Catharsis

I like...

...my brain.
...how quick I am.
...the way I can make people laugh.
...how much I know. Even though there are downsides to this. A lack of understanding: the way I feel like a Marmite person. I long, sometimes, to be naive. Although I know that I actually couldn't stand it.
...being unusual. That's my angle. I'm quirky and I'm comfortable being quirky. Who wants to be normal?
...my arms and legs, for all sorts of reasons.
...my achievements.
...my history.
...the fact that I am generous. That if I can do something I will.
...talking and writing, and that I can talk and write.
...having a command of English.

I don't like...

...the fact that I smoke. It didn't even seem like a good idea when I started. It's the first thing I'd change about myself. It's the only thing I'd change if I could only change one thing. It's expensive. It smells. I don't want my children to have to live for fifty years without a father.

...my weight. I'm overweight. I know I am. I have been for a while. I know what I need to do about it. I'm not daft. I know what I have to do about everything.

...my vanity.

...how I expect everything. I expect everything to happen without the least amount of effort on my part. I expect it all to fall into my lap. I expect luck.

...being pessimistic about my optimism.

...the way my conscience tells me things: speaks to me and tells me what to do, what I should be doing, when my mind and body won't obey its instructions.

...how lazy I am. I don't seem able to do anything sometimes. No matter how important it is or how much it would benefit me or others.

...being flippant. My ex-wife said I should be jailed for flippancy but...well...you know...whatever.

Why are you such a pedant?

Cast your mind back to the spring of 1986, if you were alive.

My mind, at that time, was that of a fourteen year old schoolboy. Full of football and friends. Panini and puberty. Every day I would make my way down to the precinct in the morning to catch the coach to school. A ten mile trip full of laughter and punches, homework and wedgies. It took about three minutes for me to get from my house to the precinct on foot. A walk I had made hundreds of times before without event.

But on Wednesday 14th May I never made it to the coach. Instead I was knocked down by a transit van on a zebra crossing. The same zebra crossing I had used every school day prior to this event, and would every day after.

I was unconscious for two days in Weston General Hospital and was considered a potential patient for Frenchay Hospital before I came round. I spent a week in that hospital. Mainly hallucinating. Seeing babooshka bears running up and down the geriatric ward that I had been placed in due to the shortage of beds in the children's ward. My memories of my stay in hospital are fairly sketchy. I remember being presented with two football trophies that I would have collected on the evening of the date of the accident. I remember the terrible smell of incontinence. I remember requesting I Heard It Through The Grapevine every day on hospital radio and listening for it to be played.

I didn't used to be like I am now. I used to be the original happy-go-lucky kid. Loadsamates. Loadsafun. But immediately after the accident those friends who, I now realise, had been on the periphery soon faded away. Leaving me only with my truest friends. I was antagonistic to the point of insanity, would split hairs that had already been split. I never knew why. I couldn't help it.

I don't remember the accident at all, nor most of the year after it happened. Something in my brain prevents me from doing that. Something in there is telling me that it doesn't want to remember the accident. My brain is lying to me. Physically I was cut and bruised and subsequently scarred. Mentally, who knows? Before the accident I can't remember ever writing a word. Not a story or a poem or a limerick or a novel or a play or a sketch or a skit. Nothing. It's like the accident unlocked a creative part of me that had been previously hidden. A gift perhaps? Or a curse? Because at the expense of this "talent" came a criminal sense of pedantry.

Happy New Year

...

What I want for Christmas...

...I want a turret, covered in ivy, with a front door and a back door. And windows. Somewhere I can see the world through 360°. A little bit of castle.

I want guarantees, but nothing big, just things that are worth the paper they're written on.

I want to be able to see squirrels whenever the mood takes me. In fact any foraging creature will do. I just want wildlife on my doorstep. Snuffling noses and twitching whiskers. Quizzical mixed with careless abandon, and a hint of quarry. Failing that a top hat would do.

I want a new heart. In fact I want new insides, better insides. More resilient. Longer lasting.

I want a Sky+ life. A microwave option so I can experience everything quicker if I want to. And slow-mo. To be able to see the world in time lapse whenever I choose. Or freeze frame moments of joy or record them. I don't want to have to rely on my memory. I could live and relive at will.

I want a clean slate.

I want to be able to smell smoke all year round. Do you know what I mean? Not just in the Autumn. I want invisible burning fields, conjuring images of the sun's rays as marble javelins.

I want to be able to mend cars. To be able to know what's wrong with cars and be able to mend them. I want to be able to to tell what's wrong with a car just by listening to it.

I want every penny I've ever wasted.

I want some foresight. Sometimes. Not all the time. Not even most of the time. Just some of the time. But more than that I want serendipity.

And I want cobwebs, in isolation. Not yards of haunted house replicas. Not long abandoned flaky spiderhomes, but fragile, freshly spun, diamond encrusted, architectural miracles.

That's about it.

I don't want much.

I don't want to be King Midas.

Halloween Poem

...so I knocked on the door
and he answered, with glee.
"My name is Paul Daniels."
"I'm Debbie Magee."
His wife hoved into view
and before I could speak
they'd both pulled me
inside
and I 'stayed' for the week.

I was kept bound and gagged
(it might sound a bit tragic)
and while Deb gave me head
I had Paul
perform magic.
Twelve times daily they came,
so did I, half the time.
The fellatio "okay"
and Paul's magic, sublime.

I was spent come the end
of a harrowing week,
then they took off the gag
which allowed me to speak.
I nodded to Debbie
shook Paul's hand, hit the street,
then turned back (I'd remembered)
as I asked,
"Trick or Treat?"

Price Comparison Website News

Agonising over which price comparison website is the best price comparison website?

Confused about which price comparison website genuinely offers you the best price comparison?

Tired and confused and wondering which price comparison website you should use?

Confused and tired and confused and confused about the number of price comparison websites?

Do you want the best deal?
Do you want the deal which is better than the other best deals?
Do you want the best deal from all the best deals?
Do you want the very best best deal?
Do you want the number one very best best deal?
Do you want the very very very best deal?

www.pricecomparisonwebsitecomparison.com

No need to thank me.

Prolificacy

I can't do it.

Labels

I bought a coat the other day.

I needed a coat, what with the weather looking like it might be turning cold.

Looking?

But, try as I might, I couldn't find one which fitted my criteria.

It had to be:

1. Cheap
2. Warm
3. Any colour including brown
4. Waterproof

I looked everywhere, even in shops which didn't sell coats, all to no avail.



Until, like I said, the other day, I found one which suited me down to the tops of my thighs.

I thought twice about buying it straight away because of the label I found stuck to the inside pocket. Instead of not buying the coat I just ripped the label off, and everything was okay.

Happy Birthday

It's a year since I started this blog. Look.

See. Told you.

Thanks for reading.

All three of you.

R.I.P.

There is no romantic way to die and there is no romantic way to be found dead. Whether you die in the arms of a loved one after a short and painless illness, or are found washed up on the banks of the Thames with your limbs in a Co-Op carrier bag fastened around your neck, the long and short of it is that you are dead.

Most, I believe, would choose the former.

Closure

This is my attempt to make everything okay.

I don’t honestly know if I care whether or not it will work any more than I know whether or not I know what work means..

I like to convince myself that I think I care in the same way that I hope you care. I don’t enjoy making you upset so please don’t change your mind about anything that we’ve said or agreed to recently.

Whilst the last two years of our marriage have ranged from a struggle, at best, to completely miserable, at worst, for the last six years we have lived our lives on fast forward. We had a relationship that was bliss. I mean it was, wasn’t it? But we know now that not everything lasts. I will always try to remember the good times, not to dwell on them and agonise over what went wrong, but just to make the future easier. I’ll try to remember things not being bad.

I know it’s over but I don’t see any danger in remembering when it was real and when it was The Best.

The result, as we both know, has been two adorable and stunningly beautiful children. We’ll always be a Mum and Dad. We shouldn’t just chalk things down to experience and relegate our marriage as a dim and distant mistake. I’m sure that we did make mistakes but learning from them must be key for the sake of our futures.

The situation at the moment is stressful and, ultimately, painful because by nature people fear change and what we’re going through is the ultimate upheaval. Time will definitely heal but we have no control over each other’s feelings or about how we think. Those thoughts and feelings are completely personal. Things we say and do can affect other people but our own reaction to these things cannot be known until they happen. Above and beyond anything else we are individuals. Our moods and temperaments change continuously. This is one of the reasons why I think our relationship has been so turbulent over the last six months and acknowledging it is one of the reasons why our relationship will improve in the future.

I will admit that in the past I have been guilty of emotional and physical neglect insofar as the girls are concerned. What I have come to realise over the last six months is my dependency on them. I couldn’t possibly even begin to imagine them not being there.

I’m sure you feel the same way.

The learning curve that we have both had to climb has turned out to be too steep. That doesn’t alter the fact that we have climbed some of it and have grown as individuals as a result. Maybe we reached the top and didn’t have any further to go? Maybe we exhausted our marriage and exhausted ourselves?

People talk about closure and I feel we’re very close to that now. It may not be until we get divorced that we have complete closure but I definitely feel its presence.

Realistically I don’t think that everything will run smoothly for the rest of our lives. There are too many issues and too many personalities involved to think otherwise. To appreciate anything good you have to experience the bad otherwise the good is irrelevant. We have to make the best of things. I want us to be sincere friends and I think we can be. But it shouldn’t need any effort. We are two people who got on and can get on. Given our mutual interest in the welfare of the girls that is how it has to be.

There must always be a place in my heart for you.

That’s just the way it is.

Time to move on.

My Mountain

I ran to ask my mountain questions
Those borne from foothills of a soul
And borrowed air as makeshift transit
The stolen time from oxygen
Inhaled and set as veins in marble
Unlike each whispered, echoed word
It sat, unmoved, unfurrowed counsel
While only lost penumbra stirred

A heartbeat peppered fractured quiet
There's nothing blowing in the wind
Then senses pricked by cacti needles
All cursed their lucky solitude
The dumbest nurture untold knowledge
Mobility is just cement
The torture of my mountain's fortune
Solutions aren't by accident

The answer isn't on a matchbox
It can't be found among parched clouds
Or hidden betwixt the leaves of trees
Nor snaking dust around the scrub
My mountain sage stood fast in silence
And truth no nodding head betrayed
The foetus of my wisdom crowning
With innocence once more decayed

Blueprint (in pencil)

Laugh like polystyrene crows are down your throat
Wake to a world through syrup crescents
and translucent lashes
Cough up sand and solar flares
Talk to goats
Fall if you feel like falling
Smile with teeth you never knew were yours
through lips which demand others

Mixing blue and yellow is innovation
Try everything twice
because people make mistakes
Wear a hat like a wig
Follow leaders
Stare in belief
Watch your back if you lie in profile
You may be in every ounce of dust you've ever seen
Imagine doors as opportunities
Use gravity to your advantage
Trust isn't a last resort
Be a sponge for inspiration
and be a brick
Prostrate yourself before gold
Brown your belly with logic
and fill it with knowledge
Consume everything

Make sure it all folds
Quit and win with equal ease
Carry your heart inside a box inside a box
Sing louder than birds conning crickets
Keep you guessing
Remember the past as photographs
and how you appear in unfamiliar mirrors
Pen people in occasionally
Addict yourself to abstinence
Consider the sky for longer than is sensible
You still need a roof when you knock down walls
Failure is guaranteed
Rollercoasters aren't the best metaphor for life
You can put flip-flops on the wrong feet
Does your neighbour even have an ox?

Play on swings and roundabouts
Swim alone if you must
Use ambition like cutlery
Embrace extremes of temperature
Patches work
All grass is green
Make Chinese people speak up
Read between the lines of blank pages
Beware of shadows
Paint towns brighter than red
Sleep when you can
The smooth used to be rough
Best clothes become rags

Steal advice

Don't bring anything down from within
Think about it

Know how to look after yourself
Know when to stop

Push

May

For four and twenty hours honour ants, before you strike the sky,
Transparent, and apparent, that this life must start and end today.

Support The Earth's extremities, let ribbons decorate the globe,
As all the while wild chamomile and wilder flora make it weak.

Next turn it under, clear your throat, let violent disorder reign,
And run this city, creative. A. N. Other; alternative.

Cede this to us and (possibly) we'll all exist and, with clenched fists,
We'll punch the air because we dare enough to spy the sun for free.

Monkey

There's no point talking
To me
I only see the things that I want
To See
It might look like I'm listening
But nothing you say
Can make me think in any sense
Except my way

There's no point talking
At all
Go have a conversation with a
Brick wall
It should seem like I care less
But probably don't
Don't try to think like I think
Because I won't

There's no point talking
Per se
It's nothing but a game that the
Humans play
Misused like a privilege
So go tell the birds
And don't forget that actions speak
Louder than words

Too-dimensional?

Do you want a piece of me? Is that what it is? Is that all this is? Because I'll tell you now, that isn't going to achieve anything.

I'm the same as everyone else. Really. If you shake me then I'll rattle. You might not think it, right now. You might think that I'm 'different', and you'd be forgiven for thinking it, but not by me. I'm pretty unforgiving. I only work one way, and you'll have to work with me if you want the best of me.

Can you see what I look like? I know you can, or at least you think you can, on the outside at least. But I'm incomplete inside, honestly. And that image, the one you can see? That isn't really what I'm like. That's not me most of the time. Most of the time I'm an unmitigated muddle. A big mess. Bigger than you imagine you know.

Don't let me frustrate you. I'd hate it if you got bored of me and I can't abide the thought of being redundant. So don't waste hours on me without getting anything back, because that might happen. You might approach me the same way you approach everyone, and you've no obligation to approach me any differently. Use your usual technique, the same tried and tested method that has guaranteed success in the past. And take your time, exercise your effort with discretion. Leave me alone for a while, go and do something else. Come back to me later, once you've had time to think, time to distract yourself from me. Don't totally forget about me though, or we'll end up having to start all over again. Although I already know it's only ever going to end one of two ways. Isn't that always the way?

Go on, please. Please try me once, or at least once, just to get me out of your system, just to find out what I'm like. I know you'll feel much better for it. You know you'll much feel better for it. It's a given. It gets easier each time, in time, like everything does. Or am I a game to you? Just some sort of fucking game? Am I...? AM I...? ...So just get rid of me. Dump me. Drop me. I'd care, of course I would, I'd go to pieces. But I swear I'd hold you responsible for picking up every single one afterwards. I know I wouldn't be in any position do it myself.

I'm an enigma: a complex soul. I'm black. And I'm white. And black and white. And grey. And a myriad of other colours and reflections of light and shades of shadow. I'm a plethora of different shapes and every shape a different shape. Every one has a pattern and everyone has a pattern. Everyone has the right to feel complete. We're all just a series of rows and columns, and corners or edges, aren't we?

No?

Okay fine. Have it your way. Go ahead. Pigeonhole me. Put me into a convenient box.

Bite Me

Hollow me out

and stuff me

Put me in the oven

and bake me

Scrape my fingers pickle my eyes
Marinade my liver poach my thighs

Peel off my skin

and mash me

Macédoine my tonsils

and baste me

Beat my buttocks curdle my cream
Microwave my nipples let off steam

Butter me up

and spread me

Roll me in some breadcrumbs

and fry me

Grate my earlobes boil my toes
Skewer my intestine up my nose

Flour my back

and whip me

Put me in a cupboard

and leave me

Soak my plums and grill my loins
Celebrate my pudding filled with coins

Now fold me in

and mix me

Put me in some foil

and roast me

Spice my kidneys batter my jaw
Barbecue my carcass

Want any more?

Knowledge

I know what I want
And if I don't know what I want
Then I know that I know
What I know I don't want

I know who I am
And if I don't know who I am
Then I know that I know
That I know who I'm not

I know what I do
And if I don't know what I do
Then I know that I know
What I Know I wont do

I know what I know
And if I don't know what I know
Then I know that I know
That I don't know a lot

Re: Lotto

Every week the National Lottery promises to make someone a millionaire. Simply pick six numbers between and including one and forty-nine and if your numbers match those chosen by the lottery machine on the following Saturday, you've won.

It all sounds relatively simple, doesn't it?

The odds are about 14,000,000-1, which are the same odds as the chance of you swallowing a badger in your sleep. And the odds of those odds being the same is also 14,000,000-1.

One way of shortening the odds is to form a syndicate, a group of friends or colleagues who all contribute a pound, or more, to purchase one ticket, or more, each. If your syndicate has two people the odds are 7,000,000-1, if it has seven people 2,000,000-1, if it has fourteen people 1,000,000-1 and so on and so forth. So if you're one of those people who doesn't have 14,000,000 friends, the chances are that you'll be pretty hard pushed to reduce the odds to evens. In fact, even if you did have 14,000,000 friends, with the average jackpot total standing at about £8,000,000, you would still lose out.

This begs the question, why form a syndicate?

They're not new, far from it. Many people form syndicates in order to win the football pools. But in this instance there is a method in the madness. The more crosses you have in one permutation, the more chance you have of matching with more score draws. The more crosses you have in each permutation, the more it costs. So, in order to be able to afford the cost of your perms (and I don't mean going to the hairdressers every week), you can split the cost between the members of your syndicate. The end result assuming you win is, of course, the same. The prize money is shared between the members of the syndicate.

More tickets more chances more expense. More crosses more chances more expense.

Hmmnnnn...

Here though is where the lottery syndicate fails to deliver. A football pools syndicate is often honed from the collective football intelligence of many people. Their foundations lie in the working clubs and pubs of Great Britain. Lifelong friends whose rights to join syndicates have been handed down throughout generations. With the football pools you have a chance to study form. It's unlikely that a cup fixture between Manchester United and Stalybridge will produce a score draw. However, a game between Manchester United and Liverpool would no doubt create some interesting debate, and might only be resolved after the seventh or eighth pint. In the event of a jackpot win the money has been won by the syndicate and each member is deserved of a share.

But compare this to the lottery syndicate. The horrible randomness of it all. Arguments over whether or not the number three is more likely to appear than the number twenty-three. There is no form, no history, no theory behind it, unless you rely purely on probability. When the lottery syndicate wins there is only one winner, the person who holds the ticket. They must then share their winnings with everyone else. Everyone who hasn't really deserved it.

Of course, for everyone else it is a dream come true.

Members of lottery syndicates nationwide should ask themselves one question. "If I win £8,000,000 do I want to give most of it away?" If the answer is no then the solution is simple. Whatever numbers you have on your ticket, buy an identical one. If a syndicate of four has the lottery's only winner, and you are that winner, and you've got two tickets, you win £5,000,000.

They only get a poxy £1,000,000 each.

Anagram Story

There are two schools of thought.

There are those who believe that Spiro Agnew was called Spiro because Spiro is a nice name, and there are those who believe he was called Spiro for a more sinister reason altogether.

One must first be privy to the knowledge that Spiro Agnew is an anagram of 'grow a penis' before one can fully grasp the rudiments of the second school since the second school believe that this seemingly random choice of forename was anything but.

Picture the scene.

Mrs Agnew has just given birth to a bouncing baby boy. Uncertain about the naming of their child, Mr Agnew - who is something of a practical joker - has what he considers a rather humourous idea. Taking away the letters in his own surname from the words 'grow a penis' he cunningly fashions the name 'Spiro'. And the rest, as they said, was history.

What, then, are future parents to do when confronted with the apparently elementary task of naming their children? Is there any need for someone to calculate every single possible permutation of anagram for a child's name before committing it to... ermmm... whatever it is people commit names to? Aren't the stresses associated with childbirth enough already, without having to worry about Richard Stilgoe waiting in the wings to point out that if Mr and Mrs Platt name their son Boris, an anagram of his name will be 'Spoilt Brat'?

If there's a lesson to be learnt from this it's a simple and fascinating one. Anagrams can be both fearful and fun.

And fascinating.

I can clearly remember the day I discovered them. It was a Tuesday. Keith Williams sparked it all off. During an exceptionally dull 'A' Level Economics lecture my mind began to wander. Keith Williams. Weith Killiams. Unassuming Keith. Ordinarily if Keith was pissing me off I would have just told him to shut up. But "why?", I thought, should I resort to such obvious intellectual depths when instead I could say, "Keith. Your name is an anagram of 'I will make shit'."?

True story.

Anagrams itself is an anagram of 'ars magna', which means 'great art'. And there are a plethora of absolute corkers out there. Famous people have used anagrams as pseudonyms, and even not so famous people, like me (Viz Top Tip c.1988). Private Eye has had an anagrams feature for as long as I don't care to remember. Competitions are run. Prizes are awarded. There's a World's Biggest One for goodness sake.

In the south sea islands
A thousand islets shine

These two lines share The Very Same Letters. Revel in their literary likeness. Marvel at their simple simplicity. Wonder about my avant-garde alliteration. I could look at those two lines for at least about roughly two minutes without getting the least bit bored. Who couldn't?

Of course, the funniest or most peculiar or chilling or clever anagram of them all isn't 'grow a penis'. It's not even someone's name. It's just a word. The word is funeral, and its anagram is quite a paradox.