Here in the UK...

Blair's government continue to generate a climate of fear against the young. The latest symbol of youth misrule to strike terror throughout the land is the hoodie, or hooded top. Yup, the wearing of a hooded top by young people is now an affront to democracy and civilised values. In fact hoodies are currently being banned from shopping centre's up and down the country, a strange fact given it's from these same shopping centre's that most hoodies are bought. The department stores better watch out for it can't be good business to sell someone a garment then bar them on the basis that they now own that garment. What an odd concept, excluding people who have just become your customers. It must be source of daily astonishment that anyone actually makes it through the doors of your average emporium. Over the last week or so economists have been telling us that the latest spending boom is well and truly over. Hardly a surprise now shopping is akin to crime. A worry like that can put a person off, you ask for baked beans and what's heard is, "I've got a gun." Little wonder the prisons are full, probably of shoppers. Bet it's more quiet in there now, no danger of riots, not with all that queuing going on.

In today's Observer newspaper are statistics that give lie to Blair's claim that we are all at risk from a growing wave of teenage crime. For instance, the number of 10 to 17-year-olds convicted or cautioned fell from 143,000 to 105,700 between 1992 and 2002, a drop of nearly 26%. The number of young offenders has actually decreased over the past three years, but three-quarters of people asked believe that the numbers have gone up. Only 11% of known offenders are under 18, although one third of people believe that this age group is responsible for the majority of crime.

There is a Class element to the whirlwind of hatred currently lashing the young. For instance Prince Harry's drunken assault on a journalist and the Nazi regalia he wears when out partying are examples of high jinks. On the other hand to wear a hooded top and live on a council estate is to be beyond the pale.

Fortunately the real truth is in survey after survey which show young people to be angry about the environment, about global warming, about poverty, about racism and sexism, about homophobia, about unfairness. Which explains why so many of them struck against the war in Iraq and why on every demonstration their numbers grow. After all, they only have a world to win.

Been such a busy week...

busy, busy, busy, busy. Grrr.

The weekend starts tomorrow, hurrah! I know I've done this weekend hurrah thing before, but fucking hell... I have an image of Robinson Crusoe face down on that south sea beach, washed by the tide, waves lifting his body and setting it down, exhausted. A hard journey has brought him to this place, this paradise. Suddenly there's beer in his hand, invigorated he spits into the receding surf. Forever reborn on the Isle of Weekends he looks around, hmm, excellent, and is that music and dancing?

One final glance catches the wreckage of So That Was Last Week Then! slipping into history's briny depths. And Robinson? He's already at the bar, chatting.

Was driving...

over the Mancunian Way this morning. It's an elevated motorway that cups the city centre's southern edge. The number of cranes is astonishing, changing the skyline, transforming Manchester. Returning from an appointment I later crossed Barton Bridge, a high viaduct that lifts the outer ring road over Manchester's ship canal. I was looking east, admiring the tall city blocks and hills beyond when from far below a heron flew up and over the traffic. The big bird heaved itself into a glide and I could see the air ruffle feathers along its side and underneath. There and gone in a moment, yet what a moment!

Heard this on telly the other night...

it's an old joke but a good one. Old guy at Dr's. Dr says I'm afraid you're suffering from bronchitis and dementia. Old guy says, Thank god it's not bronchitis.

Not sure why that makes me laugh but it does.

Can't get out of this literary mode...

' I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with
a man of about my age and a rowdy little girl, who gave way
upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter. I
was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger-bowls of
champagne and the scene changed before my eyes into
something significant, elemental, and profound.

At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and
smiled.

"Your face is familiar," he said politely. "Weren't you in the
First Division during the war?"

"Why, yes. I was in the Twenty-eighth Infantry."
"I was in the sixteenth until June nineteen-eighteen. I
knew I'd seen you somewhere before."
We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages
in France. Evidently he lived in this vicinity, for he told me
that he had just bought a hydroplane, and was going to try
it out in the morning.

"Want to go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along
the Sound."
"What time?"
"Any time that suits you best."
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jordan
looked around and smiled.
"Having a gay time now?" she inquired.
"Much better." I turned again to my new aquaintance.
"This is an unusual party for me. I haven't even seen the host.
I live over there -" I waived my hand at the invisible hedge in
the distance, "and this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with
an invitation."
For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand.
"I'm Gatsby," he said suddenly.'



Last night I made a mistake, went round to a mate who lives two doors away (between us we bookend the Dealers). He offered me a glass of wine, I was tired, I was stressed. Two hours later we were very drunk. Pouring wine into an empty stomach is like mainlining the stuff. It's not big and it's not clever. As a result I was knackered all day, not so much hung over as hung.

It's the General Election and every now and then a car sidles by with speakers and a voice normally heard only at railway stations. Mumble... muffled... Arghhhhh, ...tion... gerrout an vote, ... crackle...PASS US A FAG JEFF... nnnnnnnnnnnnn ... eeeeeeeeeeeeee.. last week.... grrrrrrrrrr... sssssssssss... put your x ... hmmmmmmmmmm.. affair... ssssss... vote now... .fffffffffffffftttttttt... night shift...rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... course I'm gutted... mmmmmmmm...

Half the street's out waiting for their next pass.

It must be the spring mood...

so here's two final poems.

Philip Larkin first.

Days

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in :
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

( I like the idea of being pursued breathlessly over fields by priests and doctors with their long coats flapping. And might it be a corn field under blue summer skies dabbed with giant puffs of cumulus. How could you stop yourself laughing out loud at such a thing?)

This next one is DH Lawrence.

A Living

A man should never earn his living
if he earns his life he'll be lovely.

A bird
picks up its seeds or little snails
between heedless earth and heaven
in heedlessness.

But, the plucky little sport, it gives to life
song, and chirruping, gay feathers, fluff-shadowed warmth
and all the unspeakable charms of birds hopping and fluttering
and being birds.
- And we, we get it all from them for nothing.

See what I mean about spring? And the birds being such sports. The little sweeties.

An April shower poured down from the heavens this morning. I got wet but so what? I like deluges. Just outside our office door two enormous pools of water collected and people had to tiptoe through them. It was fascinating to watch because no one seemed to mind. Some laughed, others shrugged and no one was miserable. Spring rain has an energy that sluices straight through those mental nooks and crannies where we've huddled these past winter months. Cleaned the place out, made it spick and span. Invigorated us. I think that's what Larkin and Lawrence are saying.

I'm blogging poetry...

to cheer myself up. A gang of dealers has moved in next door and they're making my life very difficult. Hopefully things will soon change.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was writing 200 years ago. He hated tyranny in all its forms and wrote about the fight for equality, including equality for women and in this he was influenced by Mary Wollstonecraft.

In August 1819 a huge and peaceful demonstration occurred in Manchester, only two miles from where I now live. Thousands of ordinary people met in St Peter's Fields to call for the vote. The local yeomanry with sabres and horses attacked the crowd killing 13 people and injuring many more. In response Shelley wrote The Mask of Anarchy, one of the most powerful political poems ever written.

Here's the first six stanzas plus the final three that address the impact of Peterloo and the anger it generated. The poem concludes with a call to arms that can still send shivers down my spine.

The Mask of Anarchy

I met murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him.

All were fat, and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.

Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to millstones as they fell;

And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.

Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.

And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies...

(The final bit is a roar of anger about Peterloo)

And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.

And these words, shall then become
Like Oppression's thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again - again - again

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are the many - they are the few.


It speaks for itself. Anyone interested in reading more about Shelley's politics and poetry should read Paul Foot's Red Shelley.

More of Under Milk Wood...

I can't help it...

still in the intro but a little further on...


You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town
breathing. Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black
and folded town fast, and slow, asleep. And you
alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-
before-dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black,
dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the
Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the
Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.
Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the
processional salt slow musical wind in Coronation
Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass growing on
Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in
Milk Wood.


And it goes on and on and on... reading Under Milk Wood is like eating the richest and most moist of cakes. Imagery, words and sounds tumble to form a tale of life in the small Welsh fishing village of Llareggub (buggeralL). Astonishing stuff.

Last night I watched Sea of Love, a top movie from 1989 with Al Pacino, Ellen Barkin and John Goodman. Intelligent film making spoilt only by the prissy final minutes. The story is strong and well played allowing for no fat except the tiny post plot ending which is shite. Great film nevertheless.

It's been a tough week...

so here's some William Carlos Williams.

The Red Wheelbarrow.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

This Is Just To Say.

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold


Bugger, and I can't resist the introduction to Under Milkwood. Goes like this...

(Silence)

FIRST VOICE (Very softly)
To begin at the beginning:
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless
and bible black, the cobblestreets silent and the
hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping
invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack,
fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as
moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting,
velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in
the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock,
the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows'
weeds. And all the people of the lulled and
dumbfound town are sleeping now.

In Chicago...

there's a stain on a concrete wall that looks like the Virgin Mary. (I'm really trying to move away from this Catholic stuff but it's a struggle I can tell you.) The news footage showed an underpass, a fire engine, an ambulance, cops and a crowd. Not sure what the fire engine was doing but presume the cops were to deal with trouble and the ambulance was for the wounded because that stain had fight written all over it. A sombre voice told us that the Virgin Mary's features were clearly marked on the concrete. Incidentally 'stain' is not much used by the Deity as a method of representation though you can never tell with God, always testing the faith and all that. The camera shot I saw didn't help as the stain looked as it was, a stain. It's general shape not much different from what's left after your average underpass pisser has...well... passed. Mind you I thought pissboy clearly had previous experience and might even have won school competitions with heights like that. Or is it only in the UK that schoolboys piss for prestige?

The place had become a shrine with flowers and candles and crowds. Judging by the stain's poor definition it didn't seem long before violence broke out over interpretation because even I could tell that from certain angles it was John the Baptist. Maybe mica particles in the concrete produced an optical illusion like those plastic pictures that change when tilted. Suddenly, word from the back showed a split ocurring between fundamentalists for whom there could only be one possible image and the new fundamentalists who saw many images. The genesis of a new world religion ended when the City's cleansing department arrived in answer to complaints about the all night singing . A couple of wipes with Shrino Clean and it was all over. How fickle is that?

Pope urges world...

to find God. One of the net headlines today. I've just returned from an afternoon canvassing political opinion for the Respect (anti-war) candidate in Trafford, West Manchester. Not a soul was in, in fact the streets were deserted, houses with doors ajar, half eaten meals on tables, kettles still boiling. Finally a lager drinker in the park tells us everyone's out looking for God. Apparently the Pope's really worried cos he hasn't seen God for sometime so the call's gone out. The Pope's word is taken literally in this part of Manchester. I asked lager man why he wasn't out looking for God and wryly he told me that after a few more cans God would come to him. A good answer, perhaps we should all drink more, especially if God's now available in a can. God in a can whatever next, possibly in a six pack or a case of God, cheaper bought by the dozen. An attractive prospect for the rich who can afford more. No doubt the poor might afford only little cans of God but the wealthy, they can buy tons of God cos capitalism's irrationality is demonstrated in life being cheaper for the rich. George Orwell put it really well when he said that the poor pay more because they can't afford to pay less. When Marx said that under capitalism all human relations are reduced to a cash nexus he clearly meant relations with God as well. Bush and Blair believe that so it must be true.

Imagine if you will the God aisle at the local superstore and getting the God franchise for that, it'd be a license to print money. And what if other religions jumped on the can bandwagon. What if Brahma, Siva, Vishnu or Krishna wanted a piece of the action? Or Thor and Odin, or Zeus? The market would be quickly saturated. Of course there'd still be the bean eaters complaining that God in its pure state was too rich and so the demand for God Lite would arise as sure as night follows day. There'd be a weightwatchers God most probably in a tracksuit and instead of a crucifix for the neck a little silver bathroom scales. Ah, it'd be so neat. All of this would be followed by the inevitable backlash, the pollution, massive landfills for all those empty cans, probably a bit of persecution thrown in as well. The US Food and Drug Administration would declare God a carcinogen. Yeah, yeah, they'd fed tinned God to rats and one of them got cancer. The shelves would be cleared, God would be dumped in those deep ocean trenches... I can see it now. And all because the fucking new Pope's worried about God being out all night clubbing and not yet back. The Pope's new, he's keen, but chill the fuck out. God'll be back, probably a bit stoned, bit hungover, hey he's fucking celebrating your election for Christ's sake!

But what if he doesn't come back? Wouldn't that be the coolest thing.

It is 5pm...

on Friday afternoon.

Whoopeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Sent a note to Mimi in NY and JohnnyFarOut, who's far out in the great Western US of A. I'd put in links but still haven't learned how to. Made me think that they're hours and hours behind Europe so it's still lunchtime or breakfast time for them. Be nice if it was possible to get stuck in Friday eve. Enjoy it here in the UK, shoot off to NY then further west. Spend all my money on booze and food and restaurants and mates and fun and Friday and booze. Hmm, using this method I wonder how long a weekend could last?

I love Friday evening more than any other evening because it's the furthest away from Monday it's possible to be. I think of Spring in similar terms, for me Spring is the Friday of the seasonal world, and the furthest it's possible to be from the miserable other end. An old mate Lisa used to say I should embrace winter, learn to enjoy its fickle pleasures, its subtleties. FUCK THAT! Winter is gloomy and dark, and miserable and shite and sad, and cold and wet, and dark and miserable and shite and sad and cold and wet and... oops, got stuck for a moment there. Tonight in Manchester there's a warm sun and a wonderful soft light, which is remarkable for a town where we don't often see what's above the clouds. It rained for so long once that people forgot the colour blue and many mistook the round yellow thing for a bottle top from which something was about to pour. As a result people in Manchester ducked everywhere in the expectation of matters unpleasant falling on their heads. Then came science which taught us that the sun was an object many miles from here and so we had no reason to be frightened. A wary few still holding to the old ways can be identified by their enormous hats and poor posture.

There's a bounty on squirrels...

in the south (why do all the interesting things seem to happen there?). It must be true because some gnarled old farmer was on the radio the other morning going on with himself. Before leaving by early bus I want to see one of the handbills because I'm not shooting any squirrel named Tex. Nor if they smoke or have scarring. I wonder if it was a dream? £500 seems a lot of money, unless they're after one particular squirrel. Could be it is Tex.

As I type this...

my new neighbours, daft lads, are currently blasting hip hop through the bedroom wall. This must surely lead to deafness. I SAID DEAFNESS, DEAFNESS!!! See what I mean? Sometimes cars go by my house with the bass so deep that windows fall out one after another cos the putty's gone, long gone, we are talking disintegrated . Teeth, innards, eyeballs, even small children can be displaced. A similar effect as on those bellies road workers have shimmering atop pneumatic drills. Animals 50 kilometers away stop what they're doing and look up, especially the dogs who always think they know the tune. Fucking dogs, don't know their Eminem from their Elgar as they associate all vibration with the opening of a can. I saw a programme recently where these blokes had fixed into their cars or vans enormous speakers, woofers 3ft in diameter and shrill little tweeters that reach right under your fillings. Great heaving sound systems encased in auto steel. I think the US death industry's missing a trick here. "The prisoner shall be taken to a place where his insides be mashed by a wicked tune of the Judge's choice." A cruel and unusual punishment if the fuckwit decides on Jennifer Warnes giving her all in some vomiting power ballad, or maybe Celine Dion. You can predict the final words of any decent person under those circumstances "Pull the switch, pull the fucking switch now!" The rightwing would get pleasure from such a thing because they have cold cold hearts.

A study has been done on the correlation between Country and Western music and suicide. More people top themselves to Country and Western than any other musical form. A professor describes one song that summed up the misery that is Country and Western. A guy falls for a girl but weds someone else, all his life he suffers the pain of unrequited love until becoming so overwhelmed he shoots himself with a shotgun in the head. Unbeknownst to him the real love interest has always felt the same and comes looking. She finds his body just after he's shot himself, devastated she takes up the same gun and shoots herself. It seems many fools commit suicide to that song. Laugh, I nearly choked.

I can't often be accused...

of not letting something go but a sub header on Friday's net news read "Pope's tailor already busy." Honest, it's like shooting fish... Anyway, this death thing becomes ever more intriguing. Elvis is the highest earning dead person, since the Pope's death his tailor is even busier. It's obvious we're being hustled here, and it's the dead wots doing it, the nerve of them. Now look, I try to see both sides in an argument, weigh up the pros and cons (unless it's nazis then there are no pros) but the dead earning more than the living cannot be right. I'm also upset that they wear out clothes quicker than children. I mean what can JP2 be doing in that box? In a previous blog I described a newspaper graphic of the coffin's interior but didn't mention, because I thought it a smudge, the multi-gym. It's not immediately obvious but on closer examination there it is by the gaming table. Another issue must be how little wear he's getting from those tracky bottoms despite them being in baggy. Which leads me to think that the clothing allowance for dead pontifs might not have kept pace with inflation. So the Vatican's buying cheap knockoff most probably from the local market thinking they can get away with it, thinking he'll not notice. Little wonder we're being hustled. If you ask me it's a false economy on the basis that he's only been dead a short while and eternity's still some way off. They should buy stuff that'll last, you pay a bit more but get it back in the quality.

All of this does beg a question though. If the Pope's tailor is so busy who's he making stuff for? Could it be... no I daren't say it... the Cardinals? A clue may be found in the latin root of the word 'conclave'. 'Con' of course is from the latin 'to change, or changing' and 'clave' is from the latin 'in a room'. Need I say more?

Driving home from work...

the other day my path was crossed by an open wagon piled high with old mannaquins, a higgledy piggledy mixture of arms, legs, trunks, bodies and at the bottom lone heads shouting up "Are we there yet?" Of course I followed on and when stationery at nearby lights their chatty voices were clear. Not a single one thought the Tories would win the general election. Says something when Michael Howard can't even convince dummies! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Reminded me of possibly the greatest ever Spitting Image sketch. Margaret Thatcher is in the cabinet office at No 10 surrounded by her ministers. A waiter comes in takes her order then asks "And the vegetables?" Balefully Thatcher looks over her menu and replies "They'll have the same as me."

Priceless.

Manchester...

seems to be going through a massive construction programme of boozers and student digs. Every second building is a bar named Colon or Meek. Undergraduates lurk in nooks and crannies many becoming trapped in the shoes of pedestrians. An experience akin to stepping on a slug though without the squashy, and that muffled "Oy!" as they wake up can really make a person jump. Generally the student body is harmless as it moves from site to site, from lecture to seminar in vast heaving migrations through the southern half of Manchester's city centre, which incidentally is also the largest student campus in Europe.

Using excellent graphics a recent history book shows the route and size of Napoleon's grand army as it invaded Russia in 1812, laid seige to Moscow and was then forced by General Winter into an ignominious retreat. You can see the wide swathe as tens upon tens of thousands of troops cross the eastern borders into Imperial Russia. Many battles are fought but the real attrition begins with winter and the great retreat. All but a trickle make it to their final destination, to their dream of a return once more to France. Far too many fall by the wayside and are never seen again. I suspect if we did a poll of how many students make it past the bars we might be looking at a similar demographic.

Apparently...

in the south it's become common to graffiti horses, and we're not talking tiny tags here. No, we're talking the full eight can, six colours, four shades and something in geometric. It's a wonder the horse fails to notice, though in animal terms it seems horses are remarkably dim. So dim they make sheep look good, even after shearing when no sheep looks its best. I was reminded of horses on Saturday when Prince Charles and Camilla were on the news. Both ostensibly worse for the wear, no doubt from a gin too many afore the ceremony. As ever Charles affected his startled palomino look and Camilla, well Camilla had the air of someone upon whom a coat of graffiti would not have gone amiss. On reaching the door of Windsor's Registry Office they swayed in a bewildered manner until some off camera flunky with an enormous stick poked them into the building. Imagine the mayhem if at that moment a passing sheep had stopped to jeer.

Sean's sister has received...

a bill from the council demanding £50 because she was seen throwing a cigarette from her car into the street. The fact she doesn't smoke is neither here nor there. Over the phone she denied the 'offence' and they said she would be prosecuted. There's a madness abroad in the early 21st century where you can be denounced just for being out of doors. Whatever will be next? My money's on an underealised issue, that of exhalation. It's persistant, polluting and shows no regard for global warming, the ozone layer and glacial retreat. And isn't it just fucking selfish of us not to realise the damage we're causing through such behaviour? Of course the rich won't be affected as they don't exhale they give. So that's alright then. Farting cows are also a menace but play a stronger hand having neither independent means or the capacity to fit into a dock.

Today's press is...

full of Pope stuff. Seems the funeral was a big event. The paper's had photo's and there was a diagram of the inside of his coffin. Jeez, it was like the Tardis though I think the mini-bar a tad excessive and what's that piano about, and the trouser press? On closer examination I could see it was an old graphic and the body was Imelda Marcos. Little wonder they had to use a winch, what with all those shoes...