But that’s all changed since I started this blog. Maybe everyone knows something I’ve just discovered, but now I’ll talk about it anyway.

There’s a picture I love. It’s been kind of a shotgun wedding of a romance wrapped up in a whirlwind because I only discovered it yesterday looking at Life magazine photos.

Instead of just pasting it up here, there’s a little context to it. The year is 1963, and a crowd of children in the Tuileries Garden in Paris are watching a Guignol puppet show of Saint George And The Dragon. Alfred Eisenstaedt took the picture from the front, facing the crowd of children at the moment when the dragon is killed.

It’s completely natural, naturally complete, not perfectly framed, but also yes, because it captures the wonderful instant of a perfect moment, with all the life captured within it. Some of the kids a scared, there’s relief, glory, exhuberance, and beautiful uncertaintly of innocence. Also - and this is probably the anachronistic romantic notion of a rambling fool - I think that if the show were put on today, it wouldn’t be so open ended and the killing of the dragon would either be toned down or not left open to interpretation.

There are stereotypes between the boys and girls, and those who don’t fit in are just as interesting. Forty five years on, I’d like to know what became of the boy who gasped in concern or the girls who cheered on the slaying. They are probably me and most of the girls I’ve been out with.

Life’s far from certain, even in black and white. There are nooks and crannies full of crooks and nannies.

There are moments like this

It’s not, is it? It only fucking IS, you know - it’s the I Am Livid podcast.

Also this week, me and Mr Angry tackle a bear’s arse, I reveal which of the UK’s religious leaders(’ offices) wrote in to the podcast, and Angry shivers our timbers with a chilling pirate tale from the high seas.

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This morning there was a cat playing by the railroad track. There were flats behind it and it was well fed and tame looking, so

I assumed it belonged to one of the occupants. It was sniffing around and pawing at things and having I guess what passes for a good time if you’re a cat. I guess that’s the highpoint of your day if your afternoons consist of licking your balls. OK, second highest.

So anyway, it was about one foot from the track and two minutes from my train, and I was the only one near it, as I like to stand way at the far edge of the platform where it’s just me and the sun. Usually I mean - this time there was a cat, as I’ve already mentioned.

I wanted to get it away from the track so I clapped my hands. It’s head snapped and its eyes darted towards me, but the startled look faded to comfort when it saw it was me. I guess it could tell I had cats of my own and I’m a nice guy. Cats know this with me. People take a little longer, but then people generally don’t play on railroad tracks.

It developed a curious attraction and started towards me on to the tracks, so I looked around for something to throw at it. I didn’t want to start talking to it because that would have looked weird to fellow passengers. - But you can look normal clapping your hands at it and throwing things at it, right? – Yes, but I wasn’t thinking.

What I was thinking is how I can justify throwing money at a cat. Then I remembered that I had just won seven pounds for believing in god, and here was an opportunity to give something back. Yes, it sounds crazy, but it went through my head, which saved the train going through the cat’s.

Is that how it works, the god thing, or is it just a cat on a line and a lucky guy with a pocketful of change?

I’m not really asking, it’s just a thought. I don’t not believe in god, there’s just an absence of belief.

Don’t take my word for it. This song has been recorded by Johnny Cash, Bobby Darin, Paul Desmond, Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin, Ian Gillan, Morten Harket, Whitney Houston, Jackson 5, Tom Jones, Bon Jovi, Peggy Lee, Annie Lennox, Johnny Mathis, Willie Nelson, Aaron Neville, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, The Supremes.

That range tells you how good it is, and I don’t think I’ve heard a bad version, or a better one.

When you’re weary, feeling sad, when peace is all you seek, I will be there.

Listen - Bridge Over Troubled Water (Demo)

As I run past on the opposite bank, the geese rise up, shots ring out and one or two dark figures contort and spill to the ground.

I wonder if my running disturbs the geese into the gunfire, so I try to run as quietly as possible, to still my breathing and muffle my footfall off the path onto damp verges, but as the sky turns light they’re going to fly anyway. Even if I walk quietly, that’s about the time they get up and head towards the farms.

I have developed a trick of running until I hear them take off and then calling my dog as loud as I can to get the geese to change their path and give the hunters a worse shot. Sometimes it works and other moments it turns them only towards the guns.

I wonder how I’m make things worse, or better, and whether being in place and that time means it has to be one or the other.

In the podcast this week we looked at whether or not god exists. Me and Angry bought scratchcards, just to make certain and settle the argument once and for all, judging by how things turned out. It’s a comedy podcast, but there’s a serious point there.

I don’t know what or who god is. I mentioned Mahalia Jackson, possibly the greatest singer who ever lived. She influenced everyone who influenced everyone else, but she sung only gospel. She said: “When you sing the gospel, you have a feeling there is a cure for what’s wrong.”

And maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s in the humble apology of someone who has done you no wrong, the grace and fortitude of hard work. The difference between hope and a gamble. Maybe it’s seventeen minutes and thirty seconds into Appalachian Spring, Z Cars at 2:55, the lovely repetition of stairs, the smell of my kids when I get home, or it’s that one tree off the M40 on your right when you’re heading west, where the hills roll away that stands like it’s frozen in a gust of wind.

Maybe it’s butter pecan ice cream.

Perhaps it’s the moment of acceptance after I walk into a room and my dog sighs contently, knowing it’s only me, and for then at least, that’s all he needs.

These are the things you can call what you want.

I believe in a deep acceptance of the way things are, and while you know there is something better, it needn’t to be for you.

I believe in the feeling that there is a cure for what’s wrong.

I don’t worry about where I’ll head off to when I die any more than I worry about where I was before I lived.

All these things are not going to extend your journey, but they will upgrade you to a better class of living.

And the geese are going to fly anyway, and they will be hunted.

Have a great weekend.

ERNIE WISE
Do you want some breakfast?

ERIC MORECAMBE
No, I’m all right for the minute.

ERNIE WISE
Are you sure? Because it’s no trouble, I’m making-

ERIC MORECAMBE
- I’m fine. Really. Thanks.

Eric walks to the couch and sits down

ERNIE WISE
OK - I’ve got the grapefruit out already. I’m not going to eat a whole one.

Eric opens a newspaper and says nothing. Ernie sighs forlornly and cuts the grapefruit straight through with the heavy fall of a knife. Eric shakes his head in despair.

They keep still, each wrapped in their own silence.

Producer’s notes: I like the opening, it’s got potential. I think we have to tone down the ennui, given the time this is going out (Saturday 7pm). We don’t want people to think too much. “Why are they both in pyjamas together, etc…?” This is a family show – how about a musical number? We don’t need to make a lot of changes. We can keep the grapefruit in, I like that. We could even work the making of breakfast into a song and dance routine. Have a think about it.

—
Apologies to Mr Angry, whose idea I ripped off after reading this post. And yes I asked and no he wasn’t planning on doing this.

Apparently new donors are being urged to come forward.Badum-tish

If you want, you can leave a review on the itunes page and help raise the profile there and among the masses of people who use it, which would be great. For chart/ego-boosting purposes, we’d prefer you get down this route:

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And I thought bloggers were insecure – try being a podcaster.

You can also download the podcast or listen on Mr Angry’s post if you’re at work and the man won’t let you put itunes on your machine.

Either way - it’s got news, it’s got views, it’s got jokes about Jews.
It’s the I Am Livid podcast!!!

(It doesn’t really, but it’s got to rhyme.)

Writing is stupid, or maybe writing is clever but writers are stupid. I don’t really know.

But I’m sitting here with nothing to write and I stick on a bluegrass podcast I like to list to, and everything suddenly lifts and then a Randy Newman song comes on “Just A Few Words In Defence Of Our Country”, which I happened to hear over the weekend on a BBC session, and I Twittered about it, and just when I start writing again it comes on right in the middle of one of my favourite shows.

It’s a strange thing how that should get me writing again.

And the funny thing I still haven’t said anything.

Now if I could just find a song to give me more time.

I’m recording another podcast tonight. Me and Angry are encouraged by the listening figures, so thanks a lot for listening if you are any why not if you don’t. We’ve even had emails to the show, which we’ll read out. When we get our act together we’ll have a separate website for the show and I’ll stop harping on about it here. Ok, maybe I’ll harp a little. I might zither.

On tonight’s show (which will probably go up very late tonight so you might get it in the morning), we’re going to talk about our experiment to find out if god exists or not. I’ve been doing a lot of research on the case for, Angry’s been looking at the case against. I’ve written to the Chief Rabbi, the Archibishops of Canterbury and Bath & Wells, the Council of British Muslims, some Hindu guys and we’ll see how that goes.

When we’re done with that, we’ll break down the US election for you, but that’s all we got planned in a week where I ran into the middle of a duckshoot, broke down in my car twice, blah blah and blah.

I probably won’t say “blah blah blah”, but I can’t tell at this early stage.

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Thank you.

The Waste of Ghosts
Remember
11/11

I went running through an impromptu duck shoot this morning and was envirogated by a hail of gunfire

More about that later, and there’s another podcast on Wednesday, while in the meantime I’ll hope to keep up with a post every day.

LATER THAT EVENING…
Fail. Fail like Jimmy Nail.

The guitar solo at the end is unique and brutal. It even sounds like a break-up. Or a break down. Either way, rather him than me.

It’s sad and angry without relying on the blues, leaning on folk and forces best not reckoned with. He also wrote this Weekend Song you may have heard last summer.

But this gives me goosebumps to listen to and you think the only thing he loves is his music, and he sometimes hates even that.

Slip of the tongue, squeeze of the hand -
that’s the way that it shows.

Listen: The Way That It Shows

And yet that’s what Pulitzer Prize winning Sunday newspaper Republican American called the US President Elect and its future head of state.

OK, maybe they were pushed for space when they wrote the sub-header of sending the “first black to White House”.

Nope, it turns out, because from looking at the larger image, the picture caption also describes him as the “black”.

Have a good weekend, I guess.

• Went to bed sometime in the morning after watching the news unfold
• I woke at 6:30 and went out for a run.
• While warming up I listened to the news about the election
• Checked my email to see if work had been in touch
• I ran a mile and a half, the furthest I have gone in eight years without stopping, the sun came up while I was out and it was beautiful
• I got home and had a coffee
• Fed the dog
• Made myself breakfast
• Had a shower
• Got the train to work
• Checked the election coverage again from a production point of view
• Had some meetings
• Grabbed a lunch
• More meetings
• Went out for a celebration work dinner in Notting Hill
• Drinks afterwards in basement bar
• Got home around midnight

Then went for a run at 6:30 this morning.

So I’m not in a very writey place right now, but I Am Livid podcast listeners will be cheered to know that the man who writes under the nom de plumage of Scaryduck has risen to the challenge of condensed Shakespeare, or Sh8pr, or whatever. The post is very funny, so please go and enjoy it here.

Speaking of the podcast, we had an email! It was about the project this week where have to believe in god and Mr. Angry doesn’t - and then next week we’ll compare notes and find out if he/she exists or not. You can email the show youself at PODCAST then one of those @ things, then iamlivid.com

Stick them all together and open your preferred email package and it should, it should, get to us.

One of my favourite stories about creativity one that Winton Marsalis tells about Milt Jackson, the legendary vibraphone player with the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Marsalis, part of a New Orleans jazz dynasty, got to jam with his hero when he himself was a prodigious young trumpet player on the scene.

Marsalis stepped up on the stage and played a couple of standards, awestruck and nervous but holding his own to play alongside his idols. When he came off, Milt Jackson said: “You notice how the music changed after you was up there?”

Marsalis said: “Yeah, I heard that.”

Jackson: “You know why that was?”

Marsalis: “No why?”

Jackson: “That’s cause you wasn’t up there.”

It’s like anything you do - but if you put yourself into it and people don’t like it, then there’s nothing more you could have done.

While I’m here and it’s the day it is, I’d like to extend a warm This Is This congratulations to Barack Obama. While it’s a staggering landmark in politics, my only concern is that the consequences it will have on gun-toting fascism and the far right.

Under the Bush administration, state-sponsored gun-toting fascism was tolerated and allowed to exist where it could be monitored and regulated.

Under Obama, my fear is that this will drive corporate greed and race-hate underground, making it more attractive and pushing breaches of the Geneva Convention into the shadows where it will thrive in backstreet Guantanamo Bays.

We’ll see I guess. Don’t let me spoil the moment.

I actually like Joe Biden from what I’ve seen, although I don’t know too much about him. Of the four candidates, he was very much the George Harrison of the bunch, and similarly I think we’ll warm to him.

I also think this is the only thing on the internet which doesn’t mention who is going to be living in the White House. I say White House, it’s just a house that happens to be white. And that’s cool. Some of my best friends live in houses.

Last week we used a couple of USB headsets, but this time we’ve got mics, a mixing desk and everything. Here’s a picture of the studio (click pic for the tour).

Enjoy the podcast if you can…

- I’m sorry, I’ll read that again -

Enjoy the podcast. (pause) If you can, (pause)  then download it in itunes and help us get in the charts by clicking this

or you can download it or listen over the web at Mister Angry’s post here.

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Go on - make your smilin’ worth our whilin’

I just thought of that.

Because peaches are orange and so are pumpkins. You really have to think.

This one is a song which lets me be stupid with my kids (although that’s lately a given) because it’s the kind of song that someone can’t dance to can, um, dance to.

I took a little nap where the roots all twist, squished a rotten peach in my fist,
and dreamed about you, woman.

Look out: Peaches

Last night I was waiting for the train and it was a cold night. It had been raining in the morning and then the sky cleared out and the sun saw no reason to stick around.

So I was standing there with trains rushing around me creating a breeze on an otherwise still night, black as a bible and twice as cold. I had my hands stuffed into my pockets as the cold bit through and I was thinking of the hat in my bag. My bag was  on my back keeping me warm and my hands were in my pockets so I decided against a short term investement of cold hands to cover my head, which would have warmed up my body.

I stayed rooted thinking of the train coming for ten minutes thinking how much warmer I’d be when the train comes. Eventually I realised how stupid I was being and got my hat. Is how an addictive personality works? I have no survival instinct. Actually, none of this is fair. I’m just lazy.

It’s like people who don’t pay attention and blame ADHD. I have my doubts about this, because there are loads of kids who say they can’t concentrate in school and yet can get totally absorbed in video games for hours. Hmmm, funny that. “I have a low tolerance threshold for boring things.” That’s more honest. Although if there’s a drug that helps me find bland stuff interesting, I’d take it.

I think doctors who are confronted with kids who have ADHD should start addressing the problem and then loose track and do something else.

“Doctor, can we focus here, please?”

“No, sorry.”

I don’t know, perhaps that’s not fair. Maybe these kids need our support, it’s not for me to say.

Weekend coming up. Me and Mr Angry are doing another podcast which drops on Monday or Tuesday. It should sound pretty good because we’ve got some decent sound equipment and if we can get that working, then we’ll be laughing. Maybe literally, I don’t know.

I’ll leave you with the words of Sylvia Plath, who said: “Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.”

Have a great weekend.

But seriously: When did semi-skimmed become the norm for milk?

I’m on a bit of a fitness kick at the moment, and as a consequence of running under beautiful morning skies like this, I get really hungry before lunch. Like, fucking. And I eat a lot anyway. The only thing that quite cuts midmorning it is a large coffee, but the default milkage for mileage is semi-skimmed.

I want milk milk, but I guess I have to call it whole milk now. It’s like how chocolate has to be called dark chocolate and everyone calls milk chocolate just chocolate.

I know I’m right.

When did substantially less become a little bit more? What do I have to do, ask for a “fat cappucino”?

Semi skimmed only makes the rocking words turn around 180 degrees. I want milk.

Semi skimmed milk is evil. It’s only half milk. It’s a fact that if you give a kid a glass of semi skimmed milk to drink, they’ll get a little white Hitler moustache.

Oh, and the Phillies won. But if you cared, you’d know already. I don’t think people come here for baseball news much.

In the next one, I have made a pledge that for every time I say the words “It’s funny”, I have to send a letter to a CEO of a FTSE 100 company advertising the podcast. This not only promotes the show but it gives those guys a laugh, because it just got tougher at the top. Maybe they can put it in their newsletters to the staff.

The thing that worries me about the credit crunch is that people will spend less money than they did before and there are consequences which will make the world a worse place. I haven’t read this anywhere so I’m just making it up and I may be completely wrong, but here goes.

All those farms that changed to organic food over the last few years as people switched to non-gm, and non-chemical alternatives. These alternatives were more expensive and farmers who had it hard already put their livelihoods on the line to meet this demand or lose their business. If people now switch back to cheaper, mass produced stuff, what happens to these farmers who are growing hand-reared rocket instead of the humble spud?

And cheap meat. Is animal welfare going to suffer if we all go out and buy a £3 chicken? I don’t know what a chicken costs, because I haven’t bought meat in nearly ten years, but if you do feast of the carcasses animals (which is absolutely fine, by the way) and you want to feed your family, you might need to cut a few corners.

Didn’t they promise us food pills? We’re we supposed to have those by now? It seems crazy that I can go online with my mobile phone and order food to be delivered to my house, but it’s still the same old food. Food pills seem to be quite some way off. I don’t want anything fancy. I’m a potato man, but I think it’s going to be a long long time before we get food pills.

Baseball news now, and the Phillies were aiming to wrap up the World Series last night when it was stopped for rain. Philadelphia is a big sports town. They have a team in every major league in the US. It is America’s second most populated city on the east coast. It isn’t the centre of politics like DC, it isn’t the business focus that New York is, and they haven’t won a major trophy in baseball, basketball or baseball since 1980. I was there for that and it meant everything. I want that to happen again, but last night’s game was the first World Series game to ever be stopped for rain, tied at 2-2 in the game that would have made the Phillies champions.

Maybe it’ll happen tonight, and tomorrow at 6:30am as I run across a dark frosty field, cracking into frozen puddles alongside the river, I’ll stop when I get out of breath to check the scores and I’ll run a little further than I did this morning. Running in the morning takes some doing getting up and stepping into a dark street into the cold, but it feels great once I’m on my way. It’s part of the Me Nazi thing that I’m sticking with. There’s a sixteen week plan and I’ll see where that takes me.

The Heathrow Express just went past my window. It was sponsored by RBS and the slogan said “Make It Happen”. It seems a desperate plea for a financial institution. There’s also a girl with a woven bag that says “I’m not a plastic bag” and now I’m thinking of getting a t-shirt made that says that, because fucking hell, I’m not a plastic bag, either.

Right – so that’s enough of that for today. I’m just looking around at stuff to write about now, and that’s not good, because when the material suffers, we all suffer.