Will someone please save me from all this London 2012 bollocks? A shot in the back of the neck would do the trick

I hope I am not the only one utterly underwhelmed by the coming Olympic Games 2012 in London. Perhaps I’m now just a grizzled old whingeing cunt, but everything about it manages to piss me off. I’m not going to noodle on about ‘the Olympic ideal’ but for God’s sake where is even one ideal? From where I sit, the 2012 Games are simply about money and how to make fabulous amounts of it. Long gone are the days when the athletes and sportsmen and women taking part were gifted people doing something for the love of it and for the challenge to be the best in the world at whatever they were attempting. The athletes are now all professionals keen to win because it ups their value in the sponsorship and advertising market and gets them on the world’s talkshow circuit.

Elsewhere we witness the piss-awful spectacle of sponsors cutting up rough in order to protect ‘their investment’ and suing the fuck out of anyone who dares even to come near encroaching on their territory. I can’t remember which credit card company it is who has ‘won the franchise’ to do whatever they were bidding to do (piss in everyone’s cup of tea, I should imagine), but is seems if you are unfortunate enough not to have one of their cards, you will be unable to pay for anything using your credit card and I read somewhere that you will also be unable to use one of the many cash machines which are being installed on the Olympic site.

One measure of the dishonesty which pervades the whole sorry exercise - which, incidentally is costing the country a cool £12 billion, several billion more than we were told it would cost - is that the 2012 Games are being billed as ‘great for Britain’. Bollocks. No one outside London is going to benefit in the slightest economically, and a great many people in London will be at a disadvantage - I read the other day that tourists not interested in the Games are giving London a miss this year and hotel room bookings are down, although that might also have something to do with several greedy hotel chains upping their room prices substantially to make extra moolah from the number of Games visitors expected. You can find more info on that particular piece of heartening news here.

Here in Britain, we are being entertained by a number of Games-related cock-ups ranging from outrage that the British Army is insisting of parking tanks on the top of residential tower blocks beside the Olympic stadium in order to deal with a terrorist attack, to looming chaos on London’s streets with attendant misery for commuters as all roads leading into to London will be partially blocked to non-Olympic traffic (overnight many roads have had the seven Olympic rings painted on them to reserve them for Olympic traffic along with the warning ‘Fuck off this lane if you know what’s good for you, squire’).

There was talk (and a debate in the Commons) on whether capital punishment should be temporarily introduced to deal with all and sundry convicted in Her Majesty’s law courts of not showing due and sufficient deference to ‘Olympic traffic, athletes, officials and all others connected, however loosely, with the 2012 Games’, but the idea was knocked on the head when the authorities realised that they would be unable to have made, test and commission the necessary number of gallows before the end of October, by which time all Olympic-related hoo-hah would have died down and by then popular support for the measure could be expected to have fallen. (Incidentally, Britain abolished the death penalty more than 40 years ago for murder, but you could still be hung, drawn and quartered for treason as late as 1999.)

The good news is that rather late in the day Transport for London (aka London Transport) has discovered that parts of the elevated section of the M4 leading into London are crumbling and has had to shut the motorway from Junction 3 all the way to Junction 1. They promise the work will be sorted out by July 29 when the Games start but, fingers-crossed, that’s just so much whistling in the wind and just so much hooey.

Adding to the irritation of the closure of almost all the roads leading into London is that whereas every January and February colleagues come in and bore me rigid with their war stories about how they they were caught up in traffic chaos because of

Thousands of London commuters struggle to work
snowfall (or what passes for snowfall in this gentle island nation), they are also coming in and boring me solid with their war stories about how Olympic road closures are causing chaos and a commute which usually doesn’t take them more than an hour is now taking them up do two days, that although they might be here and now, they are, in fact, only just staring last Monday’s shift.

There was a great deal of fun and games over the allocation of tickets which was due to be done by lottery. Absolutely no one is pleased with the outcome, especially as some ticket prices for the less popular sports are being slashed to drum up the numbers and, for example, those who paid several hundred pounds for a ticket to the ballroom dancing quarter-finals are very put out to find that similar tickets are now being flogged off at a fiver a piece to avoid the embarrassment of rows and rows of empty seats. Adding insult to injury, loads of freebie tickets are doing the rounds and can be obtained depending on who you know. A friend has obtained ten tickets for the opening ceremony simply because the chap down the pub he got them from has a gay brother who recently gave Lord Coe’s hairdresser a blow-job. It simply isn’t funny any more. Give me a break, please.

Continuing my romantic history: introducing SH, various shenanigans and I admit to being just a tad embarrassed

I threatened – I think that’s the right word – gradually to give a rundown of my former girlfriends and lovers as I have previously given a rundown of all the cars I owned. I must admit, and said so here, that I felt the exercise is slightly tacky, or even more than just slightly, but what the hell: I get about 20 readers a day, 19 of whom are apparently only interested in seeing a pic of Mandy Rice-Davies (info I have gleaned from the stats page of the blog) and apart from my sister, a good lady in Carolina and a chap who went to my old school (although before I went, or after – I can’t off-hand remember) I know none of you good folk out there who happen upon this blog. So here goes.


My first was WR. She returned to Edinburgh and by chance be hooked up again in those glorious weeks of freedom when I was knocking around after my finals had ended but before graduation and I could simply do as I pleased. She took me to her bed again, and paid me the compliment – a rather left-handed compliment, mind – of telling me I was a better shag than I had been four years earlier. I have no doubt she was right. She had previously trained as a nurse and taken herself off to Australia. She had now returned and eventually took herself off to Canada.

Term started in October and I was now in my second year. I can’t remember where and how I met SH, but I do remember we got it together when we went to a party at a farm where a group of my friends lived. They were all in a band called Fat Grapple (a silly name, though by no means any sillier than other names thought up by bands then and since). SH was young for someone in her first year of university – her birthday was in October – October 16, in fact , so it had either been a question of going just before her 17th birthday or waiting a year. I, as the saying is ‘fell in love’ with SH and – this is the embarrassing bit – more or less followed her around like a puppy dog. She didn’t actually discourage me, but looking back I must have been a pain in the arse. Guys can be like that – the accepted wisdom is that the mature later than girls (if at all I hear some of you women say).

Trying to recall that year now, in order to write this account, I find I can’t really remember that much, simply isolated incidents. But I do remember coming back to start a new term and one of her friends gleefully telling me she had been seeing some other guy. I was devastated, though I now realise it had more to do with feeling rejected – my apparent self-confidence was no more than skin-deep – than any worth she might have had.

We had planned to move into a small cottage together in Tait’s Lane off Hawkhill close to where Hawkhill merges with the Perth Road. I’ve just taken a peek at Google maps and find that cottage has long been pulled down and Tait’s Lane is now looking rather respectable with loads of yuppie houses down the side where our cottage was. Despite the fact that we were no longer ‘going out’, we did move in. She took the upstairs bedroom (it was a small cottage and upstairs there was only the bathroom and the bedroom) and I took one of the bedrooms downstairs. The third bedroom was taken by Arthur MacDonald, who became a good friend but with whom, sadly, I have lost touch.

Arthur was one of the leading lights of Dundee University’s ‘revolutionary’ movement and prominent in a group called International Socialists. Either that one of one called Solidarity, I can’t remember which. The two groups, as is the way of such movements, were at daggers drawn on ideological grounds, although I doubt even they, if pressed, would be able to tell us what those difference were. Arthur was a humourless cunt for about a year, then suddenly rediscovered his sense of humour and after that was very good company. More of Arthur later, perhaps, in a tale which involves another girlfriend, coincidentally another SH, her promiscuous nature – although if would only be fair to add that it turned out she was schizophrenic – and a dose of the clap she passed on to me, having caught it from Arthur. It should tell you something of my affection for him and how much I valued our friendship that I soon forgave him, especially as I have no doubt my schizophrenic girlfriend had made all the running and Arthur was not the kind to turn down a shag (as they call it, I’m told).

I eventually moved out of the cottage after SH – the first one now, not the schizophrenic medical student – began shagging not only a trendy psychology lecturer about town, but also his wife. And as the guy was – and still will be if he’s still alive – a shit of the first order, I shall name him: Martin Skelton-Robinson. Two-faced cunt. By this time I had overcome the worst of my love-pain, but I didn’t want to hang around.

SH went on to live with the drug dealer, one Ian Hunter, now dead, I knocked around with for a few days in that period between the end of finals and graduation. In fact, it was because of him that I hooked up with WR again: Ian and I had gone to Edinburgh – although I can’t remember why and, anyway, we were more acquaintances than friends – and come the evening had nowhere to stay. He was all for dossing down in the park. I wasn’t (never have been) and it occurred to me to get in touch with the only people I then knew in Edinburgh, WR sisters. They told me she had returned from Australia, gave me her phone number, Ian and I went around there and dossed down in her living room – better than the fucking park, you’ll agree – and the following day Ian buggered off somewhere (probably to try to score more drugs as it was all he was interested in) and WR took me to her bed.

While she was living with Ian SH was both dropping a lot of acid and got herself pregnant, carrying on dropping acid during her pregnancy. To this day I’ve wondered how it will have affected her child who, being born around 1972, will now be around 40. SH was quite bright and from Dundee, she went on to do a masters at Lancaster University.

I hooked up with her many years later in the early 1980s when I was back in Scotland visiting my uncle Pat and aunt Lou, who were living south of Dalkeith where my uncle was the bursar at a girl’s boarding school. I had driven into Edinburgh and as in some pub or other near The Scotsman offices where Arthur was now working as a reporter. He like his drink, did Arthur, but eventually had to go back to the office. But he told me SH now lived in Edinburgh. I rang her and went around to her flat. We chatted and had several glasses of whisky (for me on top of however many pints of cider I had drunk in the pub with Arthur) and at the end of the evening I drove home the the 20 miles to my uncle’s house. And that I didn’t kill myself is a miracle: usually when we have had too much we realise we have had to much. But I was so drunk, I decided to see how fast I could drive all the way to Pat’s place. I was touching 80mph on roads not made for more than 40. Some angel just must have been watching over me.

That’s the last I heard of SH. Writing this, I seem to have a dim memory that she was due to get married at the time we had our drink at her flat, but it really is nothing more than a dim memory.

So let me get this straight: Bob Diamond has discovered the God particle, but he’s a shit, so Newton was right all along? No? OK, how about this: the banks and those lovely people at Cern are costing us all an arm and a leg, but - sorry I’m lost. Completely. And for all those who like to eBay, a few home truths and how to try to ensure you get what you want without paying through the nose. (No secrets, just common sense)

My Economist arrived this morning, on time for a change, and this evening - just about 45 minutes ago, in fact - I sat myself outside in the fresh air (it’s finally stopped raining) with the magazine, two cigars and a glass of ice and white port (which I can highly recommend - far more macho and far classier than mere sherry, although that, too, is very pleasant with a cube or five of ice).

As usual, I start by reading what those dear fellows at the Economist like to call their ‘leaders’. First off was one about the Libor scandal (and its first cousin the Eurobor - bloody euro freaks never miss a trick, do they), Barclays and Bob Diamond. The thrust of the piece was that this is just the tip of the iceberg and if the Libor baffles you, be prepared to be even more baffled

God’s particle (apparently)over the coming months and years. What with Fanny Mae, Fanny Mac, sweet Fanny Adams,  Northern Rock going tits up, the demise of Lehman Brothers, RBS almost but for the financial genius - or should that be stupidity - of Gordon Brown and, I suppose, various European banks being bailed out, it would seem that the writing is on the wall for our banks. But of course it isn’t.

There will be a lot of outrage, some exceptionally incisive and quite often witty soundbites, various inquiries, perhaps even a Royal Commission or two before it is back to business as usual. The only change will be, to use a saying quite prevalent in the media, same shit, new broom. Why? Because governments worldwide need those with money more than those with money need governments.

Then it was onto the next leader, one all about the ‘discovery’ of something called the Higgs Bosun. This discovery, the dear Economist informed us, was a ‘triumphant elucidation of the laws of physics’. They now know, we were told, that the Higgs Bosun exists, because all those clever chaps at the Large Hadron Collider in Cern, Switzerland, finally came across ‘deviation’ in ‘particle behaviour’ they weren’t expecting.

OK, I am playing a little dumb here and in broad - very broad - outline I do know what the Economist is getting at, but I am finding it a tad difficult, if not to say a tad impossible to get even a little bit excited. The Higgs Bosun ‘discovery’, apparently, is so stupendous because it confirms the ‘Standard Model’ of reality. Without the Higgs (as we in the know like to call it to distinguish our more superior intellects from those who refer to it as the Higgs Bosun) that Standard Model would fall apart. With it - well...

What bothers me is this: first there were the Greeks who referred to the ‘atom’ as such because it was the ‘smallest possible’ and crucially ‘indivisible’ particle. So far, so good until physicists quite soon went on to divide that ‘indivisible’ particle into electrons and protons. Meanwhile, Newton (who everyone now thinks was gay, but not only is that another entry, but one which isn’t, thank goodness, even interesting) did all his stuff (which I shall quickly gloss over, mainly because I don’t really know that much about it). Then there was Albert Einstein (of whose work I do know a little more) but even though he demonstrated that there is a lot more to it all than Newton realised, he was merely skirting around the problem of what is what. That’s where the Standard Model, various bosuns, quarks and suchlike come in and where I and I should think you, too, bow out. But you see where I’m going to: Einstein trumped Newton, Newton trumped the Greeks and now the Standard Model trumps Einstein.

Being, in my more pompous moments, an empiricist - as opposed to all those whacky, mainly French, Descartian rationalist - I can’t help feeling ineffably cynical. It won’t be in my lifetime, but at some point in the future various bods and bodesses, all of them far, far cleverer than I could even dream of being, will snort in derision: those Standard Modellers, eh, what a joke! And they thought they had cracked it! Well, listen to this!

What has this to do with the bankers, wankers, hankers, chancers and and deadbeats upon whose greed we all rely to keep our democracies afloat? Well for one thing this: both they and the marvellous folk at Cern are costing you, me and Mrs Trellis in North Wales a shedload of money. And then some.

However, please console yourselves when next your pension can no longer buy you warmth and food: it’s all for the best, both what those wonderful Cern people and those marvellous bankers are doing. You might not realise it but, well, if you do actually accept that Christ was divine, Allah is merciful, God was an elephant and the only way to be happy is to want absolutely nothing at all, my advice is simple: believe. As they say, ignorance is bliss.

PS I haven’t resorted to referring to the Higgs (see above, saddos) as ‘the God Particle’ because even for this blog that really would be a cliche too far. And the obvious crack is to try a joke or two about the ‘Li-bore’ and ‘Euro-bore’. But do you know, dear reader, it’s so fucking obvious that even this tart can’t be tempted to attempt it.

. . .

This is apropos nothing whatsoever, but I thought I might add my two ha’porth worth. I regularly buy stuff on the eBay (usually computer stuff I really don’t need, but read on anyway) and I am continually amazed that so many people don’t understand the two simple principles of bidding and buying on eBay. I’m not saying I always get what I want, but I can say that when I do get what I want, I never pay more than I want to.

First off, when to bid: leave your bid until the very last moment. It is foolish to alert others interested in the item you want that you, too, are interested.

All you will do by bidding early is push the price up even higher, possibly higher than you want to pay, as others try to discourage you and get the item for themselves. All you will do is - human psychology being what it is and all of us all too often being our worst enemy - carry on bidding for the item for no better reason than YOU want it and you’ll be buggered to be bested by some other, faceless, creature out there in cyberspace. Yes, you will get what you wanted, but you will pay far too much. I know this from experience. Believe it or not, I am just as stupid as you are, perhaps even more stupid, but at least I now know that and try to do something about it.

The problem with leaving your bidding until the last moment is, of course, that you can’t always be at a computer at the time the auction ends in order to put in your final - and, you hope, winning - bid. The answer is to use one of the several services available which will place your bid for you, at the last moment. I use ezsniper - you can find it here. Sign up to one of these - it costs almost nothing but is very much worth it.

The second, and most possibly more important principle, is to decide just how much you want to pay for a particular item. If others want, and are prepared, to pay more, so be it. Just decide for yourself how much that item is worth to you and don’t be suckered into paying more. So when you use one of the bidding services, as I use ezsniper, put in your top bid. I’ll repeat: if others are prepared to pay more, so be it.

Keep in mind that you did not want to pay more - it was not worth more to YOU - and if they outbid you, what the hell: they are paying - as far as YOU are concerned - over the odds. Never forget that the world is not going to end tomorrow (although for some poor saps it will, but you could bet your bottom dollar it won’t be you) and there will be other ‘opportunities’ along in due course. Remember: NEVER pay more for anything than you want to. Yes, sometimes you won’t get what you thought you wanted, but that’s the price you pay for peace of mind. In other word, that’s life.

Amen.

. . .

I’m in the writing mood (several thousand glasses of white port, of course, have nothing to do with it) so I thought I might bring my most loyal readers up to speed on my holiday/travel arrangements. Non-loyal readers have my dispensation to bugger off and do something else.

Tonight is Saturday, and I am off tomorrow for my usual schlepp up the A303 to London to work my shifts which, apparently, justify the huge sum the Daily Mail pay me every week for sitting at one of its desks and doing as little as possible.

This week, however, I shall not work on the Wednesday but make my way to Gatwick airport to catch a flight to Bordeaux to visit my favourite aunt Ann (in fact a step-aunt) and attend a serious of Renaissance music concerts. These are being held out and about in Bordeaux (the area not the city) and I always enjoy them. Plus it is nice to have a week off, do even less than I do at work, pretend I am a man of the world and sleep a lot more. The great thing about being on holiday is that you can wake up, turn over and go back to sleep again. For some reason I can never go back to sleep when I am not on holiday. I lie awake (having woken at about 7am) telling myself that I don’t have to get up, but I can never drop off again as I can when I am on holiday.

Writing of holidays, my brother Mark and I are planning another joint two weeks away in some gite or other in France. As I know he never reads this, I can reveal (as in ‘reveal’) that of the many reasons I have for going away with him - he’s very good company and my favourite brother for two - I also like to get him away as otherwise he leads a very solitary life. At the beginning of last year, he suffered from a very bad bout of shingles and I decided that a holiday would do him good. So I was pleased that this year he has again agreed to come off with me for two weeks because I feel that two weeks away will do him good.

Why, some of you might be asking, don’t you go off on holiday with your family. Well, the short answer is that I would very much like to. The long answer - well, you’ll have to wait a while for that. We can’t always have what we want. In too many ways my wife and I life on different planets.

Ironically enough . . .

And the agonising goes on. And on. And on. We're in the shit, Europe is in the shit, the US is in the shit and, with a bit of bad luck, the rest of the world which relies on us buying their crap, their not so crap and their most certainly not crap goods, will also be in the shit if we stalwarts in the Western World (capital Ws to be discarded, perhaps, when our economies cut us down to size) can no longer afford to buy their goods.

I've long believed, and when in my cups proclaimed, that the only really universal theme is 'irony'. I don't by that mean the pseudo-cynical attitude in the West of disbelieving everything and everyone however sincere they are, but the original meaning of the word. That, funnily enough for an irritating modern habit, is a direct descendant of the (cribbed from the Ancient Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía - I 'have' no Greek so like everyone else these days I am obliged to crib from Wikipedia, an irony in itself,- meaning dissimulation or feigned ignorance. But I don't mean that. These days, irony means, for example, a man who has staunchly proselytised about the sanctity of marriage being cuckoled by his wife; or perhaps, and this I do know, the blind prophet Teiresias being the only one who realises - sees - what is really going on.

The irony of the Western philosophy - the zeal to establish 'democracy', 'capitalism', 'growth', 'liberalism' and although it is, of course, no philosophy whatsoever - is that at the end of the day it is just a prolix justification for what in our heart of heart we all suspect is simply bad, self-interested, greedy behaviour. Or if we don't suspect as much, we still, again in our hear of hearts, feel a little queasy about.

Take 'economic growth'. It seems to be an economic truism that 'economies must grow'. I once asked my brother why. He told me that 'economies' must 'grow' because the global population is growing and that we must ensure that - well what? That everyone is taken care of? That everyone gets a slice of the cake? Well, that isn't happening, is it? It is almost impossible to collate 'figures', but we do know that an extraordinary number of people, more or less in every continent, are living extremely shitty lives. I don't have the figures to hand but an extremely large number of people do not have access to clean water and suffer because they don't. An extremely large number of people toil and sweat for no reward at all except dying next year instead of this year. An extremely large number of people have no say whatsoever in how they are 'governed' at all. But, we are told, economies 'must grow. Must they? I rather doubt it. In a sense 'economies must grow' rather as a man in debt must keep borrowing in order to pay off his debtors. And the essence of that is irony. And that is exactly what we are seeing in the 'euro crisis.

Curiously enough I don't any more want to write about 'the euro crisis'. At the end of the day the 'euro crisis', for all the misery it will bring will, in time, be just another historical event, one to be analysed and dissected by future historians and economists, but one which, in time, 'will be in the past'. But will future nations, economies, societies and communities learn from all that analysis and dissection. No they bloody won't.

It's at this point that I am obliged to bring in another aspect of irony: many reading this (of which there are not very many at all) might feel inclined to demand 'change'. 'We must change things' they will shout, 'the system must be changed, and if necessary, violently. But change to what? Do you really manage to change how we, all of us, behave? Has any revolution anywhere, in the long term, actually change anything? Well, yes they have. The French revolution brought about, after a while, universal suffrage. The October revolution - which, 'ironically, depending upon which calendar you use, took place in November - meant that a substantial number of Russians were no longer serfs, were no longer 'owned' by land owners. And is are the lives of modern-day French and Russians any better? Well, in man respects they have improved beyond recognition. But 'ironically, in many other ways they are more or less the same. Russia once had a dictatorial czar. Now it has, arguably, another dictator called Putin.

Granted he can no longer, because of changing circumstances, rule willy-nilly over the lives of Russians but, in my analysis, that is only because Russia has a thriving middle class who will keep him in power because they are doing OK, thank you very much. France is, of course, very different. Only a madman would claiim that the lives of ordinary French folk have not in many, many ways improved enormously since 1789. But what is France facing today? At the very worse an economic crisis the like of which they have not faced for many years. Granted, it hasn't yet happened, and might nor even happen. But the way things are going, the best advice this pundit can give is: keep your fingers crosses and buy gold. But I have somehow slivered a long way from my initial diatribe.

Let me give you another example of irony: here in Britain while our NHS pays for women who cannot conceive normally to get IVF treatment so they can have children, elsewhere private companies abort several hundred foetuses by the day. While modern medicine beavers away tirelessly to find ever more effective ways to prolong life, our Western society has also started debating the 'morality' of euthanasia, which can be seen - can, I don't say is - seen as an efficient way of getting rid of old folk whose continued existence could present a heavy cost to society. That might well be seen as an 'irony'.

Here's another 'irony': while half the world (I say 'half' but let's not quibble about figures) still does not have enough to eat, the other half is suffering from an obesity crisis. And throws away food because it is 'beyond the sell-by date' and might therefore pose a threat to health.

So where is this all taking me? Well, I don't know. Were I 40 years younger I might well advocate a global revolution. But as I am not, all I can say, bathically (look it up) is: try to be just a little more honest with yourselves. I'm not saying don't tell lies, just don't pretend to yourselves, whoever else you pretend to, that you are not telling lies. Unfortunately, that's exactly what most of us do. Every time EU finance ministers hold a summit conference to 'sort out the euro crisis' and come up with 'a solution', they are all telling themselves lies. They know it's crap and we know it's crap. Time to read again Hans Christian Andersen's tale of The Emporer's New Clothes.

PS The ultimate 'irony' might well be that I am completely wrong. Oh well.

The incredible story of how the euro crisis was foretold in code in the Old Testament or the runes or by aliens or something like that (I haven’t quite understood the details). But whatever – man, it’s frightening what they are doing! Horrific!

All else being equal, I am far more of a cock-up theorist than a conspiracy theorist. For one thing, you are less likely to be written off as a nutter (never very pleasant, I’m sure) and for another, most conspiracy theories are usually so off-the-wall that it would easier to believe the Moon is made of cheddar cheese than swallow what many of them claim. (For a while, and, I imagine, having to fill in the space between the ads it was carrying with something, the Mail carried three-part series which were as whacky as anything you would find anywhere: an ‘ancient Bible code’ which foretold ‘with astounding accuracy’ Frankel’s win at Royal Ascot last week, and ‘authoritative’ and ‘compelling’ accounts of underwater UFOs, that kind of thing. To be fair no one here believed a single word of any of it but they did what they were intended to do: they helped to sell papers.)

Some conspiracy theories are, admittedly, not quite as whacky, and if you want them accepted and swallowed, the secret is to keep them as plausible as possible. (I use the same principle when telling lies: stick as close to the truth as possible and only change – lie about – essential details. Oh, and never volunteer further information. The accepted wisdom is ‘be wary of those who answer unasked questions’.) For example, only yesterday morning I heard an account of


Take me to your euro how an alleged plot in the Sixties by the then communist Czechoslovak secret service to get the former Conservative Prime Minister to Prague, involve him in a homosexual honeypot, then run him as an agent was apparently dreamed up by right-wingers in Britain (who, it is believed have good contacts with our security services) to discredit Heath. Our Ted was, still is, I should imagine, widely assumed to have been gay, so there was an element of plausibility. And when you know that at one point the CIA were planning to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar, more or less anything is possible.

Today I came across another, contemporary conspiracy theory, which, if nothing else – that is whether it is true, half-true or just a load of old cack, and I’m never going to know anyhow – is entertaining enough. It involves the Americans, the Germans, the Greeks, that old roué Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his shenanigans in New York, the exposure of German and French banks to Greek sovereign debt and U.S. fears after the 2009 banking crisis that Europe had come out of it all rather too well and that the U.S. had come out of it rather less well. So when Greece went tits up in 2010, the U.S. thought it was rather good news, as a bankrupt country in Europe which had just been turfed out of the euro – as it thought was likely to happen – would prove to be a useful ally, a bridgehead into Europe. Also, being a grateful ally, it might also prove to be a willing customer for many of the military goods the U.S. likes to sell to keep its coffers full.

The trouble was that quite apart from looking silly if Greece were forced out of the euro, it seems far too many German and French banks were in it up to their necks, having previously hovered up Greek government bonds. So as far as Germany and France were concerned, that is Merkel and at the time Sarkozy, a Greek default must be stopped. The trouble was that although the Greek deficit was bad, it might not appear bad enough to persuade fellow Eurozone lackeys to dip into their pockets to bail out the Greeks. So – the conspiracy theory goes – Germany and France persuaded their friends in Greece to exaggerate the bad news so that the rest of the Eurozone would shit themselves and any resistance to stomping up the readies to bail out Greece would be minimal. (When employees in the Greek statistics office objected to the exaggeration of the deficit figure, they were apparently forced to resign.) What should be remembered is that the money handed over to the Greeks as ‘bailout’ cash might well go some way to paying the canteen staff in its parliament, but overwhelmingly it is being used to pay of those who bought up Greek bonds – the French and German banks. Seen in that light, the whole ‘bailout’ is nothing but an operation to get the banks off the hook (and, it has to be said, avoid a domestic banking crisis).

The Americans didn’t like the way things were going – according to the conspiracy theory – and were especially put out that Strauss-Kahn, at the time the head of the IMF and at the time the most likely chap to take on Sarkozy in the upcoming French presidential election was very close – so the theory goes – the Greek prime minister at the time, Papandreou. So, knowing that Strauss-Kahn was a dodgy, dodgy guy as far as the women were concerned, he was framed for attempted rape in the New York hotel. That the charge came to nothing is neither here nor there – he had to resign and was out of the picture. One up for the Yanks. Next, they got their man, or rather their woman, into the spot to replaced Strauss-Kahn: according to the conspiracy theorists Christine Lagarde is firmly sympathetic to the U.S.

So chaps, what do you think. Nutty enough for you? Not nutty enough. Swivel-eyed crap and poppycock? Dark, dark, dark? I don’t know, but whether true or not, it is highly enteraining.


I'll have two Cokes and fries to go. Do you take euros?

One for all gays, homosexuals, dykes, queers, lesbians, same-sexers, friends of Dorothy and assorted hangers-on: can I come to the wedding and can I choose the outfits? Oh, and being the kind of cynical cunt who likes attention, I give The Kinks another mention. Then there’s a short piece at the end on how easy it is to lose money if you start mixing it with bookies

One of the issues which is - apparently, although I have yet to see any evidence to prove the claim - ripping Britain apart is the subject of ‘gay marriage’. David Cameron - yes, that one, who gives the impression that he dare not let a bandwagon pass without jumping on it - has decided that our parliament must pass new legislation to allow members of the same sex to get married. It is pertinent here that we - ‘we’ being stuffy Old Blighty - already have legislation allowing couples of the same sex to enter into ‘civil partnerships’. These allow them to treat their other half as a heterosexual spouse might be treated in law and in practical terms each partner has far greater rights than they did in, for example, inheritance law and the legislation governing wills and property rights.

So far, so much to my approval. There is an objection that non ‘same-sex’ couples - usually siblings who have, for example, dedicated their life to the other - still receive unfair treatment under the law, and I have some sympathy for those thus affected. But I should also add that I suspect that a large proportion of those who cite this as an example of the new, ground-breaking civil partnership’ legislation as not being - to use a current, although rapidly ageing cliche - fit for purpose are more intent on discrediting the legislation for - ahem - homophobic reasons than from any finer, legalistic sensibility they might possess. Such objections have, however, been overtake by a far greater, in their view, ‘danger’: proposed government legislation allowing gay couples to marry.

Initially, I was rather bemused. Surely, I told myself, now that gay couples have the right to enter into a civil partnership, all their concerns about being treated as second-class and inferior have been answered, Surely, I told myself, they have been reassured that after all the appalling treatment the - almost always male - gay folk in our cultures have received in the past several millennia, things are now different? And, surely, I told myself, there is, at the end of the day, no need, in practical terms, for legislation allowing gay couples ‘to marry’? I was, honestly,  bemused. So when the Tories - the Tories, mark you, which is a telling detail - announced that they intended to introduce legislation allowing gay couples ‘to marry’, I asked myself: why exactly?

I also asked two gays I know at work. I shall name them here as I don’t feel neither would object. First, about five or six weeks ago, I buttoned-holed a chap called Andrew Pierce who is, to put it cynically and at its basest, the Daily Mail’s ‘house gay’.  (That is putting it very cynically, but the hell.)

Actually, he is a lot, lot more, a very good journalist - and my no means the first homosexual national journalist - who has very good contacts, can write well in the way journalists write well, has a good brain and knows what he is talking about. I asked him whether, now that gay couples could enter into civil partnerships, it was important to him and his other homosexual friends and acquaintances, that they might also soon be able to get married. He me told that no, it wasn’t.

A week or two later I asked another gay acquaintance at work, an artist called Phil Argent. I put the same question to him, and he told me: yes, it is. This surprised me a little (although I couldn’t tell you why it did so), so I pursued the matter and asked him why. He told me that it meant that finally homosexuals would be treated as equals. And that I could, and can, understand. It sums it up, really.

. . .
 
Those against the idea of gay marriage say that the essence of ‘a marriage’ is that is the union of two people who intend to procreate. And as two people of the same sex cannot procreate together, there can be no sense in which their union can be regarded as marriage. That, on the face of it, is a reasonable argument. But I would counter that, at the end of the day, what they put forward as the essence of marriage is cultural - I almost wrote ‘purely cultural’ - and that, as such, it is a definition which, over time, can and will change.

Most certainly many cultural norms have changed, and they have changed far faster than we might think. For example, when I went to university in 1968, it was still unusual for women openly to admit to having an active sex life. Many did, of course, but they did not admit to it openly. That has changed utterly over these past 44 years. And in terms of ‘fundamental change’ 44 years is but a bat of an eye. So objecting to the proposed legislation on ‘gay marriage’ on those grounds is, at the end of the day, a tad feeble.

There might, perhaps, be other observations which could be made - and, please note, I say ‘observations’ not ‘objections’ - but I shall not record them here until I have reflected upon how to express them without running the risk of being horribly misunderstood. And that last sentence might give you an idea of how easy it might be to be misunderstood, along the lines of ‘now, don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are black/gay/communist/Tories/Americans/Liverpool supporters/chub fuddlers but ...

PS I didn’t mention that one of my brothers is gay. In fact, of my two brothers, the brother I am by far fondest of and spend most time with. So how liberal am I , eh? I mean, ten brownie points or what? Am I cool or am I cool?

. . .

A month or two ago, I wrote about The Kinks. They happened to be my first fave band, but apart from that they weren’t particularly distinguished (apart from, in the early days, being fucking great). Other contemporary and subsequent fave bands/artist were The Beatles, Jeff Beck, Steely Dan, Prince and, most recently Dave Fiuczynski. But that is all irrelevant. I am only writing the addendum to my piece above extolling gays and why the bloody hell can’t we have more of them - a government conspiracy or what? - so that I can include a mention of The Kinks.

Why? Well, the last time I did so a netbot, or whatever they call these things, came across this blog and linked it to some bloody Kinks fansite, and the upshot was that several thousands Kinks fans followed the link and visited this blog and my stats shot up. They all might, most probably, have lingered here for rather less than a millisecond, but stats aren’t that bright, so ‘readership’, for a brief and most glorious 33 hours hit the millions. And do you know, dear reader, I never got over it.

So here, in the hope that something similar will happen, is another mention of The Kinks. And Ray Davies. And Dave Davies. And bassist Pete Quaife. And drummer Mick Avory (who, apparently, was working as a painter and decorator and part-time drummer when he auditioned for a band which was to become The Rolling Stones. He impressed them and was offered the gig. But he turned it down because he didn’t think they were going to go anywhere. At least, that’s what I heard. I like to think it’s true. But either way it makes me like the guy just a little bit more.

. . .

Writing this, I am sitting with my stepmother at her cottage just down the road from me in Cornwall. We are watching Royal Ascot - I am inclined to write ‘Royal’ Ascot, but that would merely be gratuitously unpleasant, so what the hell - and I am logged on to Labrokes the bookies, placing bets on my stepmother’s behalf. Yesterday she one £10.50 after backing on gee-gee each way, but overall she must already be £70 down over the past three days.

I haven’t been betting on the horses, but I have been placing bets on various Euro 2012 events - in what half will racist chanting break out, will the Greeks beat up Germany’s manager in 90 minutes, that kind of thing. So far, I am also down, but more to the tune of about £25. Tonight Spain take on France and I am rooting for France because I have a treble, a trixie and various other bets which will only come good if France beat Spain and Italy beat England. Yes, I know that is unpatriotic, but, chaps, business is business. Germany have already done me a favour by winning last night (although I did have a separate punt on Greece winning, but only because the odds were so good).

The big noise here at Royal Ascot is Black Caviare, shipped to Old Blighty all the way from Oz, so a couple of bob has also gone on her. But there’s another ten minutes to go before we lose all our bets, which give me time to ask one simple question: what is it with British women and hats? Do they like looking stupid? Is it a sister thing, solidarity with all other sisters? I really don’t know, but they spend thousands on some silly hat and do nothing but end up being stupid. Maybe I’m just being too German on the matter. (Note to new readers: I am half-German, which also might explain that in the Germany v Rest of the World stand-off over the eurozone, I am firmly behind Les Boches.) Incidentally, all the guys or at least all the guys in the Royal enclosure (‘Royal’ enclosure) are wearing top hats. What is noticeable is that they are all variously tall. Second question: is there in significance in that? Are we to believe that the taller your topper, the longer your cock. Or even, the taller your topper, the shorter your cock and some kind of compensation quirk comes into it? Do you know, we shall never know, though doubtlessly some Phd student as beavering away at a thesis on the matter as I write (and you read - mustn’t forget the reader).

LATER: We lost in as far as we bet far more money than we one. What with the various bets, we must have placed around £40. We won £6.71. As the Yanks say, do the math. As the Brits say, do the maths. In either language it all means that gambling is a mug’s game, though bookies the world over will sleep well tonight, and till the end of time, knowing that whatever else is in short supplies, there will be more than enough mugs to go around always, a mug writes.

A corner of the Med which might well become forever Russia. And I finally begin the saga of how I didn’t become the world’s greatest lover: meet my first, WR

Doing nothing in particular tonight except sitting in the smoking area of The Scarsdale in Kensington, drinking a pint of overpriced cider (calling is ‘cyder’ seems to bump up the cost a little in West London), smoking a cigar - I know I shouldn’t, but ... - and surfing the nest courtesy of Fullers free wi-fi access, I came across a rather odd little story. (Incidentally, a pint of very nice cider and a bag of roasted peanuts at the Taw River Inn in Sticklepath, right on the edge of Darmoor and where I often stop off for a pint and a cigar as it’s only 40 miles from home, costs £2.50 – 70p for the peanuts. A pint of cider and a bag of roasted peanuts at The Scarsdale, Pembroke Villas (the name of the street it’s on, apparently), Kensington, West London costs £5.30 – 70p for the peanuts. Guess where I prefer drinking a pint of cider.)

Cyprus it seems, a complete tiddler economically in global and even European terms but nonetheless like almost every country south of the Rhine in the euro area beset by cashflow problems, has come up with a novel source of readies to pay its bills. Put aside for a moment the sheer lunacy of borrowing even more money to pay off your debts - and, yes, I know national economics are apparently far too sophisticated for saps like me to understand and nations have been doing it forever - and put aside for a moment, too, the debilitating link between EU Cyprus, i.e. Greek Cyprus whose economy is heavily linked to that of Greece so if Greece is in the shit, so is EU Cyprus (the north of the island is not in the EU, for which, I’m sure they are now extremely grateful after years of regretting the fact), the Cyprus government’s solution is rather odd.

Actually, once you get into the detail and the main protagonists involved it becomes rather obvious. Cyprus, it seems, has decided not to tap the EU and its various salvation mechanisms for the necessary to ensure it’s street cleaners, teachers, nurses and hangers-on are paid, but has decided to accept a loan from Russia. In fact, it has decided to accept a second loan from Russia - it is already in hock to Moscow for a couple of billion. Take a look at this story which appeared today in the New York Times for fuller details.

What is pertinent about this latest development (and it’s all in the news report, so you might want to read that first before carrying on ploughing through my two ha’porth worth) is that Cyprus’s president Demetris Christofias studied in Moscow and - now here’s a surprise - has been pushing Moscow’s case ever since. Would it be too, too cynical of me to imagine that he might well have been nobbled by the KGB or FSB or whatever they call themselves now and has become an extremely useful so-called agent of influence? No, do you know, I don’t think it would at all be too cynical. I mean if you want an ‘agent of influence’ in a country, having him or her as that country’s head of state would be pretty good going.

Christofias assures sceptics that the loans - Cyprus is already in Russia’s pocket to the tune of €2.5 billion ($3.1 billion at the current exchange rate) and needs at least another €1.8 billion euros ($2.3 billion) by the end of June to stay out of the shit - have ‘no strings attached’. What, a country lends another country vast sums of money out of the pure goodness of its heart? Pull the other one. Not even the U.S. does that. And if there really are ‘no strings attached’ whoever authorised the loans in Moscow must get the boot asap. I could carry on, but if you are interested, read the story. All I would be doing here is simply repeating what is written in the New York Times.

What really did amuse me was the claim that Russians feel a natural kinship the Cypriots because they both ‘belong to Orthodox religions’. I’m still trying to get my head around the logic of that one.

. . .

It’s always good to start at the beginning, so I shall start with WR (her initials - remember the last remnant of decency in me has rules that lovers, girlfriends and what not will not be directly identified).

I met WR when I had just turned 19 and when she was about 18. At 19, I was had still to lose my cherry and it was a matter of great importance to me then that I should do so sooner rather than later. To this day I remember with shame a nice girl called Liz who was a student at the TC next to Dundee University (TC = teacher training college) who was sweet on me and with whom I tried hard one night long to lose my cherry. When I didn’t, I lost interest in her, and to this day I remember sitting opposite her in the Queens Hotel in the Perth Road and ‘jacking her in’ and seeing her eyes begin to water. It was no great love affair by any means. She was merely hurt, very hurt at being used and at how shallow men - boys, really - can be.

I met WR at her flat through her friendship with a guy called Angus who was one of the students I initially hooked up with when I went to Dundee. She and her flatmate were employed by Thomson’s on one of its teen magazines. At some point a few days or perhaps weeks later, Angus made me aware that WR was sweet on me. I wasn’t sweet on her, but I thought to myself that, well ...

Christmas intervened, and by the beginning of the new term she had move back to Edinburgh to look after an elderly great-aunt who live in Morningside. I can’t remember just how we got in touch, but on the Saturday that Scotland played Ireland at Murrayfield in what was then (I think) called the Five Nations, I hitched down to Edinburgh to see her. She took me off to the match and then we returned to her great-aunt’s flat. We had another drink, she, guessing as much from my innocent fumbling asked me directly whether I was still a virgin, I admitted that, yes, I was, she took me to bed and nature took its course.

But there is one small detail which I shall mention here but which I have never mentioned to anyone else. And I can’t think how to put it overly delicately, so I shall be straighforward. Perhaps it was nervousness or perhaps there was another reason but that first time I didn’t come. And do you know, dear reader, the following day I wondered and wondered and wondered, as callow, shallow 19-year-olds do, whether I was technically still ‘a virgin’. I can’t say I really know now, but I can say that it doesn’t bother me any more.

The term carried on, and the next, with me spending more and more time visiting her at her great-aunt’s flat in Morningside, hitching down to Edinburgh from Dundee at about Friday lunchtime and not returning to Dundee until Monday night and, I think, quite often Tuesday morning. She was good company, but I wasn’t ‘in love’ with her. I was just grateful to have a girlfriend with whom I had regular sex. This was in the days when having ‘safe sex’ meant using a condom to prevent pregnancy rather than using a condom to avoid catching or passing on the HIV virus, but I can’t remember having a lot of safe sex. All I remember was that it was regular, every weekend.

I always stayed the night at her great-aunt’s flat which meant that every morning we went through a ridiculous charade of me creeping out of the flat as quietly as possible, then, as soon as the door had shut, ringing the bells and being welcomed in officially. But I’m sure - no, I’m no utterly sure her great-aunt knew what was going on - because she wasn’t the ga-ga old crone everyone pretended she was. I once walked into the living room unexpectedly and far from moving with difficulty, she moved like greased lightening from one end of the room to the other to sink into her armchair and become once again the very elderly invalid she officially was.

She eventually died, and WR moved to London, although I can’t remember why. I stayed on Dundee all the summer holiday because I had failed very single one of my five end-of-first-year exams and was due for re-sits in the September. My attendance at lecutures and tutorials had dwindled to absolutely nothing - I am not exaggerating - and what motivated me to make sure I passed enough re-sits to get into my second year - and I did spend a lot of time with my books - was making damn bloody sure that grant cheque would arrive at the beginning of the winter term. In the event I passed four out of my five re-sits - methodology, economics, political science and history, and I only failed psychology (the university ran a four-year honours course, and the first year was by way of a foundation course in ‘social sciences’.

WR were keeping in touch by letter, but I finally decided to end it at some point, although I remember few of the details except that the letter I wrote to her telling her was simply sent back to me torn into small pieces. We did, however, meet up again, at the end of my fourth year. Finals were finished and with a college acquaintance, a druggie and dealer called Ian Hunter (I was not part of the druggie set because although I enjoyed the cannabis, chemist shop speed and acid as much as the next fool, I found the druggie set ineffably, unbelievably dull) I went to Edinburgh as the end of term was still several weeks off and we were footloose to do as we pleased. On a whim I tracked WR down. By now she had retrained as a nurse and agreed to put us up for the night. And the following morning with Ian Hunter out of the flat to attend to whatever he had to attend to, she took me to her bed again. And I remember her telling me - I proudly remember her telling me - that four years on I was a better screw than I had been the first time we hooked up.

I know that she later moved to Canada and later in life had developed breast cancer, and I did what I now feel was a silly thing about eight or nine years ago. Her surname was quite distinct and I had tracked down her sister and she had given me WR’s number. I rang her and we spoke for a few minutes. I can’t at all say whether or not she was pleased to hear from me. She gave me her email address, but when I emailed her, she didn’t reply. So I left it at that. WR was my first, though pretty certain I was not her first.

Here's an irony: I know even less than you probably do

And the agonising goes on. And on. And on. We're in the shit, Europe is in the shit, the US is in the shit and, with a bit of bad luck, the rest of the world which relies on us buying their crap, their not so crap and their most certainly not crap goods, will also be in the shit if we stalwarts in the Western World (capital Ws to be discarded, perhaps, when our economies cut us down to size) can no longer afford to buy our goods.

I've long believed, and when in my cups proclaimed, that the only really universal theme is 'irony'. I don't by that mean the pseudo-cynical attitude in the West of disbelieving everything and everyone however sincere they are, but the original meaning of the word. That, funnily enough for an irritating modern habit, is a direct descendant of the (cribbed from the Ancient Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía - I 'have' no Greek so like everyone else these days I am obliged to crib from Wikipedia, an irony in itself,- meaning dissimulation or feigned ignorance. But I don't mean that. These days, irony means, for example, a man who has staunchly proselytised about the sanctity of marriage being cuckolded by his wife; or perhaps, and this I do know, the blind prophet Teiresias being the only one who realises - sees - what is really going on.

The irony of the Western philosophy - the zeal to establish 'democracy', 'capitalism', 'growth', 'liberalism' and although it is, of course, no philosophy whatsoever - is that at the end of the day it is just a prolix justification for what in our heart of heart we all suspect is simply bad, self-interested, greedy behaviour. Or if we don't suspect as much, we still, again in our hear of hearts, feel a little queasy about.
Take 'economic growth'. It seems to be an economic truism that 'economies must grow'. I once asked my brother why. He told me that 'economies' must 'grow' because the global population is growing and that we must ensure that - well what? That everyone is taken care of? That everyone gets a slice of the cake? Well, that isn't happening, is it? It is almost impossible to collate 'figures', but we do know that an extraordinary number of people, more or less in every continent, are living extremely shitty lives. I don't have the figures to hand but an extremely large number of people do not have access to clean water and suffer because they don't. An extremely large number of people toil and sweat for no reward at all except dying next year instead of this year. An extremely large number of people have no say whatsoever in how they are 'governed' at all. But, we are told, economies 'must grow. Must they? I rather doubt it. In a sense 'economies must grow' rather as a man in debt must keep borrowing in order to pay off his debtors. And the essence of that is irony. And that is exactly what we are seeing in the 'euro crisis.

Curiously enough I don't any more want to write about 'the euro crisis'. At the end of the day the 'euro crisis', for all the misery it will bring will, in time, be just another historical event, one to be analysed and dissected by future historians and economists, but one which, in time, 'will be in the past'. But will future nations, economies, societies and communities learn from all that analysis and dissection. No they bloody won't.
It's at this point that I am obliged to bring in another aspect of irony: many reading this (of which there are not very many at all) might feel inclined to demand 'change'. 'We must change things' they will shout, 'the system must be changed, and if necessary, violently. But change to what? Do you really manage to change how we, all of us, behave? Has any revolution anywhere, in the long term, actually change anything? Well, yes they have. The French revolution brought about, after a while, universal suffrage. The October revolution - which, 'ironically, depending upon which calendar you use, took place in November - meant that a substantial number of Russians were no longer serfs, were no longer 'owned' by land owners. And is are the lives of modern-day French and Russians any better? Well, in man respects they have improved beyond recognition.

But 'ironically, in many other ways they are more or less the same. Russia once had a dictatorial czar.
Now it has, arguably, another dictator called Putin. Granted he can no longer, because of changing circumstances, rule willy-nilly over the lives of Russians but, in my analysis, that is only because Russia has a thriving middle class who will keep him in power because they are doing OK, thank you very much. France is, of course, very different. Only a madman would claim that the lives of ordinary French folk have not in many, many ways improved enormously since 1789. But what is France facing today? At the very worse an economic crisis the like of which they have not faced for many years. Granted, it hasn't yet happened, and might nor even happen. But the way things are going, the best advice this pundit can give is: keep your fingers crosses and buy gold. But I have somehow slivered a long way from my initial diatribe.

Let me give you another example of irony: here in Britain while our NHS pays for women who cannot conceive normally to get IVF treatment so they can have children, elsewhere private companies abort several hundred foetuses by the day. While modern medicine beavers away tirelessly to find ever more effective ways to prolong life, our Western society has also started debating the 'morality' of euthanasia, which can be seen - can, I don't say is - seen as an efficient way of getting rid of old folk whose continued existence could present a heavy cost to society. That might well be seen as an 'irony'.
Here's another 'irony': while half the world (I say 'half' but let's not quibble about figures) still does not have enough to eat, the other half is suffering from an obesity crisis. And throws away food because it is 'beyond the sell-by date' and might therefore pose a threat to health.

So where is this all taking me? Well, I don't know. Were I 40 years younger I might well advocate a global revolution. But as I am not, all I can say, bathically (look it up, although I'm not too sure it exists yet) is: try to be just a little more honest with yourselves. I'm not saying don't tell lies, just don't pretend to yourselves, whoever else you pretend to, that you are not telling lies. Unfortunately, that's exactly what most of us do. Every time EU finance ministers hold a summit conference to 'sort out the euro crisis' and come up with 'a solution', they are all telling themselves lies. They know it's crap and we know it's crap. Time to read again Hans Christian Andersen's tale of The Emperor's New Clothes.

PS The ultimate 'irony' might well be that I am completely wrong. Oh well.

Cigars, girlfriends, starving Greeks, hacks and whatever else floats our boat

Just how often can you write that 'things are going from bad to worse' without losing bags of credibility or, worse, your audience? I've just watched a BBC 2 Newsnight piece about the ever-worsening conditions - for some - in Greece, and it is really quite horrific. Given that hacks, and even the BBC hacks are hacks, go out to get the story newsdesk wants - OK, BBC hacks might have just a tad more integrity than the rest of us, but not much - and given that it is always wise to take what the media purveys with a bag of salt - usually - what was reported from an EU member state was simply bloody awful. Soup kitchens and, apparently, many people searching through rubbish after dark for food - after dark because they are so bloody ashamed of what they have been reduced to doing.

But I'm obliged to give the report credence and the only conclusion that can be reached is that the general election in Greece next Sunday (June 17) will really be a crucial moment for the EU. It seems the coalition of left-wing parties is doing rather well and if they do come out tops and get the extra 50 seats in parliament the winner always gets, it will form the next government. After which the shit will hit the fan. I wonder: could it really be feasible that the military will intervene as I suggested recently to form a spurious 'government of national unity'? Who knows.

That the left-wingers out for power unashamedly admit to wanting to take Greece in a Marxist direction, I cannot imagine that those with so much to lose will play the democratic card and resign themselves to the situation. Also on Sunday are parliamentary elections in France. The country already has a left-wing president, and if he were to gain control of parliament and institute all the measures he says he intends putting into practice, the euro ball game will change utterly.

What is so utterly bizarre about the whole euro crisis is that, in my view at least, the horse has long ago bolted. Here in Britain the Chancellor (a lovely chap called George Osborne who, according to one of the feature executives on whose conversations I regularly eavesdrop, is a far nicer guy than David Cameron - someting of a vindictive shit according to my eavesdrop victim who met both many times in a former incarnation and, crucially, long before either came within a sniff of power) has announced what were not actually called emergency measures to protect Britain from the worst of the fallout of a euro collapse. It was something to do with lending the banks more money on the strict understanding that they would lend it further. Again, who knows.

. . .

But just how often dare I mention the euro? Well, perhaps not a lot more. So instead I shall write about cigars. I have long been a cigar smoker and have carried on the habit, seeking out nicer cigars all the time (courtesy of the cheaper prices charged for them abroad and which prices I avail myself of when returning to Old Blighty to keep up my stock). The question I aske myself, before lighting one up is this: should a heart attack victim - mine was on May 2, 2006, a Tuesday - really risk smoking cigars? I tell myself, in that way we all have of burying our heads in the sand, that 'as I don't inhale the smoke, but simply savour it' I am not doing my pulmonary system any damage. Well, as they say, go tell that to the marines.

Yet, cigars are a true pleasure in a way cigarettes never were. I don't crave them as a cigarette smoker craves a cigarette, but I must be honest and say that argument doesn't even convince me. Then I tell myself that Churchill was a life-long cigar smoke and lived until he was, I believe, 167. OK, he died gaga, but I dont' think that can be put down to smoking cigars. My habit - there, I've said it - has even led me to buy a humidor in which to keep the latest batch, bought in the 'duty-free' shop at Valencia airport last May. These most recent are Jose L Piedra Cuban cigars, of which I bought 25 for about 37 euros. I googled them and discovered the same ciagrs, 25 of them, would set me back about £150 here in Britain. But would that undoubted economy measure really stand me in good stead when, as might well, happen, a clot forms in my blood which eventually gums up a crucial artery and brings my heart to a standstill? No, your honour, it won't.

I started cigars in a small way smoking piddly little Henry Winterman cigarillos. But they were nothing but brown ciargettes and I soon progressed to Henry Winterman half coronas. Then, in the mid-Eighties, my sister, who live in Germany, bought me a box of Fehlfarben: whole coronas which were cheaper because they each had some kind of cosmetic blemish. Otherwise they were as good as those without a blemish. And that really was that. Oh, well

. . . .

Several years ago, this blog featured all the cars I had bought. I've since bought a few more, but that list gave me the idea of listing all my girlfriends. Why? I really don't know, and I was rather affected by the thought that listing them might be just a little bit tacky. But what the hell. Who can't be tacky once in a while. So, dear reader, if you are intersted read on in coming entries. I shall not be identifying them - I shan't actually be naming them - but I shall give their initials. Oh, the glory of being tacky once you have reached and passed the age of 60. (I'm 63 in November.) My first was WR. My second, with whom I 'fell in love' was SH. Then came several more. To be continued.

Dave Fiuczynski: a fan writes

Years ago - I suppose I should now write many years ago - a curious device arrived called the ‘MP3 player’. I’m not exactly a technical bozo, and it took me a while to get my head around it, and I was not especially fast off the mark in getting one. This was especially so because the iPod had then been recently launched, the iPod was - as, it seems, are all Apple products - pretty expensive, so non-iPod MP3 players, I reasoned would also be pretty expensive.

Then one day (while on holiday in Devon for a travel piece I was going to do for the Mail, which can be found here. UPDATE: No, you can't any more. The bastards seem to have wiped it from their system. But you can read a travel piece about a Tuscan cookery course here and a travel piece about a nostalgic trip to Berlin here.) I came across someone using one and, not knowing too much about them, began to question him. What first of all surprised me was how cheap the model he had bought was. It was, admittedly, not half as useful, user-friendly or ‘cool’ as the iPod, but it did exactly what the iPod did at something like a tenth of the price. I then began to investigate the things, on many visits to my local branch in Kensington of PC World, and I eventually bought one. I think it was a 128mb model and I think I paid something like £49 for it, which might help you work out how many years ago this was: not many in human years but several lifetimes in technological years. You can probably no longer get an MP3 player that small, and as a 2/4gb USB memory stick will not set you back more than £6/7, that 128mb model I bought would be yours for about 94p.

With my new MP3 player came the usual gubbins of guarantee and a small user manual, but with it also came an offer to download, I think, 20 tracks for nothing. All you had to do was register on a website. I did and downloaded a collection of jazz tracks by a variety of different musicians. I can no longer remember much about the tracks or most of the musicians, except that the tracks were pretty conventional and the musicians were more or less all well-known names. But one musician stood out for me because he was a guitarist and I am a guitarist manque (very manque. I could be better if I practised - anyone can be better if they practise - but I don’t, and as I just noodle around on guitar because I like noodling around on guitar, I don’t care). The guitarist was called David Fiuczysnki and he struck me as a tasty guitarist (although as all guitarists the world over are better than me, they almost all strike me as tasty guitarists).

This is where it all gets a little, or rather very, hazy. I decided to check out David Fiuczynski to see what else he had done and whether he had made records of his own. Indeed he had and I bought one, although as I say everything is a little hazy and I can’t remember why I bought that particular one. It is called Amandala, and it was a revelation, music unlike any I had heard before. More to the point it pressed every musical button in me I want to have pressed and then some. It was exactly - exactly - the kind of guitar and music I would like to play if I had the gumption to practise a lot more and apply myself and was able to play to that standard. And not only was the guitar playing great, so were the drums and bass.

After buying Amandala (not to be confused with Miles Davis’s Amandla, which is also great but very different), I then bought Lunar Crush (with John Medeski), then Kif and most recently Jazz Punk.

Some reading this will be familiar with Fiuczynski’s guitar playing and music, many more will not, but to try to describe it to those who are not is, I’m afraid, pretty much impossible. Fiuczynski (who was born in the US, but who moved to Germany with is parents when he was eight and didn’t return to live in the US until he was 19) has described himself as a ‘jazz musician who doesn’t want to play just jazz’.

He most certainly can play ‘conventional’ jazz guitar, but when you get to hear his own music, you’ll understand what he means. It is accessible to those coming to it from jazz, but it would be equally accessible to those coming to if from rock and heavy metal. But it would be utterly misleading to try to categorise it as something - as crass as - rock/jazz fusion or even jazz/rock fusion. It is almost a genre of its own. It is organic, it is itself and for me ‘fusion’ implies some kind of melding of two, rather like a mule being half-horse, half-donkey.

I am writing about Fiuczynski because I have just recommended to a young colleague who was asking for ideas of what to give her dad for Fathers’ Day that she might like to give him one of Fiuczynski’s CDs. She is 23 and her father is 49 and, she says, ‘likes rock’, but he might now be of an age to expand a little, if he hasn’t already done so. (These days I find rock, however pleasant, just too two-dimensional, if you get me.) I lent her my iPod to listen to some, and she agreed it might well be the kind of music he would like.

Then, driving home from London last night (and stopping off at The Brewers Arms in South Petherton to watch the second half of the Holland v Germany match, and weren’t Holland a peculiar kind of unimaginative shite?), I spent the best part of two hours listening to Fiuczynski. And what with Syria, the euro, the euro and the Middle East and all that crap, I decided to blog on something entirely different: just how great David Fiuczynski’s music is and how much I like it and how glad I am that I came across it. Apparently, according to Wikepedia, he is a ‘full-time professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston’ and since 2011 ‘Guggenheim Fellow’, but please, please, please don’t let that put you off.

The way I described it to Libby is ‘if you don’t like it, you’ll hate it. And if you like it, you’ll love it’. So get a taster and see what you feel.

UPDATE: February 26, 2019

PS If by chance you visit this entry again, here is a taster of Dave Fiuczynski


Amandla/Dave Fiuczynski