything very much and, like the wise old trouper I am, I immediately initiated a start-up cycle and switched the machine off.

It then went absolutely nuts for a while, displaying the "purple bands of death" and various other troubling symptoms before I admitted defeat and telephoned my manager to explain the sorry tale.

After a couple of hours of discussions and investigations we found out that this particular machine type, bought at about the time this one was bought, has been troubled by a graphics card problem, and the card might need to be replaced by means of the machine being sent away for repair, which might leave me with lots of work to do - we are, after all, facing another desperate deadline - and nothing upon which to do that work.

In the end I shut it down, bundled it back into its box and did my best to work up some files on a alternative Difference Engine from the dawn of time which has been known to be booted up from time to time just to prove that it still can be.

So these are troubling times for Yours Truly.

The "Inner Chimp" is screeching its worries about being blamed, or the company deciding not to bother with me, or simply not wanting to pay me for sitting around doing nothing for an unspecified amount of time because I have no equipment to work on.

The "Practical Human" part of my brain is, of course, trying to reason logically with the chimp and explain that none of this is my fault, and sometimes things happen that are beyond my control, and that, to be honest, it's really up to my employer to supply me with the equipment with which to do the job that I'm employed to do.

Doesn't stop me from worrying though, and points out how simply our lives can unravel when a device upon which we rely suddenly decides to say "Bang!" and stop co-operating with its human slaves.

On Monday morning, of course, on start-up, the perverse, tricky little beast worked perfectly normally, until at least 11 0'clock when, for no real reason it went "Phutt!" again. Then, after a bit of a rest - about an hour or so - it seemed to work fine for the rest of the afternoon.

But you really can't work like that, and so, after much debate and discussion, it has now been bundled up into a cardboard box, and carted off to the Computer Hospital, and we hope to see it fit and well in about three to five working days, whilst I muddle along as best I can doing what I can to help, whilst bashing at the chunky, clunky keys of its Great-Grandaddy... which remains a frustratingly slow but game old bird, even if some of the shiny new software packages are beyond its capabilities.

It might turn out to be a long week...

ONE YEAR ON

One year on,
One year gone.
My old mum,
One year on.

Kathy was a difficult one,
That's something I should tell,
Born in the years before the war,
Only child of Harold and Nell.
They lived behind his plumbing shop,
And seemed to do quite well,
Then Adolf got ambitious, so
The whole world went to hell.

One year on,
One year on.
My old mum,
One year on.

She was their little princess,
For whom they had high hopes,
But their ambitions for her got crushed
When she discovered blokes.
Wilfully she moved away,
And left them in the lurch,
She said that she was learning to teach
But married a bloke she met at church.

One year on,
One year on.
My old mum,
One year on.

Against parents' advice popped out a kid,
But struggled for another,
It took nine years but finally
My sister had a brother.
We all played happy(ish) families,
For more than thirty years,
But illness took my dad too young,
Leaving memories and tears.

One year on,
One year on.
My old mum,
One year on.

Left alone at fifty three,
She lived nearly three decades more,
Never really well off,
But not exactly poor.
She always hoped that she might find
Another companion (or "something more")
Church and holidays gave her happiness,
And I probably should have done more.

One year on,

One year on.

My old mum,

One year on.

The last few years were brutal,
There ain't no ifs nor buts.
Her final boyfriend upped and died
And sickness seized her guts.
Back and forth to hospital,
Things seemed to get worse and worse,
And about this time one year ago,
Life had written her last verse.

One year on,

One year on.

My old mum,

One year on.

One year on,
One year gone.
My old mum,
Dead and gone.

BIG RED LINE

I don’t know whether you’ve ever been “lucky” enough to have to pass through U.S. Customs and Immigration, but it has been rather on my mind lately.

Now, before we start, I want to make it quite clear that I absolutely love visiting the United States as “A Tourist” but sometimes, actually getting into the country, especially if you are deemed to be someone not clever enough to have managed to get yourself born there (i.e. everyone else in the world), can feel like an utter chore.

Much of it starts at your departure airport where the security questions and checks are many and varied and almost bound to make even the most law-abiding traveller feel slightly guilty about something that they hadn’t even thought about before.

Now I’m perfectly in favour of having as many security checks in place as is humanly possible, given that I’ve always been something of a “nervous passenger” anyway, and, in this day and age, the more the better, but it does sometimes seem bizarre as you throw off your shoes for the fourth time, and virtually have to undress yourself, whilst proving that all of your camera and other digital equipment is fully charged, getting X-rayed, patted down, and having all of your bottles of fluid checked, whilst at the same time answering several dozen questions, the replies to all of which seem to start with a resounding “Erm…”

And then you have to do it all over again to get into the Departure Lounge, and then once more as you get onto the plane itself.

Maybe I just look a little bit “dodgy”, I don’t know, but they always seem to pick me, presumably so as not to appear racist and be equal-opportunity body searchers.

Still, once you get onto the plane, things do quieten down a little, apart from the occasional reminders about various aspects of “Federal Law” which seem to be designed to to keep you just a little bit on edge for the entire journey.

Once upon a time you used to have to fill in the faintly absurd green Declaration Form whilst you were still on the plane, then wave it hopefully in the direction of the Customs Officer once you had been waved solemnly across the fabled BIG RED LINE at your airport of arrival.

Okay, my memory is a little fuzzy. It might actually be a BIG YELLOW LINE, but I’m usually jet-lagged to pieces, so we’ll just say it’s RED and move along, eh…

Move along…

I call the form “faintly absurd” because you can’t imagine ANYONE wanting to tick one of the “wrong” boxes asking questions about any criminal activity that you might have planned, and yet, despite this strange feeling that EVERYONE who is not American must be up to no good, they still appear to believe in some sort of “honour system” for these forms.

In recent years this process has now had the $14.00 ESTA check added to it, so that you have to apply for permission to fly – and pay for the privilege – a minimum of three days before you board your aircraft, but it does rather negate the need for the form, even though they still get handed out.

If you have to make a connecting flight, this whole process can step in to quite ruin your day, especially if the timing turns out to be something you might consider “tight” like, say, about an hour and a half.

During our 2004 trip to California, our plane landed at Chicago at about the same time as five other wide-bodies jets, and, after dutifully retrieving and identifying our luggage and placing it in the designated “Transfer Baggage” area, we ran like hell to join the Customs and Immigration “Non-US Citizens” line and managed to get ourselves into the first 100 yards or so of it.

Other, more sluggish passengers hoping to make the same connection were several hundred people behind us in the queue and, by the time we had been allowed to cross the BIG RED LINE (with me having been shamefully sent back behind it by a scary security officer when it turned out that the Beloved and I, whilst travelling together, were not actually married), and removed and replaced our shoes several times en route, we ran to the gate and caught our flight by the skin of our teeth, which is more than several of our fellow passengers managed, swearing never again to trouble Chicago O’Hare with our presence ever again, with its many terminals and monorails which needed negotiating.

You see, for the airlines, it’s really no skin off if you miss your internal flight. There’s always several people just waiting and hoping for an available seat on a connection, so they can always fill it and, presumably, charge you again for the one you still need to get on to get where you want to be going.

Another interesting thing seems to be the “flexibility” over the rules of “carry-on” luggage for internal flights. Quite often we have made our way on board with nothing but our tiny little bags as per the International Flight Regulations only to find all of the overheads crammed full of stuff from the half dozen or so passengers already aboard who seem to be travelling with several large-sized suitcases, along with a lot of other paraphernalia that would all be taken off the likes of me in a queue in lil ol’ Eng-er-land.

Since our Chicago “experience”, more recent trips have been through Boston and Philadelphia and, perhaps luckily, have been far less overwhelmed and far, far more relaxing.

But not TOO relaxing, you understand, because there’s always that BIG RED LINE to get across…

Once you reach the BIG RED LINE, because its actually there, stuck to the floor, representing a huge barrier to entry, and not metaphorical at all, your toes dare not cross over one part of it until you are beckoned and tacitly given permission to do so by a stern looking officer who will then ask you all sorts of flummoxing questions, take a photograph, scan your fingerprints, make you feel like the lowest form of life imaginable, because, by implication, everyone in the world who is not a U.S. Citizen is obviously out to pull a fast one, stay there illegally, or generally not to be trusted.

Still, with all of that out of the way, hopefully, the officer will then stamp all of your papers and wish you a pleasant stay as if, by not tripping over one of the several potential hurdles put in your way, you have miraculously instantly been transformed into a reasonable facsimile of a human being after all.

I imagine that, with the addition of the current virus checks into the mix, that it’s likely to get even worse, because there are practical things that could be done with regard to that to save time whilst you are still in the air, but the system seems unnecessarily suspicious of anything like that done outside its own jurisdiction or control, even if it might just be slightly more practical.

Still, the last time I returned to the UK via my home airport, it had begun to feel a little like that here, too… although “our lot” seemed to have decided additionally and unilaterally to be equally suspicious of anyone holding a UK Passport, too.

“You are welcome to our country” they seem to be saying, “just not very welcome…”