This Is This

I’m not sure, but I’ll bet one of the best things about getting old, right up there with getting to develop adult relationships with your children, is hats.

I went to a shop the other say and tried on a couple of hats and they felt good, but I thought “Really, am I going to wear this?”

See, if you put on a hat, suddenly you’re this guy wearing a hat, you know what I mean? If a friend below the age of 60 comes up to you and you’ve never seen them in a hat before, I bet you think, “Oh, look, it’s Steve. In a hat.”

Then Steve’s going to get this whole conversation about the hat and he’ll be thinking “Under this hat is a human being with a beautiful head - can we move on?”

Well, despite looking good in a hat, I don’t want to be Steve. Fifty years ago, anyone could be Steve. In fact, people might have met a hatless Steve and said “Hey Steve, why no hat?” But now, forget it. Wear a hat and you have elements of stevishness.

I bought one anyway. An outdoorsy cap thing that keeps the sun out of my eyes. One of the downsides of being colourblind is that my eyes are super sensitive in the light. This is great at night, I have superhero night vision, but in bright daylight I squint like Harry from Third Rock.

Trouble is my hat matches my coat. I discovered this after I got home, because I went out without my coat and I mean it really matches. It looks like I made a real fashion commitment, hatswithstanding, which makes me feel uneasy.

It’s like when you walk at a party (I don’t know, a Walking Party, OK?) and find you are stepping in time to the music. It looks too self-conscious even if you don’t mean it to be. It looks like you are The Man, or you are trying to be The Man. Worst still, everyone thinks that you think you are The Man and they know that everyone knows you aren’t.

I don’t want to be The Man. I just want to be this guy. I don’t want to stand out too much. I don’t want to be someone who marches to the beat of a different drum or anything. Me, I’m happy just walking along, and if I notice that there’s a drum playing somewhere and it’s not bothering anyone - well then that’s all right with me.

Take care everyone, I’m going away for a while to watch the wind get lost.

I was watching that Planet Earth series on the BBC on Sunday and the programme opened with some people base jumping into a very deep cave in the jungle. It looked amazing.

“Now that,” I said to Wife, “is extreme.”

“I bet Tony Hawk would do that,” she said. She’s always bringing up Tony Hawk. Sure, the most extreme I get these days is dark chocolate ginger snaps, but what’s he got that I haven’t?

The background music was new age-y dance stuff. Kind of middle class dinner party. Warm them up with a little KT Tunstall, then bring out the generic ethnic trance music. Anyway, it coulld have been arabic or something. I’m no expert, although in reality it was probably made in some studio in North London somewhere by some chancers wanting to sound cool and make some money.

But just because I’m ignorant, it doesn’t make me a cynic. “I’ll go with this,” I thought. Judging from the foliage, I’m guessing this is India. The singing continues in the back ground. Loads of reverb and slo-mo shots of people freefalling into darkness. Then David Attenborough’s breathy poshness starts the voiceover:

“The Yucatan peninsula, Mexico…”

Dickheads.

Some producer has put random ethnic music over the scene to demonstrate to the audience that this has been shot in … somewhere foreign.

I wonder if there’s a similar programme being made by India’s biggest broadcaster which contains footage of Trafalgar Square with backing music of jaunty accordian waltzes. I somehow doubt they are that stupid.

Teenage girl: “…and I’m all like: ‘If you’re gonna chat shit to me, don’t chat shit with a smiley face, know what I mean?’”

In the dark wilds of south east England, 8pm, Friday night, driving by myself, in order of appearance:

1. A deer. Just to my left in a trench by the roadside. It seemed happy enough, but was worried that it wasn’t (worried) as I drove by in otherwise total darkness at 50 miles per hour. I hoped it would be more scared of cars so it would live beyond its first year.

2. Rabbits. Two, large, probably looking for food for their young. If that’s what they do. Do they take food back to their young? Maybe if you’re a vegetarian non-human animal living in the wild, you could have it made. No cooking, no takeaways, you eat out every night. As I drove by and caught the rabbits in my headlines they looked at me like - um… I can’t think of an appropriate simile, but they looked like they were shocked, anyway. Truth be told, I was more surprised to see them, as these were the first rabbits of spring for me. From their perspective, they couldn’t have been shocked to see me. “Hey look, Thumper, a motorist on this black concrete thing. Fuck me.” “Is that all you think about, Fiver? It’s barely spring. The last thing we need is another mouth to feed.”

3. A fox. Beautiful bushy tailed and the kind of boardroom smile that is only with the mouth.

4. An ambulance, nine police cars, two fire engines (all with lights flashing) and about 30 emergency services personel cutting a driver and a passenger out of a overturned car which has hit a lorry on the overpass of a motorway.

Is this an anti-coincidence at work? A meaningful contrast of events on time? An, if you will, noincidence (snort). Or just a reminder that wherever you are, and whoever you are, it’s all and always going on.

I was in Marks & Spencer the other day (NB: not Marks & SpencerS, not Mark & Spencer - I’ve been in neither; it’s: Marks & Spencer) and I bought a triple berry muffin on my debit card for seventy nine pence.

It’s not a lot for a plastic purchase, but I find I spend less if I put everything on the card. It saves me having to break bills which leads to carrying around change which leads to impulse buying which leads to stuff I don’t really need which leads to having less money to buy the stuff I really need. I also find that using a card instead of cash is still spending money, but it’s spending it mindfully.

It’s money dharma. The only constant is change, particularly loose change.

Aaaaaaanyway - a lot of the time when you use the card these days, the person at the till asks you if you want cash anyway.

:)

So I’m standing there in Marks & Spencer with my triple berry muffin and I’m paying with the card and the lady asks me:

“Do you want any cashback?”

Just this once, I checked my wallet because I would need some cash later to buy food for my cats from a place that may not take cards. I noticed I already had a ten pound note in there that I didn’t know about.

“No thanks,” I said, “I’ll have my card back. I have cash.”

Cashier: “Cashback?”

Me: “No, card back.”

Cashier: “With no cashback?”

Me: “Yes.”

Cashier: “Yes?”

Me: “No. No cashback. I have cash, but I need my card back and I’ll pay in cash.”

It went on like this for some time, my triple berry muffin sitting forlornly between us in a state of transaction purgatory, ‘twixt Mark and Spencer.

Convenience, eh? Can’t beat it. They can bake fresh muffins in a pants store but our lives have never been more complicated. I’d happily trade in those two extra berries for an easier life.

My coincidences have turned nasty!!!

I have lost my phone. In ten years the ten years since I have owned a mobile phone I have never lost one. Then I post one little entry about a guy throwing his phone out the window and I lose mine two days later..

Yes, I have checked on my desk. Yes, I have checked the pockets of the clothes I wore and the floor of my closet.

Yes, I have walked round the house calling it to see if I can hear it. I even borrowed Wife’s phone and went out to the car and called it from there. And someone saw me walk out to my car to make a phone call in it like a stange man.

People have asked me: “Have you tried ringing it?”

What does that mean? What do you mean “tried”? I know they mean well, but ringing takes no effort. I don’t have to try at all. Calling a phone is easy, and that’s not the issue. Focus for god’s sake, I’ve lost my phone.

I have called the police because insurance only pays up if you report it stolen and they took my details and phone number. Then the constable said: “And do you have a mobile number at all? Um. No, hang on, that’s not right. Er - sorry about that…”

I am going on holiday in a few weeks for a few weeks and I am looking forward to it being very quiet. Work has been getting on top of me and I need silence and darkness. Real darkness, not suburban glow. I want real quiet and black skies. I want nights so dark the wind gets lost.

And I want a phone. Oh, and a million used helicopters and a pound.

I have stupid things on my desk at work. They are:

1. A miniature silver trophy with the Everton crest on it. It was sent by my friend who works for the Football Association. The joke is “that’s all you’ll ever win this season, Cliff”. Never gets old.

2. A cartoon of a man on the phone saying “I can’t come into work today so fuck off.”

3. Sachets of wet wipes from a really very cheap rip-off fried chicken place. They have confederate flags on the pack. I call them “ethnic cleansers” I realise this is in very, very poor taste. I like to joke about things I find abhorrant. Suicide, war, paedophiles and Girls Aloud; all fair targets to me. I’m laughing AT you.

4. Thousands upon thousands of newspapers. Very stupid, but they all get recycled and I can’t not have them for my job. And when I say thousands, I mean at least forty.

5. A (fucking) knife (ok?!). I write well with pencils. I write even better with pencils sharpened with a knife. And I don’t just mean my handwriting, I mean I write better. No idea why. Pencil sharpeners either don’t work or you get that really sharp point which breaks as soon as you push down hard enough to do justice to a good idea. And then you get that double line thing from the jagged edge and that makes me feel queasy to write with. A knife gives you those nice strong angular edges like a crystal. Plus whittling in the office gives me a tribal, primeival buzz which appeals to the animal part of our souls which remains with us through the generations and mists of time, harking back to an age when our forefathers worked for the very first internet companies.

My favourite mobile phone story is the guy is one I heard about from an insurance company when I was a financial journalist.

This guy was driving along eating an apple. He was going along at 60 miles an hour and he opened the window just as his phone rang. Started, he dropped the apple, but he continued to roll down the window. He then picks up the apple, throws it out the window, grabs the phone and puts it to his ear.

Except it isn’t a phone. He’s holding his apple to his ear. Having just thrown his phone out the window.

Priceless.

Y’ever forget to pick up your mobile phone?

And then the next thought you get is to call someone and ask if you left you left your phone with them?

And then you reach for the phone you don’t have that sparked off this trail of thought in the first place?

Just me then?

I woke up on Saturday with a St. Patrick’s Day hangover. An O’hangover.

It was seven in the morning and I went for a walk around Liverpool while my dad slept for another hour. I have a young family myself back home in the countryside, so waking up and going for a walk my myself in a city is something I never get to do and it felt great. It also felt like stupid below freezing and I went across to the magnificent public library by St.George’s Hall. I have a picture of my grandfather’s regiment marching past Lord Derby on the steps of the hall the day before they sailed for France in 1914. Now I’m standing here with my cushy life and my hangover, feeling guilty for bracing myself against the Mersey wind above Everton Valley

Song about that-
Hi-fi
Lo-fi
or download Years From The Valley
(I like the jangly indie guitars at the end)

More coincidences? Why not:

The library has an exhibition of John James Audubon’s work. I used to live in Audubon Street in New Orleans, right opposite Audubon Park, where the naturalist and ornithologist used to live. The poster in the reading room hall says he grew up in countryside outside of Philadelphia, like me, and then moved to Liverpool for a bit where I discover this temporary exhibition of his drawings while doing something I never normally do.

Another one? Oh go on, then:

“Goodison Park?” The all-knowing Liverpool cab driver looks at my blue scarf.

“Thanks,” I say.

“So what’s going to happen today?” My dad asks him.

“You’ll win 4-1,” he says confidently.

Match report

It was a brilliant evening and day and I fall more deeply in love with Everton than I can possibly ever explain.

The moments. Moments like this.

Tonight I am driving up to Liverpool to with my dad to see Everton. You can’t really appreciate the passion until you know a little history.

Recipe for Emotional Attatchment

Reunite brothers every 5 or 6 years for a trip to a match. Take grandson (me) to match and repeat as necessary.

I have sat in Goodison Park close to tears watching the blues run out to the tune of Z Cars and the roar of the Glwadys Street stand.

I love Liverpool. That’s where three of my grandparents were from and there’s a part of my heart that will always be. I am looking forward to taking my son to a match up there one day.

But it’s about more than the game. This is father and son bonding and much needed these days. Last time we went up we got rat arse drunk and ended up in a hotel bar with a Spice Girl at 3am.

This time, who knows, but I’ll settle for a win. Don’t know about you but my weekend’s going to rock.

Still not convinced? Read what my dad has to say.

So anyway, wierd things, right.

I was in the kitchen at work this month talking about talking to someone about my daughter. Normal dad stuff, kids say the funniest things, etc. Out of the corner of my eye I notice someone come in.

I reach a part of the story where I say my daughter’s name. Then the person who just walked in and looks at me funny, which stops me mid-sentence. I look at her. It is a colleague with the same name as my daughter. She is looking up from a newspaper, staring strangely.

“Oh hey”, I laugh, thinking it’s funny that I say that name just as she turns up. It’s not that common a name, either.

She stares back at me, turns the paper around and points at her name in the middle of the newspaper article, the name she shares with my daughter which she happened to read at the exact moment that I said it.

Spooky.

That thing yesterday with John Cusack wouldn’t happen anyway. In the US they have dollar bills and you can throw those things around a bit and look casual.

We got rid of our pound notes and replaced them with pound coins (NB Anglophobes: it’s also one of the smallest coins we have) so now nothing below five pounds folds. In the UK we have so much change on us that you can often pay for what you want and not have to stand around talking, which suits our reserved and suspicious nature. However, we do have the right to stew when we get too much change off someone so we can bitch about it later.

I also like to tease tourists (ooooh sitting here writing this and Lisa Loeb’s Miss You just came on the radio, remember that?) when they have too much change. They pull out fivers to pay for things to make life easier for them and by the end of every day they have on average three pounds of change on them (approx. two kilos).

The dollar is at about 1.6 to the pound, so a fiver is about 8 bucks. Now I don’t know about you, but if I was throwing around multiples of eight bucks around, I wouldn’t be all that carefree. Sticking four fivers on the corner pocket of a pool table is like betting the price of a decent lunch.

Tipping is a nightmare too. If someone carries your bag from the bus to the hotel room, it’s all a part of the service, but you want to leave them something. Two or three dollars ought to do it. Have a nice day.

In the UK, you’ve got to scramble around and it goes like this.

I’m not giving him five quid for taking my bag from the cab to the desk. Hmm, let’s see. I’ve got a pound coin. I can’t give him one little pound coin, it’s an underwhelming gesture. I’ll make it two. “Couple of quid.” It even sounds right. - Oh god. I don’t have another pound coin. There’s a fifty pence piece, and a twenty, and two tens. Now I’m throwing small change around?! That looks cheaper than not tipping. He’ll have to cup his hands like a beggar when I give it to him. Why don’t I buy him a sandwich while I’m at it…

By which time I’m looking to feign some kind of attack to just get into the hotel where my bags are. Because, erm, they’ve got my medicine in. Yeah. Pills, for my… leg. I need my leg pills.

Or we could just adopt the dollar as a currency. Or bring back pound notes. I’ll start some kind of Daily Mail reader campaign with a petition.

Right after I’ve thought it through.

Who’s with me, whatever it is we decide to do?

I have the sneaking suspicion that I may not be hardcore.

This last I went to the post office and sent a letter and a parcel.

Post office lady: “That’s three pounds forty four.”

I get a handful of change out.

Me: “Hey wow.”

Post office lady raises quizzical eyebrows, one slightly more than the other.

Me: “That’s exactly how much change I have in my pocket right now.”

I throw down the coins emphatically into the little tray thing.

Post office lady: “Wierd.”

I think she is impressed I carry that sort of money around with me. I’m not bragging, but honestly, three pounds forty four to me is just loose change.

Truthfully, I like it when little things work out like that. How something comes together without there even being a plan. With things that, if you saw them in a movie, the audience would be like, “Yeah, except that never happens,” but I would think, “Sometimes it happens…”

Think of it.

John Cusack walks into a Seven Eleven, buys a coffee and a paper and some stamps. He’s got Drew Barrymore waiting in the car outside.Cut to car

It probably wouldn’t happen - I’m not saying it wouldn’t, but it could. But normally you would get some kind of coin fumblage amidst a shooting of the breeze over the Twinkies. Or at least a cocking of an ear to the game on the radio while money is exchanged.

But not with me, I have exact change.

I’m not saying John Cusack doesn’t, but that’s just me, you know? That’s just how I roll.

This week I am celebrating wierd things that have gone on lately, because there has been a lot of it around.

A couple of weeks ago I lost a ring I wear. It’s silver with runes on it which stand for joy, prosperity, fruitfulness and success. I have a soft spot for that which other may term mystic bollocks and I am rather attached to my ring.

But it’s not attached to me, or at least it wasn’t when I noticed it was missing one night after coming back from Jude’s house late one night. Jude, by the way, is a man. I am not having extra marital affairs. I am not even having regular marital affairs, what would I need with extra ones?

I thought I might have lost the ring in the car, round at his place, maybe even before in London, at the office, on the bus, anywhere. The possibilities were endless and I was gutted that I probably wouldn’t see it again.

This carried on for a couple of days until one morning I woke up thinking, “Well, things come and go.”

As I lay in bed that Saturday morning, I came to conclusion that I shouldn’t be so attached to my stuff and what’s mine won’t be mine forever and who did this really harm anyway.

“Who knows,” I thought, “if it turns up it turns up and if not, I shouldn’t get so hung up on stuff that falls into the relatively tiny category of Things That Are Mine.”

And right then there was a small tap at my left foot where its weight caused a dip in the mattress. And I knew in that instant that it was my ring.

It must have fallen off in my sleep several days before and it had only just come back when I resolved that it was OK to have lost it.

Now I’m not really one for looking into the meaning of things, but really like things that have meaning.

So maybe the timing of me finding the ring meant something. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe there’s significance or maybe’s there’s just meaning, like affect without cause.

It’s possible that letting go always pays out - sometimes in silver rings, often in nothing.

Why is it that only fascists and beauty have regimes?

Seriously, though. Maybe Mussolini had a very rigourous skincare schedule? ” Abyssinia can wait, Giovanni, where’s my exfoliator? I’m going to miss my fucking train.”

I think when we’ve got regime it’s assumed to be unpleasant and hard work. Like how “morale” suggests all isn’t quite tickety-boo. People who ask about morale are already braced for the worst.

And another thing.

People who say “that’s hilarious” but don’t laugh.

There’s no need.

Tomorrow: No more Nazi stuff, I promise. Or Buddhism. Or Buddhist Nazis. Can I say that?

Hitler once said that a nation became weakened once foreigners started breeding with the indigenous population. The country’s dominance became threatened, he claimed, once the purity of the host race was weakened.

Which is why Iceland is such a major superpower in the world today as opposed to say, the United States, or other ethnically diverse countries like Russia and the UK.

Twat.

You can fool all of the people some of the time, so long as you do it very, very slowly.

I had blond hair when I was a kid. In the summer it was really light. Sometime a few years ago something can up that prompted me to say my hair was blond and someone pointed out that it wasn’t and I realised they were right, but because the change was so gradual, I hadn’t noticed.

Same with my friend Karl, who used to lift weights. People who have known him longer than I have think he is massive, and he isn’t really, but the image has stuck.

It’s the same with a reputation. It’s why people still think Steve Martin is funny. Or why sporting heroes, past their peak, look better on the field than the younger athletes around them who are playing better. Or why people still read this blog. Arf.

Thing is, reputation’s an important element, and if you’ve earned it, then you deserve it. But remember that a good reputation is worth building on, for the benefit of yourself and others, but never cash it in.

In other news, I got a mention in Blogmandu.

Anton Chekhov once said: “Any idiot can face a crisis. It is the day to day living that wears you out.”

And he really had something. A crisis is like the punch you tighten up for, or the tooth you have pulled. Here it comes….. Bang! And you think “fuck you” or “fuck me” - depending on your disposition.

But the daily weardown is like verbal abuse or a headache and that’s the tough stuff.
Try this. Both come and go, neither last forever, so why the long face? Day to day living is just a minor crisis prolonged. Don’t worry either way. Either the problem will go or you will. So long as when you do, you don’t leave the crisis for someone else to deal with, then it’s all good.

I saw Oprah reviewed some book on TV once called “Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff: And It’s All Small Stuff”. Actually, it’s not all small stuff. Some of the stuff is blimmin’ huge, but do something about it instead of worrying. What they should have called it is: “Stop Fucking Sweating. Jesus.”

Yeah.

Hard compassion - that’s today’s post.

*Also: “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” - that’s not actually true.

Springtime nears, the sun gets high,
and that will go and so will I,
replaced by someone just like me
who keeps a blog with poetry,
wry observations, views and whimsy,
statements (both backed up and flimsy)
read by you, but when you’re gone,
there will come others and so on.

I paid a visit to the website of advertising agency JWT, whose page boasted:

Kimberly-Clark has unveiled a 3m pound television campaign to back its new Kleenex Anti-Viral range of tissues. The company claims it will be its biggest campaign for ten years.The ad, which breaks next month on terrestrial and satellite channels, has been created by JWT. It features a gentle and “well-meaning” Guru, a hippy-like character who consciously avoids harming living creatures.

Ah, so he’s a hippy.

I feel so stupid. I thought they were using religion, Buddhism in particular, to employ a stereotype promote their product and cash in. My mistake. I feel so stupid. My God - er, I mean - well, you know. I get it now.

Those of you who have been reading the posts this week may have been misinformed. He’s not a monk. I should clear that up. He’s a hippy. Here’s a picture of him from the ad:

Whereas this guy right here is a monk:

So that’s cleared that up then.

Cheers all.

Suffering With A Cold - Part 1
Suffering With A Cold - Part 2
Suffering With A Cold - Part 3