TV time...

I’ve noticed that there seem to be even more animal programmes on the television than ever at the moment. I’ve nothing against them. Who doesn’t like to watch cuddly dogs doing cuddly things with camp comedians and lions ripping water buffaloes apart? Besides, it’s better than watching northern drunks getting arrested by the police on a Friday night for falling about drunk and endless footage of idiots doing ridiculous things in cars that they shouldn’t even be allowed to drive. 

We have it all these days don’t we? TV ‘documentaries’ about dodgy tradesmen, cruise ship boredom (have you found my luggage yet?), stupid twenty-somethings doing the things that stupid twenty-somethings do, medical conditions that even the Victorians wouldn’t want to make a spectacle of and cakes.

Entertainment seems to have no boundaries and I can’t help wondering how we got from ‘All Our Yesterdays’, ‘Zoo Time’ and ‘The Singing Detective’ to where we are today. I’m sure that a lot of it is driven by the amount of airtime TV has to fill. No longer does television start with Children’s Hour in the afternoon after school – and it was an hour - and finish with the National Anthem at 11.00 pm prompt (watch the little dot until it plinks out).

Nor do we have less than a handful of channels any longer; we have dozens, dozens of dozens and TV on demand and the Internet channels. Not so long ago I can remember just a choice of two and both were in black and white. How strange and impossible that seems now.

Now, I don’t want to get into the nostalgia zone, nor do I want to go on about how we have so many channels but nothing to watch (I’ll leave that to Bruce Springsteen), but I can’t help wondering if a lot of what we watch is driven by cost.

Filming a pride of lions wandering around the plains of Africa has to be significantly cheaper than making a Brideshead Revisited. Apart from the narrator and cameramen there must be very few participants to pay as lions generally work for nothing. Even dogs only expect a handful of biscuits and a good stroke to make TV programmes that can go on relentlessly for hours and hours over weeks and weeks. Just how much footage of dogs running and barking do we really need in this world? And do I really need to see Paul O’Grady in tears over yet another abandoned puppy.

Of course, there are lots of excellent dramas these days and it seems to have improved over recent times. There are also plenty of quiz shows which – I am ashamed to say –  I am a sad fan of. So it isn’t all bad. Just don’t get me started on ‘reality’ TV or the other pap we have thrown at us daily. Yes, I know that I have choice and can turn the box off if I want to, but that isn’t what TV is for. TV is meant to be the other person in the room. It’s just a shame that for much of the time that other person appears to be the chap you avoid down the pub, that social worker you hope that you never need to call on, a group of teenagers causing a ruckus in your road and of course the emergency services in one form or another.

Maybe it was better when we had two channels and TV programmes for less than a third of the day. It was certainly a lot simpler and in my memory the limited nature of what there was to watch made people even more keen to watch it – even the wrestling.

Everyone should write poetry...

I think that the world would be a calmer and better place if everybody wrote poetry. Think about it, it's a great way to get things off your chest and your thoughts across. How great it is to be able to conjure a picture with just a few words, just a few lines. It's almost like making a mini-movie that runs in people's heads, different people's heads, different every time and unique to them dependent on their experiences of the words you use.

I've been jotting down poems for years and when I don't write them down they are there in my head anyway. I see and hear poetry everywhere, in conversation, on the news, when I read a book. Sometimes whole passages jump out at me and I see the rhythm and rhyme even when it isn't meant to be verse. Poetry is everywhere not just in those dusty poetry books at the back of the library bookshelves.

We probably all wrote poetry at school. Some of us may even have enjoyed it. But how many people do you know that write poetry now? Or admit to it. Poetry has a bad name. It's seen as 'worthy', airy-fairy, a thing that only some rather privileged effete young men and bored housewives do. Well, it doesn't have to be, it can be anything you want. Just listen to the words of John Cooper Clarke and Hovis Presley. It really is up to you. Go on, just give it a go.

Write Poetry

Everyone should write poetry,

it’s just words put together

one after each other

in a certain order.

It doesn’t have to be clever.

It doesn’t even have to rhyme.

No need to work to meter.

Just write down the lines.

Just write it down

anyway that you like,

it’ll be fine.

It doesn’t need to be in motion

or even Andrew Motion.

Wax lyrical,

get crucial,

you really don’t need consumption

or a pallor and no gumption,

there is no magic potion.

It’s just words put together

no pressure whatsoever.

Everyone should write verse.

Doesn’t matter if you use a pencil or crayon,

use a smile from a stranger,

a moment of danger,

a heartbeat,

a falling tear mopped,

a strong cup of tea,

a bad time stopped.

Everyone should write poetry.

Believe me

it’ll make you feel happy

even when it’s crappy.

I know that it does me.

It's the best sort of therapy.
Trust me and try it, 

you’ll see.

God, belief and whales…

You know some people seem to think I am godless - a man without hope, love, or compassion. This being the case I think that it’s time to put the record straight because some attitudes piss me off more than others. 

The truth is that I think and feel deeply about matters spiritual, but after years of looking at the world and study of the religions that keeps so many people in fear, I chose to keep my mind open. Open to both positive and negative thoughts, open to the freedom of changing my mind, open to saying when I think when something is wrong without worrying about what others think. I don’t say Amen or Hallelujah or Allahu akbar. To be honest I’m not sure that that any of these words mean anything at all.

If pushed, I’d call myself a Universalist with Pagan tendencies. For some this is a massive cop out of course. Universalism allows people who have no beliefs, strong beliefs, people who aren’t sure, even people who have hard to accept (sometimes seemingly lunatic) beliefs to join together to share what is important – our humanity and spirit. It’s about coexistence and that does not require agreement, just acceptance. 

It sounds so easy doesn’t it? Most formal religions would claim that this is what they already do. But I think we all know that isn’t the whole truth; not even at the local Church of England parish church on a Sunday morning. Is it really so hard for us to coexist without having to fall out when we can’t agree? Sorry, that’s a really stupid question. But even if we can't love everybody do we really need to poke then in the eye for having beliefs different to our own?

I don’t do prophets and I don’t sign up for the Son of God, but I know that there is a universal truth that we are all seeking in our own way; even if it is the way of Bacchus. I have no doctrine, I have no affiliation to any particular God, and I am deeply suspicious of all organised religion – particularly the Judeo-Christian ones that were set up wholly for profit of one kind or another.

The closest I come to going to church is to occasionally pop in to the Unitarian chapel and have a good think - well you have to worship somewhere and the woods can be very wet. Sometimes I even ask for guidance, although I have no idea who I am asking for guidance from. It could be the Universe. It could be the collective spirit of every creature on the planet, or maybe just the whales. Whales seem very wise, certainly when compared to Mohamed, or Jesus, or the Pope. I think that whales probably have more purity and spirituality than any religious leader, as do the trees and birds and worms. (All I ask is that you think about this statement people. I don’t demand that you agree.)

Of course I recognise the value of ritual. Chants and incense and prayer are fine. But for me I don’t want or need to learn my prayers and speak them by rote and I certainly don’t want to respond like an automaton to some mumbled words of a Priest, Inman, or Rabbi. I don’t even understand why they need their titles capitalised. Shocking isn’t it that I dare to say this? How terrible for all you true believers. But I think that we are all teachers even though so many of us seem to be such poor pupils. Still, if that’s what you are comfortable with then it’s fine with me. Sometimes taking the comfortable path is what people need no matter where that path leads.

Anyway, it won’t stop me lighting my candle, clearing my mind, pouring my glass of wine and giving thanks to the spirit that I ask to guide me - and it won’t stop me from saying when I think that you are wrong. But it won’t make me hate you for your beliefs unless you cause pain by them. That’s it! I’m out of the religious closet. May the Universal Spirit help and guide you to make good decisions and try to understand others, may you not judge others by your own standards, and may the whales keep swimming in the oceans forever.

Valentine's Day

Roses are red.

On Valentine’s Day he bought a card,
An explosion of hearts and roses.
It had a verse,
But really he bought it for the pictures.
Besides it was cheap.
Still, it’s the thought that counts,
Although the envelope was battered.
The price was pencilled on the back
And he didn’t have a rubber.
But you can’t put a price on love can you?
So it didn’t seem matter.
All the love that history knows,
Is said to be in every rose.
Yet all that could be found in two,
Is less than what I feel for you.
(Happy Valentine’s Day)
He placed the card upon the shelf.
It’d sit there for a week or two,
Then he’d throw it away.
Disguising it with the bottom of the bin.
A small and quite unnecessary sin.
He held the card and longingly wished,
This thing of memories and sentiment,
That he had somewhere to send it.

Fizzy pop...

Fizzy drinks seem to have become public enemy number one. Well, they are full of sugar and these days far too many of them are drunk far too much of the time. But there was a time when a bottle of coke or a glass of lemonade, with a wax-coated paper straw to drink it with, was a real and occasional treat. I’d sit in the car in the car park of a country pub and feel like a king as I slurped my bottle of whatever savouring each tiny sip. I remember how the straw used to go soggy if you kept it between your lips for too long and then it was useless. I used to dream of growing up and getting a job just so that I could drink a whole bottle of pop every day. Two on Sundays.

Yes, fizzy drinks used to come in bottles, glass ones, not plastic, and I can’t remember when the canned drink popped up for the first time. Some bottles had screw tops, others wired bakelite flip tops that you jimmied off with your thumbs. I even think some were covered in thick metal foil that you peeled off like a milk bottle. I certainly don’t remember ever pulling the ring-top tab of a can when I was a boy. I can’t even remember when they came in. Somehow though, I’m sure that fizzy drinks used to taste better out of glass bottles, or am I looking at that through raspberryade tinted glasses?

I loved the limed flavoured Corona. "Every bubble's passed its FIZZical!" shouted the little bubble man in the cartoon ads for the knobbly-bottled drinks. The idea of glugging down an army of bubbles and then belching out their remains appealed to my juvenile mind at the time. It came in lots of other flavours too: cherry, white and yellow lemon, raspberry, dandelion and burdock, and that awful cream soda stuff which I detested. I think there may have been a cola as well and something called cydapple which was an apple flavor fizzy, but I can’t be sure.

There was something about Corona that screamed summer, hot afternoons on riverbanks sitting in the shade of a tree and then dropping the bottle off at the shop to collect the deposit on the way home. These days the riverbanks are littered with cans and plastic bottles. Progress eh? Coca-Cola or Pepsi? Fanta or Tango? Sprite or 7up? Corona or R.Whites? Ginger Beer or Ginger Ale? Irn Bru or Tizer? The debates were endless, but everybody had a preference.

Today there are more soft drinks on the market than you can shake a sugary stick at. Six types of coke at least, blueberry, loganberry, bubble gum, grape, cucumber, even bloody bacon, and of course there are dozens of fizzy caffeine based energy drinks – rockstar, red bull, full throttle, monster - where there used to be only Lucozade which back then was caffeine free. And you only got it if you were off school proper poorly. 

Just one final question before I pop off... Did anybody out there really like Cresta?

Trumpagram...

Trumpagram

Add Lump Torn, Add Plum Torn, Land Put Dorm.

Scotland Mourn.
Dad Lump Torn, Dad Plum Torn, Lad Dump Torn

Twitter Porn.
Lad Dorm Punt, Dam Plod Runt, Dam Lord Punt.

Scapegoat Hunt.
Lad Don Trump, Lad Nod Trump, Lad Dun Tromp.

Nazi Stomp.
Land Rot Dump, Land Tor Dump, Land Ort Dump,

Dam Plod Runt, Dam Lord Punt, Land Do Trump,
Land Trod Ump, Land Dot Rump, Mad Plod Runt,
Mad Lord Punt, Lard Mod Punt.

Donald John Trump.
Land Drum Pot, Land Drum Top, Land Drum Opt,

Lard Dump Ton, Lard Dump Not.

Media Plot.
Land Mud Port, Land Mop Turd, Dam Plod Turn,
Mad Plod Turn.

America spurned.
Upland Dot Mr , Adult Pond Mr, Damn Plod Rut,
Damn Lord Put, Damn Dot Purl, Damn Turd Pol,
Damn Turd Lop.

His Custard Top.
Damp Old Turn, Damp Old Runt, Damp Lord Nut,
Damp Lord Tun, Damp Dolt Run, Damp Told Run,
Damp Dolt Urn, Damp Told Urn.

Let Donald Burn.
Dram Old Punt, Dram Plod Nut, Dram Plod Tun,
Dram Dolt Pun, Dram Told Pun, Dram Dun Plot,

Please Let Him Be Shot.
And Old Trump, And Dolt Rump, And Told Rump,
And Trod Lump, Darn Dolt Ump, Darn Told Ump.

Must Be Dumped.
And Trod Plum, Darn Mold Put, Darn Dump Lot,
Darn Mud Plot, Darn Dot Lump.

Darn Donald Trump.
Darn Dot Plum, Rand Mold Put, Rand Dolt Ump,
Rand Told Ump, Rand Dump Lot, Rand Mud Plot.

Bang Bang Shot.
Rand Dot Lump, Rand Dot Plum, Pad Mold Turn,
Pad Mold Runt, Pad Untold Mr, Daunt Plod Mr.

You Get The Picture.
Rad Mold Punt, Dart Mold Pun, Dart Don Lump,
Dart Don Plum, Dart Nod Lump, Dart Nod Plum,
Drat Mold Pun, Drat Don Lump, Drat Don Plum,
Drat Nod Lump, Drat Nod Plum.

He Goes On And On.
Tad Dump Lorn, Lam Pond Turd, Palm Odd Turn.
Palm Odd Runt.

To Make It Blunt.

Palm Dun Trod, Palm Dud Torn, Palm Don Turd,
Palm Nod Turd, Lamp Odd Turn.

Burn Burn Burn.
Lamp Odd Runt, Lamp Dud Torn, Lamp Don Turd,
Lamp Nod Turd, Lamp Dun Trod.

 The People Downtrod.

Marl Odd Punt, Malt Dud Porn, Malt Dun Drop,
Malt Dun Prod, Plan Mod Turd, Plan Drum Dot,
Plan Mud Trod, Plant Odd Rum, Plant Drum Do,
Plant Mud Rod, Plat Dud Norm, Plat Dud Morn,
Plat Dorm Dun, Plat Drum Don, Plat Drum Nod.

Doesn’t Give A Sod.
Man Plod Turd, Pram Dolt Dun, Pram Told Dun,
Ramp Dolt Dun, Ramp Told Dun, Tramp Old Dun,
Tamp Dud Lorn, Tamp Lord Dun, Mart Plod Dun,

Tram Plod Dun, Pan Dolt Drum, Pan Mold Turd.
Yes Donald’s A Mouldy Turd.
Pan Told Drum, Nap Mold Turd, Nap Dolt Drum,
Nap Told Drum, Pant Old Drum, Pant Lord Mud,
Ran Dolt Dump, Ran Told Dump, Rant Odd Lump.

He’s A Ranting Odd Lump.
Rant Odd Plum, Rant Old Dump, Rant Plod Mud,
Tarn Odd Lump, Tarn Odd Plum, Tarn Old Dump,
Tarn Plod Mud, Tan Plod Drum, Tan Lord Dump,
Ant Plod Drum, Ant Lord Dump.

The Lord Of Dump.
Tarp Mold Dun, Trap Mold Dun, Part Mold Dun,
Rapt Mold Dun, Ad Old Mr Punt, Ad Plod Mr Nut,
Ad Plod Mr Tun, Ad Dolt Mr Pun, Ad Told Mr Pun,
Ad Dun Plot Mr, Add Lo Mr Punt, Add Pol Mr Nut,
Add Pol Mr Tun, Add Lop Mr Nut, Add Lop Mr Tun,
Add Plot Mr Nu, Add Lot Mr Pun.

He’s Not Much Fun.
Dad Lo Mr Punt, Dad Pol Mr Nut, Dad Pol Mr Tun,
Dad Lop Mr Nut, Dad Lop Mr Tun,Dad Plot Mr Nu,
Dad Lot Mr Pun, Lad Don Mr Put, Lad Nod Mr Put,

Lad Dun Mr Pot, Lad Dun Mr Top, Lad Dun Mr Opt,
Lad Do Mr Punt, Lad Pod Mr Nut, Lad Pod Mr Tun,
Lad Dot Mr Pun, Land Do Mr Put, Land Dot Mr Up,
And Old Mr Put, And Dolt Mr Up, And Told Mr Up.

Fucking It Up.
Pad Old Mr Nut, Pad Old Mr Tun, Pad Dolt Mr Nu,
Pad Told Mr Nu, Pad Dun Lot Mr, Tad Old Mr Pun,
Tad Plod Mr Nu, Tad Dun Pol Mr,Tad Dun Lop Mr,
La Odd Mr Punt.

Qui C’est Donald Trump.
Plan Dud Mr To, Pal Odd Mr Nut, Pal Odd Mr Tun,
Pal Dud Mr Ton, Pal Dud Mr Not, Pal Dun Dot Mr,
Alp Odd Mr Nut, Alp Odd Mr Tun, Alp Dud Mr Ton,
Alp Dud Mr Not, Alp Dun Dot Mr, Lap Odd Mr Nu,

Lap Odd Mr Tun, Lap Dud Mr Ton, Lap Dud Mr Not,
Lap Dun Dot Mr, Plat Odd Mr Nu, Plat Dud Mr On.

Odd Dud Nut Trump.
Plat Dud Mr No, Plat Dun Do Mr, An Dud Plot Mr,
Pan Dud Lot Mr, Nap Dud Lot Mr, Pant Dud Lo Mr,
Tan Dud Pol Mr, Tan Dud Lop Mr, Ant Dud Pol Mr,
Ant Dud Lop Mr, Pa Dolt Dun Mr, Pa Told Dun Mr,
Pat Old Dun Mr, Tap Old Dun Mr, Apt Old Dun Mr,
At Plod Dun Mr.

He’s A Poisonous Blister.

Donald John Trump.

Some events...

Another bloody poem. They just keep popping into my head. It's all a bit annoying really. Still, I have no choice but to write it down.

Some events 

Tuppence he said as he passed me the firework.

My smile made it money well spent.

I went down to the gasworks.

Bang it went.

My ears pounding, resounding,

the thrill of it confounding

as the bang went cold

leaving me wondering

why a two penny bang

should leave me so astounded.

Eight pence he said as passed me the beer.

First taste made it money well spent.

We three at the Bells.

Glug, glug it went.

Taste buds floundering, first encountering,

blurring my surrounding

as the beer went down

leaving me wondering

why a half of bitter

should leave me so astounded.

No charge she said as she kissed me.

Her softness would be money well spent.

First time for everything.

That’s how it went.

Passion mounting, so embarrassing,

my senses cherishing 

as our tongues met

leaving me wondering

why the kiss of this girl

should leave me so astounded.

Tuppence was spent on those open eyes.

My tears made it money hard spent.

I went out to the garden.

Crack my heart went.

My tears mounting, faith doubting,

this sad grey day outing

as the world went cold

leaving me wondering

why a death so expected

should leave me so astounded.

Some know the cost of everything,

monies spent or occasionally lent.

Some know the value of nothing.

All they do is pay you rat rent.

Never giving,

never living,

keeping it close, everyone rejected,

leaving me wondering

why wealth so infected

would even be collected.