Gigging again.

Three years ago we were all locked down, confined to our homes while our leaders played soggy biscuit…  Let’s not go in that direction today.  I quite liked it to be honest; not having to run the rat race was nice and I enjoyed watching spring take over the countryside.  All that time didn’t drive me mad, I think I made it count and anyway readers are never bored.  But one of the downsides of the locked down world was the complete stop on live music, obviously many people weren’t able to work but selfishly I love going to gigs and over the last couple of years I’ve fallen out of the habit.  Happily this has been put right over the last couple of weeks.

In mid March the usual suspects headed to London to see Fucked Up play a venue in Kings Cross called Lafayette.  Thanks mainly to altered perception our short cut turned into a long cut and we got in a little late but saw most of a really good show.  The highlight was the final song, an awesome extended, psychedelic version of ‘Dose your Dreams’, that went on and on but still I didn’t want it to end.  This was as good as live music gets!  How to describe Fucked Up?  Hardcore punk?  A wall of noise?  But once you’ve got through the barriers and found your way in there is skill and intelligence and a really special band.

Two weeks later I returned to the smoke with the Princess and my daughter, after  a sit down Chinese we spent a couple of chilled hours wandering around Camden market before making our way down the road to the Roundhouse where we be seeing my favourite current band, Eels.

The gig was great, a totally different set to the last tour, loads of new songs which unlike many people I always love to hear but also with some leftfield oldies that blew me away.  An obscure album track from long ago sounds magical when you’re hearing it played live for the first time.  There are always a couple of quirky cover versions thrown in too.  To be honest compared to other performances I’ve seen the band were a bit rusty but as it was just their second gig in four years I suppose that can be excused and anyway if live music was perfect it wouldn’t be so much fun.  The encores filled in any gaps, ‘Earth to Dora’ and ‘Wonderful Glorious’ and we three left grinning and buzzing.

So much so we all travelled to Norwich a couple of weeks later and did it again.  This time the band was tight, the sound fantastic and the gig was excellent.  I was surprised by a couple of changes to the set including another oldie I would never have seen coming.  Highlight for me was Eels oldest song, ‘Novocaine for the Soul’ and when that first gorgeous guitar chord wrapped me up in a wave of wonderful sound…

Eels and Fucked up are bands that are unlikely to find their way into mainstream consciousness but they both make great music released on traditional formats as well as streaming.  You can find them in HMV if you look hard enough.  When the world isn’t shut down these are two (amongst many) bands that tour the world playing small to medium sized venues that are mostly full.  I sometimes feel I’m the only person in the world who gets emotional at these times but when I look around the audience in these places I see people of all walks that are just as euphoric as I am. 

Beware the Franks

Fucking Hancock.  The talentless cunt is still clinging onto notoriety though he’s currently on the end of a well deserved battering as his private messages have been made public.  We are being drip fed the stories which are really just confirming what many of us already knew/suspected.  Fucking Halfcock, like his former boss has absolutely no self awareness or at least no awareness of what a prick he is.  We all know people like him, many are actually decent people who achieve things in life far beyond what could be reasonably expected possible because they have no concept of how fucking ridiculous they are.  If you were around in the seventies, think Frank Spencer…

The journalist with the scoop is getting a kicking too.  Isobel Oakeshott was ghost writing Halfcock’s Covid memoirs (as if cashing in on the deaths of thousands isn’t bad enough…) when she had a crisis of conscious and decided the British public deserved to know etc.  So she betrayed Halfcock and you could almost be forgiven for feeling sorry for the annoying little wanker until you find out this is the third time Oakeshott has betrayed someone in these circumstances.  Why did he trust her?  Because he’s Frank fucking Spencer.  But the unlovable Isobel Oakeshott, what a dishonest, nasty, self centred, loathsome parasitic cunt, whatever I may think of her victims.

 

I’ve just finished reading “The Long Knives”, the latest novel by Irvine Welsh which is a long way from being this author’s best work but is still an entertaining read and packed full of wicked insights into twenty first century Britain.

In the week that it was rumoured that the former PM and professional liar De Pfeffel had proposed his father receive a knighthood;

“An inbred mutant class who’ve shafted us for generations, and we still have enough forelock tuggers grateful to them for doing it…”

At a time when Facebook morons are demanding Gary Lineker be sacked for comparing Tory refugee policies to those of the Nazis;

“…the masses were beaten down, stupefied and frightened by the pace of change.  Thus, driven to servile drooling by the tabloid-led power-and-status culture of reality TV, they tolerated or even worshipped, the abuses of the elites.  They had the rage of victims, but they turned this on each other or any group they perceived as being better treated than them.  And this perception was almost wholly controlled by the ruling establishment through their media.”

Returning to Frank Halfcock in his former role as Health Secretary and what he really did during the pandemic;

“The British public remains blithely unconcerned that the Tories shamelessly pilfer their tax pounds.  Indeed Rupert Murdoch and the BBC have done such a comprehensive job over the years that this is accepted with a resigned shrug…”

You might not believe this but there are still people walking among us who still trust the government, not all of them are called Frank.

Spoke too soon

I spoke too bloody soon.  Just when I start to believe the England team is invincible the wheels come off.  It had to happen, we knew that really.  Even the team was telling us to expect the odd defeat along the way as they try to change test cricket forever.  So why am I so bloody angry?

Because…  Because it shouldn’t have happened.  We were the better team, we’d set the match up and the only sensible decision was to bat on and keep the Kiwis in the field, take defeat out of the equation.  Enforcing the follow on was the quirky, funky thing to do, it was the flash thing to do, the arrogant thing.  If this match had taken place this coming summer with Australian opponents would England have declared?  I think definitely not.  England let the Kiwis back in the game for what?  For the sake of the game?  Bollocks.  This devalues test cricket and in some regions and the recent past this decision would have been scrutinised for dark reasons.  Fair play to New Zealand for making the most of the opportunity but make no mistake, England dominated this series and where by far the better team.  A drawn series flatters the home side, England gave it to them.

A week ago there were no questions but now I’m wondering where did Ollie Robinson go in this match?  Is Crawley looking over his shoulder yet?  With Bairstow set to return soon who will make way?  I hope it isn’t Foakes!

Red ball rampage

England won another test match making it ten out of the last eleven and spanking a very good home team, this highlighted by the stat it’s our first win in New Zealand since the tour when Anderson and Broad first bowled in tandem fifteen years ago.  It’s all going so well there’s very little to write, the team picks itself and everyone is contributing at some stage.  Or to put it another way, they’re all doing their jobs.  It seemed bizarre that England had virtually no practice but could still come out and impose themselves on decent opposition but there was no point when I could imagine anything other than an England win.  Was this because I was asleep for most of the play or am I starting to believe?  A year some people were talking about a ‘red ball reset’ now we are enjoying a red ball rampage, by this time next year test cricket could be changed forever.

McCarthy’s bar by Pete McCarthy.

Pete McCarthy is an Englishman with Irish heritage and family in Ireland’s wild west.  Here he takes a Bryson style tour of west Ireland trying to make sense of himself, is he English or Irish?  The book was written in 1999 and describes a country I knew well at that time and I loved that I could recognise familiar characters and scenes.  The names and towns may have been different but I’ve experienced almost identical scenarios.  One of McCarthy’s rules of travel is to never pass a pub that bears his name (and very many with other names) of which there are very many and his liking for a pint is the start of many amusing stories.  The Irish pub experience and the unlikely course these evenings can take is something else I’ve enjoyed many times.

The late nineties were a boom time for Irish tourism and McCarthy laments the fake Oirishness creeping into and spoiling the towns he knew in childhood.  In trying to give tourists an Irish experience the country is in danger of losing its identity.   Certainly by the end of the twentieth century Ireland as he knew it seems to be in the process of changing forever.  This would be the only Ireland I’ve ever known, did I experience the real Ireland?  Yes I believe I did.  But how much more has it changed in the two decades since I last visited?  Maybe I should find out some time or will I not like what I find?  Either way I liked this book.

The Ginger Prince

Usually this kind of shit passes me by but it’s been hard to ignore in these slow news weeks.  The younger royals always seemed fairly human and this one in particular actually behaved like a normal teenager which was encouraging.  But since he got married I think the bloke’s behaved like a prize bellend.  It would be easy to blame the actress but whatever the truth this feud is not going to quietly go away, it’s going to keep bubbling up at intervals because it’s easy money for the former lizards.  They’ve complained about the press in the past and yes our printed media is a fucking disgrace but it is hard to be sympathetic when you see them now using the media for their own gain.  This might well end badly.

I should be laughing at the discord in the world’s most famous dysfunctional family but for some reason I find myself getting pissed off at the exiles.  This is the post truth era for sure and something about this farce stinks of bullshit, I just don’t believe them, I think they’re telling lies.  I have no wish to defend the Windsor’s but Ginge and the thespian have lost the plot.

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

Described as one of the great novels of the twentieth century but I’d never heard of it.  A love story I suppose, orbiting around Robin whose point of view we don’t actually get.  Her story is told by the man and two women that are in love with her, all of whom are tortured by Robin’s indifference.  Their confidant is the doctor who kind of narrates the book in a barely decipherable way, which I found frustrating and irritating.  Brilliant writing or the emperor’s new suit? 

I suppose this book would have been shocking in its day and there is the germ of an interesting story there but I must be a philistine because I think it is over rated bollocks.

Nothing else matters

Another year done, gone before you know it, where did it go and what the fuck happened? 

2022 was a great year for distraction, while we were looking in horror in one direction, all kinds of shady shit was going on in the shadows.  In Britain this resulted in a lot of headlines concerning royalty.  The Ginger Prince and his ride were always grumbling about something, his dodgy uncle made bad news go away using a technique pioneered by Michael Jackson so the Jubilee came in the nick of time but left poor old Queenie feeling knackered.

The biggest news of the year was obviously the death of QE2, a graceful figurehead of a failing, out dated institution that sits atop a crumbling society.  This was an extremely difficult time for a passive Republican who literally didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  In general the country mourned respectfully but the great British public still found time for outrage and argument.  Highlights included a Scottish chip shop being trashed after its owner appeared on social media celebrating Queenies demise (C’mon, that was beyond stupid).  Ex-serviceman proudly proclaimed “she was the best boss I ever had…” (You can tell yourself that but really you know it isn’t true.)  In London pilgrims undertook a ten mile hike to show their devotion but this was beset with claims of cheating and queue jumping.  Now we have a King with big ears and a pointed nose who looks like he should be pulling pints in a decrepit country pub.

Early in the year it all kicked off in Eastern Europe when a corrupt, fascist state was invaded by its larger neighbour, the prize as ever, is oil.  One CEO of an energy company was quoted saying “Just look over there, them bloody Russians!  Now bend over and brace yourself”.  Western governments were delighted as they were able to re-elect Putin as public enemy number one and the situation in Ukraine meant there was a scapegoat for all the worlds’ ills.  Basically leading politicians were given a free pass to do whatever the fuck they liked for the whole year but in a snowball of growing ineptitude they still managed to fuck it all up.  They tried to sway the stupid with “look at those bloody foreigners sneaking across the channel…” but this didn’t work for long.  Unfortunately the capitalists didn’t miss an open goal and cynically launched the cost of living into orbit while plunging the price of lives ever lower.

Somehow that cunt Johnson still couldn’t cling on to power, people could forgive 150k dead but when you throw a party and don’t invite them it puts their noses out of joint.  In times of crisis the Tory party always reverts to “every man for himself, throw the women and children under the bus” and to see our once proud leader being stabbed in the back, bravely cling to leadership then finally succumb brought tears of joy to many. 

With that cunt Johnson side lined politicians went on holiday for a few months while geriatrics and dribbling morons elected a new PM.  After weeks of discussions and working lunches where they nibbled at the food collected in their bibs, the Tory party elected Thick Lizzy who just had time to visit the Queen (whose health took a rapid and fatal turn for the worse) before unwittingly committing political suicide and vanishing from the face of the earth never to be seen again. The continued Tory policy of “chuck the captain overboard and the ship might just survive” did not go unnoticed.  The more cynical wondered if Thick Lizzy’s one job was to make the cunt Johnson look not quite so bad.  If this was the case then the jury is still out.

Now along with a new monarch we have to get used to another PM who since taking office has been hiding behind the sofa which is cramped and uncomfortable because that prick Starmer was already entrenched. Sometime soon, possibly next year, probably the one after, we get to choose between that pair of wankers.  There really is no hope… 

But away from all the grown up stuff the world of sport provided lots of excitement this year.  Heavyweight boxing got very interesting again, Fury and Usyk must fight then all questions should get answered.  In the national religion the England men’s football team played well and were damn unlucky.  The England women’s team who don’t earn a fraction were the real football superstars this year and honestly watching them win brought a lump to my throat.  They were class on the field and class off it, I find it much easier to relate to footballers who aren’t living a life of extreme privilege.  But the best footballer that ever played the game, bar none, died this year.

And Cricket, what the fuck did we just experience?  For the first half of the year England were a useless shower of shit, hammered by Australia and embarrassed by West Indies.  The failings were obvious to an armchair fanatic half a world away, how were things allowed to get so chaotic?  Let’s be kind and attribute it to Covid fall out.  Then the second half of the year we were unbelievably brilliant, winning nine out of ten with the whole team chipping in.  My brain is still trying to process what has happened since the start of the last English summer and there has been a lot written about the coach and the repugnant ‘bazball’ term but two things are clear to me.  The captain is brilliant and a once in a generation cricketer, the selectors – whoever they are – are picking the right teams.  Behind the scenes nobody is talking about Rob Key who has made some excellent decisions this year and should be feeling very happy indeed.  Oh yeah we won the T20 world cup too which makes England undisputed kings of white ball cricket, if you like that sort of thing.

I didn’t get to very much live music at all this year, I’m getting lazy.  But the Viagra Boys were excellent in London and Jools Holland in Norwich which was OK and I got to see the brilliant Ruby Turner sing once again.  The lady below won the Mercury prize this year, ‘…Introvert’ is a brilliant album and I’d like to see her perform in the near future.

In the real world where the majority of us live are we better or worse off than a year ago?  Obviously there’s a scary war, the price of every fucking thing has been hiked and we’re still in the midst of a global pandemic.  At source the real reason for this is the people who really rule the world are bleeding us all down to the bone and when the shit truly hits the fan most will already be dead and the survivors will hop on a rocket with Elon.

There must be some positives?  Well now that embarrassing cunt Johnson has gone the two party leaders whose names I can remember are both easy to ignore.  It makes a nice change to have news that is free from a PM behaving like an embarrassing bell end.  I know these people are puppets and it’s all meaningless so hopefully I might be able to abstain from all politics and not be dragged into the divide and conquer charade.  Ah fuck off, fuck it and fuck them. 

It’s all bollocks and its way beyond my pay grade anyway, what the fuck can you do except try to find humour in it all.  Spend time with your favourite people doing the things that you love, nothing else matters.  Happy New Year.

The best team wins

England’s footballers were unlucky.  They played well but didn’t get the result they deserved.  So it’s not fucking coming home, although whoever eventually wins the trophy could be thought of having rescued it from a corrupt tournament held in a corrupt country.

One of the very many great things about Test cricket is the team which plays best invariably wins and if this doesn’t happen then a draw is the worst result they can reasonably expect.  And here we are, England in Pakistan two up with one to go having played the best cricket and the bravest.  Stokes’ captaincy with its all-out aggressive approach has been met with increasingly tougher examinations and each one has been passed.  No one could or would have predicted that at the start of the last English summer.  I keep thinking ‘it can’t keep happening…’ but it does, the team keeps performing and improving and winning!  Surely this goes against everything we know (and love?) about Test cricket; all-out attack with both bat and ball shouldn’t work but at the moment it is.

England are getting a lot right at the moment, team selection has been flexible and sensible which was not the case in the last months of Silverwood’s leadership.  The players selected are doing the job required.  Ben Stokes is a very, very good captain (making it apparent his predecessor was barely average on a good day) who will only get better.

England are going to keep playing this way and all the cricketing nations around the world will be taking notice, they will be coming up with plans to counter us.  The future is exciting, if still uncertain?

Forced out by Kevin Maxwell

A story of Police discrimination against one of its own officers who happened to be mixed race and gay. The book could have done with a better edit which could have made the timeline more accurate chronologically and also weeded out the repetitions.  Also I am aware this is an autobiography so will be one person’s version of the truth and with this book I always had the feeling that stuff had been left out.  Not just the author’s life away from the force which is barely touched upon.

I’m conflicted.  Was Kevin Maxwell the victim of homophobic and racist treatment?  Yes I believe he was.  Are British Police forces institutionally racist?  Yes absolutely.  Is the UK institutionally racist?  Yes it is.

I found it hard to absorb all the detail (KM isn’t a great writer…) but will take the authors word for the discrimination he experienced whilst a Police officer although to me it seems as much about toxic masculinity as it was race/sex.  I think KM himself could have handled things better at this early stage but that does not excuse what happened to him.  He didn’t have a ‘glass ceiling’, Maxwell’s ceiling was made of concrete. 

The attempts by the Metropolitan Police to silence Maxwell and the conspiracy that sprung up to fight him is sinister and would be shocking if we hadn’t seen other well publicised cases on Police wrongdoing in recent times.  KM describes in detail the closing of ranks, deceit and dishonesty the police force stooped to using against him; withholding evidence, falsifying evidence, deliberate provocation and leaking to the worst of British media.  The author lays his evidence out for us and it’s hard to deny that the service trusted to protect us citizens was utterly corrupt.  There is a warning for all of us; challenge the police and they will come for you, ignoring the laws they are sworn to uphold.  I suppose I’m a person who wants to trust the Police, (even if I don’t always agree with what they are doing) so this is an uncomfortable conclusion to make.

But it has to be said that while Maxwell was fighting the Police and Depression he also found time to write a detailed blog as well as make media appearances which doesn’t really sit right for me, again I don’t think he helped himself.

But fair play to Kevin Maxwell for standing up and for his positivity in defeat.  That’s the really scary thing, in the end the bastards got away with it.