something witty and erudite will appear here eventually
I have an odd hobby; I like to take pictures of random things. Usually it’s something that amuses me in some way or strikes me as an oddity but other than that there’s no real pattern. Here’s the most recent batch taken while I was in Manchester last weekend.
I’ve no idea if they are indeed they are indeed the biggest and best pancakes in the world but it struck me as quite a claim. Maybe one day I’ll go back and try them.
The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
I’ve been clearing out some of my old stuff and while doing so I found this scribbled in the back of one of my old school textbooks. I must have been about thirteen or fourteen when I wrote it and I’m surprised at how well it stands up to the test of teen angst. Presumably we were doing Romeo and Juliet at the time.
From time to time in your life there will be people who change everything, people who come to mean more to you than your own existence. It doesn’t start out like that of course. To begin with they’re just another person, a face in the crowd. But gradually, subtly, that changes. You’ll start to notice little things about them. A certain nuance, a turn of phrase, the way they smile and the colour of their eyes.
You’ll grow fond of them. You won’t mean to, you won’t be able explain why, but you will. You’ll make them a part of your life and come to value them above all things. They’ll haunt your every waking moment and fill your dreams until, without them, you’re nothing. Lost, alone. And you’ll tell yourself it’s not love; pretend it’s something else, infatuation, a crush. And too late you’ll realise how you feel, miss your chance and curse your luck. That’s when everything changes. You’ll promise yourself you won’t make the same mistake again, say things’ll be different. But you will, and they won’t.
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
I worry that I’m not as firmly anchored in reality as I should be. I worry more that I say pretentious things like “I worry that I’m not as firmly anchored in reality as I should be” but that’s beside the point. I worry because I have no real focus in my life; I’m constantly distracted by fleeting thoughts and fancies. They may hold my attention for a brief time, maybe a few days, but then I shift onwards to something else; some other intangible dream.
For example, we had a frost this morning and the air smelt clean and crisp as it would after snowfall or high up in the mountains. I found myself wanting to sit on a beach looking out to sea. Nothing else, just looking out to sea. The urge was so strong that I contemplated not going into work and making the trip out to the wash just in order that I could sit in the freezing cold looking at an expanse of water. I still want to do it. It’s nearly two in the morning and I’m still considering an eighty mile round trip just for the sake of it. I find myself staring at the stars from time to time too. And not just for a few minutes either, we’re talking about hours. I lie on my back and watch the stars for no other reason than it feels right at the time. I don’t note anything down, I’m not looking for constellations, comets or anything else, I just watch.
And I think.
At least I think I think. I may just plagiarise the phrases and ideas that run through my head. And the snippets of verse? I may just be making them up as I go along or I may have read them somewhere and can’t recall. Either way it’s frustrating because I lack the skill to make anything of them. It seems I excel in the tip of the iceberg but can never reveal what lies beneath. I like to think I’m erudite and witty, clever even, but deep down I know I’m not. I can’t resist the urge to rhyme even though I know better. Worst of all is the disappointment that comes of knowing what you want to impart, committing it to paper, reading it and finding a confused mess of ideas, repetition, convolution, pretension, all mashed together without any semblance to what you wanted to say.
I suppose this entry acts as a good parallel. I started off talking about my being a dreamer and I’ve ended complaining about my lack of literacy. None of it resembles what I planned to say and countless rewrites haven’t made the semblance any better. Funny really.
I think I’ll go for a drive.
Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday have been and gone, I didn’t make too much fuss about it. I bought my poppy, made my donation and paid my respects along with any other decent person. I think it a very small price to pay all things considered. But was it worth it?
I find myself weighing the sacrifice made by two generations of our forbears against my own worth, against our society’s worth, and feel that we come up short. We haven’t really learnt anything. Over seventy million deaths in two world wars and we’re still as mindless and violent as ever. People still war over trivialities; money, race, religion and all of them content that they’re doing what’s right.
And what have I achieved with the freedom bought for me at so high a price? Have I made the world a better place to live, do I give anything back to society? I doubt it. I complain to friends that I have to go to work on a Monday morning, grumble because the price of petrol has gone up and mutter that the government is out to screw us all. I have everything countless men gave up so that what, I could complain? Would I rather trade places? No. So I feel ungrateful but not so much as I feel ashamed. Ashamed because I know this feeling will soon fade, forgotten for another year, to be replaced by foolish notions of the glory of war and the bravery of men.
Then again, how can such a debt ever be repaid? I suppose we all just have to do our best.
Somewhere there’s speaking
It’s already coming in
Oh and it’s rising at the back of your mind
You never could get it
Unless you were fed it
Now you’re here and you don’t know why
But under skinned knees and the skid marks
Past the places where you used to learn
You howl and listen
Listen and wait for the
Echoes of angels who won’t return
He’s everything you want
He’s everything you need
He’s everything inside of you
That you wish you could be
He says all the right things
At exactly the right time
But he means nothing to you
And you don’t know why
You’re waiting for someone
To put you together
You’re waiting for someone to push you away
There’s always another wound to discover
There’s always something more you wish he’d say
He’s everything you want
He’s everything you need
He’s everything inside of you
That you wish you could be
He says all the right things
At exactly the right time
But he means nothing to you
And you don’t know why
But you’ll just sit tight
And watch it unwind
It’s only what you’re asking for
And you’ll be just fine
With all of your time
It’s only what you’re waiting for
Out of the island
Into the highway
Past the places where you might have turned
You never did notice
But you still hide away
The anger of angels who won’t return
I am everything you want
I am everything you need
I am everything inside of you
That you wish you could be
I say all the right things
At exactly the right time
But I mean nothing to you and I don’t know why
And I don’t know why
Why
I don’t know
You may not have realised it but I’m down with shit, all kinds of shit. And I don’t mean excreta. Chip music? I was there before it was cool. Indeed I still am. No one ever seems to know what I’m on about when I try and discuss it; it’s a bit like cheese welding in that respect. Post-modern art happenings? You’d better believe I’m there with bells on. Sometimes literally. This? Man, I was there at the start. Wearing trousers? I’m so in with that scene you can scarcely stop me throwing a pair on in the morning. Ears? Yeah, I’ve got two. I don’t like to brag but they’re where it’s at if you’re in the know. You like a band? Yeah, I used to like them too until the sold out and got popular. Nothing is any good if other people like it.
Like I said, I’m down with shit. This week I was especially appreciative of Roy de Wired when he played down my local. The man makes playing a guitar look like the easiest thing in the world and I envy him a great deal. If only I were as smooth (in a non-tactile sense) as Roy and could produce glorious acoustic music using nothing more than my mouth and some bits of wire attached to some wood. A guitar I think they call it. Anyway, I suggest you check him out if you get the opportunity. He seems to endlessly play in bars around Nottingham and is well worth the no money it costs to hear him play.
Now, with the money you saved by not spending any when you go and see Roy, you can buy this. Buy it simply because it is the greatest thing ever invented by man. If you’ve any sense you’ll order one this instant. My mate Duncan did and we’ve already wasted six hours of our lives. Sensible Soccer truly is the game of kings. Kings and misty-eyed twenty-somethings with a penchant for all things old school.
Oh, and I can score from the half-way line. You know I’m down with that.
My friend Laura turns 23 today. To celebrate, a group of us are making the journey to Manchester to get drunk just for her.
I’m sure you’ll all join me in wishing her many happy returns.
I loathe political correctness. It sickens me in a way that few other things can emulate and stirs in me a rage almost as great as that caused by coat hangers. People with one leg are not differently abled, abled isn’t a word. Old people are old, they are not senior citizens. If you don’t like the thought of being called old then die young. A hospital is a hospital, not a health care centre. Friendly fire isn’t friendly; it’s what happens when your allies are idiots. Fat people are fat, regardless of what they think. There’s no such thing a “big boned” I know, I’ve lost 4 stone and none of it came from my skeleton.
I digress. This isn’t a rant solely about the evils of political correctness, it’s about the litigate everything brigade and the nanny state as well. The following events have wrenched this diatribe from me by the sheer force of their mean-spirited, micromanaging idiocy. Observe.
First we have this. I know Santa waterskiing into the harbour at Wells-next-the-Sea is a strange event all round, but what sort of shit complains that he’s breaking the speed limit? It’s Santa for fuck’s sake and it’s just a bit of fun. To have it ruled out on safety grounds? The guy travels around the entire world in a single night dispensing presents to all the good little boys and girls, avoiding every horror that the world can throw at him, and they worry about doing 16 knots in an empty harbour. May they be cursed to lose something even though they only put it down a minute ago.
Then this. Considering the fact that Christmas, as the name hints, is a Christian festival and the UK is a predominantly Christian country, who exactly is going to be offended? If I moved to Israel I wouldn’t give two shits how many people refrained from working and decided to fast. Sure I’d be pissed the shops weren’t open if I needed toilet roll but really, who cares? No one bats an eyelid when Ramadan does its thing or when the Chinese have their New Year early because they can’t wait to throw down and party. Read this for a more balanced view.
Then finally there’s this. Of course we live in fear of legal action. It’s because every soft-minded tit can’t conscience the idea that an accident might, just might, be an accident. People seem to think they deserve money for falling over themselves in the street or because they develop cancer after 20 years of smoking. Of course you’re unwell, you suck air through a burning stick and fill your lungs with smoke, what the fuck do you expect?
I was cornered by one of those no win, no fee people a while back. My response was to trip over their foot and inform them that I’d just had an accident as a matter of fact and to enquire where I should sign. They weren’t so interested then.
I figure if the courts did their job properly 90% of these idiots would be laughed out of the building or, better still, fined for wasting everyone’s time.
Now, on a slightly more upbeat note, I left a comment over at Nakedbarbies and now I kick ass apparently. It’s amazing what a kind word can do. Anyway, go and have a read. It’s not porn, not even with a name like that, trust me.
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