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.

 

Stronger

Wanted to write something about the 50 songs I chose in the previous blog post, just some observations on a song by song basis - won't do it for them all. Don't read on if you're dealing with some grief right now, as it's about loss and I hate to upset people.

STRONGER - Sugababes

(single, 2002, from album "Angels with Dirty Faces)

Oh fuck.

Pop music as emotional trigger.

Sugababes released a string of what the kids call absolute bangers at the start of the century, an all time John Cazale style run. If we do anything well in this country its pop music, and girl group pop music especially. And I could have picked “Freak Like Me”, “Round Round” (especially the Soulwax mix), "Overload" or even “Push the Button”.

But Stronger is the one for me, even if it does take me back some place I'd rather not go.

We had a kitten called Marvin. He came along with his sister Millie in the package labelled “New Girlfriend.” It was a good package, an instant family.

A few months later my stepdad died. 

A friend came to cat sit whilst we attended the funeral. Marvin, being a fucking lunatic, ran out of the door the moment the cat sitter arrived and got hit by a car. He survived but with a problem that wouldn’t get any better and we spent a fortune on vet’s bills before facing up to the vet's assertion we were just prolonging his agony. The day we took him on his final journey was grim, a fortnight before Christmas, the rain lashing down. And the vets is only round the corner so we walk and he’s meowing like mad, loudest he’s been in some time. And it’s not really my kitten, it’s my girlfriend’s, I tell myself, I'm going to be ok. I’m alright with this decision. It’s not fair to see him in so much pain. I’m going to be there for her, I’m carrying the cage because it’s heavy and it’s only a 5-minute walk but it takes forever and the vet sees us straight away.

Of course Marvin climbs out of the cage like he’s better, not fucked, not half crippled and yelping in pain continually. A ginger Lazarus. One last act of defiance. And I can feel myself going, the lip is wobbling, the eyes are misting up. The vet, she strokes him and then Marvin, the little prick, starts playing with a stethoscope round her neck like he’s back in good health, still got some play in him. And it’s that that fucking kills me. I can’t be there for this. I run out of the room, completely overcome, can’t be there and I’m properly uncontrollably and undignifiedly puke-crying in the street.

I want to get absolutely fucked on booze but I can’t and I don’t, I wait for my girlfriend and she comes out and I pull myself together and we walk home in the wet dark silence. Later that evening I’m making a cup of tea for us and the radio is on in the kitchen and Stronger comes on and it’s all too raw and literal and I’m shaking with grief and anger and it reminds me that I’m no good at this stuff. I can’t be strong around loss and pain. And this song becomes stuck in my head for the next few days. I buy the record, I play it repeatedly, it purges me of something but I feel guilty about the level of my anguish. I shouldn’t feel this much but I do.

Stronger is an anthem of defiance, a song that transports me instantly to those unbearable moments.  It's Unfinished Sympathy for the pop kids. And it’s Marvin’s song now. Even now, 21 years later, I’m back on that walk, the cage swinging in my left hand as he rocks it around, trying to make sense of his final minutes, the condemned man. And it’s a magnificent pop song that can do that thing where you say to yourself that you almost enjoy that misery, because it’s like another instrument playing at a frequency only you can hear. 

So probably shouldn't have had the song on this morning in the gym....

50 best singles of the 21st century

Inspired by, but feeling too late to join in with, the hashtag #FearofMu21C on Twitter - thought I'd have a crack at picking my own selection of the best 50 singles of the 21st century so far. Research led me to realise belatedly that songs I thought were singles actually weren't, a symptom of the streaming era I guess. Can't tell you the last single I bought, going back a while. I think it might be a split single between Marissa Nadler and Father JOhn Misty where they each covered one of the other's songs. Neither track made this list, though the Nadler one is pretty cool. Decided to not include remixes as that seems like another sort of playlist, also I would end up having about 8 Soulwax ones...

So, here we go, in reverse order....

50th place - Let's Make Love And Listen to Death From Above - CSS. 

49 - Proserpina - Martha Wainwright

48 - I Need Some Fine Wine and You Need To Be Nicer - Cardigans

47 - 1 Thing - Amerie

46 - Hurt - Johnny Cash

45 - Johnny Cash - Sons and Daughters

44 - Wild Young Hearts - Noisettes

43 - Midnight Sun - Nilufer Yanya

42 - More Than A Woman - Aaliyah

41 - The Suburbs - Arcade Fire

40 - 1980 - Estelle

39 - You Let My Tyres Down - Tropical Fuck Storm

38 - Digital Love - Daft Punk

37 - Mistaken For Strangers - National

36 - A Private Understanding - Protomartyr

35 - There, There - Radiohead

34 - Ibithaj - Rapsody

33 - Panique - Juniore

32 - Reagan - Killer Mike

31 - Seventeen - Ladytron

30 - Losing My Edge - LCD Soundsystem

29 - Show Me - Mint Royale

28 - Feel It Still - Portugal, The Man

27 - Remember Me - Sea Power

26 - Fascination - Alphabeat

25 - Sunglasses - Black Country, New Road

24 - The Isle of Arran - Lloyd Carner

23 - Get Yr Freak On - Missy Elliot

22 - Mirrors - Justin Timberlake

21 - She Wants to Move - N*E*R*D

20 - 212 - Azalea Banks

19 - Do You Realise? - Flaming Lips

18 - Danger! High Voltage - Electric Six

17 - Human - Molly Sarle

16 - Dedicated to My Ex - Lloyd

15 - Straight to the Morning - Hot Chip feat Jarvis Cocker

14 - Laura - Scissor Sisters

13 - Not - Big Thief

12 - The Spoils - Massive Attack

11 - Since I Left You - Avalanches

10 - The Rat - The Walkmen

9 - Toxic - Britney Spears

8 - Maps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

7 - Stronger - Sugababes

6 - Something Kinda Oooh - Girls Aloud

5 - Crazy in Love pt 1 - Beyonce

4 - Video Games - Lana Del Rey

3 - With Every Heartbeat - Robyn

2 - Maneater - Nelly Furtado

1 - Hey Ya - Outkast

Playlist here - complaints to the usual address....

New short story - October

 

October

 

It was the last birthday card he ever bought for his wife.

He wasn’t to know it, wasn’t to know any of the things that could happen in the next twelve months. Who amongst us truly sees the future? The card had been selected against a number of criteria. Firstly, that it was not in any way sentimental. Secondly, that it did not feature the word “wife” in any way on the front of the card. Third, it did not feature teddy bears or kittens. Fourth, it looked like some actual decision had been made to choose this card and of course, finally, it had to come in at around the small amount of coins in his battered wallet.

There was a small amount of shame to be had in taking the plastic bag with the shop’s name to hold the card. But the card might get crumpled in the inside pocket of his jacket and those looked like rain clouds up ahead. The bag felt flimsy, cheap and reminded the man of his current economic status.

They had once been madly in love and got married without either of them really considering what it might take to shake the foundations of that madness. Within a year of the confetti each had cheated on the other without the other finding out. Things like that happen in life. A Christmas party, too much alcohol, a feeling of wanting to try something different, feeling dangerous. That was her story. His was another kind of boredom. An email from an ex. Then another. Then phone calls and lies. And a hotel room that he had let the ex pay for on her card, not his. There was no chivalry that day, how could there be. There was only a brief feeling of excitement, and no little shame after.

He was thinking of that afternoon now in the autumn wind. The bag in his hand blew weakly. The man imagined a scenario where he’d already written the birthday message and the words were being blown across the card, leaving streaks of biro and no words of congratulation or love in their inky wake.

I only met that man the one time. He was sat next to me on the red seat at the bus stop outside Boots. He didn’t share any of that stuff with me, I just made it all up for this story. He had only glanced at me for a second, nodded at the same thin bag in my hand from the same card shop as mine and smiled in a way that unsettled me. Not then, but much later.

Red Converse

Any amateur psychologist would trace the start of this collection to the death of your mother. Walking home from the funeral, you came across a real find. A giant Perspex letter H, fallen from the side of a closed down factory. They made plumbing supplies there. The H was Impact font. You dragged it down the alleyways, crossed into the lane that your house backed onto. It was an effort, heaving the little rugby posts through the back gate, but you still went back to see if other letters had jumped.

In the winter you trained yourself to see these things before others. Lone gloves, lost scarves, a bus pass, a Madness cassette. Nothing as large as that H, but everything just as precious.

Sometimes the finds felt wrong, but only for a second. An engagement ring in an open swimming pool locker, a walking stick against a graveyard gate. The shed became a museum. You bought a padlock with a fiver you saw fall from a paper boy’s pocket on Christmas Eve.

You hadn’t told anyone about your collection. It was sacred to you, a secret from the world. When the first item appeared outside your back gate that January morning, you thought it a coincidence. A bucket and spade, the castle turrets still flecked with old sand.

Soon, other items appeared – a skipping rope, a stuffed guinea pig, two bibles.

Then the knife.

Now you don’t want to go out. But the urge is so strong. What will be outside today?

You pull on your tattered red Converse, the hole in the right sole getting bigger. You pull at the gate and as you do so something tells you it is already too late.

To the tune of Cool for Cats

 (with all apologies to Difford and Tillbrook)

1.

The jingles and the mingles that were promised in the card

Will all go undetected by the boys from Scotland Yard

The wankers at the party, they might get an OBE

And nothing will be done about the fast track PPE

Boris laughed at all the nurses and he laughed at you and me

And we haven’t even started on the parties in his flat

And everybody knows it’s cos we’re run by Tory twats

It's Tory twats (Tory twats)

2.

Nadine is on the lagers 'cause she’s got the word to go

She’s been promised a sweet peerage by a fat Lothario

But Rishi’s put the kybosh on the changes to her name

And Boris shoved some new young blonde into the honours frame

It's funny how his missus always look the bleeding same

And meanwhile in the video there's a couple of likely lads

Who are breaking their own lockdown cos they’re evil Tory twats

They're Tory twats (Tory twats)

3.

To change the mood a little I've been going down the pub

Cos until the next election, I’ll be feeling in the dumps

I fancy clothes, I fancy heat, I can’t afford the gas

I get a little food in but I spend a load of cash

And all I feel is bitter and I end up on the lash

And by the time I'm sober I've forgotten why I’m sad

And then I turn the news on and I see the Tory twats

The tory twats (Tory twats)

4. 

Shape up at the foodbank and there’s nurses in the queue

The morgues are full of corpses and the river’s full of poo

Rishi’s in his chopper cos he wants to miss a vote

Suella’s on the telly and she’s yelling stop the boats

I go to scream myself but it just sticks inside my throat

The media lead the way in distorting all the facts

Cos All you see on telly is a bunch of Tory twats

The tory twats.....