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.

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?