Well...

Here is the new video which, as you will see, is a tribute to those pilots of the RAF collectively known as 'The Few'.

I am proud of being British (well... when I'm not being proud of being Irish and in touch with my inner Jamaican). In fact I'm proud of all my roots, but in particular, the root I am most happy to be part of, is the human root, if that makes sense; though now I think about it that makes me sound like some kind of tuber, which I'm not.

I didn't expect to be able to put this on for a few days. The original plan was to go and review bands for the Out Of Town Night. However, I had forgotten about a previous engagement involving coconuts and a festival called Mahashivaratri, which is a fine thing for a Catholic like myself to be doing.

Hare Om, as they say.

Yes...

Amen to that.

I’ve just been reading about how a sneeze is the closest thing to an orgasm. They’re very similar in certain respects when you think about it, except that neo-Christians don’t go to hell if they sneeze while watching re-runs of Baywatch with the curtains closed.

One other thing. You know how if you have an orgasm on your own, so to speak, they say it makes you go blind. Well, it turns out there is another similarity between the orgasm and a sneeze, because sneezing can make you go blind.

If you don't close your eyes during a sneeze they pop out. Scary stuff. Just imagine  what happens if you sneeze while having an orgasm; your nuts could fly off and kneecap you.

So...

Be careful out there

If I told you that America is going to fall prey to a bloody coup, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousand of Americans, you would be shocked. You might take to the streets to defend your nation's capital; take up arms in its defence (God forbid; one civil war is enough). At the very least you might ring Oprah and ask her to step in as temporary leader of the nation to save the day.

But you’re too late; sorry; you missed it while you were watching the X Factor.

The coup took place and you turned the channel.

Oh...actually, one important point; the killing took place after the coup; Americans being killed in Iraq, and in the Twin Towers when your government allowed, or orchestrated the attack in New York to justify its intention to invade another country. I know it’s nitpicking, but if Bush came to power as a result of all those deaths, you’d be somewhat more agitated about having an unelected leader.

The fact that the deaths have come about as a result of his stealing the election seems to make the coup acceptable.

Well...

It does in the eyes of some.

Not in mine.

I broke my hand. It was over Christmas. I gave several stories over how I broke it depending on who I was talking to. The truth is, quite naturally, the one that makes me look like the idiot I am. I broke it by punching the arm of the sofa. It wasn’t even self defence. The couch didn’t suddenly leap out at me and demand to be taken to Florida. I was just frustrated, fucked up and fundamentally flawed as a human being, but fuck it; I never claimed to be perfect. So I punched the couch; my fist ramming into the armrest, muscle memory of breaking jaws in the past coursed up my arm and felt my own bone break in a snap of pain that cracked a metatarsal.

I was talking about this last night to a young lady at a function which had been organised to raise money for Christies Hospital. It was for a piece of medical equipment; a scanner or something I presume; after all, nobody organises a function to fit the staff rooms with large inflatable novelty bananas. I wasn’t struck by the irony of smoking during a fundraiser for a hospital that specialises in treating people with cancer until this morning. I feel retrospectively stupid if there is such a thing. If there isn’t, consider it to have just been invented. Please feel free to use it yourself.

Anyway, speaking of hospitals, I had the plaster caste removed from my hand a few weeks ago at Tameside Hospital. Of course it wasn’t that simple. I had to wait in the ‘waiting room.’ As much as I hate waiting, I’m always impressed by how ‘waiting rooms’ and the way they are named after their function. How come other rooms aren’t named in this way? How come the kitchen isn’t called the ‘cooking room?’ Or the bathroom isn’t called the ‘washing room?’ Or the lavatory isn’t called ‘the reading room.’ Or the bedroom isn’t called ‘the wrestling room,’ because that’s the only way you can get enough of the bloody duvet to go to sleep with.

So

There I was waiting in the appropriately named area; extremely bored. There was nothing to do but wonder what the other people have got; wonder if it’s anything contagious. That train of thought didn’t last long though, seeing as I was waiting in the fracture room; broken arms, broken legs and... if that sudden smell was anything to go by, broken wind. There’s an angelic looking young woman sitting opposite me. She’s got a fracture in her tibia and she’s pregnant; not that the two are connected unless she conceived on a trampoline; knocked up and knocked off at the same time. To be honest, I want to look at her a lot more than is acceptable in polite circles. It's nothing sexual, more curiosity. She really does look angelic; it’s like seeing Madonna and Child come to life before me. Of course in this case Madonna is up the duff and not actually reached the point where she gives birth and then gazes adoringly into the eyes of the infant Jesus; she’s chewing gum and, like me, no doubt wondering which reprobate has farted.

I hope she doesn’t think it’s me. I’m not of an age where I break wind unintentionally, like an old man bending over to pick up his hat. I still have enough control over my buttock muscles that I don’t have to break wind, but can safely dismantle it.

Every now and then, one of the staff comes out and calls for a patient or ‘customer’ as we are now collectively known. Bloody nonsense; when Jesus went around healing the sick he didn’t say ‘can customer number 875 come forward? Yes, you, with the leprosy, no, not you, the one beside the ugly bloke with the beard and the saucepan stuck on his head.’

A male nurse, who looked like he wasn’t a day over twelve, came out and read a name off a clipboard.
        ‘Vicky Beaver?’ he called out.
        What?
        For a moment I had a little panic, thinking I had inadvertently sat down in the Gynaecology Department.
        The angelic young woman stood up, Vicky being her name, and she walked past me wafting the seductive scent of Opium and the less seductive scent of piss; unless you were a frisky Alsatian, which I’m not.

I looked around me, even more bored than I was before, observing the unhealthy looking people around me. Most of them were overweight, grey faced or pasty faced with red noses. A lot of them had skin that looked waxy. I imagined hearts clogged with cholesterol, which I’m told is a waxy substance produced by the liver that amongst other things helps to build the cell walls. From the look of the other people in the waiting room there was enough to build a waxwork effigy of Godzilla. If there was a fire they’d go up like a candle. What with that anonymous fart earlier and this lot, if anyone lights a match I’ll burn for a month.

God I’m bored. Why is it that you turn up for your appointment and they make you wait an hour, but if you turn up ten minutes late they cancel your appointment?

I passed some time flicking through the magazines but wish I hadn’t bothered. There is one called CHAT which is just stupid gossip, and another called HEAT which is just cold insipid gossip that has been heated up and then allowed to go cold and congeal into a magazine. Christ almighty; if the Messiah read any of this crap while he’s waiting to come and rescue us, he’ll turn around, go back home and tell his Dad we were out when he called.

There was a young lad reading one of the magazines. He had his hood up, as if he were expecting rain indoors and he didn’t want to get his hair wet; or perhaps he was expecting it to rain actually inside the hood and did want to get his hair wet. Whatever, he looked stupid. He also had mirrors built into the collar of his coat. What the hell for, I don’t know; reversing probably; tit.

The male nurse who had called for Vicky Beaver called out my name. I stood up and raised my hand, the one that had the plaster cast on. It was, after all the reason why I was there.
        ‘Half cast?’ he asked, eyebrows arched quizzically.
        I took exception to the question and said, ‘what’s that got to do with anything?’
        He looked nonplussed and said, ‘I need to know.’
        ‘Well, my mothers Irish and white, and my dad is Jamaican and black so that would make me half caste, but I like to think of myself as being brown. Half caste makes me sound like I’m half baked.’
        The young man pointed to my arm, and said, ‘is that plaster cast, a half cast or a full one?’
        Oh...
        ‘It’s a half cast...’
        I felt very uncomfortable standing there, feeling like an idiot.
        It was almost as bad as having a case of Vicky Beaver.
      

So...

I see Barack Obama has put in his bid to become President. I expect some people will be thinking, "if there is a black President then things will be better for the average black American."

Think again, because this will not necessarily be the case. After all, look what happened in the United Kingdom when Margaret Thatcher was elected. She was a woman, but did that make things better for women? No, it didn’t. Her sympathies extended to her own class and subspecies of cow. Improving the lot of a single mother trying to hold down a job was not on her list of things to do, and if it was, it would have just read, "put in workhouse and send child up chimney to clean."

There are other examples:

Reagan was a mad old bastard, but he didn’t improve life for other mad old bastards unless they too, happened to be rich.

Clinton liked being blown in the oval office but it was still just as hard for the ordinary man on the street to get a blowjob, even though, despite what the republicans say, he had a good chance of actually finding a real job.

You see what I mean. So if you’re expecting a better deal for minorities from Obama just because he happens to be black then don’t hold your breath. It would be like saying ‘George Bush is a human being, so he will make things better for other human beings.’ It just doesn’t work, particularly in the case of President Bush. Just because you have something in common with the President or Presidential candidate doesn’t mean he will act upon what is common to you both. Unless of course you happen to be a complete and utter selfish bastard with a rich dad in which case Bush has given you massive tax cuts while pissing on the poor huddled masses in which case, I guess you can prove me wrong...

Mrs McDonough lived on the third floor.

She was quite mad; poor thing.

She hadn’t always been that way, but senile dementia had taken a very respectable, church going elderly lady of ample proportions, and turned her into a sullen, irate sumo wrestler. My first encounter with her in her sudden state of madness was when I came back from school one day. I turned the corner and saw her. She was looking out of the open window of her flat, as I say, on the third floor. Her lumpy arms were folded and perched on the window sill. Huge bosoms were sitting on her arms; like a pair of fat seal cubs. She was naked; in fact, she seemed more than naked because she was so old and large and was usually quite the lady; poor but very proper; it was a really shocking sight for me to behold. I was fifteen years old and stopped in my tracks.

The shock only lasted for a moment, then I averted my gaze and continued walking. This was Dublin, I was a Catholic. I had been brought up not to look at ladies frontal characteristics unless I was married to them. I was confused, naturally. It was such an ordinary scene. Other people were walking about the street and paying her no attention. I sneaked a peek back up at the window and she was still there and I felt a slight shift of the earth beneath my feet; a little fear. I wasn’t too sure why at the time. I know it wasn’t the nakedness. I may have been Catholic but I knew nakedness existed under clothes; I’d seen pictures in the National Geographic. I think, in retrospect my discomfort came from the fact that madness itself had been revealed. It was the vulnerability of the human condition; a feeling that what we call sanity is nothing more than our sleepwalking along a narrow path of perception; the deep dark wishing well of madness on one side, and enlightenment on the other; the silently waiting abyss of unselfconscious madness. I think I feared that above anything, feeling my fingers slipping off the edge myself. I certainly wasn’t frightened of her massive diddies. No way.

We lived directly underneath the old lady, who so unselfconsciously had displayed herself in the window; she on the third, and we on the first floor. You entered the building into a short passageway through large double doors. Before you was a cold stone staircase with a cold iron railing leading upwards. We lived at the bottom of the stairs, which somehow makes us sound like a family of trolls, but we weren’t. We lived in a one room flat. We had to bathe in an iron tub with water boiled on the stove. It had an outside toilet, or spider sanctuary, depending on how nervous you were.

As I stepped off the street, there was an old bible, pages splayed and laid on its spine; like a dead bird, pages turning with a gentle autumnal breeze. I looked up, beneath the window sill of the old lady, and wondered had she thrown it out. I couldn’t see her from that angle, just the bottom of her sill and a little peek of pale dumpy arm. I could see a lot of grey sky and hear the pages turn, that lovely, secret rustle of paper. Perhaps the grey sky was idly thumbing through the word of the Lord. I picked it up. I wasn’t sure I believed in God, but books were sacred. To see the words being bled into the gutter by the rain would have appalled me; the word of the Lord was just as water soluble as Steinbeck.

I heard my name being called. It was my mother. She beckoned me into the tiny flat we lived in and closed the door behind us.
        ‘Mrs McDonough’s got no clothes on,’ I said.
        ‘Yes, I know, bless her,’ Ma said, shovelling me out of my duffel coat. ‘She’s having a bit of a turn.’
        ‘She’s gone mad?’
        ‘Don’t say that,’ Ma said, blessing herself. ‘She’s got that senile dimensions, y’know; that thing that old people get when they go a little bit funny in the head. All we can do is pray for her.’
        ‘Its senile dementia not dimensions, and I don’t think she wants prayers anymore. I’ve got her bible. She threw it out the window, I think.’
        Ma took it off me, and said, ‘we’ll give it back to her when she’s feeling better.’

She never did get better. She got worse. She got louder. She would berate people as they passed her window, occasionally throwing books out at them. She was quite a good shot and could knock a pigeon off the church gates with a shoe. We lived opposite St. Katherine's church which blocked out the view of the Guinness Brewery but allowed the overwhelming odour of hops to pass unheeded. Perhaps, when Mrs McDonough launched her missiles out the window, she prayed for accuracy. Thank the Lord, she missed me. I like to think it was some kind of compliment, the fact that she had saved up her copy of Webster’s English Dictionary to launch at me as I came back from school the following day. It was a big, red and hard-back and just missed my head by an inch, which comes from the Latin uncial, ‘meaning one twelfth part.’ I know this, because I looked it up in the dictionary later, which had exploded into a profusion of pages as it bounced off the church railing.

At the time, I stopped in my tracks and stared up at her, wide eyed. She was looking the other way, still naked, pretending it wasn’t her. I just stood there until she turned and looked at me. She did so, gazing intently, and for some reason, in the process of looking at her, I felt as I was actually looking at her for the first time; and no longer was she just an old woman, and crazy to boot, but something else; those eyes had peered out of her infant face at her mother; later up into the eyes of her lover; into the eyes of her new born baby; into the eyes of the face that she looked into every morning in the mirror for the past sixty-five years, as she sat in her room and thought how sad and lonely she was after all the years of living a long, hard life, in the shadow of the church that swallowed her muttered prayers every Sunday and promised her a peaceful afterlife in heaven, whilst here on earth, she was just another lonely widow; wondering why her child never replied to her letters.

Actually, I didn’t think that at the time, now with hindsight I remember. Not precisely. My thoughts at the time were similar but came out as, ‘mad cow nearly killed me.'

She closed her window, and I went in for my porridge. As I spooned it into my face, little did I realise that Mrs McDonough would, from that point, no longer speak to anyone. It was as if she had thrown all her words out with the dictionary.

Later on that evening, some men came and took her away in an ambulance. She went quietly, wearing a warm blanket. She stood erect, proud, a saucepan on her head, a tin tiara of the nobly insane. She didn’t speak to anyone.

        ‘Such a shame,’ Ma said. She had prayed for Mrs McDonough and asked me to do the same. I did, and also asked forgiveness for having gone to school and told my mates how big her bosoms were, as well as setting fire to the rubber on the end of Patrick McCarthy’s new pencil in the science class.

It was just another of life’s anecdotal nuggets; caught in the cavities of one's mind as it chews the cud of life; but here I am twenty-five years later and I can still see her up there in the window. The hair that was once dark now rough and grey and being teased by the wind, the bloom of a cold flush brought to her skin as she looked out on the rest of us, heads down, scurrying back and forth.

Perhaps she was mad; or perhaps she wasn’t. Maybe after years of sitting, wrapped in the black strait-jacket of her shawl, back aching, knees aching, heart aching, ignored by all except for polite exchanges of words with familiar strangers, she gave up the polite pretence of being content with her lot; the little room, the faded photographs, the brittle bones, struggling but falling further behind as life moved on without her, not looking back, not noticing her quiet struggle to live with a little dignity; slipping quietly beneath the waves, unheeded, unheard, until that one fatal day.

When she threw out her dictionary, she threw out her bible, and she threw out her chest, and declared, naked as the day she was born...

Here I am.

        ‘It’s ( I gave him my name), phoning from the Manchester shop. I have a bit of a problem...’
        I explained it all; missing trousers; volatile situation; possible riot; damage to property, life and limb; and I needed some money to pay out compensation for the missing item.
        Mr Green was unsympathetic.
        ‘You must stand your ground and tell him, no. Under no circumstances will we pay out for garments that the customer hasn’t collected.’
        ‘I don’t think you quite understand the situation. I’m in the middle of a ghetto, dealing with a man who is no stranger to violence, who is accompanied by people whose idea of negotiation is to give me a choice between being stabbed or clubbed. This is no ordinary disgruntled customer and this is no ordinary shop. If it was, I wouldn’t be on the phone to you now.’
        ‘Do you really think I would refuse payment to this character if I thought there was any danger in that decision for yourself or the staff? All you have to do is say ‘head office will not permit you to pay any compensation. That will be the end of the matter. Trust me, I know these types; all mouth and no trousers.’ He laughed at his own wit, before continuing...
        ‘Just be firm,’ he said.
        ‘Okay. How’s this for firm. I’m not going to refuse this man some form of compensation, because if I do, it will result in a riot that will wreck your shop, but more importantly, my staff may be hurt in the process, and even more importantly, you may get seriously hurt, because I’m not going to be the one to give him the bad news. And just so you know what you’re walking into...’
        I held up the phone, and gestured to the crowd to make for some volume. They obliged and someone was kind enough to throw a cardboard cutout of a man in a freshly pressed suit at my head. Fortunately it missed by a mile but succeeded in smashing a teacup that had been on my desk. I put the phone back to my ear, and GBH subdued the riotous throng.
        ‘Did you hear that?’ I asked.
        ‘Yes, I did.’
        ‘Good. My advice is to be firm with them when you ask them to stop kicking you in the balls.’
        Mr Green put me on hold.
        ‘What did he say?’ GBH asked.
        ‘He put me on hold,’ I said.
        ‘That really annoys me,’ he said.
        ‘I’m sure he won’t be long,’ I said, soothingly.
        ‘He sounds like a real prick.’
        I held up my hand as Mr Green came back on line.
        ‘I’ve called the police,’ he said.
        I was stunned.
        ‘You did what?’
        ‘They should be there any minute...’
        ‘I’ll call you back.’ I put the phone down, and yelled for Danny. He may have had a club foot but he could move like a whippet.
        He came running. I dropped out of sight behind the counter, and scribbled a note which said:

        Go out the back. Run to the police office. Tell them the situation is resolved. HURRY!!!!

        I gave him the note and he disappeared again. The office was in the shopping centre, and they were, in theory, only five minutes away in case of any emergency within the mall.
        ‘What did your boss say?’ GBH asked.
        Before I could reply, someone called out, ‘let’s just thrash the place and take the till.’
        I held up my hands and said, ‘no need. It’s all sorted. Party’s over.’
        Amongst the crowd, which as an entity had now become so big it couldn’t actually fit into the shop, had overflowed out into the precinct. People were now queuing up to stab me; apart from the mad old woman at the back who joined the end of the queue under the assumption there must be a sale. One of the thugs would probably sell her some crack so at least she wouldn’t be too disappointed.
        I leaned forward, so I could speak softly to GBH.
        ‘The only thing is,’ I whispered, ‘he said I was to offer you £50, but if you were difficult I could go as high as £75. But between you and me, I think I could give you a £100 and they probably wouldn’t sack me for going over the limit.’
        He considered it for a moment or two.
        I sweated, as discreetly as I could.
        ‘Okay, but I don’t want to get you sacked mate. I appreciate you sorting it out. I’ll take £75.’
        I reached under the counter, took £75 out of the till, and handed it over.
        GBH thanked me, and even shook my hand.
        The crowd cheered.
        Everybody likes a happy ending; especially me. I was very pleased to see Danny when he turned up after his errand to the police.
        ‘Well done, Danny. If the police had have turned up here, this place would have gone up like a tinder box.’
        ‘Actually, when I got there, they were just closing the office.’
        ‘Thank God, you got there in time. They would have been here in a couple of minutes.’
        ‘No, Boss. They were shutting the office and were headed in the opposite direction, in pretty much of a hurry.’
        The police had been running to the rescue alright; running in the opposite direction and saving themselves. They understood as much as I did what could have happened, had they turned up and it wouldn’t have been pretty. I’m sure I had their sympathies as they hotfooted it to someplace other than where the trouble was about to erupt. It was a difficult area to police. I can understand them not wanting to be in my shoes; nobody would want that.
        Mind you, there was one person, who would have wanted to be in my trousers, and that was Mr GBH.
        They were, after all, his trousers, which was why I didn't want to move away from the counter. It's not as if I could have given him a reasonable explanation as to why I was wearing them. The fact that I had bought them off the rail for the price of the dry cleaning ticket as per the policy of the company, wouldn't have endeared me to him. It was a bit dumb of me to wear them, I know, but there you go. I guess I could have told him it was a service we offered. We clean your trousers and then warm them up for you. I don't think he would have believed me though.
        Much to my surprise, I didn't get sacked for going against the wishes of Mr Green. I got sacked, or, as the out of court settlement agreed, I was unfairly dismissed. It was because, on Christmas Eve, a few days later, I went shopping. I hadn't had a day off in three months, and needed to get some stuff in for Christmas. I was entitled to take half a day, which is what I did, when the shop went quiet.
        Unfortunately, while I was out, the staff decided to throw a party, which they did. They also invited their friends around, and they in turn decided to rob the place blind. They treated the shop like a piggy bank and virtually turned it on its side, using a kitchen knife to extract every last penny; bastards. It was particularly galling for me to get the blame for this. The reason I had not taken any time off previously, was because petty pilfering was rife in the shop and my diligence had put an end to it. The minute I turned my back, the shop was turned into a people's republic and the contents of the till was redistributed to the masses, namely, the staff and their mates.
        I met Eddy a few weeks later and he told me about the new manageress. She had been told about me by Mr Green and he'd said he didn't want a repeat of the compensation episode. He told her the mistake I had made, was in not being firm.
        So, the poor lady was firm with the first unhappy customer she encountered.
        The customer was then firm in return, and broke her jaw.

        I went on, through the years to work for other firms and with some really great people, but I remember my time with Johnsons and shudder at the thought. I never saw any of the people from there again, with the exception of Eddie. He was still a Jehovah's Witness but had settled into a degree of moderation with it. I got the feeling, when I spoke to him,  if we could have gone back to those days, and I offered him the chance to go home early, he would have accepted and been grateful. His spiritual beliefs had turned from considering the things he would be condemned for, to counting his blessings.
        I was glad for him.
        As for the trousers I parted company with them as soon as I got home on that fateful day, all those years ago.
        They wrote to me occasionally, but then even that stopped.
        And to think, we were so close...

        THE END

Hello.

I'm writing to complain about discrimination. I think it's so unfair the way panda's are given preferential treatment. I'm not a panda bear, by the way. No; I'm not typing with one paw, if you know what I mean. Don't get me wrong. I've got nothing against pandas. Some of my best friends are pandas. At least, they would be if they could be bother getting up off their big furry bottoms and socialising. Let’s face it; they are very lazy. They don't hear the 'call of the wild' like the rest of us. They've switched off nature's alarm clock; the one that says if you don’t do ‘it’ more often, your species is going to die out. In the case of pandas it’s more the 'call of the mild.' What else can you say about a species that would rather chew bamboo than do the hokey cokey?

The amazing thing is this. Science is bending over backwards to help the panda in the romantic department, even down to producing a Panda Viagra. Personally this annoys the hell out of me. I mean, let's face it, if I'm not getting any, I can't ring the World Wild Life fund and ask them to send around a couple of hot babes for me, can I. I can chew all the bloody bamboo I want but it still doesn't make any difference does it. Any other creature that sits around on it’s fat arse, eating all day eventually ends up on Oprah talking about how it can’t seem to lose weight, despite all the diet coke it guzzles.

Sure, I sleep eighteen hours a day, but that's because I'm a Sloth. I can't help it. Nature made me that way. So I get four hours in which to eat, wash, defecate, do the crossword and if I'm lucky and don't nod off, have a spot of humpty tumpty, and even then she'll probably nod off before I get her fur off, so to speak. Mind you, I'm not complaining; well, not about that anyway. The fact that the laziest creature on the planet has thousands of scientists and fund-raisers pimping for him is none of my business. It's just that I think it would be fair if a little more attention was paid to the needs of, well, me.

So, here it is. I can sort out the sex for myself. Like I said, I'm no panda. What I would like is this; a remote control; you see, by the time I get up and make my way over to change the channel, it’s taken so long to get there, my program has finished.

Yours truly,

Mr Sloth