What can I do that's more interesting, more appealing?

Barry Manilow Complex

I'm finding it increasingly hard to write these things.

I know, there has to be a god, you're thinking. 

But subject matter is ever more difficult to come by. 

Life has become more, easy, in a way. I now know more people to chat to in Wells, or at least say hello to. Takes a while. 

If it's me it does. 

Some people obviously avoid me like the plague. And who can blame them?

Me bombarding them with lewd phrases and a random 'ANUS' now and again. 

Telling people about the virtues of ear-syringing, or out of politeness they ask me about Dungeons and Dragons and I actually try to explain it to them. 

I'm not all Dungeons and Dragons you know. I also play Traveller and Pathfinder.

See? A man of many interests.

There are people I avoid too. Gregory Twat and Barry Tedious are 2 who spring to mind. 

I guess having the same day over and over again does that to you, as regards news. 

It's okay though.

Toilet Update

I love a good toilet me, as you know.  

And to me toilet is also a verb, as in to toilet.

I toilet, you toilet, she toilets, we toilette.

"Hold me bag Deirdre, I'm just going to have a toilet for a couple of hours."

Makes sense, huh?

Toilets in pubs are a thing too. In the old Slab House Inn  - a family pub up the road that was burnt to the ground and is now a housing development (the 2 are not related - ok? OKAY??) served great food but had pictures of nude ladies in the men's. 

It was really inappropriate. It was like the landlord showing you his dirty mag from under the counter when the Dorises weren't around.

"Look at that eh? Phwooorr!"

Well, I went for a walk with Richard and Charlotte, my fashionable new friends I shan't be introducing you to, and I took the opportunity to have a toilet, and this is what I encountered.

 Even the little boys (or dwarves) will get a complex.

I'm still in shock.

In the future...

In the last post I predicted that the human race is headed towards an aesthetic singularity. 

So it is now, with great confidence, that I predict that in the future everyone will look like Punky Meadows, from hot rock band, Angel.

"In the publicity photo, Punky can be seen with a beautiful shiny hairdo...."

Lip filler, botox, make-up, dyed hair, probably some plastic surgery too. 

It could equally be Aunty Val from Manchester, as she drunkenly tries to get off with some footballer in a nightclub.

It's where we're heading, folks.

Too bloody hot

During the last few days it’s been very hot. Too hot, in fact. 

Apparently it takes 2 weeks for the human body to acclimatise to different temperatures. Trouble is in the UK with a temperate climate it fluctuates all over the place, so we never have time to get used to shit, hence we’re always complaining  it’s too hot, too cold, we need the rain, it’s too wet, etc.

It’s gone from 30 yesterday to barely 20 today. This is great, as I can wear clothes again.

A relief for everyone. 

I am looking every bit my age now. Withered body, flabby breasts, pot-bellied, bald.

Reminds me of the bloke in the Contacts magazine from my friend's dad's colossal porn collection. One of the classifieds pictured a middle-aged bloke in his 50s with a black Brylcreemed comb-over, National Health glasses, full-length shot, standing in his Y-fronts.

"Ex-forces, gammy leg, looking for couples."

Who could resist such an Adonis?

I don't know why it stayed in my mind. Probably because I didn't know what a gammy leg was. 

And it was a very powerful image. 

Very, very powerful image...

So anyway, I need to rectify my revoltingness. 

Hopefully there's a pill or something.

What I have been mostly watching

Giff-gaffing doesn’t win you the moral argument. Ask Jordan Peterson, or the bloke down the pub who hands out Reform Party leaflets.

Jordan Peterson is the Canadian psychology professor who became a cultural phenomenon by telling young men to make their beds and take themselves more seriously. 

In other words all the stuff their mums had been telling them for years that they'd just ignored. 

He recently went to pieces on a 20 atheists vs one Christian show - he's gone all religious now, yet he denies it with obfuscation, deflection and word-salads as these clever young people tore him to shreds.

Enjoy! (as they say)

Adam Curtis is a film maker who follows in the seldom broadcast social and cultural analysis of Clive James, Jonathan Meades and even Jon Ronson, in showing us what’s really going on under the surface.

Shifty is a 5 part series chronicling life in the UK for the last 2 decades of the 20th century.

More like an essay than a the usual BBC documentaries; those of us who lived through it or know about the subject matter will not necessarily agree, but it all adds to the conversation or at least starts one.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002d2jv/shifty

I'm afraid it's probably unavailable for those of you outside the UK.

My viewing figures are down

So what can I do?  

I know I go on. Same old stuff. I mean I'm quite content but at one point I was getting 200 views for every post, no it's down to just over 100. 

Did I become boring?

Was I was I always boring?

I should look to some popular people for advice.

I asked an old Welsh fellow what the trick is: 

Or should I be more like Drimble Wedge and The Vegetation? 

Treat 'em mean keep 'em keen. That kind of thing?

I think the latter is more me.

When was our zenith?

When did we peak?

I'm talking about human excellence. In the sciences, arts; creativity. What it is to be human. What we can achieve if the best minds and talents are nurtured, encouraged.

Very few people know who the engineer of the Burj Khalifa was. 

More people know what Kim Kardashion has for breakfast.

Great people of our age are pouting morons.

Exude Izzy! Exude!

I just watched a documentary on Stanley Kubrick, genius director. 

He picked the greatest hard-science fiction author of his age - Arthur C Clarke - to co-write the story with. Arthur C Clarke had an extensive background in science and predicted back in the early 60s the use of satellite technology for communications, so that a doctor in London could perform an operation on a patient in Calcutta.

What we now call a futurologist.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) features iPads , artificial intelligence, and asks fundamental questions about our place in the universe.

Unlike the great cultural milestone that was Sex in the City 2. 

Kubrick created a new standard of special effects, technologies and ways of shooting scenes by aiming for perfection, and encouraging and enabling excellent people to go and figure things out so they could contribute to his vision.

He used Zeiss lenses made for NASA which were F0.7, to shoot Barry Lyndon and lit the whole film by candlelight and no electric lights, having exhaustively studied English 18th century paintings. 

His films became fewer as he got older as the perfection he sought in preparing for his movies was increasingly exhaustive. For example, he employed his nephew to photograph every house in Commercial Road in Shoreditch, which entailed a separate shot up a ladder so there was zero perspective convergence. (This is all before digital cameras, let alone Google Streetview).

It took a year, and they made a huge Bayeux Tapestry of them all. 

Stanley said 'It sure beats going there, huh?'

In the end they made the front they needed on a film set. 

What's all this about then? 

I suggest we probably peaked 60ish years ago. 

We live in an age of homogeneity: botox and fillers and deadening hairdos with which people try to reach an aesthetic singularity, finished off with make-up techniques perfected by drag queens. 

Young men with absurd dental implants, bulging  biceps and shoulders, with the skin colour of pure creosote. Then covered in tattoos that look like any doodled notepad next to a telephone.

People no longer wish to be individual. This idea that for northern European women the upper lip should be as plump as the lower lip, despite having the wrong bone structure and skin colour to accommodate it.

Music that is so utterly banal and boring as to reduce me to sleep in seconds. Where people like Cowell talk about "The Product" rather than the song.

Scum.

That anyone creative is at the bottom of the pile. That English, art, drama and music are now the least popular subjects in state schools, leaving only kids from wealthy backgrounds with the opportunity to pursue careers in them.

The country that gave the word the most mongrel and elastic language ever, and the person who shows us who we are, now eschewing it all to turn us from a 1st rate Britain into a 3rd rate China.

The commodification of everything has put a stick in the spokes of what it is to be human. As Frank Zappa said, American culture can be summed up as “What’s the bottom line?”

So kids are driven to careers which will soon be swallowed up by the leviathan of AI, or A1 as US Education Secretary Linda McMahon calls it.

Yes, she of the WWE.

An art scene that is purely market-driven to decorate the foyers of large banks and the preposterous homes of those who toil in them, in order to show off their great taste they neither have nor are even interested in acquiring. 

"I mean, they must be good. I paid a fortune for them!"

Our differences which were fascinating and wonderful are eroding. Those old colloquialisms found all over the British Isles, subtly different accents from town to town, have become disappeared or are disappearing fast thanks to radio, TV and now the internet.

For example you rarely hear rural Buckingham or Kent accents any more. They've been replaced by estuary English.

Those almost incomprehensible accents I heard at school have softened to become a broad Mummerset.

I listened to a fantastic podcast the other day which explains how social media has essentially fucked us up. 

That it was all going so well and the future was rosy, until in 2006 Facebook introduced the Like button and Twitter the opportunity to retweet...

PICK YOUR BINARY SIDE AND START HURLING INSULTS!

It’s really worth listening to.

We live in a world where a narcissistic conman and reality TV star and who has aspirations to be an unenlightened despot more appropriate to Turkmenistan than a liberal democracy, is the leader of what used to be known as The Free World; enabled by immoral lickspittles whose CVs comprise solely of how far they can get their tongues up Jabba the Trump's anus.

In summary,, I'll leave you with this. 

And...breathe

So we arrive with nothing. We leave with nothing. 

It's the in between that's the difficult bit.

Well, I found it quite difficult anyway. 

My Dad who is quite wise said it's about picking where you want to be on a line with money at one end, and pleasure on the other. What are your priorities?

I think the old bugger's right.

"Hey Stud! Let's boogie!"

Went out with friends on Friday at 4pm. Came home around 10.30. I had a good time but I'm on the cusp of 56 and I don't want to have let myself down. I can be quite a show-off with a few beers inside of me, and quite dumb as well.

I think I had a good time. 

My key-demographic is now the horny pensioner. Thankfully nothing has happened in this department, and luckily with my diagnosis and living in the parental home, it should be a sufficient repellant.

Apart from that, I am running Dungeons and Dragons on Thursdays and the thrill-factor seems to be back on eleventy, which is where we want it.

We had 2 guest players this time and they enjoyed it too.

So that's good. We are back on track! Also playing Mondays, Wednesdays and the very occasional Friday.

Been playing BG3 - over a 1,000 hours just on the PC.

Reading the paper. Do you go to the columnists you either love or hate? I do. Nothing inbetween.

What's that about?

Here's something beautiful. Check out the harpsichord!

Trump - a footnote, from a YouTube commentator:

An Insurrectionist threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act??? A Draft dodger demanding he be honored with a military parade??? A Felon demanding law & order??? The irony is not lost.

An end to navel -gazing

"He was black, so he might have pulled a knife out"

I see racism's on the increase. Reform - the party for the modern Daily Express reader - seems to have more batshit crazy councillors than Labour and the Conservatives combined.

And with batshit populism on the rise everywhere, it seems to have gifted the bigoted and the dim with a green light to air their prejudices, all in the name of Free Speech.

The other day a dog walker told me her daughter lives in Bristol, and her dog was attacked by a larger dog, but because the owner was black he may have pulled a knife on her so she just had to back away.

Obviously a large out of control dog is one thing. Like the dogs in question, the owners are often a 'type' .

We think of drug-dealing gangsters, but again these can be of any ethnicity. 

Why she felt the need to mention his skin colour when the majority of knife crime is black on black, to me is just racism.

It's like when you hear the phrase 'black bastard', as though the blackness of the person's skin had any bearing on his bastardness.

That's why the police mentioned that it was a white man who drove into a crowd of Liverpool football fans, as with social media had it been even mentioned that it was a brown person, the racist mob may have descended into violence, like last summer when a disturbed teenager who it was rumoured was Muslim but it turned out was not, stabbed some children to death in a nursery in Southport. 

These are scary times we live in. It feels like we're in a powder keg and one spark on social media is all it ever needs.

And it's all part of free speech. 

Which should of course come with responsibility.

The Beautiful Cathedral City of Wells...

Wells is a proper old Medieval town - and one of the smallest cities in England. It gets its city status purely by having its own cathedral.

There are plenty of stonemasons earning a living in these here parts, so I wanted to show some of the utterly shite repairs.

Someone has presumably ticked the 'okay' box and paid money for these.

This joker's used a stone repair mix instead of mortar, and it's already failed

Same again.

Obviously some left in his bucket.

Nothing like having pride in your job is there? Could have used a sponge.

Yes, that is a Grade 1 listed 850 year old cathedral behind. But who cares?

Wrong colour, too wet, and then they just leave it.

When you can do something to a certain level of proficiency and you have pride in your work, to see crap like this, you just think "What's the point?"

What is the point of me having dedicated all these years, thousands of hours, into a craft when shit like this earns people a living?

My family are musicians. My Dad still can't understand how people who could barely play could make so much money in pop music. 

Why do a good job when the people signing it off either haven't a clue what they're looking at or just couldn't care less?

And the thing is it's everywhere. For example, look at some of the new builds and see how poor some of the bricklaying is.

It's not as difficult as you'd think to make something look right, but it does take time and concentration.

I've seen some shocking work be praised by people who should know better. Even awarded with OBEs (Other Buggers' Efforts) and conservation awards. 

What is the point, indeed.

DMing the kids at Pilton

This was hard work. I'm still pretty kernackered 5 days later. 

One and a half days of prep, then 2 days of running the game with a large group of 6 kids - age range 12-16. 

That's a big range if you think back to when you were that old.

And then throw in a bag of neuro-diversity.

The youngest had quite a high level of ADHD and by the end of the 2nd day he was really getting on the edge of everyone's tolerance, but we got through it.

I had a massive tension headache, then took one ibuprofen and slept for 11 hours. 

Ah well. It's what I live for...

Dancing?? on a Saturday???

Ugh! You bastard.

I admit, it was me, in the White Hart, last Saturday. 

Boppin' about like a right Bertie. 

I think it was grab a granny night, as we used to call them.

Some joker called me a pirate on the Facebook post. 

I can see why.

As lovely old Dick van Dyke said: 

'Sing like no one's listening; dance like no one's watching.'

Gyles Brandreth in The Times, said: 

“Stop thinking about yourself. I find this one hard. We’ve all turned our lives into one big selfie. Breaking the mirror won’t give you seven years’ bad luck; it’ll add seven years to your life because happy people live seven to ten years longer.”

Good advice I think.

But what the hell am I going to do now??

T-shirt of the week

The Disclaimer T

Summer Ranting (and worrying)

Enforced Enjoyment

People in cafés and pubs dictating how I react to their product.

They serve the food then qualify it with ‘Enjoy’.

An affectation which has crept insidiously into the service industry.

Is it an instruction? 

You MUST enjoy this mediocre sweetmeat! Or else!

Perhaps I should cheerfully wish you ‘death’ upon serving your knickerbocker glory?

Don’t you tell me what to ‘enjoy’. Who do you think you are? If it’s good I shall be in receipt of an enjoyment. 

That is an inevitability.

If not, I shan't be in receipt of any form of enjoyment.

‘Enjoy your boxers!’

Sure! Enjoy my deep loathing of you!

Jargon. Like ‘Going forward…’ 

Repeat any sentence ever spoken with that phrase but elide those 2 words, and see that it adds nothing.

Mindless.

Scum.

Hiding from the Hairdressers at The Dorchester

Many years ago...at possibly my lowest ebb - and if you read this blog you'll know I've had a few ebbs like that - I was working in the office of a hairdressing/day spa.

It hurts just to admit this, to type those words - 'day spa'.

It was fucking awful.

The grifter who ran it (and it is an industry of grifters) had bought rights to a big hairdressing expo, and he got a former employee who'd fled to America to run it. 

It was insane. 

Said person got a friend she'd met at the pub to assist her. Pub-person was unbelievably irritating, and had no clue how to use a computer. 

Me and the other person in the office were kept out of the loop.

On the day of the event at The Dorchester, grifter decided to destroy her seating plan, and scores of attendees went ballistic at her. She had a nervous breakdown. 

I later found out this was a pattern of behaviour for her - take a high-octane job from grifter, don't share it, then get hospitalised. 

Nuts.

So I then dealt with the hairdressers, who were so visually ludicrous and deluded of grandeur that I had to bite my cheek as I couldn't take any of them seriously. That made life very easy.

Ludicrous yet terrifying

The 8th floor of The Dorchester compared to the lower floors is like a dorm. It's like most hotels in London were in the 1970s - so in need of an update as to be a national embarrassment.

I hid under the bed for about 3-4 hours. People came in looking for me, I saw their feet and heard their conversations. 

I'm never one to shirk a party or a free drink, but I just couldn't bear these people.

It was one of the best decisions I've ever made, hiding under that bed. It was so nice and peaceful, as I didn't have to suffer the dumb conversations of coke-fueled twats. 

Organiser and her mate from the pub awarded themselves a suite each - £1,500/night? Pub irritant and her beige-suited, slip-on shoed boyfriend left with almost the entire contents of the room - bathrobes, towels, mini-bar etc.

They do actually bill you for these things.

I only mention this as I'd almost forgotten it until I mentioned it casually to my friend Mark.

I've always been a bit strange, I guess.

Empty days 

One day looks very much like the other. So much so I'm seldom writing in my diary anymore. 

Walked Tomos, ate porridge, caught up with YouTubers and Times, went to town, played D&D/went to pub as a daily routine gets a bit monotonous.

Then a couple of days ago I woke up (which is almost always a plus) and the world span, and I flopped down on the bed. 

I hadn't had a drop the previous night. Honest.

I wondered what the hell was going on. My first thought was, is it dementia-related?

Apparently poor balance is a late-stage of dementia. I'm not at a late stage.

So is it a stroke? Or something else neurological?

Later in the day hives would appear on my hands and feet - my post Sertraline guide to my stress-level.

A couple of days later I confided my dizziness to my sister - it's vertigo, most probably caused by calcium deposits which have come loose in the ear. 

I've made a doctor's appointment but due to the increased size of Wells's population, I'm having to wait a month!

So I lay down on the bed and rolled on both sides to find out which side I instigated the dizziness, did some exercises and it's helping. 

Phew.

At least I know it's not dementia-related. That made me sleep easier.

(And some of the hives go away.)

New D&D Campaign

I'm running a brand new Dungeons and Dragons campaign called Quests from the Infinite Staircase. It's essentially a bunch of 40+ year old modular adventures, all updated to the current 5th edition rules.

Under 18s, as I've found out from running said games at Pilton 6 times a year, don't like the old games so much. They're used to narrative and role-playing, and there is certainly less of that in the old adventures.

I'll explain. Old adventures had little plot. Most of the time you would chance upon them like an old tomb for instance, enter and open a series of rooms each of which would have a random monster in, kill the monster, nick its treasure, and repeat. There was almost zero logic to the randomness of the creatures, as to why they were there, what they did in downtime, where they prepared their food, where they went to the toilet, and a lack of communal areas or canteen where the gelatinous cubes, goblins and shadow demons (or whoever else might be in the dungeon) could get together to discuss their days or watch Countdown.

It was really like opening the door of an advent calendar, with a different result each time.

These are generally referred to now as 'funhouse' dungeons. There's no particular logic to them - they just exist.

Modern adventures tend to have an overarching narrative and structure, with the randomness excluded.

I'm trying to make the experience more visceral for the players by expanding on the written content with embellishments - personal quests such as looking for long-lost family members, heirlooms, or being on the run, which I've developed with the players - and trying to expand the personalities of the non-player characters or NPCs who the players will meet on their adventures, to make them real or at least 3 dimensional.

We had a terrific session zero where we worked on the characters, which will of course add to the fun when they are role-played by the players, because their motivations, flaws, traits and idiosyncrasies will  be more real, as opposed to say, playing a fighter who hits stuff and simply works for 'coin'.

I'm looking forward to Thursday.

And so is Nafas the genie, who runs the Infinite Staircase.

Daydreamers of the world Unite!

'Rambling, ill-thought out and vague' #2

David Lynch and the ability to daydream, as a human necessity. He was adamant that creativity came when the mind was relaxed and he hated not being allowed to daydream.

I love that.

Study a single leaf on a branch blowing around in the wind.

Look at the corners in the room you're in.

I like my flip flops.

Yassss.

I like my Buffs.

Bufftasmic.

Looking at my favourite things.

Opening up an old book or box with a familiar object inside and thinking about what it means to you, when you used it and how.

The situation: who was there and where. Was it a happy occasion?

Watching my favourite YouTube channels.

Reading my favourite columnists.

Sitting and looking out of the window.

Seeing friends.

It's so quiet right now!

Increasingly thinking my life is like Billy Pilgrim’s in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5. Here I am in the geodesic dome on the barren planet with everything I could need then my mind catapults back to previous points in my life which I live out in that instant, feeling the same euphoria, amazement, embarrassment or whatever.

Check it out. It's a 100 times the book The Time Traveller's Wife was.

It's like I've done everything I was ever going to do. That was it.

It's not depressing. Just some existential clarity. 

It's quite liberating, actually.

When are you going to get back on the tools?

They ask. As though this is some temporary or minor ailment.

'All in your mind.'

'Nothing really wrong with you.'

'Just the same as he ever was.'

If only we could walk a mile in each others' shoes. You'd see how foggy and frustrating my brain has become. 

I'm the weirdo talking to himself or out loud and he doesn't even know it. 

I wear crazy colours on my head and feet. 

Yes, I go outside like this.

I'm reading a children's book. (Probably D&D related)

I have my headphones on 90% of the time.

I can't stand bright light or noise.

On some days it takes me 10 minutes just to get out of the front door. 

Keys. Damn. Go upstairs. What did I come up here for?

Ah keys. Yes.

Go downstairs. Where are my shoes? Is it going to rain? Large red boots require different socks. Why's it so dark? Take off sunglasses. Where are my regular glasses? Go back upstairs.

Repeat any combination.

Concentrate on Tomos on our walk. It helps keep me in the present, rather than let my mind wander off into the past.

Picked up a 4" breeze block the other day. Much heavier than I remember.

I'm small and weak. That's just the way it is.

And logistics...jeez.

As I always say, these days there is no automatic mode. Everything has to be thought about from one moment to the next.

That's where all the energy goes, so after 2-3 days of painting or doing something I need at least that to recover.

Gaming or lack thereof

My week revolves around running my D&D game on Thursday evenings. For various reasons it seems to have fallen apart. I don't think it's my DMing - rather just life getting in the way of leisure.

I know I keep banging on about this, but it takes me a long time to prep. Some days when I run a game it could be I'm having a bad day - a trough - with the old FTD, and trying to process the written material is even worse - the viscosity of the treacle I'm wading through is stiffer than ever.

I précis the adventure which is often 10-20 pages long, and read it over and over. It takes me hours and can be quite difficult as I gloss over and over the text not taking 80% of it in.

Running the game - while tiring - is a thrill-fest. It's exhilarating, a mental workout and when it's flowing it is so much fun.

I need a come-down afterwards, which is 2 bottles of beer and some YouTube..

So the last few months have been very frustrating, not just for me, but the players too.

I'll need to pick myself up and immerse myself in the new campaign in order to run it to best of my ability. That means all the player characters have a reason to be in this particular campaign - their own story hook in other words, and it will need to be fully developed.

So I'm going to have to be on top of my game. 

Always a challenge.

Better start then...

How to be incredibly popular, like me

Sociably anti-social or anti-socially sociable?

I used to copy Joe Dunmore. I don’t know how he put up with me for so long. I’d have been totally freaked out if the roles were reversed.

I used to copy the tutors at Art College. I thought I had a licence to critique other people’s work, so I’d go round the class as the tutor did.

How to turn an entire year against you.

I copied the comedians at the production company. That didn’t go down well either.

I can judge an atmosphere in a room but I can’t pick up on social mores. The rules, in other words.

I was overfamiliar at the first stonemasonry workshop I worked at. Not very wise. There was a Lord of The Flies-style pecking order there so people hated me.

They were wankers anyway.

What is going on?

I don’t have Borderline Personality Disorder.

Do I have Autism and/or ADHD? This would seem the most probable.

I’ve masked and copied for years, stared out of the window or even watched the laundry churn around in the washing machine when I was little for tens of minutes at a time. 

I wanted to be liked so I copied other kids, always chasing the most popular kids, hanging by their coat tails.

I always maintained when I was being assembled they took my frontal lobe out of a skip. It's gone from bad to worse with FTD.

I could never revise. I would dust my bedroom meticulously with a 1/2” wide flat paintbrush instead.

Boring lesson? Most of them are. Why pay attention when you can look out of the window and watch Ernie the caretaker hypnotically going up and down mowing the grass?

In my twenties I'd flip from being scared of my own shadow to periods of intense confidence, so pleased in my own skin I’d be frequently approached by women in pubs and clubs.

It wasn’t an act - I really did feel that confident. Borderline arrogance.

And then it left. 

Thankfully for the best part these days, I am confident, or rather, adequate, in my own skin. I am me. It’s taken so long to get to know me, to even like me.

Those first few (four!) decades were more difficult than I’d have liked. And no person or mechanism to label and treat those symptoms, unlike today.

But I think it’s flipped over - harsh lessons learned stay for your entire life. If you wrap someone in cotton wool they never really learn and may expect the world to bend over backwards to accommodate them.

We do the young no favours by doing this. You still have to go out there, try, fail, get up and get on with it and learn in the process.

No one else is going to do it for you.

The 80s

Yuppies, vulgarity, venality, shoulder pads, shaggy perms with highlights, spoilers on Ford Escorts, greed is god, white stilettos, aerobics, ankle warmers, headbands, bubblegum pop, mullets, flicks, drum machines, Reagan, Thatcher, trickle-down, ra-ra skirts, deely-boppers, smiley faces, Tennants Extra, Marlboro cigarettes, pop videos, acid house, Falklands War, Miners’ Strike, Arthur Scargill, Neil Kinnock, Noel Edmunds, ITV, Blind Date, Duran Duran, Essex, Spandau Ballet, gold lamé, Wham, Goth, trendy, rasta, mod, casual, new romantic, punk, met’ler, psychobilly, hippy, skin, raver, Testarossa, Sierra, A-Team, Transformers, He-Man, Dynasty, Dallas, Care Bears, Kylie and Jason, Neighbours, Eastenders, Joan Collins, Roland Rat, I’m all right Jack.

You think this is cool????

Yuck.

Thank god the 90s came immediately afterwards to take the taste away.

Winchester

I visited my old friend Rupert, his refrigerator-sized son (my godson), Sophie and daughter.

On Tuesday Rupert and I left Sophie and the kids (who don't like old stuff) and went to Winchester. I’d last been there 6 or 7 years ago on a weekend with J. 

It’s quintessentially English in a Country Life or This England way. You’d bring North American friends here, Bath and The Cotswolds.

Ancient, civilised, tranquil, refined, orderly, quaint, pleasant. So much architectural history everywhere.

We had lunch in a lovely old pub called the Wykeham Arms. Great pint of Dark Star Hop Head (3.4%) - perfectly kept beer. 

Then the Cathedral itself. Wonderful hotch-potch of architecture. Thankfully the diocese had run out of money transforming the Romanesque into early English, so it just stops half way through. So much wonderful work there - frescos and polychomatic stone all over the place. Great to see the puritans didn't get to everything.

Lierne vaulting - NOT fan vaulting!

Romanesque period: built 1079 - 1150s. 

These are only 16" high. Amazing.

Wonky Winchester - it sank at one end.

The RoodScreen - keep you lot out!

Gurt nave.

18th century marble statuary

Gurt wall painting.

Saxon?

This is an effigy of God - seriously. There are about 4 in the UK

Romanesque, innit?

Lovely door - great colour combi 

Pisspoor repair.

Gurt flying buttresses.

The Easter Murders

Goodbye (moron)!

While walking through the market I met a couple I thought I knew relatively well enough for conversational purposes. 

I was explaining I'd just had my ears syringed and mentioned TWICE how the brain quickly comes to terms with deafness, compensates with hearing and balance, and was currently in the process of dealing with a clear ear'ole again.

Such was my amazement at the process and results of said ear de-gungification, they’d already said goodbye and walked off!

People cut the conversation short these days. Not all the time, but when it happens I'm still compos mentis enough to notice.

Several possible explanations come to mind:

1. I'm becoming [even] more tedious
2. Because I have dementia (=Alzheimers to most people) I won't remember how the conversation started or how long it's gone on for, so they can end it any time and no offence will be taken by yours truly.
3. I was always a complete twat and not worth any interaction with.

I can understand any or all of those. I don't even get offended, just curious as to what's really at the heart of a quick volte face from a potential conversation.

So I followed them for a while, and then I murdered* them.

That's just me though. 

You may react differently and that's your prerogative.

I blame it on the FTD. 

Unconscious whistling

I was walking up the High Street with Tomos the other morning, just like any other day, and a sweet old lady said “It’s so lovely to hear someone whistling. One never hears it anymore.”

But I wasn’t whistling at all, you deranged crone!

Oh shit - I’m not even noticing it now. Damn.

Rather like Austin Powers when he awakens in that scene, my internal monologue is now - intermittently - no longer reliably internal.  

This could lead to some complicated situations. Luckily at the time of writing, most people just see a mad person (me) warbling along and rightly ignore me.

Let’s just hope it stays that way for as long as possible.

Welsh-born

I just read an article on the BBC website referring to actor Matthew Rhys as 'Welsh-born.'

A few years ago I wrote an email to the curator of a particularly shit exhibition of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery featuring a number of performers at The Glastonbury Festival. One of them was of singer Tom Jones - the caption of which described him as 'Welsh-born'. 

I asked why the writer of the guff next to the images couldn't say 'Welsh'. The reply was that he'd spent so long in America that he wasn't really Welsh anymore.

Poppycock.

You see this as a Celt quite often. It's as though despite being relatively sub-human as a Welshy, an individual who's done rather well has transcended into a fully-formed human being and shuffled off the cloak of Welshness. 

They could even be English.

It would never occur to these people to refer to Michael Caine as English-born, would it? Or Hugh Laurie, James Mason, Helen Mirren or countless other English actors who earned or are earning their living in the US. 

Drives me nuts.

I murdered them an’ all.

The Time Team

My favourite programme of all time. All experts - all geeks - all passionate about archeology. Not a treasure-hunt, but an unpeeling of time to show how the land was used by people biologically and neurologically the same as us, but with the knowledge and beliefs of that specific time.

Endlessly fascinating, it ran from 1994 to 2012.

Most episodes are available on YouTube. The original characters were Tony Robinson the actor who presented, Professor Mick Aston in his rainbow jumper and black country accent, field archaeologist Phil Harding with his Wiltshire burr, Stuart the landscape archeology specialist, Victor Ambrus the historical illustrator, Carenza, Helen Geake, Mick the Dig etc. 

Wessex chic

It's charming,  gentle, funny at times and ultimately educational. These are real people who are able to communicate their passion and knowledge to the audience.

I wish I'd been an archeologist. 

Edwardian band names

Algernon and the Danglers

Forthright Bertie and the Pong

Marvellous Mucus Machine

Dr McGuthry's Vomitous Vituperations 

Billy Bolax and the Deep Dibbler 5

Gravel in't Gravy

Ebenezer and the Sneezer Geezer

Whoops! Where's me wobbler?

Jonathan Putrid and the Scrumping Guns

The Undesirable Altercation

Gladstone's Gallstones

Gene Splicer and the Mutations

*not really! 

...But I would say that, wouldn't I...?