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

More camp twattery from your resident demented

Trying to make sense of it all

This is a tough time of year for many - perhaps even most of us. Post-Christmas and the dull, damp, cold, short days, seem endless. It's not until April that we properly see the green shoots of Spring.

I've tried going out over Xmas in Wells - but not very much. It's difficult to meet people. It's a bit like being the last people on the dating app. You soon realise why you're there - no one else will have you! 

You're half-cut when you do meet people, you swap numbers, and when you do contact them for a drink or to give them a link to your erudite and hilarious new blogpost, they either ignore you or don't open it at all. 

Oh god - it's him!

People have busy lives too. I'm there all the while shouting "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!"

I chatted with a chap from London and he said he found it difficult too. I spent most of my life in the city (that's London btw, not the City of Wells) and was a reluctant returnee.

I know I'm intolerant and opinionated but I have tried over the 18 months I've been here. 

Wells and I are just not meant for each other

It could be that my hitherto brilliantly concealed madness is seeping out all around me, thus giving the game away as I stand ankle-deep in puddles of undiluted insanity .

The only answer is to get out more and visit/bug existing friends, so I shall have to do that this year.

I've been watching a ton of movies and I just watched Inland Empire - David Lynch's last feature film from 2007 which he self-funded. What I like about Lynch is his reliance on dreams as puzzles to slowly elucidate for the watcher. And if they don't that's fine - whose dreams really ever make sense or have a comprehensible message?

The best hair, ever.

Having done the Mindfulness course and looking back at my past actions with my customary self-criticism (I am my harshest critic) along with my cynical attitude to just about everything, I can see I have fewer answers and more questions.

Just another minnow in an ocean trying to make sense of the indefinable, incomprehensible chaos.

Trump's inauguration doesn't help of course.

My Dad suggested I'd have been better off if my sister had been running my business. 

The whole thing is I always hated work, even when it was something I enjoyed doing. I know that that's the system, but I was born into it. I didn't have a choice.

And I've met so called life-coaches who say 'if ya ain't lovin' whatchya doing it's the wrong job for you!'

Well I say bullshit. Where’s it written that you have to love work, or even like it? 

It just sells a bunch of dumb self-help books on Amazon.

It's easier for some people. The rest of us just have to mug on and get on with it.

I’m also of the opinion that work stress and sleepless nights contributed to my dementia.

Excerpts of unwritten novels (in my head)

Talking of David Lynch who sadly died recently, he loved to sit in silence and the ideas would come to him, like a solitary angler waiting for his first bite.

I get silly lines in my head, usually spoken in a particular voice, when I'm least expecting it. Walking the dog, doing the dishes, that kind of thing.

Example: the start of another forgettable Merchant Ivory film based on the boring novel of some Oxbridge stately homo about the unrequited love from Smedley minor, in the voice of some luvvie or other:

'It was at Ebstone where I wrote my third novel; 'The Crimson and The Beige. Ahhh...Ebstone...'

Or a children's book for girls about ponies, narrated by Kenneth Moore:

'Ginny loved to ride, and everyone loved to ride Ginny!'

I never got any further with that one...

But Ginny did! 

Good old Ginny!

Film reviews

The Substance - amazing body horror from French director Coralie Fargeat. Demi Moore plays an aging starlet who now has an 80s style aerobics show. To her horror, she discovers her grotesque boss played by Dennis Quaid, wants to replace her with a beautiful sexy young thing. But luckily someone has slipped her the details of a new wonder ‘thing’ called The Substance. What could possibly go wrong?

Fabulous performances, not only great set design and cinematography, but incredible sound design too. An awesome tale about women, their bodies, aging, beauty, the patriarchy and the price to be paid. 9/10

Poor Things - released last year. Bonkers Alice in Wonderland meets Frankenstein in a steampunk wrapping. Based on the book of the same name by Alasdair Gray (which I actually read many years ago) this is a bawdy tale of a child’s brain in a woman’s body, and how she experiences the world as she grows up feeling neither guilt nor shame.

Check out the architectural jokes of the set, if you're that way inclined.

Very refreshing and enlightening. I loved it. 9/10

Nosferatu(alt title: 'Sleepin’ and a-creepin'.) 102 years after the Max Shreck original, this beautifully designed and rather characterless film neither creeps us out nor scares.

It looks beautiful in incredibly low-light which at a modern cinema works brilliantly. But the characters are essentially cyphers and the last 3rd does drag a bit. 6.5/10.

Eerie, weird and tragic.

For proper nightmares, the Werner Herzog version is properly unsettling - a bizarre, eerie film shot mainly in natural light. It’s like a Breughel painting come to life. It also has the most rats I’ve ever seen in a movie, with the ethereal beauty of Isabelle Adjani and the hideous tragic monster fittingly portrayed by Klaus Kinski.

Toilet of the Week

They don’t make them like this anymore. Back when Sheffield steel meant quality and Britain led the world in toilet construction: a vintage Unitron. 

Built like a tank, it can cope with anything. 

Very high water level in the bowl which was a thing back then. 

Now that’s a man’s toilet. That’s not sexist as I know some of you women can really let rip.

Great is a word often overused but coupled with Andrex quilted toilet paper, this is a truly great toileting experience .

Seat: 8/10

Flush: 10/10

Ambience: 7/10

Total: 8.3/10

I am NOT a bloody hipster

I've always been into prog, fusion, Zappa, as well as all those wonderful themes from library music.

And people like me have a fancy moustache as we can't grow hair where it’s intended (on top of me 'ead) so it's compensation: a sporran/mirkin for my face.

In fact, if anything I'm trying to emulate my hero, the inventor, Wilf Lunn.

Wilf, and dragon.

One of the many great inventions was this owl scarer. Why it never went into production I have no idea.

British invention you know.

Copy-wrong

Bullshit copy seen this week on a Leica website: 

"It fits seamlessly into your creative lifestyle."

Just like my Tom Ford buttplug.

A-frolicking and a-prancing in Wells

Great British Breakfast

Marvellous breakfast. Coffee was terrific - perfect strength and oatmilk-to-coffee ratio. Left the extra-large blueberries in the honeyed porridge just long enough to slightly stew them and take the sharpness away.

Gurt lush.

Kemi Badenoch has just been declared Conservative party leader.  The party of Disraeli, Churchill, Macmillan, Thatcher and Truss have elected the first black leader of any main political party.

I don't think Labour will even elect a woman leader for decades. There are reasons for this, and the main of which is the dyed-in-the-wool sexism of Trade Unions who still select the candidates.

Matthew Syed of The Times wrote an article where he applied to become a Labour Party candidate. Articulate, intelligent, reasonable - yet to apply in Labour you have to be approved by each table representing different sections of the party. 

I guess he was a bit too posh for some.

By contrast Matthew Parris, also of The Times and a former Conservative MP, wrote that when it comes to defining The Conservative Party, it isn't ruled by political ideology but rather it defines itself by what it isn't. So they do it by saying 'we don't like what Labour is doing' so they push back against it.

I guess that's a bit like defining what Britishness is: we say what it isn't, which is why Trump disgusts us so much. 

He is the antithesis of Britishness at its best.

Halloween, Shmalloween...

Being a misery guts I don't do the American 6-week festival of Halloween. 

Rather like being oblivious of that tennis tournament in SW London every June/July when I was organising my 50th birthday party, when hotel prices go up to £900/night.

I didn't even think to do a Halloween-themed adventure for Dungeons and Dragons at Pilton this year,. 

It just passes me by. Rather like Harry Potter.

So this half-term thanks to Edspired Tutoring, I ran an oldie but a goody. 

Nice team of kids too. Smart, enthusiastic, friendly and funny.

I tried to prepare by reading and making notes but it just was not happening. I found it impossible to knuckle down and get stuck in to the text. 

So I winged it. Again, having picked an adventure which I'd run 3-4 times before it was much easier to just run straight out of the book.

It went really well.

I think.

Indulgence

Look at this. While the 6 week festival of Halloween drags on some bright sparks had the idea of making themed drinks. This is Northern Monk's Witches Fingers - that's their spelling not mine.

Yes, it is actually that colour.

It's just food colouring, rather than eye of newt and lark's vomit.

Friends Reunited

Sarah, The Arty Teacher. 

I realised that throughout my pretensions of trying to be cool, Sarah and I were actually quite similar. We were both bored by 80% of schoolwork and did pretty much the minimum. Well, if you've got Ernie going up and down the playing field mowing the grass, it's far more interesting and soothing (hypnotic even) than learning German grammar or balancing some equation or other.

Both of us found revision for exams almost impossible, and duly did badly in our A-Levels.

I wonder if we're similarly neurologically diverse?

Haven't changed in 30 years. Well, Sarah hasn't...

To think, it's 30 odd years ago. We reminded each other of things we found excruciatingly embarrassing we'd said or done when we were...kids, essentially. But having been in contact over the last few years again, this was the first time we'd seen each in the flesh. 

We did the Cathedral, Vicars' Close and Bishop's Palace. Proper tourists we were.

Sarah has a business in which she provides teaching resources to a global client base. 

Check out the website. It really is something else.

Shelley who is so tiny that if it wasn't for her glorious hair and smile she would not be visible to the human eye.

She has the health of about 3 normal humans. She glows with wellness.

We laugh a lot. I like making her laugh. 

I always did. 

Then she said she'd seen something really profound while on a school trip in Sierra Leone, and she communicated it in a way that I suddenly felt the profundity too. 

What was it? 

A little boy, malnourished, stopped and stared for about 10 minutes at children in a private school playing football. It was as though he realised with his little 7 year old mind that he would never be part of that world. 

Suddenly the mood had changed, and hearing the immortal words of Alan Partridge ('I want to keep it lite...') I said something dumb, and we were back to normal again. 

Phew. 

Clare is the adult who accompanies me from time-to-time. 

We went to a cafe and I saw it had Basque Cheesecake on the menu. OMG - last had that at Brat  years ago. Best cheesecake ever, and I AM AN EXPERT.

It was nearly £5 a slice and while it was delicious it was about half the portion we were expecting. 

Mmn. 

I felt that was a bit mean. We wandered around through the autumn leaves and got another coffee then walked home. 

Clare's dog passed away recently, which is very sad. She is very laid back (she always was) and I can't imagine the stress she's been under recently what with her dog, moving house and stuff.

We talked about the awful things women do to their bodies - Brazilian butt-lifts, botox, filler and other implants and injectifications. 

Big old ugly duck lips. 

One of the things that women often have conversations about is 'What would you change about your body?'

Talk about fuelling self-loathing.

I thought about it. As a bloke, you're paranoid about the size of your John Thomas, my head's too large, and I'm rather puny. But those are things I can't do anything about. 

Perhaps I should change my sense of anxiety to that of contentment - be accepting of who I am and how I look. 

Yes - contentment. That's the part I want to change. 

It's a brain-thing, not a body-thing.

This week made me realise that I spend too much time on my own. 

I need the company of people more than I realise.

Mods

A lot of computer-based - and lately console games - have become open-sourced (is that the right phrase?). That is, opening up the innards of their games allowing clever people to add code to enhance the gaming experience. 

For example, they will update the graphics and make them higher in resolution, or add bonus content to the site in the form of extra adventures or crazy daft things - one of which is turning dragons into Thomas the Tank Engines.

The modding community, on their way to work.

Skyrim is the most modded game of all time. It was released in 2011 and I thought it was amazing, but time has taken its toll and it looks very dated indeed with its blurry, dull graphics and limited voices (very few actors playing all the rolls) and dialogues. 

There's not much that can be done about the latter, but it is astonishing what modders have achieved (if you ignore some of the more teenaged attempts...) with additional plots and stories, the use of additional voice actors and all the graphics enhancements.

(Vanilla = original)

I know I should be doing the cleaning and stuff... 

I'm actually looking forward to playing D&D with other adults soon as we haven't done a proper session in over a MONTH!

Shocking.

But I want to end on this enigmatic photograph which I imagine was taken in either Regent's or St James's Park.

What does/can it mean?

Caption competition?