Lest they forget...

I don’t know why I sit here deep in the wine glass, far too late at night, on the eve of Armistice and wondering where my eighteenth birthday present ended up. It wasn’t much, but then I knew we had no money, and a gift of something I’d for so long admired and wanted was more than good enough for me.

It was a First World War shell lid, the piece they screwed down at the bottom of the shell. Some Tommy had made it into a soldiers cap adding a copper peak to the brass, two cap buttons, and an old French copper coin inside the cap on what I assumed was the detonator. It’s not the one in the picture, but it was close.

I often wondered if that poor soldier made the thing while he sat in the trenches up to his knees in mud and rats, or if it was something he brought back to Blighty. Maybe he fashioned it a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, perhaps he never made it back at all and it was brought home by a friend.

‘Off to college,’ his mouthpiece said. ‘While you are away we’ll keep it safe for you.’ She said.

Safety? A new concept then.

Anyway like my fossils, the bird’s eggs, my paintings, the National Geographic, the pier, the grandfather clock, my hope, it went the way of all things that were mine but really his. In sat on their mantelpiece for years after I was given it. I can’t understand why I simply didn’t ask for it back or just pick it up and take it.

Perhaps I just knew that it was never really mine.

These days they call this things Trench Art, collectible, quite valuable. Perhaps that was it. Of course it’s a long time ago now, but there are some things that – lest we forget – aren’t forgotten. I wonder where it is now?

John Lewis time again...

So the new John Lewis is here. I know, I know, it’s cute, it tugs at the heartstrings, that little boy is adorable, and everyone loves a penguin.

Yes it is all so cute, so adorable, so lovely, and all so completely bloody cynical.

The ad is basically a sales tool for Monty the penguin merchandise. Nothing wrong with that you might say, ads are meant to sell product, and you would be right. What I think is very wrong is making a not very well-made stuffed penguin into a ‘must have’ gift and then selling it for £95, a staggering £185 if you want Monty’s practically identical girlfriend Mabel (both typically John Lewis names) so that the two of them can remain a couple.

Let’s not be fooled, this ad isn’t about love, or sentiment, or nice deeds at Christmas. It’s about grabbing as much money as possible for as little as possible. If you look carefully at the ad you’ll see all the John Lewis penguin products you could wish for. You are being manipulated, brainwashed to need these things.

Are people really this gullible? Apparently yes they are. John Lewis sold out of Monty toys within hours of the advert launch. Just who is so naïve to allow John Lewis to tug at their overly sentimental heartstrings in order to sell them such tat? Who would pay almost 100 quid for a toy that you could pick up for less than a fiver in any discount toy store?

Many people are saying that this ad is the best ad yet. Well, I guess it depends on your perspective, your definition of best, and if you don’t mind being taken for a bloody fool by a major store who should know better.

I can imagine grandmothers all over the county tutting as they blow a couple of weeks pension on these cuddly toys, but doing it anyway as little Ben, Grace, Charlie and Fleur will simply adore their very own Monty and his sweetheart. Yes, the little darlings really must have one, so the old dears will part with their money and then wander home to a cold flat that they can’t afford to heat.

But it doesn’t end with cuddly cloth penguins. The soft toy is only part of the Monty range. John Lewis has produced 39 pieces of Monty merchandise including umbrellas, onesies and cufflinks, which also sold out within hours along with those shabby Monty toys.

It seems the world is Monty mad. Well, mad anyway.

As for Sam, the rather strange seven year old boy in the ad, it seems to me that the poor boy needs help. It’s fine to believe that his penguin is real - an active imagination is a good thing - but his concern with his toy penguin’s love life is, well to be frank, a little unsettling. Not only is that penguin in need of a bloody good wash, but is it really normal for a seven year old to fixate on a penguin’s sexual needs?

This is boy who may grow up to seek love with a little too much passion, a boy that might become addicted to romance, or a stalker, a serial philanderer, a sex addict, maybe even something worse. He’s well on the way to becoming a voyeur as he watches the penguins make whoopee with that strangely over-interested smile on his face - and all because his parents spoilt him by buying him an overpriced stuffed rag penguin one Christmas.

Yes, there’s a moral in this: don’t pay £95 for a cheap cuddly toy, make an ass of yourself, and send John Lewis laughing all the way to the bank. If you do your child may grow up to be one of those weird people who hang around farmyards watching the chickens mate.

A few fireworks…

What a week for fireworks, well actually what a couple of weeks. Just when did Bonfire Night start in October and go on until mid-November? Bonfire night with all its gunpowder, treason and plot is on the 5th of November, otherwise what is the point of having it?

Bonfire nights in my boyhood were such anticipated affairs. Everyone would build a bonfire in their back garden, stuff a motley selection of old clothes tied together with string to make a Guy, and save pocket money for weeks for a few fireworks.

Sometimes I’d plonk my guy in an old pushchair and go penny-for-the-Guying it. It never occurred to me just how wrong it was to burn an effigy of a Catholic, even a Catholic terrorist, despite Blue Peter telling the story with sketchy drawings every year.

Such an exciting event; if I were to rate special days back then Bonfire Night was only just behind Christmas, in front of my birthday, and Easter limped along miles behind like a damp squib. Even Halloween, which was nothing like the trick-or-treatfest children enjoy today, beat Easter by a crooked mile.

Bonfire night was so exciting - the flames, the smell of burning tyres and wood, volcanoes, Catherine wheels, baked potatoes, and of course the sparklers. How I loved sparklers.

This year, and for the first time in many, we set off some fireworks in my mum-in- law’s back garden. They were very good, not overly large, but sparkly and banging and whizzing and splattering. I didn’t feel the same thrill and excitement I did as a boy though – except when it came to the sparklers.

Last night holding my sparkler in hand, a big grin on my face, I was a boy again standing in a council house back garden, watching a burning heretic go up in smoke, and eating a baked potato.

Yes, I still love sparklers it seems.

Government bans farting...

As a boy I used to read The Beano.

Dennis The Menace, Billy Whizz, Minnie The Minx, Roger The Dodger, The Bash Street Kids. Hours and hours of reading fun in a comic that cost a tanner.

I don’t remember when I gave up reading it, probably when I switched to The Hornet, but I’ve dabbled over the years and read one or two; even bought a Summer Special when a moment of unfettered madness grabbed me by my grey little soul. Not for a while now though.

These days The Beano costs £2.20. So when my mum-in-law was given a free copy in her paper I decided that I might as well take a look. Now I’m not sure who The Beano is aimed at these days but it entirely appealed to me. The issue was one long story about farting, each character’s strip continuing from the previous one. The basic premise was that a new roller coaster would be built in town if only the Mayor would agree to it. Of course everyone was thrilled, everyone except Walter, the leader of the softies, that is. Now the Mayor hated farting so Walter decided that he would become the Phantom Farter and try to get the roller coaster stopped…

TOOT!

As I said, it entirely appealed to me – well farting jokes are absolutely the best aren’t they?

I was engrossed for a good ten minutes as I read from cover to cover. I smiled at the awful puns, was intrigued by the artwork, made nostalgic by the well-remembered characters, and I fell in love with The Beano all over again.

FERPPP!

Of course The Beano is a little bit more edgy these days. Lame, awesome, pants, dude, epic, whatevers, and app are just some of the words I dont remember from my childhood comics.  Political references to the Prime Minister making everybody miserable is not something I remember from my childhood Beano either; although a good farting story is universal to small boys of all ages, so maybe I am actually part of the comic’s target audience.  Yes, although the characters looked and behaved pretty much the same as they always have there was definitely something else going on in that comic - I’m not quite sure what though.

PAAAARRRRP!

If I were pushed and had to pick a single word to describe The Beano today that word would probably be ‘subversive’, although I’d probably attach a ‘mildly’ in front of it.

TRUMMMP!

Anyway, short story even shorter; there was a voucher inside to get a pound off the next edition which means I can have my next copy for just £1.20. It seems ungrateful not to take DC Thomson up on the offer and besides, in the name of research, I need to check that The Beano isn’t actually inciting young boys into becoming subversive with its disruptive story-lines and ideas for pranks.

RRRIPP!

That would be too awful wouldn’t it? It could lead anywhere, even to anarchy, and I’m sure that the Prime Minister wouldn't like that at all. No he'd have to set the thought police on it and dumb it down, just like his government is doing with everything else from Twitter to speaking about your beliefs in public.

PPHART!

Fairies in the garden...

I wish it had been fairies, but it wasn’t. Mind you, if you look closely at the photograph you can see the odd fairy shape or two.

I’ve been noticing these tiny white mothy things in my garden for a few days now. Pure white swarms of minute insects every time I pick up a leaf or deadhead a plant. I suppose I should have known what they were - after all the clue is in the name - but in all my years of gardening in various places I have never, ever, come across a single whitefly; let alone a swarm of the little buggers. Greenfly I have had and blackfly are regular visitors to my nasturtiums, but until now the whitefly have stayed away.

I have to say that they weren’t what I expected. Both greenfly and blackfly look like the kind of crawlies that will damage your plants. Whitefly, on the other hand, look like benevolent creatures who might have flown down from the moon and would have Tinkerbell for a friend. Of course they aren’t benevolent at all and left unchecked can do all sorts of damage to your plants.

They go in through the leaf and stem, literally sucking the life out of plants, and live to a five day breeding cycle. Once you have them you have to be vigilant. I sprayed with a mixture of washing up liquid and bug killer which seems to have got them for now. Five days down the line though it might be a different story. I’m actually hoping for a sharp frost. That’ll get the little devils.

Oh well, it’s good to have a new foe to fight, as if the slugs weren’t enough. I’ll get them. Yes, my new quest it to eradicate the whitefly. Let’s hope that it doesn’t turn out to be mission impossible.

Now children, clap if you believe in fairies. It might help kill the whitefly.

Moving skies...

Sometimes it’s best not too look. Sometimes you don’t need to or don’t have the chance. The A55, speeding along in the passenger seat on a clear autumn afternoon, no time to look, everything whizzing past so quickly - apart from the sky.

The big blue sky and the clouds, wispy and drawn out like smeared emulsion across a light blue silk dress. Don’t look. Just react.

Point.

Click.

Point.

Click.

Point.

Click.

I never saw that tree or the pylon, and even if I’d tried I’d never have timed it so that the street lamp was right in the middle of shot. I didn’t even notice the contrail.

Sometimes it’s best not to look. Sometimes you just have to trust to chance.

I love Halloween...

Oh Jesus (is that appropriate?), so that’s another Halloween come and gone and this year there were a record ninety-eight (yes 98! I put it in letters and numbers so that there is no mistake) Trick or Treaters a’visiting our house. I have to say I was impressed. The costumes were brilliant and the children so involved, little devils.

It was almost like I was taken back to my childhood – except I wasn’t. My Halloween childhood was the smell of burning turnips – no pumpkins for sale in supermarkets back then – and the threat of witches. These kids were dressed to the nines and their parents had spent big on their outfits. Witches, warlocks, ghouls, ghosts, Star Wars characters with light sabres, vampires, grim reapers, axemen, princesses of the night, cats, a robot, a moon and the cutest not quite three-year old girl pumpkin I have ever seen.

Of course I played my part, knife through my head and drooling blood. One group screamed and jumped back when I opened the door, the smaller kids just looked very nervous and quivery lipped. Apparently it’s healthy and part of the learning process for kids to be scared occasionally. So that’s alright then - conscience clean.

Most of the children were well behaved and very polite, but inevitably there were a couple of brats – well aren’t there always, cheeky little tykes. I only wish that my knife had been real so that I could have pulled it out and waved it at the little witch who repeated screamed that my knife was a fake, fake, fake, fake, fake, fake, FAKE!

Ninety-four children came to the door, running the gauntlet of pumpkins, their parents (many in fancy dress) standing at the gate watching on in various levels of wine induced oblivion. My wife had made up thirty bags of sweets and, with the frequency of our spooky callers, these were all gone by half-past six. She was pretty much on a sweet bagging production line, bagging sweets all night with no cupboard unrifled in the quest for confectionary.

The last trick or treater, a lone boy in a torn grey suit covered in dust, arrived at about nine. ‘Trick or treat,’ he mumbled. I’m not at all sure he was into the spirit of things. It was probably a last minute decision to come out and have a go; either that or he really was a risen spirit. I gave him his sweets anyway and he wandered off.

Then I blew out the pumpkins, closed the door, and drank myself to sleep. Well, you have to escape the evil spirits somehow.