Like a strong odour

Like a strong smell that causes embarrassment when guests arrive, I have returned once more.

Haven’t been at the old PC for a while as I was rather busy with caring for our gran. Technically the wife’s grandmother, however she passed away, so time has been taken up with funeral arrangements and such.

I couldn’t really think of anything to write about either, my joie de vivre was a bit lacking.

The play Murdered to Death starts this coming week, which is causing me no end of nerves. Quite why I’m not so sure, I can readily identify with the part of the Colonel. Him being a heavy drinking, tweed wearing chap with an eye for the ladies and terrible trouble with remembering names.

It’s dress rehearsal and publicity photographs today, so it was rather disconcerting to find an enormous spot right on my forehead. Quite why this should occur at my age and neglect to fulfil it’s duty to afflict the face of some nauseating adolescent is beyond me.

 

A rose by any other name

I do have a love of words. Some words simply thrill me, words such as ‘encyclopaedia’ are so well crafted that they titillate me!

One can imagine my disdain then at the current examples of modern English, words such as LOL, which technically is an abbreviation, but one hears actually expressed as a word, uttered aloud. The word ‘Woot’ which apparently is an exclamation of joy was added to the dictionary last year,  much to a chorus of groans.

I’m not such an old stickler that I don’t expect language to evolve, but I cannot help but think there could be more debate as to which words we enshrine in permanence.

Whilst Shakespeares influence on the English language is both admirable and prolific, the great bard himself came up with some words that impressed nobody at the time. Words such as ‘Kicky-Wicky’ which meant wife, ‘Near-legged’ which frankly I am a loss to explain, never took hold in the language.

One never hears the words ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ any more, I do still use some antiquated language on occasion, words such as crepuscule, to describe the hinterland between dusk and evening. I understand that this a quirk on my part, that words come and go out of usage.

I do have a thing about names however. I cannot abide names such as ‘Kai’ or ‘Jai’, both of which are in evidence at my son’s primary school. The repulsive Beckham family have a great deal of explaining to do at NoBacon towers with their insistence on using ridiculous names for their offspring.

It seems that we are running out of Roberts, Richards, Geralds, Vivians, Peggys and Olives. Instead our future lies in the hands of people who sound as though they were named after characters in Star Wars. When I am in my 80′s I shall be highly suspicious of anyone called Dr Jar-Jar Binx.

Viva Boredom!

I’m aware that I haven’t posted for a short while. However, things are very different in my new house. My wife and I are caring for an 89 year old lady (Wife’s gran) who has recently broke her hip and had a stroke. She also has dementia.

Rather than put her in a ‘home’ we felt it was better for her to receive care from her family in her own surroundings.

Of course, it’s hard and rather tiring. Still, it is rewarding and she is happier that she isn’t alone.

It does mean however that our own free time is somewhat limited. Hence the lack of blogging recently.

Today, I was reading the paper and was struck by something. Not literally of course, I have no wounds. The Condem government is proposing more changes to Sunday trading in order to ‘stimulate’ the economy. Given that people have less money to spend (with fuel, food and heating costs being so expensive), quite what people will be able to buy is beyond me. However, I digress. Sunday in Britain used to be a national day of boredom. One couldn’t pop out to the shops or pub as everything was shut. This posed a challenge in my childhood. We used to go for ‘days out’ in a British made car, which invariably meant parking by a motorway waiting for the radiator to cool down.

Sundays were so universally dull that Morrisey wrote ‘Everyday is like Sunday’. These days, everyday is much like another.

It seems that modern British society has become ‘boredom averse’. I feel that this is a great pity. Boredom breeds creativity. Of course chronic boredom leads to riots, sort of. I think a hint of boredom is just the ticket. It can lead to writing silly verse, or playing cards, Monopoly or attempting to teach the cat to use the toilet.

The modern answer to boredom is to go out and spend money you haven’t got on stuff you don’t particularly need.

How does that build character?

Yawn

Well moving house is not my idea of fun. Firstly why do I own so much junk? Secondly why do I now have it my new house?

Today I have been up in the attic packing away stuff from our old house that we never use. Hmm.

Still, it’s been good exercise I suppose. My trousers now keep falling down, maybe that is just the Benny Hill in me coming out though.

In between moving house, unpacking etc I’ve been on stage each evening in A Streetcar Named Desire. My scenes seem to involve a lot of fighting, which unsurprisingly is also exhausting. I think it is worth noting that Tennessee Williams wasn’t much of gag merchant!

Oh well I must dash as the theatre beckons.

Moving stuff

No, this isn’t a post about emotive things. I’m in the process of moving house, hence my on-line activity has been rather quiet of late.

A particularly miserable note is the fact that I won’t have access to the net in my new home until March.

An interesting thing I suppose. This is a supposedly free-market, whereby I could choose a whole raft of suppliers, but no. Apparently I would have to fork out a small fortune in order to get a new provider as this would entail road works.

Marvellous stuff eh? Here we are in the 21st Century, with the same old economic problems that haunted the early parts of the 20th century, relying on ineffective private companies to do the basics.

Ah well, being off line shouldn’t be too much of a hassle for me. Most of Feb is taken up with Streetcar anyway. Also it will give me more time to shout at random strangers.

 

Humbug day

I don’t know about you, but it seems that if one says “I’m not keen on Christmas” then you may as well sign the sex offenders register and defecate on Princess Diana’s grave for all the popularity you will gain.

I know I am not alone in my ambivalence towards all things festive.

I enjoy seeing my son open presents but after that it’s all down hill. Copious drinking, eating food from dawn till midnight, people talking over a TV show you want to watch. Sigh..

However, I know that men of a certain age love a good moan. It does us good, I have no empirical data to support this assertion, but as it is the time of year when magical thinking is allowed, I will assert my case.

I advocate a world wide holiday of moaning, being grumpy, brutal honesty and sobriety.

One day where we can really let rip.

It’s more likely to bring peace on Earth than some fat bloke trying to squeeze down your chimney.

 

Use stereotypes to save time

The EU blunders its way through one financial crisis to the next. This of course is of no surprise. Europe is old. Indeed, this may not strike you as a particularly exciting point, nor a topical one.

However, bear with me on this. Europe is old, it also has habits. For example, Greece has always been rubbish with money. Italy too.

When these countries used their own currency, frankly it was better to buy goods over there with monopoly money such was the chronic and rampant inflation. We Brits used to joke that as soon as you went to Italy you became a millionaire. Considering that a newspaper and a cup of coffee would cost 20,000 lire, you could see where we were coming from.

The German economy was a force to be reckoned with once they stopped trying to rule the world and make people wear leather shorts. The Germans were a sensible bunch really. Despite their inexcusable admiration for the music of David Hasselhoff and their predilection for scatological pornography, you pretty much knew were you stood with them. They could make really good stuff, cars, stereo systems and anything that required a degree of precision.

The French? Well, there is a mutual antipathy between the UK and France. We’ve never really forgiven them for sending the Normans over in 1066. Since then, we’ve had wars a plenty, mocked their ways, and insulted each other on the world stage. Saying that, I do like French people, love the language and their films.

So, it is no surprise to see that the Euro is dying, that the politicians of Europe cannot come to an agreement that would make everything fine and dandy once more. Interestingly, it seems that the old stereotypes are coming to fruition. The French and English can’t get on together, the Germans are cross that other countries wont see their point of view and the Greeks, Spanish and Italians  stare blankly at the economic figures, shrug their shoulders and say ‘meh’. This of course annoys everyone apart from the Irish who blame the UK for everything.

Which of course begs the question, what on Earth were they thinking trying to merge all their different cultures and currencies together? In the old days, we used to just have wars. Much cheaper in the long run too. Not necessarily fun of course, but it’s always nice to do a Basil in front a German chap.

 

I’d like to be rich too, where do I apply?

 

Reading the recent OECD figures on theUKeconomy (my word I know how to have fun in my spare time), it is possible to see that the gap between rich and poor is not only widening but also accelerating.

I’ve decided that I too would like to be very wealthy. Given that mental health nursing doesn’t lead to great wealth and I’m into amateur dramatics, I can’t see where my next million is going to come from.

I think I’d be great at being rich. I already have a big moustache and I likeTweed. My ideal car would be a British classic in racing green colours. I’d eat game and live in a gothic house, that was slightly too large for me and the family.

The thing that I would love to do though would be spend money on the things I care about. I’d put in a lift at the theatre, and invest in young people’s projects. I am not so much a ragged trouser philanthropist as I would tear about the countryside eating game pie and driving terribly fast in my vintage death trap.

Maybe that is the secret to joining the 1% club. You can’t do things to improve services or invest in people, you have to hoard it. There is just no fun in that.

Oh well, anyone want to pitch in and buy a lottery ticket with me this week? If I win I’ll give you your £1 back.

Sex and the city…the male version

One of my problems is that I spend a huge amount of time reading newspapers. I read the Telegraph, the Independent, The Huffington post, The Guardian, The Mail and the BBC news site.

I’ve noticed that essentially a great deal of the writing on the site is basically filler.

It’s easy to spot filler. It focuses on things such as name dropping “Last week I had lunch at the Ivory with…Bobby Crush“. The name has to be dropped in some suitably trendy venue such as the Ivory or The Groucho club.

Another trick of the filler piece is the fatuous crisis article. The Daily Mail is of course notorious for this sort of behaviour “Gypsy immigrants in EU cucumber straightening outrage” is  a typical headline. In these articles, a psychotic, cocaine fuelled pig..sorry journalist waxes lyrical until his word count is achieved before he sends it to the editor.  In it he hints to the plots of Marxist homosexual muslims who invoke the spirit of Lady Di.

Ahem.

My point is, that much of what I write on here is utterly banal filler. I enjoy writing it for the most part, and I hope you enjoy reading it. I’m just curious how on Earth the journalists get paid for producing such guff?

 

No more heroes

Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, David Hockney, Karl Marx, Che Guevara, Albert Einstein, Jules Verne, Bram Stoker and George Orwell.

The Northern lights, the Pyrenees, monument valley and the Carpathian mountains.

The Napoleonic wars, the Boer war.

I’m sure you have heard of all of the above. Please, deary me I hope so. I’m afraid that not everyone has.  Indeed a phenomena I increasingly encounter is that of the ignorant adult.

I am at a loss as to explain why some people have failed to hear of such famous and iconic figures, landmarks and historical events.

I have some theories as to why this has happened, sadly I have no facts as to why. Perhaps there has been a change in the way we educate, history seems to be seen as an increasingly irrelevant subject in schools. Maybe it is due to the fact that reading for pleasure is on the wane, or that so much of our media is utterly ‘dumbed down’.  Another hypothesis I flirt with is that we have a generation of ’Kidults’. That is adults who still operate with a mentality of children, reading Harry Potter, listening to inane pop and consumed by vacuous celebrity culture.

I do find myself feeling increasingly alone these days, maybe that is in part with the company I keep, or the people that I meet.  Perhaps I should simply accept this and allow my inner ignorance to blossom like a fungus.