Treats...

I’ve never been one for indulging myself. Oh, if it’s there I’ll take it, but treats are not built into my psyche. Mind you I come from a world where having ice in your water was a real treat and a slice of lemon or lime… Well, that was really pushing the boat out.

I’m not saying that I live frugally, because I don’t. But my idea of a treat is probably most people’s idea of normal everyday expenditure. Let’s take cooking. If I find a recipe that calls for an expensive and frivolous ingredient, let us say coriander, or cilantro as the Americans call it, I will: (A) either substitute with something else (like parsley which grows in our garden), (B) use some of the dried stuff that lurks at the back of the cupboards, or (C) not use anything and pretend it didn’t need it.

The fact that fresh coriander can be bought for less than a quid at Aldi doesn’t change anything. Coriander is without doubt a treat.

And then there are fish and chips. Fish and chips have always been and always will be a treat. There’s something so decadent about just going to the chippy and buying your tea freshly fried over the counter. In the old days they came wrapped in newspaper and I could go on about that for hours, but I won’t (even though they did taste better). In fact it isn’t just fish and chips; all takeaway food is ‘a treat’ in my world. Chinese, Indian, a kebab, even a Happy Meal; although I would no more order a takeaway pizza than run a marathon. Expensive cheese on toast in a box is really a treat too far.

Wine is another matter, and sometimes I will treat myself to a good bottle of the red stuff. The problem then is that I find it hard to drink it. No, not drink it, that’s easy enough, but finding the right time to drink it can be a problem. I’m always looking for that special occasion to drink my ‘treat’ wine and somehow most occasions just don’t seem special enough. I have bottles I bought as a treat which are fifteen years old at least gathering dust on the wine racks. One day though. Yes, one day.

Fortunately I’m not much into cars, so I’ve never treated myself to anything special. For me a car really is a way of getting from one place to another (shall we say Aylesbury to Zoar in Cornwall) and I don’t need all those bells and whistles that cars seem to have these days. They are more an annoyance than anything else, just something else to fiddle with and distract you when you should be concentrating on the road ahead or texting.

This brings me to holidays. Holidays are a treat, and perhaps the biggest treat of my life is soon to come about. Two weeks in Barbados in a beach house with a cook and maid with the Caribbean at the end of the garden is about as good as any treat can get as far as I’m concerned. Of course I agonise over the cost, knowing full well that the money could have been far more sensibly spent or put away for a rainy day.

But then, it is a treat and maybe that rainy day will never come.

Better red...

I really can’t understand why anyone is still surprised by the antics of our politicians. Why would they be when we are all aware that election promises will not only be broken but cynically overturned as soon as the votes are counted? Surely we expected this when we voted? Surely we knew that under their smiles and weasel words were lizards simply waiting to grind us all down with their self-serving plans and need for power and control? Surely we expect our nouveau Lords to snort coke and cavort with prostitutes, wear orange bras and leather jackets and basically spend our money on their own strange perversions. Why are we shocked or surprised? Wasn’t it ever so?

Let’s face it; you don’t become a politician by being a nice bloke. You have to have something else going on in your make-up, something that drives you, something that you will – at any cost – push through regardless of the consequences even if it is wearing a prostitute’s bra. Oh, you can wrap it up any way you want and use terms like elected representatives, democracy and choice, but in reality it’s hard for ordinary people to see through the lies or even understand that these people would promise anything, break any agreement, to get themselves in charge and have their own way.

I know that I do.

At the last election I voted conservative despite hating all of the Tories that are leading this country into becoming a smaller, far less important, America. In my case I was expecting a Lib-Dem coalition, a little sense injected into a Tory world that is becoming far too much like Germany in the thirties. Unfortunately I got it totally wrong and poor Nick Clegg, battered and dispirited, broken by his role as second fiddle sans bow, was ousted by us voters. In many ways at that time I believe he was our only hope.

Miliband never stood a chance. Unpopular and shifty-eyed, happy to stab his more popular and better looking brother in the back, a man pretending not to be a Tory when he had ‘almost Tory’ tattooed all over his seriously smug, slightly wrong face. No wonder Cameron won. As Kylie sang ‘Better the devil you know’, and then there was the Scottish threat to stoke the fires of fear as the Scottish threat so often does.

I’ve been advised by my conscience never to write about politics. I’m not very well informed and I am far too easily fooled. So in most ways I am just like the rest of the voting population, from idealistic kids straight out of school, to silly old ladies continually voting the way their dead husbands did. But we need a change and we need difference, so I’ve decided to ignore my conscience yet again.

How can you vote with any passion when at best the difference between the available parties is merely a couple of shades of washed out grey? Where is the red and the blue? Has it been lost somewhere in the mediocrity of failure, spreadsheet political accounting and point scoring? Has it faded and turned to beige?

I think I can feel a very slight breeze of change and I begin (at long last) to feel the need for that change to happen. I don’t want our children to be homeless and poor all their lives. I don’t want them to have to worry about how they pay for their children’s medical treatment or education or how they are going to keep them fed and warm through the winter. I don’t want them to fear the knock of the bailiff or the foreclosure of the bankers. I want them to have pensions, I want them to be cared for when they are old and not sit in their own piss all day. Maybe I am just getting old myself, or maybe I am thinking that I might make a tiny difference to the future if I can change my views a little.

Well, I can hope.

Last week I paid three quid to become a Labour Party supporter. I’m not (well at least not yet), but at least I now have allowed myself the option. My three quid buys me a vote in the Labour Party leadership election and my reason for doing this was simple. I listened to Jeremy Corbyn and what he was saying made sense to me. We do need to build council housing to provide homes, there is no need for a competitive gas and electricity industry so re-nationalise it and manage best price for all, of course the NHS should never be totally privatised and young people do have a right to a free-ish education.

I may not vote for him to be leader but at least I now have the chance to be involved if I want to. He might be a lefty, but at least he doesn’t wear a really expensive suit, dye his hair, use his hands to emphasise empty promises (as taught by a presentation coach), or give answers that don’t answer the questions. He seems to just answer the questions the way he feels and believes. Perhaps he isn’t a real politician at all.

Of course talking a case is easy, but he doesn’t strike me as a liar. He seems to be a fairly sensible and quite nice bloke who believes in what he is saying, not Michael Foot, not Tony Benn, certainly not Blair, just a man speaking about what he truly believes might work.

And it might.

What is it they say, ‘Better red than dead’?

I just hope he doesn’t wear an orange bra.

Parked up...

I love coming here and parking up to look at the mountains in the distance.

Our cottage is behind those three peaks on the far right. When I was working the sight of these mountains as we drove along the road every Friday evening transported me from stress to peace in an instant.

Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like without our tiny sanctuary from a  busy and indifferent world.

The stone...

How I wish my heart was a stone.

Untouched by past,

Unaware of present,

Washed smooth by waves,

Made cold by ice,

Shaped by the wind,

Ignored by the world,

Hidden in deep,

Lost to all.

A certain thing,

Not a thing of beating.

A stone.

 I heard it beat from the shoreline.

That place where the road meets the sea.

Heavy as lead,

Hard as steel,

Calling out to me.

As if it wasn't enough to be alone

At that place where the road meets the sea.

Hurt to the bone

With the pull of a past,

The echoing beat of a stone.

Fo’shizzle...

I’m no Stephen Fry, but I do like my words I do. I like all sorts of words. So when President Obama used the ‘N’ word on TV quite recently I was surprised, not shocked, but also quite pleased. It’s just a word, a word that has become infected over the years with some of the worst connotations, far more negative than its original meaning of an ignorant person which had no colour connotation at all.

Of course this change of meaning happens to all sorts of words, clever once meant sly, gay once meant happy, lush until recently meant verdant, and pillock once meant a straw pillow scented with medicinal herbs (no, I made that one up, it’s actually derived from pillicock , the old Norwegian for penis. I like my explanation better though).

Words change their meaning all of the time and as language changes new words are always just around the corner. If it didn’t evolve we’d still only be saying ‘ug’ (yes) and ‘ug-ug’ (no) and that wouldn’t make for interesting TV or reading would it? That’s the beauty of language it evolves and morphs as the world changes and as language changes with innovation, new discoveries, science, pop culture, our vocabulary gets ever richer. There was no superglue, Teflon, maxi, mini, fab, turbo, lol, labradoodle, laptop, or lap-dance until quite recently.

There are around 1,025,109 in the English language, but a word can’t really be a word until it is in the Oxford English Dictionary and each year new words are added. Five hundred new words were added last month and as I don’t like to suffer from FOMO. I thought I’d take a look at some of them.

Fo’shizzle I’m not keen on anybody that drumbles, but I’d rather that words were on-trend and not stanky. After all, I’ve bukoed far too hard with my uber vocabulary to auto-tune it to flatline. I’m no freegan, and neither do I live in ecotown but I still like my go-juice black and hot in my koozie. By the way if anyone would like to sext me I won’t play at hard arse, life’s too short and shitshow for that.

BTW, that ‘N’ word I mentioned was the word for God in ancient Egypt. I wonder what will happen if it comes to mean something else?

There was once a Tory call George...

Osbornerick

There once was a Tory called George,

Who decided to cut out the poor.

His forty percent,

Well, it made quite a dent.

But his cuts were the sickness, not cure.

Pound shop lilies...

My pound shop lilies, such a bargain.