I’m a thick bitch packing cake

Bloody Chickens

(WARNING TO ALISON: contains 1x F-bomb…)

I'm completely mad and should never be allowed near the general public. So say I.

Haunted by my past - scattergun memories make me wince with every one that lands. Like a flicked finger to the unmentionables.

Shouting out ‘Fuck off!’ which my parents are either too deaf to hear or miraculously - especially my mother who’s strictly adverse to swearing of any kind - ignoring.

I wasn’t even allowed to say bum as a kid, nor chuck stones into ponds where no one was lurking “just in case”.

Sounds mad now.

Because it is.

Increased Input

Re-subscribed to The Times (£1 a month for 3 months - they must be desperate, which in a way is good) but I've failed to read more than half of the editions.

I like the Saturday edition but The Sunday Times is a piece of shit. Completely different - like a bombastic, snobbish older uncle, there to embarrass you with its antediluvian outlook and Faragist waistcoat.

Ignorant, ludicrous, pompous.

So I can still read a newspaper. The downside is it's bloody depressing. News is almost always of the 'bad' variety. A new forest being planted doesn't quite have the gravity of bombs falling on families in Ukraine or the middle-east.

Already though, with the input of information - 'news' as it's often referred to - it's stimulating my brain enough to start writing.

What a fug I get myself into. Hitting the same thing on YouTube time and again. I need variety but it's difficult to know how to get it when there are only 3 choices available...

I just have the greatest taste in music…

Saying that I listen to a lot of great music (as do we all) although my taste is the best. No really, you must check out what I listen to. It really is better than yours.

Truthfully.

Lots of great jazz/fusion/Brazilian funk from the 70s - Banda Black Rio, Gilberto Gil, George Duke, and also rediscovering Gil Scott Heron and Roy Ayers, who I saw at Ronnie Scott’s many years ago.

Also a big fan of Lizzo, which inspired the title of this post. Big fan of Missy Elliott who I always found strangely beautiful and one of the best rappers of all time. She doesn’t get as much recognition IMO due to her sex.

And here are both of them in a conveniently packaged video promo!

Also like Louis Cole and Genevieve Artadi, Domi and JD Beck, Esperanza Spalding and countless other geniuses.

I like music where musicians have conversations with other musicians - I guess that’s why I like jazz.

I want to hear bands - musicians. Original ideas.

I want there to be imperfect concerts in an age of computerised perfection.

Do you know they’re even auto-tuning Freddy Mercury’s voice on Queen re-releases??

It’s possible to like current music when you’re old but in the main you have to work harder for the good stuff as… Simon Cowell.

Yes, why have the chef’s special when you can have the Big Mac followed by the Mars Bar?

He probably doesn’t even listen to the stuff.

Saying that, Mars Bar were never good live.

Me and my non-sequiturs, Mrs!! 

What’s…out the window?

 That woman in her cardigans is walking past all the time. Bag over shoulder, hair tied up, wellingtons or boots. All weathers. Like a farmer, but not. She stares at the ground, always on a mission. She’s a strong walker - I’ll give her that. 

I spoke to her while walking Tomos. She could speak for England. 

She's pleasantly bonkers but I find it hard to get past the cardigans.

Ow! 

That lump under my right patella is rather too big now. It's been growing there for years. I occasionally acknowledge it. I don't want to bother anyone (doctors) with something as non-emergent as an uncomfortable growth, but that's what they said about Mount Vesuvius isn't it? All those Pompeiians.

Having a black desk shows up the dust somewhat. I need to dust it at least every hour.

It’s gotten really cold. Dark clouds. So windy too. My Mum swears it was never this windy in the past!

I call it Led Zepplin weather. Me with my Sanyo version of a Sony Walkman in the back of a Ford Cortina driving to Ystradgynlais in the early 80s - cold, grim, cloudy, and all the while listening to either Led Zep 4 or Houses of the Holy. 

Romantic, melancholic, hiraeth, Tolkein.

Love it.

Word of the Week!

‘Relatable’. As in “I can relate to that”. 

Like Rylan, bless him - all teeth and no brain. Hence him replacing the old fuddy-duddies who do.

How dare they know shit! 

Elite, arrogant, entitled!

But it’s also an annoying word as it doesn’t seem to have any synonyms. A bit like the word ‘impactful; which I first heard being used by a PR person.

Damn - it hasn’t replaced any word. It’s just new. And while I hate these words, I hate it more that I don’t know their equivalents, if they even exist at all!!!

Lord Alli and me

Before I aged horribly, in my 30s I was an attractive well-dressed office worker in central London.

I had hair and everything.

So much so that when I worked at a certain company people used to think I was gay. I mean, you have to be to dress like that!

Don't you?

Lord Alli was the chairman of that company. Always used to make a special effort to say hello. He used to say things like: “Are you taking the stairs or are you coming out with me?” In reference to the lift.

Er, the stairs.

He asked me once what I did in the company. I told him (it was relatively lowly) and he said “Well, I think we’ll have to do something about that Geraint.”

He’s now embroiled in the freebies scandal with the Prime Minister.

I remember he had his chauffeur running round London picking up and delivering presents to his 100 closest friends and the chauffeur who'd been employed by him for a number of years absolutely mortified that Alli had neglected to buy him one.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a man so hurt.

Alli was one of “Tony’s Cronies”. I always felt there was some kind of transactional nature to the guy.

Wow: if I could earn that kind of money!

He then elbowed out the CEO and went on a spending spree buying up millions of quidsworth of intellectual properties.

And then the crash of 2007 happened.

And that was the end of that company.

Just my thoughts.

One day I’ll tell you about Dom Joly.

I find you very puerile...

Sympathy for the Beige

Spare a thought for dull celebrities. I know I know, they make a lot of money. 

'He's a great bloke. He's got loads of money.' 

Yes, unlike that lovely old pensioner down the road living on government handouts. Evil witch.

Anyway, I digress...

These people are efficient yet dull: human Mars bars.

Ronan Keating of Boyzone fame

One such person is Ronan from Boyzone. They sang banal covers of sugary, forgotten 70s popsongs. They resurrected these hideous things like the terpsichorean necromancers they were.

Then they got old and wretched and Ronan found himself on daytime TV. 

He has no sense of humour and nothing interesting to say. Just wallpaper. Suits the medium I guess.

But when he sang in the group he affected this weird speech impediment. His handlers must have advised him to. 

"Ronan" they said, "you're almost see-through. Lose a leg or something. The viewers barely notice you!"

So rather than becoming the world's first quadriplegic pin-up he bottled it and instead developed this weird speech impediment.

'Say' became 'Shay' or even 'ßay'.

That's the lengths beige people have to go to to be interesting. 

So sad.

Another is Dermot O'Leary, or rather, Dermot O'Dreary. The girls loved him. But if you just listen to him without looking at his front-head you'll see what I mean. 

Years ago I was driving on the M4 and turned the FM radio on. All I could get was Radio 2 and inbetween the dull music - where even Elbow are considered too out-there to be on the playlist - he was bloody presenting this radio show.

 Just muttering endlessly about absolutely fuck-all. I felt myself nodding off - it was more effective than sleep songs or ambient music on The Calm App or chloroform.

It was actually dangerous - no one should have let him on there because it was hazardous to motorists.

And then he presents X-Factor or Britain's got no talent whatsoever, with the Great Satan and Death Becomes Her. More banality for the masses.

I mean how bloody beige can you get?

He's professional and efficient and dull. The Chartered Accountant of television presenting. 

Actually that would be Sophie Raworth. 

I feel bad for them all. I really do.

Poor bastards.

Talking of accents...

I was assisting a photographer friend of mine once upon a time. I set up the lights, and tried to make the subjects feel at ease. 

One lad  - posh Edinburgh - had just joined the particular accountancy firm we were doing the shoot at, and was nervous. He had a big round head and a chubby body, bursting out of a fashionably tight suit. It wasn't the greatest styling.

Anyway, I asked him what he'd done recently, just to take his mind off things.

"I went to the cinemahh with some friends."

Oh, what did you see?

"Ted."

Did you like it?

"I found it very puerile."

I had to stop myself laughing - there's something about that accent that's so snooty and dismissive and of course so funny. 

Of course Ted is puerile - that's the whole point. 

I'd seen it too and thought it was hilarious. But then, I am its target audience.

It's a Miss Jean Brodie accent. In my mind somewhere between Denis Law and Fyfe Robertson with an altogether disdainful tone, and best spoken with nostrils flared.

Ayn Rand down the pub (who's been banned for 2 weeks - ha ha) speaks like that too. Can't wait to see him again when he's taking court with his bitches, spewing his plutocratic nonsense for the whole pub to hear, and talking of 'silly, opinionated women.'

Yes, how dare they...

I shall challenge the fucka. And then write about it HERE! John Otway will guide my debating style:

Lots of dot dot dots...

Yes. Punctuation. There's a thing. 

For or against?

The apostrophe was always a problem. Brought in to the English language by the Georgians, apparently most people have a problem with it.

Well, I say most people are DUMB!

Get over it and LEARN THE RULES!

That's why I'm the world's worst teacher. Doing it for them or hitting them over the head with a travel-anvil because they don't get it.

What are you up to these days, Geraint?

I'm glad you asked me that, Clarence. 

I'm writing in a posh Edinburgh accent as you can tell. 

My days are spent reading and weaning myself off of 'what's Trump said now?' videos on YouTube.

I walk Tomos every day. I speak to the dog-walkers who don't mind my presence - getting fewer by the day, restraining-orders being what they are.

I shop at Waitrose and Tescos. I sometimes meet up with people one-on-one. I see my sister. 

I need to get away at weekends more and see friends out and about.

I sometimes wash.

(Only joking.)

I cleaned the bathroom the other day - I had to be asked even though I knew it needed to be done.

I should mow the grass but I like seeing the dandelions and daisies. I remember buttercups too - don't see those anymore.

Everyone has to have a uniform lawn here. But no one ever wrote a poem about a lawn. But meadows seemed to inspire lots of people.

Oh lawny lawn,

Oh lawny lawny.

Come to me,

I'm really horny

Doesn't work.

End. 

(E.E.Cummings, aged 12 and a half.)

Oh, I ended up watching - bingeing - Fallout on Prime. It was wonderful. 9/10.

Our hero.