The Great White North

Canada is one of those places that is mind blowingly (or should that be numbingly?) big. Most of it is of course uninhabitable wilderness, home to the grizzly bear and the odd coonskin hat wearing maniac who regards temperatures of -30 as pleasantly bracing. The Canucks all live within a hundred miles of the American border. This may suggest a communal huddle of warmth and conviviality, but I suspect that the sheer distance between their cities suggests that they really don't like each other very much at all.

Canada tends to slip beneath the radar. Ask anyone over here who their Prime Minister is and you will receive a blank look. Even I'm not entirely sure what he looks like. There was a nondescript looking sort of bloke at the last G8 summit who might have been him; then again, it might have been a gardener who had stumbled in on affairs inadvertently.


SPOT THE HARPER No prizes awarded for identifying George (I've got one growing out of my head) Bush.

The beaver squealers are having one of their interminable recruitment drives over here at the moment. Why they should have the right to nick our brightest and best is beyond me. Oh well, I suppose we shouldn't be too hard on them as they do tend to turn up on time for wars (unlike some I could mention) and are obviously in need of a few elocution lessons.

"For you Tommy ze war is over"!

The decline in unionist sentiment in Scotland since the 1970's has less to do with oil and general Jock chippiness than the disappearance of Commando comic from the newsagent shelves. Small boys lack tales of British martial derring do to gird their loins against the Hun and hoist the stout shield of Britannia.

The really good thing about Commando was that the Americans always played a secondary role to the brave Tommy with his sten gun. Quite right to, as the chewing gum masticating oiks from Milwaukee never tire of reminding us that 'we saved you guys Limey asses'. This is obviously tosh as they didn't turn up until brave Blighty fought off the squareheads with little more than bits of old string and stripy mint humbugs.

I don't know why we bother with ASBO's and Community Service Orders. What we really need is conscription for twelve year olds to toughen the pampered little scrotes up a bit. More time spent reading back issues of Commando and less playing girly games on the Wii and posturing on Bebo would do much to reduce delinquency.

Give them guns and divide them into warring Buckfast Brigade and Tamazepam Terrier factions and let them fight it out to the death. That would give the survivors a taste for good literature and reduce youth unemployment at a stroke.

I really should stand for Parliament.

Pass the straitjacket Petunia.

Losing It

It is estimated that 750,000 people in this country suffer from dementia, principally Alzheimer's, but also its less well known but equally hideous variants. It's an ailment we prefer to shove into the background, the elephant in the living room.

My mother has Pick's Syndrome. Medical students memorize it for their exams as "Pick's disease picks off the frontal or temporal lobes but leaves the rest alone". The person I love most in the world is living a hideous inverted childhood, retreating into a mute presence, all her innate vitality vanishing into a black hopeless vacuum. Thankfully, as she is over 70 the progression is slow. Unfortunately it is also inexorable.

Empathy: a simple word for the most complex and rarely achievable human quality. My mother had it in spades and it was the solace I reached for at many times. She kept my black dog at bay and was a light that I could reach for when at my most wretched. Today, if I was killed in a car crash she wouldn't notice.

I have become a part time carer. The care I provide is subsidized by the State with the princely sum of £58 pounds per week. I have money, so that level of support isn't a problem, but as a level of payment for people of more limited means it is an utter disgrace. The cost of a care home is in excess of £500 per week, so our Government is effectively relying on familial love to prevent a burden on the State.

I do apologize if this blog sometimes seems cynical and flippant. The only thing I can offer in my defence is the netherworld that is a constant backdrop to my life. My father is elderly and the strain is killing him.

The only good aspect of the whole business is that I have finally had to become responsible, with inevitable lapses. . I can't say I like it much, but it is teaching me a few lessons that I should have learned years ago.



Only connect.

Cheesy Wotsits

Everybody has guilty pleasures, secret indulgences which are kept strictly under wraps lest howls of public derision lead to complete embarassment. I'm not referring to secret sexual proclivities and fetishes here, although I'm sure MJ has a few, but to the private enjoyment of the saccharine and superficial.

I have a few of my own which I am happy to reveal in the blogosphere as nobody can point at me in public and laugh uproariously.

* Pizza Hut buffet lunches

It's pizza Gianni, but not as we know it. The average Neapolitan would projectile vomit if forced to ingest a Pizza Hut pepperoni, the very idea of a deep crust fill them with existential angst. For me it's the sheer blandness that appeals, that and the salad bowl with crunchy bacon bits drenched in thousand island dressing.

* Lees' Macaroon Bars


A sugar hit to beat all sugar hits, even Kendal mint cake. Unbelievably unhealthy but undeniably scrumptious.

* Girl Groups

There have been non cheesy girl groups like the Supremes, but for me it has to be the likes of Bananarama. The less musical talent the better, it's the jiggling and pouting that cuts the mustard.

* Popcorn Films

Independence Day, Eight Legged Freaks, Slither, et al. They have to be mindless with wooden acting and over the top effects. Art house is all very well, but a body can only take so much sub titled thought provoking artfully shot ruminations on the human condition.

* The Carpenters

I happen to believe that Karen Carpenter had one of the great soul voices and I will challenge anyone who thinks otherwise to a fist fight. This is deliciously cheesy and definitely one for the desert island.



Anyway, I'm off to read some Dostoevsky and brush up my Hegelian dialectics. If anybody has a cheesy secret pleasure please feel free to share, I'll try not to laugh.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

This being the holiday season most right thinking folk have buggered off to diego land or the far east in order to improve their skin cancer prospects. Only the poor saps like me involved in the domestic tourist trade have to stay in drizzly Blighty and attend to the whims and peccadilloes of moaning tourists.

I watch them from my living room window, departing for another days jolly while I face the dispiriting prospect of mowing their lawns. I suppose I can't complain too much as their cash is germinating in my pockets, waiting to sprout vigorously in the winter when travel and accommodation is at its cheapest.

I'm getting the wanderlust bad at the moment, and am indulging in my favourite pastime: deciding where I shall go next. This is highly pleasurable as everybody knows that the most enjoyable part of travel is the planning and anticipation.

I would like to ask you to advise where I should bugger off to next. It will be for a month, or possibly six weeks, so it ain't gonna be a long weekend in Riga or Bratislava. I've narrowed the contenders down to three seductive prospects, but being torn as to which I should allow to ravish me can't make my mind up.

Spain

No Costas. Eating cooked breakfasts with lame and halt Mancunians (no offence KAZ) in Fuengirola doesn't appeal. I'm thinking mini cruise from Portsmouth to Bilbao for a mooch about the Guggenheim and some top Basque nosh. Then it would be a leisurely peregrination around Madrid, Seville, Granada, Valencia, and Barcelona - possibly with some Balearics thrown in should time permit.

Italy

Three weeks in an apartment in Venice sounds good; nice and misty and romantic with loads of stuff to explore and no bloody tourists in St Marks Square. I quite fancy myself as a Doge. Then Genoa, Bologna and Florence. Nifty.

Mitteleurope

This one is definitely a strong contender. My bollocks might get frozen off, but Prague, Budapest, and Cracow would make up for it with their beer and dumplings. A bit of faded Austro Hungarian elegance appeals, and I relish the prospect of scoffing sachertorte in a grand hotel haunted by the ghost of the Emperor Franz Josef.

Over to you.

Bugger Bognor

I'm fed up with newspaper travel supplements waxing lyrical on the delights of Caribbean and Pacific idylls where cocktails are sipped on bleached wood balconies as azure seas glimmer seductively.

All very well and good I suppose, if you can afford it; which I can't unless I decide to liquidate my rapidly depreciating UK property assets. Actually, that might not be such a bad idea as I'm increasingly of the view that hoarding assets to fund a sybaritic retirement is a fools game. What's the point? I'll just end up a decrepit old crumbly leering pointlessly at nineteen year old lovelies and imagining what it would be like to bounce 50 pence coins off their firm young stomachs (among other things). Either that or I'll get dementia and they'll wheel me off to a old folks home that smells of boiled cabbage and wee. Then they'll steal all my money to pay for the indignity of dribbling in a high chair and being forced to participate in cumpulsory 'Heigh Ho Silver Lining' singalongs.

Unfortunately I'm not brave enough to say 'fuck it' and squander all my readies on jet set travel and louche living. Maybe I should emulate campervanman and spend six weeks touring the British coastline. I have already indicated my love of British seaside resorts, so this cheap and cheerful escapade definitely appeals.

I'm sure I could produce an interesting tour guide, complete with evocative descriptions of furtive couplings beneath disused piers and alcoholic cider swilling vagrants raving at seagulls. I would complete my tour at Sanna Bay, the most splendid sweep of beach and dunes in Britain. There is nothing tawdry there to tempt the tourist, just the swell of the atlantic and sunsets filtered through the clear northern light.

Garfer's Guide to Peace, Love, and Understanding

There has been much moaning recently about the cost of motoring generally, and more particularly about the cost of fuel. Personally I think it's a good thing that fewer of the hoi are able to choke up the Queens Highway with their hideous little eco boxes and people carriers.

When you think about it the obvious method of reducing CO2 emissions from vehicles is to ban the working classes from driving. They used to cope ok on bicycles and trolley buses and the like, so I see no reason why they shouldn't revert to type. They could even start wearing cloth caps again. It would be most heart warming to watch the masses trudging to work in the pouring rain like in the olden dayes. Perhaps the powers that be could bring back tuberculosis to whittle down their numbers and reduce pension committments, thus leaving scope for tax cuts on beer and fags for the rest of.

I digress. The gist of my argument is that cars with petrol engines of four litres and above with a cylinder count of a minimum of 6 (although 8 or 12 are obviously preferable) are a minority because most people can't afford to drive them. If these cars were the only ones which could legally be driven the level of CO2 emissions would plummet.

It's blindingly obvious. No Kevin and Traceys lowering the automotive tone in their tatty old Ford Focuses, no smug marrieds in people carriers with 'baby on board' stickers on the back windscreen, no dieselists clattering about. This would not only reduce pollution at a stroke, it would also make Britain a more attractive and fragrant place.

Mr Squeaky Shoes

Chinese food in Britain is all much of a muchness; a 100 item main course menu, prawn crackers, and a healthy dose of mono sodium glutamate. Strangely the food in all Chinese restaurants tastes slightly different. You'd think they'd all be singing from the same hymn book, what with being Hong Kong Cantonese and all. I suppose it's just one of lifes mysteries, like the Loch Ness monster, or the British inability to run a public transport system fit for purpose.

My local Chinky has an exuberant and hail fellow well met waiter who bounces around on an extremely squeaky pair of shoes. The high pitched squeaks always let you know when your foods on the way. This helpful squeakiness, and his indefatigable cheerfulness, always compel me to leave a largish tip. This is unusual for a stingy Brit like me, so he must be doing something right.

Yesterday he was rather taciturn, his normal bouncy squeakiness somewhat deflated. I enquired tactfully if anything was the matter. "Yes" he replied "we've just had some customers from Beijing. They ordered me about all over and made me charge up their mobile phones. These Chinese are very rude (gesticulates). I from Hong Kong, we VEWWY polite"

So there we have it. Next time you get called a Gweilo and are shoved off the pavement in Hong Kong try and look on the bright side, you could be in Beijing.

Maybe I'll give the Olympics a miss.

Loveless

Popular music is a limited form. This isn't surprising given its origins in the blues and the hillbilly music of Appalachia. Those origins are a narrow seam of the purest gold, but I increasingly feel that they have been virtually mined out.

Maybe it's just a consequence of getting older, but these days I feel that I've heard it all before. The same old chairs are being shuffled around the room. To be honest nothing over the last six years or so has really grabbed me. By 'grab' I mean the 'oh fuck' moment when you hear something for the first time and realise you've found what you were looking for without knowing that you were looking for it.

Loveless by My Bloody Valentine was released back in 1991, and remains the one album that I never ever get tired of. The word 'genius' is much too casually bandied about, but Kevin Shields emphatically has it.

Nothing since 1991, but so what? If you achieve perfection why sully it with anything less than perfect?

I can't really describe Loveless. It's elusive, melodies buried, vocals lost in the swirl, lyrics enigmatic.

Greil Marcus said that rock music is about 'power, beauty, and excitement'. Here it is in all its glory, its romance, and its despair.

Turn off the lights and turn up the volume. This was drifting from bedroom windows in 1991 for good reason.

Rowan

All blogging relationships are vicarious by nature.

Some of us have met, but mostly we are connected by nothing more than cables. Strangely that can make our relationships more intimate, sometimes divulging things which we normally wouldn't in face to face encounters. In that sense blogging is valuable, particularly in its international context. We become aware of the circumstances of other peoples lives and discover that whatever the distances that separate us we are made from the same crooked warp and weft.

I have never experienced tragedy. Nobody close to me has ever died; the things that have caused depressive phases are piffling compared to bereavement.

Rowan's loss is almost unimaginable. Although we lost touch, I feel her loss deeply.

Run Lola Run

I am always on time, never early, never late. I don't regard punctuality as one of the cardinal virtues, it certainly isn't up there with donating a kidney or adopting a kitten, but it matters to me.

Perhaps it's the potential embarrassment factor that does it, the realisation of lateness and the sweaty fumbling hurry to be somewhere at the appointed time. The room is already full, the audience attentive, the speaker into their stride. You open the door and a room of faces turns its gaze briefly on your perspiring dishevelled form.

No, I don't do late.

Early is potentially worse, it suggests over expectancy or nervous anticipation of the potential outcome of the meeting. Not good, and potentially fatal.

No, punctuality's the thing.

Noir Rock

I was on a knife edge all morning. My nervous twitch started playing up and I only quelled the staccato tapping of my foot by downing half a bottle of Scotch and chain smoking a pack of Players Weights. Pinkie couldn't be trusted. He was shifty, a little sewer rat with no morals who used a razor as a conversational gambit. I couldn't be sure the little bastard would come through, but he knew he owed me big time. I had the dirty on him with the snaps of him cavorting with those baldy Yorkshire poofs and he knew it.

No rock and the word would out.

I heard the rumble of a car engine. It could've been Big Vern with another consignment of shootahs. It could've been Sniffer of the Yard on my tail again, but the engine note was wrong. I peered through a gap in the drapes.

The omens were good.


The goods were intact


Top quality gear. Stripy. Mmmm....nice.


Now I've had my fix Pinkie thinks it's game over, but he's got another thing coming. I'm gonna take the twisted little scrote for all he's worth: first his candy floss, then his 'kiss me quick' comedy policeman's helmet, and finally his donkey.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

The sad demise of the traditional British seaside resort when the hoi cleared off to Benidorm has been much lamented. The descent into tawdry decrepitude didn't happen overnight, the fly blown encroached gradually. Bed and Breakfasts were slowly colonised by the homeless, usually suffering alcohol or drug problems. The paint on the sea front hotels flaked and peeled, their once proud frontages turning into the face of a demented dowager aunt.

There has been a recovery of sorts over the last decade or so. The affluent have bought second homes and the demise of the ghastly boarding houses with their harridan landladies has resurrected a tourist trade, albeit one a shadow of its former self.

I like the seaside. Nothing beats candy floss, rock, amusement arcades, fish 'n' chips, and cockles eaten from a polystyrene cup. Even the slightly downbeat air of a seaside resort in winter appeals to me. The disconsolate wander along a blustery parade, pause, and gaze out to sea into their futureless futures.

The Boy With The Arab Strap

Twee is not one of my favourite words. The twee is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. For me it is epitomized by clay figurines of tartan clad haggises playing the bagpipes.

Herge Smith made the unforgivable error of describing Belle and Sebastian as twee. This is precisely what they aren't. They capture the underlying melancholy romantic Scottish spirit perfectly.

I rest my case on the untweeness of Belle and Sebastian on this video. I must advise that this video (containing images of the lovely Miss Isobel Campbell playing the recorder, tambourines, people clapping, and a drummer wearing a Perthshire Advertiser T shirt) is unsuitable for young children or those of a sensitive or nervous disposition.



Clap along now boys and girls.

Bitter sweet ain't twee.

A fool and his money are soon parted

Bob.

Imagine for a moment that it is 1930 and you have saved £80 which you have lodged with the Midland Bank on the Tottenham Court Road. You are inordinately proud of this £80, it resides at the back of your mind and its comforting presence may be summoned when the workaday world overwhelms you with its tedium and pointlessness.

That £80 is destined to diminish; at first in trifling amounts, but as your infatuation gathers, with unforeseen haste. It will soon reside in Jenny's delicate little hands. She won't have grasped it, she won't have consciously tried to steal it from you, but there it will reside.

I don't normally like television adaptations of novels, they lose much and add what is inappropriate. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky is an exception: perfectly pitched, perfectly acted, perfectly adapted.

Delusion, despair, and thwarted dreams have rarely been so uplifting.

Vulgar Bulgar

The siblings Gloom, Doom, and Despondency are dancing the light fantastic at the moment. The general air of 'God help us all' is increasingly inclining me towards the view that Herge Smith's imminent departure on a banana boat owes more to astute financial prescience than to the sybaritic hedonism I had hitherto suspected.

Now that the Labour Party has finally made a total balls of the economy (which they always do eventually) I fear that life on this island will inevitably become increasingly depressing. Drunken mongs throwing up on the pavement and knife wielding hoodies are just about tolerable when fivers are apparently falling like confetti, but when buying a loaf of bread and a tank of petrol doesn't leave enough change for a copy of Viz then all hope evaporates.

Like most people, I would like to emigrate somewhere warm and cheap. I think I'd settle on Bulgaria; it has all the plus points of mostly sunny weather, cheap booze, and long legged lovelies. Not only that, all Bulgarians smoke all the time everywhere which makes the place ideal for inveterate chuffers like me.

I think I've got what it takes to become a vulgar Bulgar. I might even grow a moustache and beat up Gipsies, just to blend in like.

May I Have a Word?

Words that deserve to exist

*iconoclastic - a nice concatenation of syllables this one. I try to use it in everyday speech such as: "That's a very iconoclastic frock you're wearing today Marjory".

*circumnavigate - as Milo almost said: "why say go round when you can say circumnavigate?"

*desultory - just right this one, with a nice hint of insouciant couldn't care lessness

*ampersand - because its the word for that squiggly jobby that indicates 'and'. Not a lot of people know that.

*ennui - listlessly draped on a chaise longue swigging laudanum and feeling melancholy and bored in a slightly pleasurable kind of way. And it rhymes with pee. Obviously French.

*dinner


Words that don't

*banquette - most commonly used in conjunction with the phrase 'faux suede'. Deeply contemptible.

*epistemological- beloved of philosophers and sociologists, as in 'epistemological break'. For me this always conjures up an image of groups of bearded sociologists rushing off to the gents urinals.

*actually - oh really? How fascinating.

*chalet - pronounced 'shally' in Britain and used to describe beach huts built from bits of old cardboard.

*gotten - this is an American invention, and utterly unforgivable. They may have Harvard and Yale but while this monstrosity continues to exist they will remain backwoods hicks.

*umbrage - because people are constantly taking it with me for no apparent reason.

Dublin Milk

There are few more traumatic experiences that a young man can suffer than to draw back the curtains of a stinky Dublin hotel room and find his nakedness scoffed at by a gurning urchin perched precariously on the window sill.

That's when I knew it was going to be a bad holiday. The auguries hadn't been good up to that point; Dave the Brummie had stomach cramps on the flight, Nina drank too much gin and was rude to a stewardess, and Keith and Karen were on the verge of splitting up and spent the entire journey swapping sarcastic bon mots.

Dublin: city of exquisite Georgian architecture, former inspiration for the genius of Joyce and Beckett, cradle of Oirishness gleaming by the softly flowing Liffey.

My arse.

When we got to the hotel/hovel there was nobody there: no lights, no welcoming smile from a pretty receptionist, no fuck all. After several phone calls a pissed munchkin turned up and informed us that " de owners have gone to de Cheltenham Gold Cup and oim lookin' after de guests till dey get back". The swaying dwarf then escorted us to our rooms, although he obviously had no idea which rooms we were supposed to be in as singleton Dave the Brummie (who still had stomach cramps) got a family room, Nina and I got a squalid little wardrobe in the basement, and Keith and Karen were confined to an attic garret.

During the course of our stay we enjoyed dirty hotel rooms, miserable bastard Dublin bar men, and ubiquitous urban drizzle. It was so depressing that even copious amounts of Guinness and Bushmills failed to lift our downtrodden spirits. I tried to cheer things up by suggesting we visit a south side Dublin bar, where tourists never ventured and where the real milk of human kindness Dublin bonhomie still lingered. Unfortunately Keith got into a political argument with a drunken harridan who accused him of being "no better than a fuckin' Black and Tan" and "the spawn of Satan". We were ejected.


And that was that. Dublin: rip off capital, cockpit of miserable bastards, armpit of humanity. It's no wonder Joyce and Beckett got out of the place as fast as their legs could carry them.

Still, things could have been worse. At least we didn't meet Bono.

Lost Weekends

I'm sure we've all had 'em, regretted 'em, forgotten 'em, and glorified 'em while glossing over the more embarrassing details.

Unfortunately I haven't had one in as long as I can remember, so I'd like to solicit some advice on what I should do during the lost weekend that appears to be welling up in my psyche. It is important to remember that all things are possible on lost weekends, the outré or esoteric equally likely given the appropriate level of chemical enhancement attained.

I've tried to narrow the field down as far as possible, so give me your best shot.

Prague - I'm not over keen on dumplings, but I love cheap beer.

Inside Uma Thurman's underwear - for obvious reasons.

A Butlin's glam rock weekend - this would be to satisfy my sense of post modern irony. I have no desire to dance along to Mud's 'Tiger Feet'.

Inside Robert Mugabe's Head - so that I could understand the obliviousness to human misery that megalomania enables. Then I'd give him an aneurysm.

With Jean Paul Sarte - just to find out if he really was such an ugly little bastard as everybody claims.

With Simone de Beauvoir - just to find out what a cracking French bird was doing with an ugly myopic little French bastard like Sartre.

Saigon - so I could wander around in a linen suit, quote French Existentialist philosophy in a pretentious manner, and smoke opium.

Unfortunately I don't suppose any of these are particularly likely. It's more likely to be Edinburgh, Perth, or Glasgow as usual.

One can but dream.

Floppy Haired Git

I recently purchased an iPod Touch, a gorgeous little gadget which has become my constant companion. The only catch with the device is that it isn't Flash enabled. Sure you can get YouTube, but that still leaves a lot of internet content unavailable.

Thank God for the BBC, who have converted iPlayer content into a format that can be viewed on the iPod in superb quality. They didn't have to do this, and it's good to see them spending money on the people that really matter (i.e me).

I'm not so keen on them handing out £18 million to Jonathan Ross. I appreciate that the organization can't hold to a Reithian ideal, but I fail to see why a tosser like Ross should command silly money. Clever he may be, but he is also deeply repulsive. He's like Ricky Gervais in that respect; he may be good at what he does but he makes my skin crawl.

I'm convinced that the BBC should spend that sort of money on high production value series like Lost or Heroes. My God, the talent is there and the CGI makes it possible to do things that were unthinkable twenty years ago. A proper adult sci fi production would sell overseas and probably recoup its costs many times over. Personally I'm bored with costume dramas, what I want is aliens and stuff that doesn't look like it's made out of traffic cones and sticky back plastic.

Doctor Who is all very well and good, but ultimately it's a kids programme.