95k

Keep going!

95k in a day!

And tomorrow!

And what happens when you just need a bit more!

University for the kids. Plus cars plus vacations plus their entire lives!

A business for the kids?

A long-term loan for the kids?

A loan for the kids' spouses?

Summats for the grandchildren?

After all, it's not like he ever worked.

Sew the seeds, my friend. Sew the seeds.

You'll be tracked down.

Unless you act like a fucking man and wake up.

Otherwise, when you've gone, you've fucking gone. The markets are hard, but fair, right?

It's all about what we are worth.

Larkin about

I thought it would last my time -
The sense that, beyond the town,
There would always be fields and farms,
Where the village louts could climb
Such trees as were not cut down;
I knew there'd be false alarms

In the papers about old streets
And split level shopping, but some
Have always been left so far;
And when the old part retreats
As the bleak high-risers come
We can always escape in the car.

Things are tougher than we are, just
As earth will always respond
However we mess it about;
Chuck filth in the sea, if you must:
The tides will be clean beyond.
- But what do I feel now? Doubt?

Or age, simply? The crowd
Is young in the M1 cafe;
Their kids are screaming for more -
More houses, more parking allowed,
More caravan sites, more pay.
On the Business Page, a score

Of spectacled grins approve
Some takeover bid that entails
Five per cent profit (and ten
Per cent more in the estuaries): move
Your works to the unspoilt dales
(Grey area grants)! And when

You try to get near the sea
In summer . . .
It seems, just now,
To be happening so very fast;
Despite all the land left free
For the first time I feel somehow
That it isn't going to last,

That before I snuff it, the whole
Boiling will be bricked in
Except for the tourist parts -
First slum of Europe: a role
It won't be hard to win,
With a cast of crooks and tarts.

And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There'll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.

Most things are never meant.
This won't be, most likely; but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon.

Turn

Turn-ups and turn-offs
First shags and fist fights
Mates’ burds and barmaids’ smiles
Cleavage, arse-cracks in church aisles
Train lines and suicide
Taxi ranks and rain lashed miles
Lager tops and rollies
Tank tops and rallies
Donkey jackets and toilet bowls
Broken windows and bullet holes
Dreams and nightmares
Tough questions, hard stares
Make up and make over
Saying ‘yes’ buys a baby stroller
Wake up and realize
It’s all shit
And nothing but lies

Pig Brother

AIDS was the start, for me. When I was very young, there was a diet product called Aids. That made sense – it was an aid. AIDS didn’t sound that bad at first. Maybe that was the idea, like asking people to leave a smoke-filling auditorium in a ‘quiet and orderly fashion’. Whatever you do, don’t yell, “Fire!”

At some point, naming things – from consumer products to epidemics – became a bit of a laugh. I won’t bore you with lists that you can well draw up yourselves.

And now we have swine flu.

It is influenza, that much is for sure. But it has never been passed from pig to pig, much less pig to human. It has, clearly, spread from human to human, apparently beginning in Mexico.

For all the sense it makes, it may as well have been called rat flu.

Maybe that’s been reserved for the next one.

Unspeakable

Language is the origin and the end.

We do not think. We use language.

This is where all the problems begin.

They never end.

"If God knows everything then he or she or it must know what I am going to do next, which means I have no free will, which means none of it is my fault, which means it is all God's fault. If he or she or it does not know, then he or she or it is not God."

Language.

Anyone or anything or anybody thinking without language can easily understand the concept of God.

Mathematicians use equations. They write them down. Idiots use language. They write it down.

The Divine is not an equation, much less a poem or an image.

The Divine is simple.

The Divine is absurd.

The Divine is complex.

The Divine is all.

The Divine is patience.

The Divine is waiting.

Joy

Stand up for your self.

Stand up for your beliefs.

Stand up for your dignity.

Stand up for your future.

Stand up for your name.

Stand up for your legacy.

Stand up for your loved ones.

Stand up for love.

Stand up for feeling.

Stand up for the weak.

Stand up for the poor.

Stand up for the needy.

Stand up for what is right.

Stand up.

Flaunt

You’ve got it. This bra helps you flaunt it with revolutionary, light-gel technology you won’t find anywhere else! Sexy, seamless styling accentuates your curves. Decorative straps add a flash of fashion. All for amazing lift and more cleavage than ever before.

That comes from the Wonderbra site.

Now, where's the harm in that?

Here's where. I was in the gym the other day and a girl no older than 15 had decided that flaunting was her thing. It wasn't sexy. It was revolting and she was in no way to blame. Her parents are probably my age and either think she looks cool, or they don't understand the damage done by reducing everything to sexual attraction.

And what damage would that be?

- Reduced ambition in girls

- Lack of self esteem in girls

- A sense in boys that girls perform for them

- A loss of respect for each other

ad infinitum

Tumbling

Economic Darwinism is in play, and we look on, baffled by the numbers and unmoved by the political speeches. How could we do or be anything else? We live in a world in which we have no influence, no say, no control and no hope. We are tumbling.

The thing about tumbling, as opposed to just falling over, however, is that there is a momentum involved, and if you catch it just right, you can spring and fly.

This is not about making a killing on a market. This is about finding out, when all is said and done, who we are, and taking it from there. We are no more defined by the cars we drive and houses we live in than we are by our shoe size. Things often get much worse before they get any better, but for those that dig deep and come through, a new beginning can erase the bitterest end.

Told you I had moved my head quarters.

Change

My head quarters have moved.

Slavery

We, I mean I, often talk about being slaves. We are, as well. We are slaves to the world we live in. If I could choose a life in much the same way as I choose a product, this would not be it. I would be free, of course. It always comes down to that word - "if."

Is my life so awful? No. My life is much like yours. I worry too much, perhaps, but on the whole I have a life that many would take now if push came to shove. I am a slave to the phone company and the electricity company and so on, but I am lucky.

There are an estimated 29 million slaves in the world who don't worry too much about the phone company and the electricity company and so on.


I don't know where this is going to take me. One thing is clear: certain problems on this planet are insoluble.

Slavery is not one of them.

(The picture above is not much older than you are)

Cracking

As a very young child I looked on a world that would in later life haunt me with its beauty and simplicity.

I have very early memories of kitchens and front-rooms and pantries, single-glazing, fireplaces, coal scuttles, orchards, fields, and enameled bathtubs. I even now remember my grandmother’s mangle in terms that others might well reserve for first loves.

I remember a white-painted wooden conservatory. I remember wasps and flies fizzing to death in its sun-scorched window sills, next to the old saucers, now bereft of cups, holding terracotta-colored plastic pots of tomato plants.

It was, as my grandmother would have said, “ever likely” that I would fail to find a true ambition. Growing up with memories like that, only an idiot would have wanted to move on.

Consciousness then began to take hold, and I suffered the inevitable metamorphosis we all must. I outgrew my skin, before cracking out into the freezing reality of life.

The thaw would take time.

Crisis

"Nothing is so bad that it can't get worse."

- Portuguese saying

Line

When you stand in line, you see modern man at his worst.

Off

Sooner or later it all had to grind to a halt, as any idiot could have said. The problem is that no idiots did say, and nor did any (or many) experts, until after the fact. Maybe the experts knew, which is why they kept quiet. What could have been done anyway, except to make themselves look like idiots? When you're at a party, it's rude to complain about the food and drink. It's considered polite to wait until you get home and put your pajamas on, when you can moan a little before nodding off.

So this was a party that no one wanted to moan about. And why should they have? The food and drink tasted fine, as is normal just before an epidemic.

Suit yourself

When you are a child you are encouraged to talk about what you want to be when you grow up. I don’t remember really wanting to be anything when I was a kid, and now I am most certainly grown up in the physiological sense of the expression I am sure that I really don’t want to do anything at all, in a professional way. What is more, I’m equally sure that anyone who really does want to be someone or something is mad and should be locked up to protect the rest of us. Careers and professional ladder-climbing are just rather sophisticated ways to distract us from the simple, shocking truth that not much, really, is that important, and what matters most, in fact, is the love we feel for others.

Noise

So we went out. It had been a hard day, for us. We don't work with anything special. We are not scientists or even MBAs. We don't even have jobs, in fact. We have no professional qualifications at all, to tell the truth. It is fair to say that most people we meet in everyday situations have more measurable skill than we do. You'd have to go a long way to meet someone less qualified than we are.

But what we do is hard to pin down. Any certification of it would imply a measurable standard, and so far that hasn't been found. We are not artists but we aren't that far off, either.

What we do is not important. We do it, and we do it better than most. It had been a hard day.

And then we sit down in a restaurant. The owner is a friend of ours, but he wasn't in. I was happy about that. He needs some time off. Works all the time.

So do we.

We are happy to be out. It's a break from what we do. A change is as good as a rest, and all that.

The bad news is that the beer is off. Broken pump, or something. This is swiftly forgotten as we opt for wine. Close. The night had almost been ruined.

And then we enter that meal default setting. The food arrives and is good, and we just enjoy eating and sitting in front of each other. We've been together for sixteen years, almost. They should change the rules nowadays and call that Golden.

Not that it would make any difference. We are not stacking matches. Striking them, sometimes, for sure.

It was a good night after a hard day. I just wish I could have found the courage to stab the guy next to me. He might've shut up then.

List no. 1

10 things I hope not to become (random order):

- An embarrassment to my younger self.
- Convinced of anything.
- A defeatist.
- Blind to absurdity.
- Interested in Richard Dawkins.
- Consciously unable to take care of myself.
- A cook.
- A statistic.
- The last one standing.
- Resident in England.

Good

This picture is of part of the GR20 - also known as the Corsican High Level Route. I walked it when I was 18, about twenty-three years ago, with three friends. It is reputed to be the hardest long-distance walk in the world, but I can tell you it is not.

But it is impressive, and has stayed with me every last minute of those last twenty-three years.

Recently I have found myself indebted to the days I spent as a teenager in such places. I was as free as anyone can reasonably expect to be without becoming a hunter-gatherer and perhaps making the local news one day after being found dead with a very long beard and no friends. I've never been one for long beards and whilst I am nowadays part of a very small circle of friends, no friends at all would be unbearable.

Nevertheless, on odd days when I struggle to make sense of the things I see and hear and read and am told, the wilderness seems civilized and good, maybe too good to be true.

Perception

Ideas - that is the root of all the trouble. We get ideas that something may be in some way good. When I was seventeen I and three friends had a great idea - let's do the Pennine Way. The idea was good. The perception of the Pennine Way was good. See England, get some exercise. Maybe have some fun. All good stuff.

It rained for 22 days straight, almost all day. One friend didn't even start because he broke his leg in a parachute jump just before the beginning, and another friend fell about 70 miles short of finishing, the victim of blood poisoning picked up through infected blisters.

I sincerely recommend it to everyone. Reality and perception rarely cross paths and the Pennine Way, after you have seen photographs like the one here, has a way of reminding us that this is no picnic, this path we have chosen.

Rain

Constant and soaking, the rain has fallen this month with the dedication of a long-distance runner knocking out the pace. It has been remorseless and lethal, generating media moments that have been swooped on with no true care for the devastation caused. The President flew over in a helicopter, sharing the pain. The poor and the weak were washed away, making room for more poverty and more weakness, the sickening predictability of suffering not lessening the rain's murderous intent.

It will stop, eventually, but what is left behind will not replace what has been taken. Memories carry pain, as much as the future carries hope.

Destiny

We are cathedrals to be built, heaving stone and blistering hands and tearing feet. The dreams of our internal architects may vary infinitely, but our scales are equal and the suffering involved no less so. Joy upon completion is joy indeed, but surely is fleeting, tempered by the knowledge that now comes the end.

Horses

Had a dream last night in which I was the driver of a car barreling through country roads which turned into sandstone tunnels. As I looked up, I could see empty beer bottles hanging from natural crevices in the stone. I knew that kids had been drinking and doing this to provoke. As the road wound on, I saw dead horses strung up like trophies along the roadside. As I paid more attention, I realized someone had slit the horses’ throats and left empty beer bottles in the pouches, as if they were trash cans.

As the car journey continued, I came to a crossroads, with a village green and a post office.

I asked myself how people could behave like that, back in the tunnels.

New shorts

Got some new shorts today. Not much in the great scheme of things, but in the great scheme of things, what is?

Also got some new contact lenses, which I was assured were better than the old ones. They were 30% more expensive than the old ones, too, as if to back up the claim. The salesperson said, "Comfort always costs more". You can't argue with that. Well, you can, but you're wasting your time.

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