Yesterday's Pants

Balls to Festivals

So we've just come to the end of the Halloween Festival. It was only 2 months long. 

You can tell I enjoyed it.

In my day Halloween was just another day; the important one was Guy Fawkes' Night, in which children made effigies of the Jesuit conspirator and went house to house asking "Penny for the guy?"

Papist was then burnt on a massive fire as we all watched, along with a fireworks display, and we all cheered.

Good old fashioned family entertainment.

Honestly, you can't even burn Catholics anymore without upsetting people. It's only once a year for gawds's sake.

Political correctness gone mad etc.

So now it's children going house to house dressed up as scary things like ghouls or Disney princesses, and getting sweets in return. 

Or candy. 

Well, we're all American now, right?

An American, earlier today.

Then it's back to the Christmas festival, which has been running in the background since August. 

What do we do once New Year is over???

Don't worry: the Easter Eggs will be ready in storage at the end of this year to go straight onto the shelves on January 1st.

Yes, the Son of God has just been born and (Spoiler alert!!) we go immediately into his resurrection. 

You'd think those scum in marketing may have had something to do with it.

I may be sexy but I'm boring

10 weeks now sans alcohol. I realise on those rare periods when I’m abstemious, that I rely on alcohol as a social prop. I use it to unwind and relax.

So do I, I hear you say. 

But as said previously, I have no off-switch. No limit. No concept of what is ‘too much.’

So without alcohol I’m rather intense and socially awkward. 

I haven’t danced since I last drank.

I no longer go out in the evenings except for special occasions (games nights).

I have lost weight, but not as much as I’d have liked. 

I look and feel better within myself - less physically repulsive.

But that’s it.

Aging

'The peripheral visual field shrinks by approximately 1 to 3 degrees each decade after a certain age.' according to Google's AI.

On that basis and my recent trip to Tescos, where many people had large trolleys which they parked adjacently in the aisles while choosing packets of Bourbon creams, completely oblivious to those of us trying to get past, I would estimate their average age to be at least 160.

Philostophy Bag

"The relentless pursuit of material gain and consumption as a moral failure that eroded social bonds, dehumanized individuals, and leads to a hollow, alienated existence."

Sound familiar? Existential dread in the 21st century? 

This was an AI summation of the philosophy of Thomas Carlyle in the EARLY 19th century, living in that London.

He'd have puked himself inside out if he could experience life today.

'This is the sound of...'

Those radio ads written by children who've had no actual experience of the medium.

Of course it's the bloody sound of - it's the only sense the medium uses!

Try that sentence without those 5 words, and it works much better. 

Honestly. Bloody moronic, illiterate, advertising scum!!!

(I was nearly one myself!)

This is the smell of old people.

Taste the goodness of Thatcher.

This is the look of fart.

Days

BY PHILIP LARKIN

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

The Scrotary Club of Great Britain

I don't know what this means.

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

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