A cool cat...

With all the grimness in the world I have to say that my cat Luna helps. Nothing seems to bother her. Ferry and plane disasters pass her by, celebrity sex scandals bother her not a jot, the goings on in Coronation street mean nothing to her, and as for the football.

Luna lives in a world of calm and eating and sleeping, getting only the teeniest bit agitated when she wants to be let out to play or when she gets soaked to the skin by rain and rushes in for a good rub dry and a tummy tickle. I swear she only goes out in the rain so that we towel her dry, she purrs and purrs so loudly. Not even that yappy little dog down the road upsets her, she just sits on the wall and teases.

In the evening she sleeps on the sofa, at night she sleeps at the end of the bed, her white hairs leaving behind a trail of evidence.

There’s no doubt that Luna is a calming influence and I think some of her easy going attitude may be rubbing off on me. My world gets calmer and calmer, I eat, I sleep, I go out in the rain, only rushing in for a…

No, best not go there.

Fat people…

Let’s face it, all really fat people are jolly and cuddly and nice. You only have to look at The Laughing Policeman, Father Christmas, Billy Bunter, and Fatty Arbuckle to realise that.

Of course that fat old policeman (he's always on our street) may not be quite what he seems and on the take, Billy Bunter was a greedy bully, Father Christmas sneaks into children’s bedrooms, and Fatty Arbuckle – king of the silent comedy – was a murdering rapist.

Which brings me to that jolly, cuddly, smiley, nice, Sir Cyril Smith chappie; a smudged blend of them all.

There was a time when good old Cyril was everybody’s favourite politician, a real character in a world when there were a lot of characters in politics. He was all over the TV; singing with Don Estelle, appearing on Clunk Click with Uncle Jim, even showing up in a Bananarama advert. Yes Cyril was one of the good guys; a self made man, working class to his corpulent, corrupt, core, and a knight of the realm to boot forsooth.

He lived with his mother (an office cleaner), his illegitimate brother and sister, Eunice and Norman, and his grandmother in a one-up one-down cottage in Rochdale. He was fond of describing himself as "illegitimate, deprived and poor". What he didn’t say was that he was an obese (which was obvious), homosexual (which wasn't), bullying pedophile, preying on the innocent boys he claimed he was helping.

Of course there is nothing wrong with being fat or homosexual, but as far back as the 1960s Smith was spanking and sexually abusing teenage boys in a hostel he co-founded, bullying them into doing whatever he demanded. That can’t be right can it? Nor can it be right that despite numerous allegations and complaints over the years the authorities did nothing about it.

I encountered Big Cyril, as he liked to be called, on a train once. I was just twenty and on my way from Birmingham to Wolverhampton. In those days trains had compartments and he almost filled it with his body, legs stretched out akimbo in front of him. The train was packed, and for a moment I considered sitting in one of the seats opposite his huge bulk. But as I went to open the compartment door he shot me such a look of warning that I changed my mind and spent the short journey standing in the corridor.

Up until that time I’d always thought him okay as far as politicians went. But I changed my mind that day. There was something unclean about him and - maybe it’s just my mind adding even more grime to the experience - he reminded me of a bloated feral rat, like the one I was reading about in the James Herbert novel that was stuffed into my pocket that day.

Of course there will be those that will defend him. Those that ask why all this only came out after his death. Those same people will probably say that the men making these accusations are only doing it for the money. I don’t care what they say. I say strip his knighthood, burn his records and books, prosecute the people who, through complicity or silence, are as guilty as he, ridicule, pillory, and tarnish his memory beyond even the glimmer of a shine.

I really hope that Big Cyril Smith is rotting in his own shit alongside his old crony Jimmy Saville in Hell, and I make no apologies for it.

Bacon and beans...

Somewhere between The Archers and growing runner beans I seem to have lost my way. Whatever happened to that angry young man who was going to set the world on fire with his big ideas. Now it seems that rather than angry, I’m just slightly grumpy and a little tired of being even that. Turns out those big ideas of mine weren’t so very big after all.

Maybe it’s a mid-life crisis as I slip towards old age, but I can’t help feeling a little peeved that I didn’t achieve a lot more. Oh, I’ve done some things; had a more interesting life than many I suppose, but I always imagined that I might do something, even one thing, that was truly great.

Twenty two years ago today Francis Bacon died. As a teenager I discovered his work and, whilst at first it repulsed me in lots of ways, I soon understood what a master of the paint he was. I remember feeling very sad when he died. He didn’t really start painting until his mid-30’s, not knowing if he could paint well enough he made a living out of interior decoration. It wasn’t until he found a theme, which in my mind is simply meat, that his real work began, and just look at what he achieved.

Now, I’m no Francis Bacon but I can paint a little and if I could find my theme who knows what I might come up with. Maybe if I tried I might find whatever it is that seems to be missing for me at the moment.

Maybe instead of meat, vegetables, with just a hint of bacon, could be my theme.

Two sinking ships...

The last letter to be written on the Titanic was sold for £119,000 at auction yesterday.

The letter was written by survivors Esther Hart and her seven-year-old daughter Eva just eight hours before the ship hit an iceberg and sank back in 1912. The husband of Esther and the father of Eva died when the ship sank. The letter only survived because it was in the pocket of Esther’s husband's coat which he gave her to keep warm.

Titanic memorabilia is big business and the fascination with the disaster never seems to stop. A menu from the day of the disaster was sold for £76,000, while a violin played as the ship sank went for £900,000; and if you can’t afford the real thing then you can buy a reproduction Titanic memorabilia pack on ebay for a few quid. There are dozens of Titanic memorabilia collectors all scrabbling for bits and pieces of historical grief.

Of course it’s not just the Titanic. Bits of the First and Second World Wars, Belsen, Pompeii, and any number of tragedies from the past are sold by auction houses. It seems that other people’s misery is a real money spinner.

With the recent South Korea ferry disaster, a ship crammed with hundreds of teenage students, I wonder if in years to come there will be memorabilia of this disaster for sale. If so what will it be; boarding passes, the belongings of the students, the pictures taken by the dying kids on their phones jut minutes before they drowned? Or, in lieu of letters written on Titanic letter-headed paper, will it be the text messages sent by the dying students to their parents?

I hope not. These are so sad and harrowing.

Shin Young-Jin: "Mom, I'm sending you this now because I'm afraid I might not be able to say it later. I love you."

Mother: "Why..? I was wondering why you weren't checking the messenger ..."

Mother again when no reply: "I love you too, son."

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Student: "Dad, don't worry. I'm wearing a life vest and am with other girls. We're inside the ship, still in the hallway."

Father: "I know that the rescue is under way, but shouldn't you be waiting outside the rail? Try to get out if you can."

Student: "The ship is too tilted. The hallway is crowded with so many people."

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Student to parent: "There are few people on the ship, can't see a thing, it's totally dark. So there are few men and women, women are screaming and we are not dead yet, so please send along this message."

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The father of teenager Shin Seong-hee: "I know the rescuers are coming but why don't you try to come outside?"

Shin: "No – I can't move because it is tilted too much. Moving is more dangerous."

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Student to parent: "I am alive; there are students alive, please save us quickly."

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Student to a group chat entitled 'Theatre Club': 'Love you all for real. Looks like we really are gonna die. If I've wronged any of you, forgive. Love you guys.'

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Brother of victim: 'Keep calm, don't panic, take your time, stay sharp, and do as they say. Just act fast as they tell you to. When data works contact me again, your brother.'

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Student: "The ship ran into something and it's not moving. They say the coast guard just arrived."

Brother: "Don't panic. Just do what you are told to do and then you will be fine"

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Thank God there weren’t mobile phones on the Titanic and maybe it's best that they don't find any wreckage from Flight MH370.

The beach monsters cometh...

It’s been a while since I stumbled across anything on the beach. Somehow my Dali giraffe still eludes me, although this might have become it I guess. No matter, I was happy enough to see this visitor cranking its way along the sand the other day. Of course when I say happy, that’s a purely relative term.

Even though it is the start of the beach monster season, it isn’t everyday that you bump into a sea tank, one of those horrible semi-machines which harvest humans from coastal settlements for reasons that are never made clear in one of my favourite books by John Wyndham. The Kraken Wakes, if you’ve never read it, then you probably should. The premise of the tale is that aliens come to Earth and inhabit the deep seas, managing to change the currents and melt the polar ice caps. The world is flooded with people living on closely guarded islands as the sea tanks continue to spirit away any survivors to suffer God knows what fate. I won’t tell you how it ends; it’d spoil it; although the UK and the US publications have different endings, with the UK version not being quite as bleak.

This little monster wasn’t as terrifying as all that. Maybe its waste wood and rubber pipe legs, plastic baker’s tray body, and traffic cone top head appendage give it a sense of quirky comedy that a real monster from the deep simply wouldn’t possess.

And I don’t think this chap eats people.

I know, I know, why would anyone waste their time on a thing like this. Well, lets just say I have the time and leave it at that shall we?

I really must read The Kraken Wakes again. Perhaps I’ll try to get hold of the American version, I quite like a bleak ending.

A sunny day...

A sunny day, a deserted beach, and the mountains of the Llyn in the distance – what more is required?

Of course climbing down the pebble bank was tricky, climbing back up even harder, but it was worth it for the solitude, the smell of the sea salt, and the light aircraft taking off and landing at Caernarfon airport. Of course, it’s really more of a landing strip left over from the war than an airport, but everything counts in North Wales. Three thousand years ago the Iron Age fort, the fort of Lleu the hero and warrior, stood proud above the waves as fishermen in coracles caught sea bass on cat gut lines. These days it’s a sea battered hillock, rising above the scattering of 1930’s bungalows and asbestos chalets.

The beach at Dinas Dinille is an out of the way place with dunes and salt marsh; the sort of place you might come to fish for sea bass or to watch the warblers in the reeds. On a sunny day it shines, the pebbles making a rocky rolling sound as you slide, feet falling away of their own accord beneath you, to the sand below. When the tide is out the sands stretch for miles, and there’s an overwhelming sense of space. The air is so empty and the emptiness so great that sometimes I feel that I am rushing away with it. Big sky, vast sea, and a beach that stretches away to the distant Lynn, across to the lighthouse of Llanddwyn island on Anglesey, and far away into the horizon.

It makes me want to breathe deeply.

Looking for mermaids...

So off we went in search of adventure and Cribinau, a small tidal island off the south west coast of Anglesey between Porth China and Porth Cwyfan where, in my imagination, the mermaids sing as they comb their hair.

The island can only be reached on foot at low tide and when we eventually found it, the postcode wasn’t recognised by my sat nav (maybe not surprising for an island church) the tide was in. We parked the car by a stile then ambled the length of the beach towards the 13^th century church in the distance.

As we walked, the rocky causeway became more visible with each step. By the time we drew level with the island there was a narrow path of rocks leading out towards the island.

‘Just call me Moses,’ I quipped as we walked between the waters on each side of us. Seagulls flapped into the air as we reached, then climbed the steep stone staircase, setting down our armchair explorers feet on the totally deserted island.

It was an empty, quiet, and beautiful place; a small island of peace in an already peaceful setting. I didn’t hear any mermaids singing, but the sound of the breeze in the grass and the glimmer of the sunlight on the waves were more than soothing consolation.

We wandered around the crouching lime washed building, peering in through the tiny windows at the shadowed silence inside. It was a mystical place, a place where fishermen and farmers, milkmaids and merchants, blacksmiths and bailiffs were baptised, married, then finally buried, a place to stop and draw breath, a place to wonder at, a place to just think.

And that’s what I did.

I didn't find any mermaids though.