The Tao of Bruno

Just got back from Sardinia. Stayed in a little apartment close to the centre of Olbia, a small coastal city with a seemingly endless supply of unimaginably beautiful human beings. I went with my pal Dave, a stoic and quiet man who fights against his instinct to say nothing by taking me places to test his considerable language skills abroad. We share a love of beer. And most of the time we were sat on some sun blessed piazza or another, Ichnusa on the go, watching and sighing as yet another supermodel walked past cool as the breeze which punctuated the warm afternoon.

I met Bruno outside Cafe Cosimino on a Sunday afternoon in early May. He took the table next to ours. He was dressed in motorbike leathers and looked like PierluigiCollina. The moment our eyes met I knew two things instantly. One that, without any hesitation that he was going to engage at some point in conversation. Two, that this conversation would change my life. He took a seat at the next table to ours and I sensed about him the air of a man who did not lack confidence, who had supreme faith in his ability to bend the universe to his will. 

We have all known many men like this. Beware of false prophets. 

But this guy had an air of humility also, a joy for life and a desire to make human contact the mission of his existence. The way he ordered his pasta and made the young waiter feel like a man of the world without ever patronising him. The way he let the first forkful of food stay in his mouth long enough to provoke in his tongue a memory and sensation he was able to share with everyone nearby without making a movement or sound. He spoke slowly and with authority. He shook my hand. I knew instantly that he had The Force, the Light, or whatever you want to call it.

He told me he lived in Vicenza and was riding his motorcycle around Sardinia and Italy. He complimented my friend on his excellent Italian in a way that did not feel patronising. We spoke about the way having knowledge of other languages was so important in this world. We spoke about food, weather, beer and none of it felt like small talk. His voice was the warmth of the sun, his words the shade we sought.

The handshake that he gave us each on his departure was solid without being possessed by some toxic masculinity. My world was changed. He never told me his name. I knew it to be Bruno. He said arrivederci and rode off on whatever chapter of world history he was setting off the first domino for that afternoon. I felt like a disciple in the warmth of the sun that his shadow’s sudden absence cast me in. 

I arrived in Italy broken by everything, desperate for relaxation. The Sardinians seem to have a way of just living for each precious moment. Something about the perfect temperature, the beautfiul food, the slow and gentle stress free pace that everyone seemed to enjoy here was embodied in Bruno. I envied him his absolute command of the air around him, he was like Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea, part of the mountains and the hills, the sea and the sky. He belonged to the magic and loveliness of this special place. And whilst my thirst was mostly caused by the endless savoury snacks sent out by the kind waiters to accompany each fresh beer, some of it was inspired by Bruno of the Bike, an urge to taste this life he seemed to live so easily.

A few years ago I wrote a short story called The World's Most Famous Man. I was trying to capture life in a small town and how anybody can become the unwilling bearer of a secret mythology if they stand out in any way.  For the rest of our time in Sardinia, Dave and I's main theme of conversation was Bruno, where he was that day, the things he'd done, the things he would do. He was advising bishops before the conclave whilst sipping an espresso on a ferry to the mainland, fathering endless children on his way round the mountains, texting Zelensky and meditating with Keanu. In him we saw our lives as they could be. We vowed to live the way of Bruno from then on. Stressing the small stuff would kill us. Bruno was the Light. 

For the next 48 hours we were disciples. Zen as fuck. And then I got to Britain and my bus home was late and I was instantly me again. I had failed the first test of my new faith. When I got home, I sat with a late night coffee on my own balcony, enjoying the glamorous bin bags and debris of my street. I vowed to follow the Tao of Bruno. 

The World’s Most Famous Man

NOTE - this short story appeared originally in my collection, A Cure for Love (Typewriter Press, 2020) and one day it'll be in print again. Maybe I'll shove it on Kindle.

The last train of the day was the first train of the next.  

The station’s signal bell would clang out across the inevitable dankness a few minutes before midnight. Stood on the platform would be the guard looking out down the long straight track waiting for the small light of the 23:56 to make itself known. And then it would come at you, a ghost train from Swansea.   

The driver and the conductor alight because that’s what you do with trains. Before doing so they check the train for signs of life and bombs in the carriages. Finding none, they switch the lights off and creep away like tired parents from a shattered baby.  

For once, there’s a passenger on board. A stocky, mid-height fella built like a straight-to-video Rambo. He’s wearing a black jacket like bouncers wear with a logo emblazoned across the back. Despite the hour, he’s wearing shades which, combined with his full beard and handsome head of hair, give the impression of him being half-bear.  

He carries two gym bags and, if there was anyone about, you’d see them gawping at him. It’s a week before Christmas, gone midnight and colder than a loan shark’s eyes. But the shades stay on, offering some protection for his eyes from the icy wind that always visits come Christmas. The jacket will help too, but not much. It’s the shorts he’s wearing that would cause most concern though, skimpy little numbers, silky affairs revealing darkly tanned and muscular legs.  

Striding upward through the sleepy Welsh town he looks like the Terminator played by Dave Lee Travis. Or some sort of avenging cowboy from a spaghetti western designed by the Kids from Fame. No-one exists to challenge him as he moves slowly over the bridge and into the town seemingly impervious to the bitter night.  

Me, Skinny and the Bish are in the Fatted Calf.  Oh, and Beppo the cabbie. Beppo is sat a couple of stools down from us, talking to One-Eyed Barry the barman. The curtains are drawn, the lights are dimmed. We can hear the wind. The jukebox dies dramatically halfway through Otis Redding’s whistle at the end of Dock of the Bay so for a second it feels like Otis is in the room really giving his whistle some welly. 

We’ve already had a few drinks and are resigning ourselves to a wet walk home but Barry indicates through some subtle nodding that not all of his patrons need leave at twenty past. He’s a good lad, Barry. Bit of a past mind. Was in a stolen car when he was fifteen, which flipped doing sixty on the roundabout by Burger King. The flip killed his best mate who was driving and Barry was lucky to survive himself by all accounts. Died twice on the operating table. Came round a month later. Broken back, a fucked leg and one eye down.  Didn’t get probation or youth custody - magistrate reckoned he’d been punished enough.  

Unlike us three, beyond help. Old one eyes has laid on some after show chemicals and me and Skinny are polishing our young gums with speed whilst the Bish walks behind the bar and helps himself to a large Bells.  

“Lift home in a bit Bep?” says Skinny, oblivious to the large scotch Beppo is drinking. 

“I don’t like driving at night.” 

“It’s pissing down.” 

“I don’t like driving in the rain either.”  

Before we can address Beppo’s lack of professionalism there’s a knock at the door.  An insistent and assertive banging.  

Police? 

Silence.  

“Fuck,” says Barry.  

Another set of knocks.  

“Fuck,” we all say.  

Then a rap at the window.  

Barry picks the keys off the little hook above the till and moves towards the door. Limping still, fifteen years after the accident.  Not that that’s ever going to go away.   

We hear the door being unbolted, then opened, the rain rushing down Lammas Street like a small ocean walking past.  

“Any rooms?”  

This is a new voice. Not local.   

“Erm yeah. It’ll take me a few minutes but yeah. Come in.”  

The Fatted Calf is a hotel but no-one’s stayed here for a while. Wrong end of town, the guy’s clearly taken a wrong turn for hotels from the station. There’s a couple of rooms upstairs and Barry’s up there sorting things out when the stranger walks in to the bar, places his bags down in a corner, takes the stool next to Beppo and sits down. 

Skinny and I look at the Bish. The Bish looks at us.  

“Why is he wearing shades?” says Skinny. 

“It’s thingy,” I whisper. 

“Who?” says the Bish? 

“You know, out of erm, the cop films.” 

“No, no it’s not him. That’s erm Bob someone. This is that bloke from that thing with erm Clint Eastwood, the Western guy.” 

“Bollocks. You’re both wrong. It’s wotsit who played for Everton when we were kids.”  

And so on. Beppo moves over to our end of the bar, seemingly to conduct some business with the cigarette machine, but obviously to throw his theory into the ring. Four voices whispering animatedly whilst pretending to contemplate the varying merits of cancer sticks. 

 “It’s one of the Carradines. Not Kung Fu, the other one.” 

“Bollocks. It’s whatsisface out of Batman.” 

“Bennies? You’re mad. They’re fucking horrible.” 

“No, no it’s definitely the big bearded fella who played for England.” 

“Keith is it?” 

“Only wankers smoke B and H.” 

“Nigel?” 

“What was that thing with Michael Douglas? Streets of San Francisco. It’s him. With a beard.” 

“Not fucking Nigel Carradine is it? Dickhead.” 

“Used to go out with Christ, what’s her name, the Swedish weathergirl.” 

“Silk Cut.  Christ, Beppo. You can do better than that. Get some full fat Marlboro.” 

“That’s it. That’s who he is.” 

“He’s so famous that we’ve forgotten who he is.” 

“Yeah, Marlboro Lights. A safe smoke.” 

“Perhaps he’s Jesus.”  

The thought that the Messiah might be seeking shelter in the Fatted Calf hangs heavily in the air until sanity arrives in the form of the limping Cyclops that is Barry. 

“I’ll show you to your room.”  

The World’s Most Famous Man picks his bags up and moves through the little serving hatch and out of sight up the little staircase to the side of the optics. There’s a mumbled conversation we can’t hear followed by the strangely offbeat rhythm of Barry coming back down.  

Skinny and Beppo are negotiating a dry drive home in Beppo’s taxi.  

“Beppo, come on. Give us a lift. It’s fucking pouring man.” 

“I’ve had too many.” 

“No you haven’t. What’s your mum’s name?” 

“Mum.” 

“That’s good enough for me. No mental impairment there.”  

Barry pours himself a large gin.  

“Who the fuck is he then?” I ask him. 

“Mr. Smith apparently,” 

“I told you Bish, he’s a celebrity. That’s what they do. Smith my arse.” 

“I’m not sniffing your arse you bender.”  

Barry is giggling. Beppo has his hands in the air in mock surrender.  

“Alright, alright. I give in.”  

The argument continues all the way to me tipping Beppo an extra couple of quid. At various points in the journey The World’s Most Famous Man has played up front for England, fucked Carrie Fisher, been in films with Sylvester Stallone and David Niven and been one of the presenters on Good Morning Britain.   

“If he’s done all that, then good luck to him. He must be the World’s Most Famous Man,” says the Monk. 

 Beppo beeps as he drives off.   

“He’s not even Italian,” says Skinny. 

“Who now,” I ask. 

“Fucking Beppo” 

“That’s it. It’s him. The opera fella,” screams the Bish as we finally open the front door. 

“It isn’t fucking Pavarotti.”  

The World’s Most Famous Man never left the Calf. He stayed there forever, ended up working the bar. I never asked his name. No one did. Not even Barry who just called him Smithy whenever he asked him to change a barrel. 

All weathers you’d see him out in his wife beater vest and sunnies; his tan never fading despite the best efforts of the Carmarthen micro-climate. People would say hello if they drank at the Calf and Smithy would nod and flash those amazing Hollywood teeth. Other people would gawp at him and make their own observations as to who he was. He was thingy out of Star Trek. He was JPR Williams. He was Italian. He was German. He made porn. He dealt drugs. He was Mary’s cousin, you know Mary from the bakery on Pond Road. He was Gandhi, Superman and Elvis.  

He was the World’s Most Famous Man. 

Twitting Quitter

I don’t want to quit Twitter.

I was there before Musk bought it, he should be the one to fuck off and drag his repulsive school bully face and his what the flu hernia of a gut and skulk away, shamefaced.

But addiction trumps conscience. And, pathetically, I’m addicted.

Twitter is now practically unusable. The algorithms tweaked so successfully by Apartheid Boy have rendered its timelines unstable. Every other post now is an advert for some messed up product from China to be shat through my letterbox by some exhausted Amazon driver. And what posts aren’t adverts for things you’ll either never receive or never love tend to be inarticulate yelps from bot farms in response to Musk’s favourite people – the radicalised online.

It used to make me laugh, keep me informed, present different opinions to my own and make me think about my own biases. Now it depresses me.

Reasons to stay.

1 – Like I said, I was a regular long before he bought the place.

2 – The friends I’ve made through this place that I fear losing contact with if I walk away.

3 – The audience, I quite like having made a few thousand people decide I was worth occasionally looking at.

4 – Not wanting to look like some inconsistent flouncer. Quitting Twitter, oh that’s good. You still using Amazon? Eat at McDonald’s lately? You’re either opposed to the genocidal planet wrecking cdeuntocracy that is the US of A or you aren’t? Etc.

5 – I’m addicted. Getting on for 200,000 tweets. I’ve spent actual YEARS of my life on this stupid site. Wouldn’t I just be swapping one platform for another?

6 – Now that Musk’s initial mission, getting the Rapist back in the White House, has been accomplished, many of the bots have been switched off. And suddenly I see that in the Musk Years, I’ve inadvertently been following actual people with terrible opinions. So, I’ve been enjoying sweeping those types into the metaphorical bin. Extremely cathartic.

7 – Gary Barlow’s Giant Son. Things like this don’t happen nearly enough now. So, when they do, it makes me feel a reluctance to walk away.

Reasons to go.

1 – If enough decent people go, maybe things will change.

2 – Can always make new friends.

3 – Can always build a new audience.

4 – Because you have to start somewhere.

5 – This could be the methadone to Twitter’s smack. Maybe I need it.

6 – I follow too many centrist scumbags.

 

 

Britishcore

I'd never heard of BRITISHCORE until, like many people, this eye-poppingly shit screed hit the world this morning. Anyway, bored as I was with everything else, I had a go myself.

1: Buying a Big Issue, revelling in some kind of inner smugness for doing so and drowning out the voice in your head that says “Fucking hell, the Big Issue just turns homeless people into advertising space” before heading back to the former council house your parents left you.

2: Tutting and aahing at the lifestyle choices of the poor before getting obliterated every night on expensive malt.

3: Knocking one out watching Rachel Riley.

4. Having a mate called Rapey and never having questioned this.

5. Getting incensed at Just Stop Oil and the like and then weeping watching an Attenborough clip.

6. Spending double the amount of money on a holiday to Cornwall as on a holiday to Portugal.

7. Watching and enjoying Saturday Kitchen.

8. Brushing cocaine off your BBC lanyard.

9. Actually knowing what the fuck half the shit Slater or Ottolenghi are on about actually is and where the best place to locally source it is.

10. Still banging on about Britpop.

11. Going to a local independent cinema to watch a four hour Chilean drama purely to say you’re really into South American cinema now.

12. Using the term holibobs.

13. Fancying Keir Starmer and writing about it.

14. Thinking you are friends with the cleaner/au pair.

15. Referring to a holiday in the UK as a “staycation”.

16. Commandeering a significant area of your local park with a gazebo and a barbecue and some sports equipment so you can get pissed with your friends and their equally awful kids

17. Misrepresenting your parents occupation for working class credentials.

18. Raving about the new Jamie.

19. Being excited about the new Gavin and Stacey.

20. Messaging the WhatsApp group about the new John Lewis advert.

21. Parkrun.

22. Having a collection of anything taking up a room in your home.

23. Giving your kid a working class name when they’re never going to have been dismayed to find some prick has filled their basket with yellow stickered food despite having a BMW in the car park outside.

24. Getting emotionally aroused by the Red Arrows.

25. Saying stuff like “Of course, the real Glastonbury isn’t the bands, it’s the little stages, the secret nooks and crannies.”

26. Sneering at people for buying eight quid jeans when that’s all they can fucking afford, you reprehensible wankpigs.

27. Pretending you’ve never been to “a Spoons”.

28. Enjoying that Alan Carr show where he gets to restore Tuscan villas for peanuts but then tutting at Bradley Walsh dragging his chirpy mug round the States on ITV.

29. Saying you live in West London when you live in Harrow.

30. Saying “ooh I’m awful till I’ve had my coffee” in the morning as some sort of excuse for being a prick first thing every fucking day.

31. Liking Ant and Dec.

32. Having an opinion on Harry and Meghan.

33. Giving your kids a Christmas box or whatever it is when you give your kids a load of stuff on Christmas Eve too because you’re an idiot.

34. Exaggerating some sort of working class accent whenever you enter anywhere you suspect that working class people are socialising.

35. Saying things like “Yes bruv” and “Ya feel me” when you’re from Chipping fucking Sodbury.

36. Liking Led by Donkeys and sharing their posts, thinking you’re contributing to the fall of evil.

37. Thinking you could handle yourself in a fight because you’ve watched Peaky Blinders.

38. Ringing your genuinely hard up mates to complain about your financial plight because you can’t afford Carfest this year.

39. Those stupid massive fucking coats.

40. Pretending you still refer to Starburst as Opal Fruits.

41. Driving everywhere.

42. Enjoying Clarkson’s Farm.

43. Still going on about only getting a B in A-level French thirty years later.

44. Using the phrase “I know, right”.

45. Texting Six Music and saying things like “Wooh, Love a bit of Libertines. Absolute scenes here in the conservatory! Whoop!”

46. Stop photographing EVERYTHING.

47. Saying “its coming home mate” to everyone because England just got a last minute winner against Laos. And also because you know nothing about football.

48. Having the Zoopla app.

49. Saying “LOL” out loud.

50. Reading those “10 ideal Croatian hotspots” type articles in the Sunday papers and ticking off the ones you’ve been to already.

51. Having a massive fridge covered in those stupid magnetic words.

52. Convincing yourself your kid’s got ADD because they were late back from hockey practise.

53. Resenting the dog you got during lockdown.

54. Pretending you never really liked Russell Brand.

55. Having any kind of picture in your kitchen that refers to “Gin O’Clock”.

56. Getting heavily on board with the latest fashionable food – “pulled pork”, “smashed burgers”, “kicked-the-shit-out-of-kebabs”

57. Getting a tattoo of your children’s names but it’s in some ancient script.

58. High fiving.

59. Having shoes with designated roles like “Work Shoes”, “Party Shoes”, “Funeral Shoes” rather than just one pair of fucking shoes that have somehow got to last till the next paltry pay increase.

60. Banging your saucepan or whatever for NHS staff during the pandemic and then voting contradictory to that performative nonsense at the next election.

61. Being a bit too into Rocky Horror Picture Show.

62. Having a crush on Carol Vorderman.

63. Calling your gap year in the 80s “being unemployed.”

64. Watching The Budget intently.

65. Booking annual leave every year for the day after the Oscars.

66. PELOTON!

67. Wearing a different Christmas jumper every day from December 1.

68. Sticking with Line of Duty even though it was shit after about series 2.

69. Calling Wednesday “hump day” to people for whom, that week, it may well be their Monday.

70. Downton Abbey.

71. Grown adults skateboarding.

72. Football fans who over-intellectualise the game. “Actually, much as I was pleased Atlanta won, I was surprised Klopp fell for the 3-3-1-3 trap, a primitive take on the classic libero system if you ask me ETC ETC ETC FUCKING SHUT UP ITS JUST A GAME.”

73. People with massive cars who believe that somehow the landscape in the advert they first saw said car, a world of wide open empty Continental lanes of smooth perfect tarmac, is just like the crammed suburban bottleneck hell hole they’ve taken delivery of the monster truck with small wheels to.

74. Saying “PARKLIFE” at anything.

75. People who play golf.

76. The Great British Doing Shit You Don’t Have to Do Anymore Because Capitalism/Technology Show, you endlessly middle class fucktards.

77. Wimbledon.

78. The wrap-around-shade-in-the-gelled-up-hair-with-cricket-jumper-draped-around-your-shoulder-whilst-you-walk-around-in-shorts-and-birkenstocks-trying-to-appear-casual-whilst-you-queue-for-your-expensive-fucking-coffee-on-a-Satruday-morning look so beloved of every middle class middle aged prick in the shit seaside town I live in from March to September.

79. Doing shit “ironically”. Yeah we got tired of Dubrovnik so we took the kids to, get this right, fucking PONTINS! Hilares!

80. People who say stuff like “ooh 5 sleeps till Christmas”.

81. BrewDog.

82. Reading the Guardian

83. Taking time off work “for your mental health” and then verbally abusing an underling on your return to work for not doing more in your absence.

84. People in the gym who don’t use the lockers and just take all their shit into the gym despite signs asking them not to because they’re a busy media person and look it doesn’t matter really and the kid on the desk is going to say fuck all because he’s a kid on 8 quid an hour.

85. Endlessly watching your Ring doorbell thing.

86. Using “Best” as an email signature.

87. Not referring to Benedict Cumberbatch as “Benny Cums”.

88. “I mean, yeah, there was Iraq. But Blair did so much good….”

89. “I love Comic Relief!”

90. Calling your pub quiz team “Cunning Stunts”

91. Having an allotment when you’ve covered your entire garden with fucking pebbles.

92. Having zero understanding of being poor.

93. Having zero understanding of being hungry.

94. Having zero understanding of anything past your stupid facile media bullshit world.

95. Banksy.

96. If you’ve got this far, I’m sorry.

97. I mean, I’m as much of a cunt as most people.

98. I’ll probably get pissed tonight. Hungover in my shit job tomorrow, all of this is just the politics of envy.

99. I’d love to have the chance to go ski-ing, I mean I wouldn’t go because I’m accident prone.

100. But imagine it. I don’t even know what apres-ski means but I bet it’s fucking delicious. Am I allowed it with crisps?

 

Top of the Premier Pops

Decided to predict the Premier League race by looking at what was number one in the UK charts when their manager was born.

20^th place. MAN CITY (Pep Guardiola) – Grandad (Clive Dunn). Clearly those charges are finally going to bite. Clive Dunn cosplaying as a sweet old man to appallingly sentimental slop that was bizarrely written by the same bloke who played that bassline on Walk on the Wild Side. 

19^th place. WOLVES (Gary O’Neil) – True (Spandau Ballet). The worst record of the 1980s. If Thatcherism sounded like anything it sounded like this. Sorry Wolves. Tony Hadley with his Yuppie Gaston head, a fucking saxophone solo from hell. It was I’m Not in Love for cunts.

18^th place. BRIGHTON (Fabian Hurzeler) – No Limit (2 Unlimited). No no no no no no no no, no no no no, there’s no Premiership.

17^th place. ARSENAL (Mikel Arteta) – The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Tight Fit). Fantasy Island was the best pop record of the 1980s. But this shite cover got to the top. Arsenal’s away form will desert them and their fans will beg them to “Win Away “ to the tune of “Wimoweh.” Possibly.

16^th place. BRENTFORD (Thomas Frank) – Eye Level (Simon Park Orchestra). The only instrumental in our list. A theme tune more memorable than the show it soundtracked. It’s shit really but it’s better than what’s below it. A season of struggle.

15^th place. SOUTHAMPTON (Russell Martin) – Merry Christmas Everyone (Shakin Stevens). Southampton will be the surprise package of the season up until Christmas and then it’ll fall quicker than the reputation of Olympic breakdancing.

14^th place. NOTTINGHAM FOREST (Nuno Espirito Santo) – You Wont Find Another Fool Like Me (The New Seekers).. The kind of bland, uneventful stuff that would be a hit if people had power cuts twice a week and only Spam and Mike Yarwood flavour crisps to eat.  Mid table beckons.

13^th place. CRYSTAL PALACE (Thomas Glasner) – When Will I See You Again (The Three Degrees). Being the kind of song you recognise the chorus when it comes on but nothing else about it. Like Palace when Zaha comes back.

12^th place. FULHAM (Mario Silva) – So You Win Again (Hot Chocolate). The title suggests the Cottagers will pick up a lot of points this season but the singer’s bald so maybe they won’t have much up top.

11^th place. LIVERPOOL (Arne Slot) – Three Times a Lady (Commodores). Who doesn’t want to hear this song in a Dutch accent? Who is the Lionel Richie of Liverpool? (Insert predictable hair and tache 1980s joke here). A disappointing season nonetheless.

10^th place. IPSWICH TOWN (Kieran McKenna) – Rock Me Amadeus (Falco). Fucking bonkers stuff. All over the place. A one hit wonder though so just like last time they were in the Prem it’ll end in tears in 2025-26.

9^th place. BOURNEMOUTH (Andoni Iraola) – Goody Two Shoes (Adam Ant). Everyone likes Bournemouth a bit don’t they? Hard to really dislike them especially now Eddie “Beheaders and Volleys” Howe has gone. Adam Ant’s finest hour and I’ll brook no argument.

8^th place MANCHESTER UNITED (Erik Ten Hag) – Love Grows…(Edison Lighthouse). Ten Hag finally gets a tune out of United. This was the song that knocked Rolf Harris off the top of the charts. And for legal reasons I’ll end the tweet there.

7^th place. EVERTON (Sean Dyche) – My Sweet Lord (George Harrison). In much the same way that George beat the other Beatles to a solo number one, the Toffees finally finish above Liverpool. There’ll be an expensive legal battle after mind…

6^th place. LEICESTER CITY (Steve Cooper) – Walking on the Moon (Police). Steve Cooper has the same initials as Sting Cunt and Stewart Copeland. And Leicester will make giant steps this season…

5^th place. SPURS (Ange Postecoglou) – I Got You Babe (Sonny and Cher). Groundhog Day again for Spurs as they miss out on the Champions League places.

4^th place. NEWCASTLE UNITED (Eddie Howe) – Name of the Game (ABBA). Abba is short for Arabian Bonesaw Bastards Athletic.

3^rd place. WEST HAM UNITED (Julien Lopetegui) – Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby (Beatles). I got nothing here. You can sing Chrysencio Summerville to the tune of Yellow Submarine and Edson Alvarez to Eleanor Rigby if you like though.

2nd place. ASTON VILLA (Unai Emery) – Maggie May (Rod Stewart). Yes I’m biased but Rod was never better and Villa are brilliant now.

1^st place. CHELSEA (Enzo Maresca) – Too Much Too Young (Specials). How many young players have Chelsea got? TOO MUCH MATE! (SATIRE!).

How to buy a Twix

 

Someone said to write it down. To document it. Get the fucking feeling of your mind, like it was a car and you were taking it for a test drive, a spin. Not that you can fucking drive because well we’ll find out won’t we.

When you were a kid you discovered you didn’t like crowds. You remain terrified of mobs to this day. You don't like gigs or football matches in stadiums. That’s the school thing isn’t it? Those first few days of terror, the absolute crushing sensation that for the first time in your life nothing could protect you or comfort you for a few hours. And you’d lose yourself in books, fiction, encyclopaedias, lists and facts. And you can still reel off terrifying amounts of trivial, pointless shite. And the dates thing. You know where you were at any point of your life pretty much.

Today is July 28^th. You know that on this day in 1991, your then girlfriend’s parents came round with the dad’s own mother and she was from Weymouth and she looked like Nana Moon from EastEnders but without any of the kindness, just a little silent ball of rage. On top of the fridge in the kitchen is a double cassette player, a shit black one made by Aiwa and in that player is Shiftwork by The Fall. And it’s very sunny and your heavily pregnant girlfriend is a week late giving birth but you know it’s not going to be tonight. You know when things are going to happen. You sense things. You would be able to smell it.

You know because you think you’re tuned in differently. You smell that stuff they put on kids knees when they fall over in school playgrounds in the moments before someone gets hurt. And you can’t say it out loud because that’s insane, no one has that ability but you do and you keep schtum. Because you’ve learnt to swallow those words, the words that people jump on, like bugs to squash. People like to smash things they don’t instantly understand.

You can’t sleep because you’re always tired. You can’t get things done because you’re always doing something else. A lifetime of incomplete tasks. Easily distracted by your own self. You could buy a hoover, drag it home and be all excited about the hoovering you’re gonna finally do, gonna drag that flat from the jaws of environmental condemnation and save it and save you in the process and you know you mean it but the moment you get in you’ll be wanting to know what happened to Hollywood Beyond because you were humming it on the bus home and you’ll remember that on the 8^th August 1986 you bought their big hit, What’s the Colour of Money, from The Studio in Lampeter with some babysitting money you’d earnt earlier in the week from Cass who lived next door. The record was lurid green vinyl and you were unable to talk because you’d had two teeth removed due to yet another complicated orthodontic procedure conducted an hour earlier.

You’ll go on Wikipedia when you get in and the hoover won’t leave it’s box for a fortnight.

Sometimes you can’t wash. Sometimes you can’t do anything but drink. Some days you will have the ability to scrub your flat to within an inch of it’s life but you’ll probably have phoned in sick to do it. It’s like there’s a voice, not quite a conscience, more a kind of deranged interior supervisor saying fucking hell mate you have to do these things otherwise your life will fall apart, and it’s there all day long, it’s saying fucking hell mate why are you typing this shit down, no one will want to read it, and do you really want to share it anyway, who will believe you, you’re fucking losing it mate. But the typing means you don’t have to think about the pain in your foot which is causing you problems all the time and you don’t want to go to the doctors again because you have convinced yourself your doctor has written Time Wasting Hypochondriac down in medical code at the top of your notes so everyone who sees you knows they’ve got five minutes off work.

Memory. Long-term, pointless stuff, I’ve got that down.  I make three times the amount of food and drink that I actually consume. I get on buses and have to remind myself why I’m on it. I get lost in music. I go to pub quizzes because once or twice a week this esoterica blocking up the fire exits of my head becomes useful and someone will ask “which pop song from 1985 was the first number one single to mention the word “record”, I will know it’s You Spin Me Round, Like A Record by Dead or Alive which I will also know was the week Aston Villa lost a League Cup semi-final second leg to Oxford United because of course I fucking do but do I know where my glasses case is? 

Short-term, useful stuff? Fucking useless.

I make very bad, impulsive decisions. I am really bad with money. I have to stop myself from saying appalling, terrible things which I don’t really mean. I cry at everything that I don’t find hysterically funny. I watch films on repeat for days on end because the pattern of it being on means I am able to kill some time before the thing I need to do becomes too late to be done. I make instantaneous emotional connections with film and art and nature and all kinds of things. I can remember ex-girlfriend’s phone numbers from 30 years ago. The smell of their hair, the way they pronounced certain words. I couldn’t tell you either of my kids phone numbers. Some of that is down to technology I am sure.

I have extremely high self-confidence right up until I need it. I have absolutely zero confidence that people mean what they say when they try to boost my extremely low self-confidence. I fall in love very easily and hold grudges forever. I think about stuff way too much that I have absolutely no impact over. I can convince myself that I can see the future and sometimes I really can. I know when I’m being lied to because I am a brilliant liar.

When I complete a routine household or everyday task I feel the most astonishing rush for a nano-second and then I review it and I either conclude that I have forgotten a key component of said task or that I am an idiot for leaving it so long or that I am an idiot for having that rush in the first place. I think I have talent for writing but I hate writing in case no one ever sees it or that if someone does I will know that they are lying when they tell me it’s good.

I am forever awake in the night and sleepy in the day. I am clumsy and struggle to follow instructions to tasks that everyone else finds easy enough to complete. I worry about dying and think about killing myself quite a lot just to get it out of the way. I love my children more than anything and I wrongly suspect that sometimes they don’t love me very much back. I play the lottery. I don't eat sticky food. I have severe problems maintaining eye contact with people. I took my driving test four times and then just gave up. It is my concentration levels I think. I have to work very hard to not crash.

My school reports were unexceptional.

My friends say the following things about me to my face. I am a genius. I am mad. I am the funniest person they have ever known. They worry about me. I am kind. I will find happiness one day. I am loved. I should get tested for something. Maybe I have ADD. I have autism. I am a savant. 

I never believe them though I always look like I do. I am depressed. I am anxious. I say if everyone is neurodivergent then no one is and everyone laughs. 

I have been prescribed various things down the years but nothing works really. I tell myself my mind is too clever for the drugs. It says “I see. You just want me not to worry but we’ve done all right with worrying and catastrophising till now. It’s what’s kept us alive. Fuck you I won’t respond to these drugs.” And so it continues.

If I ring someone and they don’t answer, I will tell myself that they have looked at their phone and decided they can’t be arsed. Or if it is one of my children I tell myself that they are dead. I know that this is not healthy or rational. I did CBT. My mind did it again every time. Where’s the evidence for this negative thought you are having? And my mind will say I don’t need evidence, I fucking know sunshine. And then I will use some other crutch for confidence, it might be a can of lager or some cans of lager or some chocolate or I might sit down at my laptop and type.

I worry that I am just an egomaniac really and there’s nothing wrong with me at all. I second guess the reasons behind my every action and have to work very hard to dissuade myself from the notion that I am a narcissist or a Svengali or something else manipulative. 

Beside me, on this cluttered table, sits a cup of lukewarm coffee. It has a dinosaur on it and the caption “Tea-rex” and instantly on reading this I remember the word Archaeopteryx being the first entry in a little Ladybird book of dinosaurs my mum bought me when I was six. I was reading it in the playground on an overcast afternoon quite happy not to be part of the mob playing War or Kiss chase or whatever. I am sat on this weird little brick ridge reading a book next to a girl called Joanne Wormald who is reading over my shoulder. I can't remember her face but she had dark blonde hair and always got more stars than me in her school work.

Right now it is not 1977 anymore. I am not sure if I had breakfast today though I definitely went to Tesco this morning because I wanted to buy anti-fungal cream for my toenail. I did not buy it because I couldn’t be arsed to make a list with one thing on it and subsequently I forgot and came home with a Twix and some vanilla milkshake instead. 

Outside, the sky is blue and a child is screaming and splashing in a paddling pool almost the same colour as the sky. I have not had an alcoholic drink in 73 days.

 

Wait and See

So here we are then. Election day. And unless every psephologist in Britain has been doing heroic quantities of glue since Christmas, it looks like the Tories are finally fucking off. Tonight's election results will be an asteroid in the bollocks of the current government. I try to be excited about it and I almost am but something is missing.

It’s more than knowing that many Tory MPs lack the backbone to see what their electorate think of them now they’ve about to be thrown out of office. There should still be plenty of schadenfreude tonight despite the ranks of cowards quitting the stage before the end of the play. Not fit to govern, just frit, as their once beloved leader bellowed in the Commons.

So why my lack of excitement? 

It’s because I keep being told “wait and see.” As if those millions waiting to be housed, of children needed to be fed, of sick treated by the NHS have the time and energy for the exercise of such patience. 

I fear that the grownups have not so much entered the room, more that another set of self-interested bastards have. And when “wait and see” stops playing on the political jukebox, the old classic “we’ve inherited a mess” will get an airing. 

Your NHS will not be saved. Not with Big Wes and his American friends in charge. Your kids will still go to school in dangerously broken buildings. The rivers will still flow with human shit. The life expectancy of our most vulnerable will continue to decline. Homelessness will rise further still.

That our next PM has spent more time being questioned about how JK Rowling might vote than say his position on Gaza or climate change or lifting the two child cap on benefits suggests that although the money is there (and it is always there), the political will isn’t (and it never is). 

All this, in the sixth richest country in the world. People need hope. And they need change. The former they may have today. The latter won’t be coming tomorrow, no matter what Sir Keir tells you. Or any time soon. Because if genuine change was on the agenda he wouldn’t be heading anywhere near Downing Street. 

Winning, they say, is everything. You have to be in power to change things. But I fear this landslide will not be interpreted by its benefactors as a desire for the radical changes needed rather than as a polite blue light for a slightly more competent, hopefully less corrupt remix of the toxic shite we have now. Because, as I said just now, genuine change isn’t what the Sensible People are selling. If the Labour Party hated the Tories as much as they hate the left of their own party, we would all be better off already.

After the last five years maybe a bit of stability is needed. Some semblance of competence and normality. These should be the bare minimum requirements for any ruling party but the bar is now so low it qualifies as revolutionary. 

Here’s why I might dare to have hope. If Labour achieve the kind of majority people think they will then they will have done it without communicating any real idea of what Labour stand for. Which means that people really do want change. And a decade in power gives Labour the time to implement it. Maybe things can only get better. Maybe Starmer isn’t a ruthlessly ambitious individual with a vicious streak. Maybe speaking to The Sun yesterday, after telling the people of Liverpool he never would, is just another blip, a necessary bruise to be gained in the grubby ring of politics. But then again maybe he is just another liar after all. Knighted as he was for his part in the rush to give disaffected black youths disproportionate prison sentences for rioting and looting, reluctant as he was to back a ceasefire in Gaza, delighted as he is to still sit and slur thousands of former Labour supporters as anti-semitic, it cannot be said that Keir Rodney Starmer is an obvious thorn in the side of the establishment. But perhaps he's like one of those alien ships buried beneath civilisation in War of the Worlds, waiting for the right moment to reveal himself. 

We will wait and see. My reckoning is we will be told that we’re just going to have to “tighten our belts” further still. 

Which, roughly translated, means that those at the bottom of the pit, and that is around 15 million or so people living below the poverty line, won’t be getting a rope thrown down to save them any time soon. And because you don’t see poor people on the news* it isn’t going to matter. 

This is just an opinion. I’m an old man with vaguely left wing leanings. I may yet be pleasantly surprised by the outcome of a Starmer government. I will only be too pleased to admit I was wrong if so.

None of it matters really. The climate crisis is approaching at such a pace that we will all soon be gone anyway. The mainstream parties don’t care and the greens are practically a cult as far as the media are concerned. If a bunch of well meaning kids covering Stonehenge in cornflour irritates the media then screaming for the abolition of capitalism from the top of a burning Amazon warehouse probably won’t get much traction. We are, as Bambi's mum says, fucked.

I digress. 

I have nothing to gain from arguing with anyone. I still love you all. Vote as you see fit. But vote this current lot out. That rabble, that bloated choir of racists, rapists and absolute fucking bastards has to go.

Stick your X next to anyone but them or Reform.

I love you all.

PREDICTION (not including the 18 Northern Ireland seats) - Labour 425, Conservative 105, Lib Dem 74, SNP 18, Green 4, Plaid 4, Reform 4. 

PS I ain’t engaging. Life is too short. You won’t change my opinion. I won’t change yours. Comment if you want to, share if you must.

 

*unless they’ve done something terrible.