From now on my blog will be continued at JoeGardnerWrites.com , please go there for all further posts.
Farewell, blogger. It has been fun.
All the best
Joe x
Thursday, 25 June 2015
Sunday, 7 June 2015
Irrational Discourse Will Always Become Violence
On Friday evening I attended my first animal rights protest. I'd always been curious, and always had that twang of shame pass through me when I'd eschew a passing rally in favour of heading to whatever shop I was off to when out and about in Central London. So when I saw the event listed on Facebook on Thursday evening I decided to stop wishing and go out and do it.
The demonstration, which was held in Covent Garden, was in opposition to a certain high-end restaurant's use of Foie Gras on their daily menu. Thanks to its misleadingly fancy name, you'd be forgiven for not knowing what Foie Gras is, or why animal rights activists take a certain level of umbrage with it over other animal products. In short, it is a particularly heinous and decadent type of duck or goose liver pate which is produced by shoving metal tubes into the throats of captive birds, force-feeding them junk until their livers become infected with disease and swell up to ten times their natural sizes, then leaving them to die in agony after which their bulbous, infected livers are gouged out and fed to sadistic or ignorant diners in pompous restaurants. It's illegal to produce in the UK, yet a select few restaurants who cater for the amoral have found loopholes in the law which allow them to import the product from countries in which the torture-food is still made. If you can't see why I'd have a problem with this, then you might be interested to know that the rest of this post is about you.
As a point of interest, the venue for our protest - which was jointly hosted by London Vegan Actions and the Anti-Foie Gras Movement - changed no less than twice on the day, as the first restaurant, Le Garrick, conceded to our concerns and removed Foie Gras from their menu. So did Clos Maggiore, the next spot on our radar. Unfortunately the same can not yet be said about Balthazaar, a gluttonous establishment with a degenerate clientele and no regard for its outside reputation as a profiteer of the basest animal torture our imperfect race is capable of. As I went hoarse shouting that evening, shame on Balthazaar.
Joining in on the protest was one of the best decisions I've made in a long while; I felt alive roaring my values into the Central London summer evening, shaming Balthazaar's management and customers at the top of my lungs, waving my truth-bearing banner aloft and forming an instant camaraderie with the seasoned activists I had joined in occupation of the deplorable doorway of this tavern of torture, the intoxicating spirit of disorder and revolution surging through me. Irrespective of our ages or levels of demo-experience, we were one and the same. We each hold an unquenchable urge to see animal abuse eradicated from our slowly-but-surely evolving culture. I made some true friends that evening.
We rallied passers-by to our cause, we acquired myriad signatures for the anti-Foie Gras petition, we were met with applause and salutations of congratulation, and a neighbouring business even saw worth in our plight and gifted us with two bags full of fruit juice, which kept us going well into the evening. Peyton and Byrne, your gesture illustrates an affiliation with the cause, and for that we thank you.
But there was one chap who stood out among the bemused, the scornful and the sneering apathetic who passed us by. He took audience to our chants and rallies early on, and remained for as long as he could until the inevitable crescendo of his chosen outlook ushered him away. He was, as I have come to know them now, a spokesman for the "Lion Clan".
His stance was one of proud apathy to animal suffering. His conviction was that all creatures not human were "Put here" for us to enjoy as food. There was no hope for him; he had long ago chosen to reduce animals to the level of "product", such was his sweltering alliegance to consumerism that he actually held onto the idea that the billions of non-human species covering this globe were a gift for him to gorge himself on, self proclaimed "top of the food chain" (Hence his status as Lion Man. I asked him if he truly lived by the notion of a food chain, if he - overweight chainsmoking drunk - actually went out on a morning-to-morning basis and killed his own breakfast. He said that he did, and thus my argument was curtailed by a cement wall of blatant falsity).
Other similarly absurd arguments poured out of him. He claimed that Balthazaar was entitled to sell tortured duck corpse, because it was profitable. Every word he uttered highlighted more and more the inadvertent wide-berth he was managing to give to our argument, and we didn't indulge his verbal landfill, as it had become apparent early on that we were dealing with a trash-sluice rather than an intellect, and indulging such a cheese-stick as he would only serve to malnourish. Plus we had to save our lungs to tell off the institution of cruelty whose doorway we had taken residence in.
Ultimately, his presence was less blighting than he'd probably hoped. With a hefty audience of tourists, drinkers and passers-by, the Lion Man (clad in a Harry Potter Gryffindor t-shirt no less, likely a symbolic testament to his Lion Man status, being that the lion is that fictional wizard-house's emblem) proved emphatically that irrational discourse can't survive for very long before its mask inevitably slips, like that of a Scooby Doo villain, and becomes violence. Wearied of our refusal to entertain his lunacy, the man entered the belly of our protest group to try and confront each of us more directly. He made attempts to snatch the megaphones of the protest leaders, he blew cigarette smoke in our faces, claiming he was allowed as it is a "free country" (Try telling ducks and geese that), and, eventually, he decided to try and come to blows with one of our number. It will never stop being said that you are what you eat, and a diet consisting exclusively of the results of violence had rendered him the living embodiment of violence. He only practiced a pretence to humanity for so long before he returned to his bloody comfort zone.
We are a non violent group, my spacious-headed friend. We rally against violence. Excuse the pun, but trying to start a fight with us is nothing short of a losing battle. Nonetheless, the police officers who had come to politely monitor our demonstration took notice of his violence and acted quickly. They stepped into the fray, cuffed the Lion Man and threw him into their van, which then departed to take him to his overnight cell, somewhere nearby in this free country. We cheered for a moment, and we got back to the task at hand, free from his infestation. The fight against the cruelty of Balthazaar may continue, but in some very special respect, rational thought and empathy won that evening. Irrationality simply can not hold its own against reason and intelligence, and I glibly hope that the Lion Man pondered this as he sat in his cell that night.
Boycott Balthazaar in Covent Garden! If you'd like to assist with the anti-foie gras campaign, leave Balthazar a single-star review / flood their page with your disgust, here.
The demonstration, which was held in Covent Garden, was in opposition to a certain high-end restaurant's use of Foie Gras on their daily menu. Thanks to its misleadingly fancy name, you'd be forgiven for not knowing what Foie Gras is, or why animal rights activists take a certain level of umbrage with it over other animal products. In short, it is a particularly heinous and decadent type of duck or goose liver pate which is produced by shoving metal tubes into the throats of captive birds, force-feeding them junk until their livers become infected with disease and swell up to ten times their natural sizes, then leaving them to die in agony after which their bulbous, infected livers are gouged out and fed to sadistic or ignorant diners in pompous restaurants. It's illegal to produce in the UK, yet a select few restaurants who cater for the amoral have found loopholes in the law which allow them to import the product from countries in which the torture-food is still made. If you can't see why I'd have a problem with this, then you might be interested to know that the rest of this post is about you.
As a point of interest, the venue for our protest - which was jointly hosted by London Vegan Actions and the Anti-Foie Gras Movement - changed no less than twice on the day, as the first restaurant, Le Garrick, conceded to our concerns and removed Foie Gras from their menu. So did Clos Maggiore, the next spot on our radar. Unfortunately the same can not yet be said about Balthazaar, a gluttonous establishment with a degenerate clientele and no regard for its outside reputation as a profiteer of the basest animal torture our imperfect race is capable of. As I went hoarse shouting that evening, shame on Balthazaar.
Joining in on the protest was one of the best decisions I've made in a long while; I felt alive roaring my values into the Central London summer evening, shaming Balthazaar's management and customers at the top of my lungs, waving my truth-bearing banner aloft and forming an instant camaraderie with the seasoned activists I had joined in occupation of the deplorable doorway of this tavern of torture, the intoxicating spirit of disorder and revolution surging through me. Irrespective of our ages or levels of demo-experience, we were one and the same. We each hold an unquenchable urge to see animal abuse eradicated from our slowly-but-surely evolving culture. I made some true friends that evening.
We rallied passers-by to our cause, we acquired myriad signatures for the anti-Foie Gras petition, we were met with applause and salutations of congratulation, and a neighbouring business even saw worth in our plight and gifted us with two bags full of fruit juice, which kept us going well into the evening. Peyton and Byrne, your gesture illustrates an affiliation with the cause, and for that we thank you.
But there was one chap who stood out among the bemused, the scornful and the sneering apathetic who passed us by. He took audience to our chants and rallies early on, and remained for as long as he could until the inevitable crescendo of his chosen outlook ushered him away. He was, as I have come to know them now, a spokesman for the "Lion Clan".
His stance was one of proud apathy to animal suffering. His conviction was that all creatures not human were "Put here" for us to enjoy as food. There was no hope for him; he had long ago chosen to reduce animals to the level of "product", such was his sweltering alliegance to consumerism that he actually held onto the idea that the billions of non-human species covering this globe were a gift for him to gorge himself on, self proclaimed "top of the food chain" (Hence his status as Lion Man. I asked him if he truly lived by the notion of a food chain, if he - overweight chainsmoking drunk - actually went out on a morning-to-morning basis and killed his own breakfast. He said that he did, and thus my argument was curtailed by a cement wall of blatant falsity).
Other similarly absurd arguments poured out of him. He claimed that Balthazaar was entitled to sell tortured duck corpse, because it was profitable. Every word he uttered highlighted more and more the inadvertent wide-berth he was managing to give to our argument, and we didn't indulge his verbal landfill, as it had become apparent early on that we were dealing with a trash-sluice rather than an intellect, and indulging such a cheese-stick as he would only serve to malnourish. Plus we had to save our lungs to tell off the institution of cruelty whose doorway we had taken residence in.
Ultimately, his presence was less blighting than he'd probably hoped. With a hefty audience of tourists, drinkers and passers-by, the Lion Man (clad in a Harry Potter Gryffindor t-shirt no less, likely a symbolic testament to his Lion Man status, being that the lion is that fictional wizard-house's emblem) proved emphatically that irrational discourse can't survive for very long before its mask inevitably slips, like that of a Scooby Doo villain, and becomes violence. Wearied of our refusal to entertain his lunacy, the man entered the belly of our protest group to try and confront each of us more directly. He made attempts to snatch the megaphones of the protest leaders, he blew cigarette smoke in our faces, claiming he was allowed as it is a "free country" (Try telling ducks and geese that), and, eventually, he decided to try and come to blows with one of our number. It will never stop being said that you are what you eat, and a diet consisting exclusively of the results of violence had rendered him the living embodiment of violence. He only practiced a pretence to humanity for so long before he returned to his bloody comfort zone.
We are a non violent group, my spacious-headed friend. We rally against violence. Excuse the pun, but trying to start a fight with us is nothing short of a losing battle. Nonetheless, the police officers who had come to politely monitor our demonstration took notice of his violence and acted quickly. They stepped into the fray, cuffed the Lion Man and threw him into their van, which then departed to take him to his overnight cell, somewhere nearby in this free country. We cheered for a moment, and we got back to the task at hand, free from his infestation. The fight against the cruelty of Balthazaar may continue, but in some very special respect, rational thought and empathy won that evening. Irrationality simply can not hold its own against reason and intelligence, and I glibly hope that the Lion Man pondered this as he sat in his cell that night.
Boycott Balthazaar in Covent Garden! If you'd like to assist with the anti-foie gras campaign, leave Balthazar a single-star review / flood their page with your disgust, here.
Wednesday, 7 January 2015
How I Survived The Rock Star Year
It's over. It's too late. There's no going back. My unused membership to the notorious and grimly coveted '27 Club' has expired. There is no longer any chance of me sipping space mimosas on a blanket made of rubies with the likes of Hendrix, Cobain and Morrison. The 27 Club, if you don't know, is the place rock stars go to die. I am not a rock star, but I certainly behave like one from time to time, and I always held it in the back of my self-deprecating, pessimistic mind that I'd end up there. Either way, I'm 28 now; I'm no longer invited. And the biggest surprise to me is that I am glad.
It's my birthday!
Those of you who know me well may be familiar with my darker tendencies, my dwellings on the morbid and the mortal; my natural state. It has become ever clearer to me, especially as I set to work on my fifth novel The Ashen Bough, that I possess an unquenchable capacity to constantly imbue my creative output - be it song or prose - with elements of despair, psychosis and suicide. It's obvious where this comes from, even if I may never fully understand why, but as I wave goodbye to the petrifying Twenty Seven, I do so having learned that these things could finally be banished to my imagined worlds, and are no longer attacking me personally. Things may well revert, but for now I choose to believe that the change is permanent.
2014, thus with my 27th birthday hot on the heels of its arrival, didn't start at all well for me (not least because the first song I heard upon the stroke of midnight was Kings of Leon's Use Somebody). I was (unbeknownst back then) stifled by a dead relationship, totally unsure of where I wanted to go, unadventurous and I hadn't written a new song in three years. My last novel was completed but needed a shit ton of redrafting to escape severe banality, and I really didn't care if I were to drop dead at any time before fine-tuning it.
Then my former significant other did something wondrous; she tore the plaster from the wound. It stung like hell when she walked out, and for a moment there as I blitzed my drunken way through a city of sadness, I was certain my life had run its course, but her lesson was a slow burner and I realised that, as I began to feel better, I wasn't just recovering from the break-up, I was recovering from the relationship itself and the sick, sorry shell of a person it had gradually turned me into. She was right, and I just wish I'd realised that before I fell reduced to a shrieking wreck on my knees, pleading with her not to go. Perhaps I could have salvaged some dignity. Never mind.
And that was the beginning of the year. A heartbroken singer-songwriter, newly 27. All the elements for my termination were in place! Could things possibly get worse than a kick off like that? Though I was prepared for a resounding 'YES', it turned out to be a No. How did that happen? My friends arrived. People who, it turned out, were always there for me but I was just too submerged in a bog of takeaway pizzas and How I Met Your Mother repeats to notice before (Just to clarify, I hate that show. I was made to watch it). They pulled me up from the bog, like Dumbledore saving Harry Potter from the underwater zombies in Half Blood Prince (I wish people would stop calling me Harry Potter). They prodded me out of the door and onto an adventure, and the adventure didn't reach an end.
They whisked me away to Paris, and after a wild, wine-fuelled gallivant around the French capital I returned a jovial pirate with a new best friend, who then left, but then returned. I became part of an unstoppable trio, jumping into dinghies and sailing the Regents Canal, hopping round my room to wacky soundtracks and running off to all corners of the country in Ellie's Batmobile. And I found a kindred spirit in a namesake also bereaved of a long-term love. We were two sad Joes being Recalled To Life and pulling each other through. We crawled to Green Park to gaze upon the jagged tree of death and I realised I wanted to live. I was waking up. I was writing songs. The 27 club be damned! Sorry Kurt, sorry Amy. I'm pretty sure fame is also a requirement for membership anyway, and there was no danger of me achieving that any time soon, nor of me caring.
It wasn't all smooth. I hit snags. I became bemused, broken and besotted by newcomers, I occasionally dwelt upon the hopeful possession of people who cannot be contained, and I erroneously thought that love had dug its talons into me yet again. But summer had arrived, and it was medicine. I cycled along the coast, I sailed the sea, I blistered in the sun before experiencing a live show by the legendary Black Sabbath, I shed a joyous tear to my favourite bands in a Welsh field during the Greatest Weekend Of My Life, and I hurled my increasingly skinnier body into a Bavarian lake (before an oncoming resident serpent bade me leave immediately). Some shred of my dwindling negativity came to the fore upon said Bavarian holiday, regrettably, and I paid the price for it (albeit a price heroically slashed by the conviction and efforts of my genius, life-saving brother), but it was all a learning curve and, while I'm rightly ashamed, I'm not dwelling. I'm stronger for it.
Joe Groke finally emerged from his prolonged hibernation - my musical side returned as I broadened my horizons beyond compare as a music fan. With my friend Danny on the bongos I began gigging again - '60s era Marc Bolan reincarnated - maybe I could have skyrocketed to fame and still have joined that club yet. My gigs had evolved from what they were when I was a 22 year old whining about a girl from Derby; I now have a cartoon mascot sidekick, a tray of biscuits and cakes for the audience and a stage presence my formerly more introverted self would be terrified of (tell former me that he'd one day be rapping on stage and he'd run screaming for the hills). I feel I was fully out of the coma by October, and am now the very person I have always wanted to be. There is nothing and nobody weighing me down or suppressing my personality; my wits and values are at their most forthright, my feelings controllable and my anger all but extinguished, and I really think that this is for the first time in maybe a decade.
Winter's threat was meeker and more laughable than ever. The blues never came. I squeezed in an October dry spell (which I shall recommence after these birthday festivities have passed) before turning into a gentlemanly vampire for Halloween, then ploughed through a trio of November birthdays, with varying degrees of personal success, before it was time for Christmas to roll around.
And this is more or less where it comes to an end. The close of the year brought jolly Dickensian excursions, a new job, the beginnings of my biggest literary project to date and, as ever, a Christmas day to remember (two, in fact, this year).
So that, if you care, is how I survived the rockstar year. And as you're reading this then there's a very good chance that you had a hand in that triumph. As I mused on new year's eve, I am generally sorry to see off 2014, and that makes it a winner of a year, but what little of 2015 there has been so far has shown promise. My time as a resident of Soho is at an end, and the ever-long party with it, I imagine. But this is necessary, I need to keep growing. Thank you to all who were there, including those I lost along the way (to geography, not mortality!), you know who you are.
And if you're interested in hearing me talk about myself even more, I'll be at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street tonight celebrating my birthday in a flood of beer to rival that which claimed six lives in the Parish of St. Giles in 1814.
Wednesday, 24 December 2014
Winter Blues
I hope you have a moment for my little Christmas speech. Let's call it a ghost story, as is the festive tradition. I most certainly shall be talking about unseen terrors, and, let's say, I'm the ghost at your celebration. Let's say I'm behind you, in that empty armchair that nobody wanted to sit on for some reason. Don't look around, just know that I'm there. The day is upon us now and we're half way out of the bitterest season. But, for those of us with mental health problems, particularly the kind that are inflamed during the chill season, the worst is still to come.
My fear of the winter is, thankfully, suppressed and blanketed by my love for Christmas. I am eased in to the colder, greyer turn of year by the joyful approach of the festive day and all the celebration that comes along for the ride. And I've had a good ride. I've climbed a castle while dressed as a Victorian gent, I've sang and danced and drank and I've even had a little Christmas day of my own with my two best friends. December has been as good as ever (I try to recall how wonderful last year's was but with the hindsight of what happened to me shortly after, and how that was clearly already an idea in the mind of the person who dealt that blow by then, I can't feel fondness for December 2013. Anyone who has read Children's Hospice will know how I am capable of illustrating a less-than-stellar Christmas). But Christmas day will be over soon. We'll have a long, lovely day with the people we love, we'll squeeze every moment and drink every drop and make it count, but it will be over. Boxing day does good by its name to the depressed as it is the vanguard of a series of thuds and blows thumping us through the close of the year and the dreaded January. Pain returns in the month of my birth - a pain more complex than the December head-kicking I got a few years back, and far less curable by a wad of titanium in the skull.
Feelings of constant sadness are notoriously difficult to express. With the threat of embarrassment, ridicule or a change in how your nearest and dearest appreciate you, we feel they must remain inside. So we suffer through the winter in silence, not ever letting on and, thus, never being asked how we are feeling. It is at the fault of nobody that we are not reached out to - when the assumption is that somebody is absolutely fine, why bother asking if that is indeed the case? So I implore you all, on this day of good will to all, to hold the good will tightly and not let it loose when the day is over. Ask a friend if they're okay whenever possible, even if they seem so. You can't know what they're going through this time of year, but you can count on the likelihood that they might want to talk about it if the invitation were to arise. Winter has brought terror to my doorstep every year. Whether it's in almost losing an eye or clutching a banister tightly and thinking with utter certainty that I am experiencing my very last seconds on Earth, the darkest season delights on doing the darkest things. I wish I could locate a reason for this connection; maybe it's a lack of vitamin D, or years of poetic, pathetic fallacy feeding my subconscious. Either way, all I can do right now is try to fight it.
I can reflect on the year that's been and that is a comforting thing to do. I spent a hefty part of it assuming it to be a year of loss but (although I can say with confidence that this year I've turned getting dumped into a hobby), it really was a year of gain. I leave with more than I had when I went in - I've finally become the person I've wanted to be all my life. I've discovered powerful sides to myself that have been suppressed for years and I've made friends that I know will be with me until the very end. Furthermore I've taken long-overdue steps into doing the sort of work I want to do; perhaps I'm not doomed to repeat the phrase "do you want a glass of ice with that?" over and over again until I collapse into ancient dust. I had a triumphant mess of a Summer and I've been on some remarkable adventures. A scroll back through my facebook photos paints 2014 as a year of constant fun, and that is no distortion of the truth; it really was. When the midnight bell chimes, though, and January rears its head, I must begin to look forward, to an oblique, unknowable year ahead. And doing that whilst cold and alone can, and always will, exacerbate my low feelings. I won't ask my friends to be there for me, because I know that I never have to ask that. Substitute currency for loved ones and I am the richest man on the planet. I hope you can all compete.
So Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope your various Christmas days are as fun as mine always are and I hope there are plenty of people near to you who you can legitimately be there for in the coming months, however happy or sad they are feeling. My ramble is almost over now and if you've read to the end then I thank you. Go and pour yourself a brandy and play Wizzard at full volume.
And lastly, to wrap this up, I'm talking to you now. Yes, YOU. Don't look around, there's no one else there (I was just joking about being a ghost in the armchair). I don't know if you even read my blog but, if you're reading this, I hope you realise that it's you I'm referring to. I think you will. I shan't embarrass you by naming you but I just want you to know that I hope you're okay, and that, as I've promised before, I'll always be there for you in whatever capacity you need me. If, when the bad winter withers, the year to come makes good on its promise, our friendship will be strong again. I know how you do in the cold and the dark, and that you've got far worse to return to than most of us, and if things were perfect you'd only ever exist in the sunshine, like you so deserve. Life won't allow that, but if it's anywhere near a decent compromise, I'm here. I'm always here. Merry Christmas.
My fear of the winter is, thankfully, suppressed and blanketed by my love for Christmas. I am eased in to the colder, greyer turn of year by the joyful approach of the festive day and all the celebration that comes along for the ride. And I've had a good ride. I've climbed a castle while dressed as a Victorian gent, I've sang and danced and drank and I've even had a little Christmas day of my own with my two best friends. December has been as good as ever (I try to recall how wonderful last year's was but with the hindsight of what happened to me shortly after, and how that was clearly already an idea in the mind of the person who dealt that blow by then, I can't feel fondness for December 2013. Anyone who has read Children's Hospice will know how I am capable of illustrating a less-than-stellar Christmas). But Christmas day will be over soon. We'll have a long, lovely day with the people we love, we'll squeeze every moment and drink every drop and make it count, but it will be over. Boxing day does good by its name to the depressed as it is the vanguard of a series of thuds and blows thumping us through the close of the year and the dreaded January. Pain returns in the month of my birth - a pain more complex than the December head-kicking I got a few years back, and far less curable by a wad of titanium in the skull.
Feelings of constant sadness are notoriously difficult to express. With the threat of embarrassment, ridicule or a change in how your nearest and dearest appreciate you, we feel they must remain inside. So we suffer through the winter in silence, not ever letting on and, thus, never being asked how we are feeling. It is at the fault of nobody that we are not reached out to - when the assumption is that somebody is absolutely fine, why bother asking if that is indeed the case? So I implore you all, on this day of good will to all, to hold the good will tightly and not let it loose when the day is over. Ask a friend if they're okay whenever possible, even if they seem so. You can't know what they're going through this time of year, but you can count on the likelihood that they might want to talk about it if the invitation were to arise. Winter has brought terror to my doorstep every year. Whether it's in almost losing an eye or clutching a banister tightly and thinking with utter certainty that I am experiencing my very last seconds on Earth, the darkest season delights on doing the darkest things. I wish I could locate a reason for this connection; maybe it's a lack of vitamin D, or years of poetic, pathetic fallacy feeding my subconscious. Either way, all I can do right now is try to fight it.
I can reflect on the year that's been and that is a comforting thing to do. I spent a hefty part of it assuming it to be a year of loss but (although I can say with confidence that this year I've turned getting dumped into a hobby), it really was a year of gain. I leave with more than I had when I went in - I've finally become the person I've wanted to be all my life. I've discovered powerful sides to myself that have been suppressed for years and I've made friends that I know will be with me until the very end. Furthermore I've taken long-overdue steps into doing the sort of work I want to do; perhaps I'm not doomed to repeat the phrase "do you want a glass of ice with that?" over and over again until I collapse into ancient dust. I had a triumphant mess of a Summer and I've been on some remarkable adventures. A scroll back through my facebook photos paints 2014 as a year of constant fun, and that is no distortion of the truth; it really was. When the midnight bell chimes, though, and January rears its head, I must begin to look forward, to an oblique, unknowable year ahead. And doing that whilst cold and alone can, and always will, exacerbate my low feelings. I won't ask my friends to be there for me, because I know that I never have to ask that. Substitute currency for loved ones and I am the richest man on the planet. I hope you can all compete.
So Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope your various Christmas days are as fun as mine always are and I hope there are plenty of people near to you who you can legitimately be there for in the coming months, however happy or sad they are feeling. My ramble is almost over now and if you've read to the end then I thank you. Go and pour yourself a brandy and play Wizzard at full volume.
And lastly, to wrap this up, I'm talking to you now. Yes, YOU. Don't look around, there's no one else there (I was just joking about being a ghost in the armchair). I don't know if you even read my blog but, if you're reading this, I hope you realise that it's you I'm referring to. I think you will. I shan't embarrass you by naming you but I just want you to know that I hope you're okay, and that, as I've promised before, I'll always be there for you in whatever capacity you need me. If, when the bad winter withers, the year to come makes good on its promise, our friendship will be strong again. I know how you do in the cold and the dark, and that you've got far worse to return to than most of us, and if things were perfect you'd only ever exist in the sunshine, like you so deserve. Life won't allow that, but if it's anywhere near a decent compromise, I'm here. I'm always here. Merry Christmas.
Thursday, 11 December 2014
Children's Hospice - Noteworthy Quotations
Here are twenty-one lines from Children's Hospice that aren't about dogs shitting, women being smacked by chair legs, rotting babies being torn up and chewed or naked boys eating fish out of bins.
"If I were a thousand times more intelligent, and if I were a thousand times more beautiful, then maybe I could be her. But as it stands I have to make do simply being with her, which is hardly a poor compromise."
"Mummy - the conduit for all of Little Baby Victor's future fallibility where daddy's nine-month-passed euphoric release signalled the passing of his accountability."
"Fatherhood truly makes a man himself."
"Her boy, her joy, a greater melody than ever she created on that piano."
"Oh if he were truly absent this would be a happy home, but his vacancy is just of the heart and this is a Hell house now."
"Guilt is a paralytic in action and cowardice is a motivator in silence."
"The only word that gets around is the word of man."
"The elements hold no such grace against the damned."
"I'm not a liar anymore. But I'm still a killer."
"She just wants to be home. But home is where the heart is and the where the bloody hell can that be now?"
"Little things have big effects on the over-aware state of mind that the witching hour brings to the sleepless."
"Must men prove the worth of their sex by denying the right of it to others who simply want to get by?"
"Snuff it in the dark or snuff it in the light, what difference does it make?"
"Hope is like sugar to a baby boy; give him too much and he'll climb the bloody walls."
"All children die."
"January is the very worst time of year and one which we all bafflingly herald the arrival of with merriment and midnight kisses."
"Who they were in life can not matter any more for all they know now is pain untold and unending and when pain is all there is to be known then self becomes absent."
"Killing's a sin, whoever you kill. Them's God's rules."
"You aborted the second coming before he could teach us things and you looked your abortion in the eye as you did so."
"Man is the creator but also the destroyer. Man destroys himself. Woman is the giver of life and seldom the brute force and here she is alive and well!"
"Maybe my marrow heart will get the better of me! Maybe the muscle - the vessel - the withered, pulsing hunk of meat - will finally let me sleep!"
"If I were a thousand times more intelligent, and if I were a thousand times more beautiful, then maybe I could be her. But as it stands I have to make do simply being with her, which is hardly a poor compromise."
"Mummy - the conduit for all of Little Baby Victor's future fallibility where daddy's nine-month-passed euphoric release signalled the passing of his accountability."
"Fatherhood truly makes a man himself."
"Her boy, her joy, a greater melody than ever she created on that piano."
"Oh if he were truly absent this would be a happy home, but his vacancy is just of the heart and this is a Hell house now."
"Guilt is a paralytic in action and cowardice is a motivator in silence."
"The only word that gets around is the word of man."
"The elements hold no such grace against the damned."
"I'm not a liar anymore. But I'm still a killer."
"She just wants to be home. But home is where the heart is and the where the bloody hell can that be now?"
"Little things have big effects on the over-aware state of mind that the witching hour brings to the sleepless."
"Must men prove the worth of their sex by denying the right of it to others who simply want to get by?"
"Snuff it in the dark or snuff it in the light, what difference does it make?"
"Hope is like sugar to a baby boy; give him too much and he'll climb the bloody walls."
"All children die."
"January is the very worst time of year and one which we all bafflingly herald the arrival of with merriment and midnight kisses."
"Who they were in life can not matter any more for all they know now is pain untold and unending and when pain is all there is to be known then self becomes absent."
"Killing's a sin, whoever you kill. Them's God's rules."
"You aborted the second coming before he could teach us things and you looked your abortion in the eye as you did so."
"Man is the creator but also the destroyer. Man destroys himself. Woman is the giver of life and seldom the brute force and here she is alive and well!"
"Maybe my marrow heart will get the better of me! Maybe the muscle - the vessel - the withered, pulsing hunk of meat - will finally let me sleep!"
Wednesday, 3 December 2014
Fuck You I Like Christmas
It's very 'cool' to hate Christmas. When a jingly old Christmas classic comes on the radio it's expected of the occupants of that room to go 'Eurgh' and giggle misanthropically at their fellow man. To mumble into your drink and offer a dismissive hand gesture at anyone who dares mention the word earlier than mid-December. It's a C word that offends more easily than THE C word (cunt).
With that in mind I, as a 27-year-old man with alternative interests and a hatred for processed pop music and capitalist John Lewis heartstring pornography, should be the very vanguard of the anti-festive brigade. Well I'm sorry to disappoint you, you assuming nincompoop, but I love Christmas.
When I hear Slade's old hit for the first time, I smile. When I'm treated to that first whiff of delicious mulled wine I feel warmer inside than the cauldron it's served from. I've liked Christmas ever since it was nothing more to me than a morning of free toys, and as its merit to me has morphed as I've grown up, my fondness for it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
It's not my fault, my love for this time of year is out of my control. If you want to blame someone for this gleeful affront to your yearly grumble, blame my relatives. Blame my friends. Hell, even blame my ex-girlfriends if you want. These are the people who, throughout my life, have always made my Christmases happy, exciting and memorable. They've been conditioning me since birth towards Pavlovian salivation responsive to the first beats of 'Last Christmas'.
Christmas to me is a gathering of relatives I don't often see (and I actually like mine), good music, games, drinking and feasting. And Doctor Who is always on. Any day that's on is Christmas to me. Prior to that it's me and my friends, prancing about like idiots in my flat to silly songs in the shade of my glowing Christmas tree, festive-events and the sudden influx of good, Christmas ales. I've yet to have a bad Christmas, but after almost thirty good ones I doubt a sour one-off will make much of a dent in my support for it.
I've been consistently lucky. Millions haven't. Many have lost someone precious to them at Christmas time. Many are abused, neglected or subject to some continued, dreaded form of all-the-year-round torment during the festive season and, however their fortunes have fared, they have a justified disdain for the time of year. Human evil doesn't take a break when Santa's workshop opens.
On the lighter end of the spectrum, others dislike Christmas because their families have never really bothered with it and so they're baffled at the onslaught of celebration. Sure, they can have that. And no, I'm not about to careen into a Geldoffian rant about how we should shove Christmas down the throats of entire cultures who have never historically acknowledged it. By all means grumble at Him, I'll join you there.
But anyhow, I fall into neither of those categories. I am humbled to have been left in this section of society, and I recognise the struggles of others, I am not ignorant, I am simply thankful. And Christmas brings this out in me more than any other time of the year.
"Oh but you aren't religious Joe! What are you doing celebrating Christmas?" I hear you ask (keep it down, I'm writing). No, I'm not. But I won't let a lack of piety stop me from enjoying a festival of light and heat, invented by pagans in order to banish darkness and cold, under a tree introduced to my culture by a German prince in the nineteenth century, and unfortunately obtained by a God-fearing cult with an agenda to promote their fantasy starring a magic baby who was born in September. I'll leave the light and warmth in, and the religion can go out in the cold (ask me what I'm doing for Easter).
Who else was unashamed to love Christmas? Him. Charlie boy. My hero. Charles Dickens, who popularised the salutation "Merry Christmas" in the very same year Prince Albert brought Christmas trees to Britain. If it's good enough for Charlie, it's good enough for me. And I will most certainly be reading A Christmas Carol for the ninth time this year, and enjoying Kermit's rendition of it for the forty-ninth. And while, yes, Dickens does sign off with a desire to be blessed by God, it is Dickens I am blessed by, every year (I even got a job in his house this year, so he's technically my boss now too).
Finally, you'll tell me I'm in support of a festival of capitalism. Well save your breath. That's not what Christmas is to me, and I don't indulge. I won't be eagerly awaiting the horrific Coke advert (why people are excited to see a convoy of corporate gas-guzzlers lay waste to an idyllic country village is beyond me, they moan about it at other times of the year), I won't be setting foot into a John Lewis or a Debenhams (the queues for that are huge anyway) and I certainly won't be enjoying any butchered turkey flesh either. If this is what Christmas is to you, I get why you hate it. But stay out of my way, I'm putting 'Fairytale of New York' on.
Merry Christmas!
With that in mind I, as a 27-year-old man with alternative interests and a hatred for processed pop music and capitalist John Lewis heartstring pornography, should be the very vanguard of the anti-festive brigade. Well I'm sorry to disappoint you, you assuming nincompoop, but I love Christmas.
When I hear Slade's old hit for the first time, I smile. When I'm treated to that first whiff of delicious mulled wine I feel warmer inside than the cauldron it's served from. I've liked Christmas ever since it was nothing more to me than a morning of free toys, and as its merit to me has morphed as I've grown up, my fondness for it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
It's not my fault, my love for this time of year is out of my control. If you want to blame someone for this gleeful affront to your yearly grumble, blame my relatives. Blame my friends. Hell, even blame my ex-girlfriends if you want. These are the people who, throughout my life, have always made my Christmases happy, exciting and memorable. They've been conditioning me since birth towards Pavlovian salivation responsive to the first beats of 'Last Christmas'.
Christmas to me is a gathering of relatives I don't often see (and I actually like mine), good music, games, drinking and feasting. And Doctor Who is always on. Any day that's on is Christmas to me. Prior to that it's me and my friends, prancing about like idiots in my flat to silly songs in the shade of my glowing Christmas tree, festive-events and the sudden influx of good, Christmas ales. I've yet to have a bad Christmas, but after almost thirty good ones I doubt a sour one-off will make much of a dent in my support for it.
I've been consistently lucky. Millions haven't. Many have lost someone precious to them at Christmas time. Many are abused, neglected or subject to some continued, dreaded form of all-the-year-round torment during the festive season and, however their fortunes have fared, they have a justified disdain for the time of year. Human evil doesn't take a break when Santa's workshop opens.
On the lighter end of the spectrum, others dislike Christmas because their families have never really bothered with it and so they're baffled at the onslaught of celebration. Sure, they can have that. And no, I'm not about to careen into a Geldoffian rant about how we should shove Christmas down the throats of entire cultures who have never historically acknowledged it. By all means grumble at Him, I'll join you there.
But anyhow, I fall into neither of those categories. I am humbled to have been left in this section of society, and I recognise the struggles of others, I am not ignorant, I am simply thankful. And Christmas brings this out in me more than any other time of the year.
"Oh but you aren't religious Joe! What are you doing celebrating Christmas?" I hear you ask (keep it down, I'm writing). No, I'm not. But I won't let a lack of piety stop me from enjoying a festival of light and heat, invented by pagans in order to banish darkness and cold, under a tree introduced to my culture by a German prince in the nineteenth century, and unfortunately obtained by a God-fearing cult with an agenda to promote their fantasy starring a magic baby who was born in September. I'll leave the light and warmth in, and the religion can go out in the cold (ask me what I'm doing for Easter).
Who else was unashamed to love Christmas? Him. Charlie boy. My hero. Charles Dickens, who popularised the salutation "Merry Christmas" in the very same year Prince Albert brought Christmas trees to Britain. If it's good enough for Charlie, it's good enough for me. And I will most certainly be reading A Christmas Carol for the ninth time this year, and enjoying Kermit's rendition of it for the forty-ninth. And while, yes, Dickens does sign off with a desire to be blessed by God, it is Dickens I am blessed by, every year (I even got a job in his house this year, so he's technically my boss now too).
Finally, you'll tell me I'm in support of a festival of capitalism. Well save your breath. That's not what Christmas is to me, and I don't indulge. I won't be eagerly awaiting the horrific Coke advert (why people are excited to see a convoy of corporate gas-guzzlers lay waste to an idyllic country village is beyond me, they moan about it at other times of the year), I won't be setting foot into a John Lewis or a Debenhams (the queues for that are huge anyway) and I certainly won't be enjoying any butchered turkey flesh either. If this is what Christmas is to you, I get why you hate it. But stay out of my way, I'm putting 'Fairytale of New York' on.
Merry Christmas!
Sunday, 16 November 2014
Angry Man With Stella Can
Angry Man With Stella Can
When were you last okay?
So bulldog-eyed
So swift of stride
All your livelong, snarling day
Angry Man With Stella Can
Doing laps around Soho Square
So many wide-berths
From tourists perturbed
But though you'll grumble, you'll never care
Angry Man With Stella Can
Arguing with the tarmac
Though your words are coarse
And enraged by the sauce
I don't think you'll ever attack
Angry Man With Stella Can
Draped in your coat so grey
Is it the uniform
That impedes your reform
Or does apathy dress you that way?
Angry Man With Stella Can
Who had you been before?
A good man with a vice
And friends not so nice
Given little but promised more?
Angry Man With Stella Can
You frighten me, so you know
It isn't the can
Or the big, shouty man
It's in seeing where my life could go
Angry Man With Stella Can
If I could make you well
And if there was a way
To avoid your fate
Would you be kind enough to tell?
When were you last okay?
So bulldog-eyed
So swift of stride
All your livelong, snarling day
Angry Man With Stella Can
Doing laps around Soho Square
So many wide-berths
From tourists perturbed
But though you'll grumble, you'll never care
Angry Man With Stella Can
Arguing with the tarmac
Though your words are coarse
And enraged by the sauce
I don't think you'll ever attack
Angry Man With Stella Can
Draped in your coat so grey
Is it the uniform
That impedes your reform
Or does apathy dress you that way?
Angry Man With Stella Can
Who had you been before?
A good man with a vice
And friends not so nice
Given little but promised more?
Angry Man With Stella Can
You frighten me, so you know
It isn't the can
Or the big, shouty man
It's in seeing where my life could go
Angry Man With Stella Can
If I could make you well
And if there was a way
To avoid your fate
Would you be kind enough to tell?
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