The annual Christmas blog repost...

First published 22/12/2013. Images from my collection of vintage cards and postcards. Updated December 2016.

Christmas: for some a religious festival celebrating the birth of Jesus.  Others are more than keen to point out that Saturnalia and the pagan Winter Solstice celebrations have more bearing on why we celebrate in December (it’s not clever, by the way, we all know this).  There are elements of all in the modern Christmas and to an extent we can pick and choose what parts we observe.

I am not a Christian.  I was not brought up as one by my parents but was by school and a couple of years ago during a time of crisis I did get baptised but I have since come to believe that there is no God.  I don’t say that to offend; I have no problem with those who do (unless they use their beliefs to be shitty to others) and I find the Christian bashing attitude of some atheists rather tiresome. I just don’t think there is a divine deity that watches us; not even Father Christmas (he knows when you’ve been sleeping?  Kindly old elf or MI5 spook?). And yet I celebrate Christmas whole-heartedly, including Christian elements of it.  You think that makes me a hypocrite?  Well, I don’t like your attitude!  Fuck you!

Yesterday I went to the village square and sang carols rejoicing a god that I don’t believe in.  So what?  I don’t believe Star Wars (episodes IV to VI) is real either but I still enjoy it and even find parts of it inspiring.  Ditto ghost stories.  There are no such things as ghosts.  If you have seen one you are either insane or a liar.   Nonetheless I still enjoy a ghost story (and am looking forward to Mark Gatiss’ take on the MR James classic The Tractate Middoth on Christmas day, 9.30pm, BBC2).  I celebrate Christmas mostly without the religious aspects but I like a good carol and I call it Christmas rather than Yuletide or what have you mainly for convenience. And don't get me started on the closet racists moaning about the "PC brigade" trying to "ban" christmas, or rename it or whatever... it's just bollocks. 

So what is it I like about Christmas still when so many others find it such a chore?  There is one aspect of the season that becomes more apparent each passing year and that is that people moaning about how early Christmas starts and how commercial it has become getting earlier.  Chaz was already moaning about Christmas in October.  Christmas is commercial because we live in a capitalist system and people need jobs to live.  Now that we no longer produce much in this country that means buying and selling stuff we don’t really need to each other.  You don’t like it; think of that next time you vote.  For me Christmas starts in December because I have this amazing super-power called being able to ignore stuff if it doesn’t interest me.

Christmas for me is largely about eating and drinking well but it is also about nostalgia and evocation.  I like and attempt to replicate the kind of things that remind me of the Christmas times of my youth.  I was born in the early seventies and can remember very little of what happened to me before I started school so it was the late seventies and early to mid-eighties Christmases that I remember most. I will now bore you with a long list of Christmassy things and memories that evoke that warm feeling in me…

One Christmas in the late seventies I had a toy gun from my Dad.  I can barely remember that but I still remember the label on the box had a spaceman on it.

Carol singing, door-to-door with my sisters.  I rarely went out at night in the dark so just being outside when it was dark and cold in the crisp night air, all wrapped up, was slightly magical.

Top of the Pops Christmas Special on Christmas day in the days when I was not only interested in pop music but liked almost all of it.  Around 83’ to 85’ was possibly the high point for me… and covered the Band-Aid phenomenon.

Star Wars Episode IV recorded off the telly followed by a Duran Duran concert which cut off half way through because the VCR got switched off by a Satsuma kicked across the room by my brother.

The Christmas my Great Auntie Kit came to stay.  My Mum had only re-established contact with her earlier that year and she died the following Spring so it was a wonderful memory of a lovely lady.  Somehow the thing I remember most is staying up past midnight on Christmas Eve to watch Santa Claus And The Martians which was the finale of a terrible-movie season on BBC2!

One year having an advent calendar that instead of a picture (and before the days of chocolate filled ones) had a little novelty gift in each door.  I still remember in particular a little plastic seal (as in the semi-amphibious mammal, not the Kiss From A Rose bloke).

The same Christmas I think having a stocking filled with little knick-knacks on my bed on Christmas morning.  This was all silly things, little ornaments and the like but I loved it.  I still remember a little resin pig in a rocking chair reading the Wall Street Journal but couldn’t tell you what my “main present” was that year.

Then there was the hamper year.  This was before I was at secondary school, I'm guessing I was nine or ten.  We had a fairly un-elaborate diet at home but one year my parents bought one of those hampers which are in essence a massive rip off. This introduced various exotic foods to us that I'd never tried before... in actual fact it was really not that exciting but at the time I'd never had canned game soup (posh oxtail), canned french onion soup, tinned crab and chocolate limes.  Chocolate limes has become part of my own tradition, I always buy a bag in December even though they're actually not very nice. 

Reading the double festive issue Radio Times from cover to cover is still a tradition for me but goes back to the days when we’d have the Radio Times for BBC TV and radio and the TV Times for the commercial channels (and before 1982 that must have been one channel!). I still find old issues of these fascinating.

Quality Street… not Roses!  The old tins with the soldier and the lady on were much better though. I do regret the year I announced that I liked the green triangle best and then got given all of them for the next five years. 

Scrooge.  The 1951 version.  I now also like the Muppet one but that was not around until the early nineties.  There used to be shown an animated version which used Alistair Sim’s voice but that never gets shown any more. 

Add to this the sort of films one could only possibly enjoy at Christmas like Digby The Biggest Dog In The World and also classics like the Ray Harryhausen Clash Of The Titans (Christmas Eve, 12.40pm, Channel 5) and who needs modern blockbusters?

Christmas Shopping at Havant Hypermarket (now Asda Wal-Mart) with my Dad.  It was about the only time of year there’d be alcohol in the house and he’d spend a good deal of time deliberating on what to buy.

My Dad, who never really had his finger on the pulse of contemporary music, inexplicably coming home with Now That’s What I Call Music 6 and Now – The Christmas Album in December 1985; on Vinyl of course.  Until then I’d never heard Mike Oldfield’s In Dulce Jubilo.

Mr Thomas, my oft derided Headmaster at Junior School (years 3 to 6 I think) going bonkers for Christmas, including a spooky reading of A Christmas Carol in assembly.  I also loved the school being decorated for Christmas and the season started with the Christmas Fayre, which was usually in November (so early commercialisation started in the public sector… we really are a bunch of gits, aren’t we?).

The year I got my first stereo was a good one and when I really started to get into music. It was a Toshiba with a three band graphic equaliser (all the rage at the time) and detachable speakers.  I was mildly disappointed at the time not to get tape-to-tape but the Toshiba was still working twenty years later when I sold it at a car-boot-sale.

Tapes.  Getting tapes, both pre-recorded and blank, for Christmas was great. These were generally gifts from my Sister but I would also get more with any Christmas money I had.  A multi-pack of c90s would then allow me to copy albums that Mark over the road had on his tape-to-tape Matsui (which I doubt lasted 20 years!).  Albums I remember getting on cassette for Christmas include Fleetwood Mac’s Tango in the Night, Madonna’s Like A Virgin, Depeche Mode’s Singles 81-85 and Kate Bush’s The Whole Story.

There was the year I went to stay with my cousin Lisa in my aunt and uncle's pub in Titchfield just after Christmas until new year.  That was my first pub related christmas, I was 15 but they let me have a few beers. I also met a girl on New Years Eve who became my very first girlfriend for about a month! This Christmas introduced Lipstick On Your Collar by Connie Francis to my annual listenings as Lisa played it so often on the jukebox it now makes me think of that time of year. 

Christmas Tips as a paperboy.  In Christmas 1989 (when I really should have given it up by) I made around £150 in tips from my various rounds and spent much of the time in various pubs around Chichester and Havant with Harry at a time when going in a pub at Christmas still seemed special.  I seem to remember getting drunk 16 times in two weeks.

Christmas 1989 was the end of the best days of Christmas for me.  That boxing day my girlfriend, who had just come back from visiting relatives in the USA , dumped me.  I was 18 and grown up stuff kinda took over then.  By Christmas 1990 I’d left home for the first time and the less said about ’91 the better.  Things started getting better once I’d started work but I was stuck between boy and man and never got the balance right.  Too much drinking, not enough money, lack of real involvement in anything left me always feeling like I was not really at the centre of Christmas for anyone.  Then in 2000 I met Becky.

Christmas 2000 we spent apart but since then we have spent every Christmas together; either at her Mum’s, my parents or later at our own.  We tend to mix it up each year.  The last few Christmas seasons have been hard due to not having any money and last year in particular was not too good because I was mental.  This year we are still poor but with the prospect of a more affluent Christmas in 2014 a very real one and I am not nearly as bonkers and sleep deprived as I was last year. I am determined to enjoy it!

Update: December 2016

I'm no longer sure I'd call myself an atheist but I don't like the term agnostic; I am open minded about spirituality but I do occasionally go to church. Why? Because I find it relaxing and interesting. It's almost like meditation when I'm there.  I've been going to the advent services; carols in the (Westbourne) square has become a tradition and I intend to go to either Midnight Mass, the Christmas morning service or both this year. Another tradition that Becky and I have developed is getting a "real" tree (which I'm assured is from an environmentally sustainable source).  As a kid my family always had an artificial one and the tree we had from when I was an infant until I think my secondary school years probably lasted around eight years in total.  But I like a traditional look for decorations and prefer a real tree for that purpose.  Also, dragging it down to the square to be chipped is, for me, where Christmas is well and truly ends and I always feel a pang when I do that.

There'll be time enough for counting when the dealin's done...

Just over three weeks ago my father-in-law died.  I’m not going to write here about the how, why and when but suffice to say his death was not unexpected when it happened but would have been only a few weeks before.  I’m also not going to write about my grief or about my feelings; not because I don’t have any but because I’m acutely aware that his children and grandchildren have experienced a greater loss than have I.  Again, I will simply say that I am sad and I have a few regrets but mainly positive memories of a man who had been part of my life for 15 years.

What I going to write about is the process of clearing out Tony’s home.  I am thankful to say that his daughter (my sister-in-law) has largely dealt with the administrative side of things so we have been most shielded from that frustration (that is not to criticise the authorities, it’s very easy to do that when unaware of the massive workloads they experience).  I am talking about the actual, physical and practical emptying of a man’s home (and to an extent removing traces of his life in that home).  It’s been hard work and it isn’t done yet.

The home in question was a two-room bungalow probably built by the local authority in the 1950s.  I put this date on it with my limited knowledge due to the coal bunker in the shed and the open fire in one room (and evidence that there was once an open fire in the other).  The floor was tiled (more of that later).  It had a nicely sized front garden that took two sides of the house and a small back garden which was just about enough to dry washing in.  The bathroom had not been updated for some time and the toilet was the old high cistern/pull chain variety and I was surprised that was still there.  It also had a built-on shed with the afore mentioned coal bunker. This could have been a lovely little home.

I write the following not to denigrate someone I was hugely fond of and not to belittle him as a man or person but to present an honest picture of a situation; much of what follows is based on the  first hand testimony of his children and former wife.

In his younger days Tony had considered himself to be a practical man and was very pleased when asked by others to lend his practical skills to a situation.  However… Tony did occasionally cut corners, sometimes never fulfilled assignments to completion and as he become older and frailer he often did not have the strength or will power to get started.  His home was, unfortunately, a bit of a mess.  He also was not fond of asking for help or having others interfere which contributed to the situation.  He had been the kind of bloke who accumulates items, sometimes in very bad condition, would repair (to a degree) those items and sell them on.  His daughter mentioned a tale of a collective of Dyson vacuum cleaners that he intended to work on but that is another story for a different media.  Tony had accumulated a lot of stuff, especially tools which we are in the process of sorting to see what can be salvaged and what is for the tip (by “the tip” I refer to the municipal recycling centre or dump). 

My first job a few days ago was to sort through records and DVDs for anything we could sell.  I do not wish to sound like I am moaning here but Tony was not well covered for his death and when he died the cost of his funeral was largely born by his daughters.  It has been agreed that anything that has no sentimental value we will attempt to sell with monies raised going towards the funeral bill.  So, records first!  I am quite a fan of vinyl and I read Record Collector and though not an expert I do think I have the skills to identify what has some commerciality and what is essentially without financial value.  One of his Grandsons had already made claim to the Johnny Cash albums and the (signed) Slim Whitman box set but the rest came to me to sort and I truly enjoyed going through them with a mixture of fascination and bemusement.  Of around 60 albums and a handful of singles there are four or five that may be worth a few pounds to the right collector in the right place, possibly around £50 in total if eBay is to be believed.  However, the right collector is very unlikely to appear at a car-boot sale and that value is assumed from eBay listings for the same items and none of these had bids against them.  The rest of the albums we are keeping hold of as there is no point in even trying to sell.  I like to have vinyl in the house just to look at, there are around 25 country and western albums for t’mrs and who knows, one evening in times to come I may have an urge to listen to an Open University English Literature album from 1970, Hawaiian music or Swiss yodelling.

DVDs are much harder to clear these days and having sorted through and removed a few which were possibly not quite legal (for reasons of copyright, not subject matter!) and a few more that were just not playable due to tea stains there were still around 100 DVDs.  Another Grandson has requested a couple of Clint Eastwood box-sets that he had given his grandfather and we have decided to keep around ten for ourselves (including The Omen and The Evil Dead).  We have largely moved to Blu-ray ourselves and sold most of our DVDs so these ten now make up around a quarter of all DVDs we have.  The rest we will attempt to sell at the car-boot sale and at 50p for most we will be undercutting just about every other person selling DVDs.  Any left will then be donated to charity.

A few days later my next tasks were the destruction of furniture and the lifting of carpets as well as helping with lifting and carrying on a few tip runs.  Most of the furniture being destroyed was nothing to get excited about but there was one sideboard/cabinet that I was genuinely sorry to smash to pieces, therapeutic though it was.  I couldn’t date it, could have been as early as 1950s but possibly as late as 1970s it had a retro rather than vintage or antique look.  It was a big bugger too, possibly five feet wide and apart from the feet being missing was in fairly good condition.  Our problem was time.  The landlords want the bungalow emptied and cleaned by the end of next week (and we are all back at work then) or they will start charging the estate, which means us.  There was no time to advertise for anyone to buy or even take for free as we needed it out of the bungalow so we could lift carpets and clean and even charities, if interested, would take weeks to come and collect.  If we had room and it matched our furniture we’d have had it but we don’t and it didn’t.  So I took a mallet to it.  I smashed that mother to pieces in five minutes flat.  The wood was then taken to the recycling centre where it will be sold on (good news for council tax payers), processed and will probably end up in some posh git’s new kitchen.  Still, it is very sad that such a cute piece of furniture had to be destroyed because no service exists to quickly remove it for recycling as itself; I wonder how much other furniture from rented homes goes the same way.

The carpets did initially seem to be a fairly easy job as they had not been tacked down and they lifted easily.  Carpets?  You remember I mentioned the tiled floor earlier, why am I now going on about carpets?  The floor was indeed tiled in both of the main rooms and with a bit of work this would have looked gorgeous with perhaps a few well-placed rugs around.  At some point, however, somebody had placed carpet over the tiles; I’m not sure if this was Tony or another but it wasn’t the best quality carpet.  I’m no expert but I’ve always been advised to get separate carpet and underlay.  This was foam-backed carpet and as I lifted it became obvious that the foam had disintegrated and had become stuck to the floor in some places, little more than powder in others.  Getting the carpets up took a couple of minutes, scraping the residue of foam off the floor and sweeping up the Sahara of formerly-foam has so far taken a couple of hours and is not yet finished.  The carpets themselves were in a poor condition and have been taken to the tip along with two old, still working TVs of the not flat screen variety that can’t even be given away these days; one of them was the one we gave Tony about six years ago and I’d forgotten how heavy and unwieldy it was.

My only other task to date has been going through some of Tony’s personal effects to see what can be sold and this has been a quite endearing task.  The daughters and grandsons had already requested a few items each for sentimental reasons and I found myself also wanting to keep things to remember him by.  I have decided to keep a set of cufflinks which I think he wore to our wedding; two pairs of my own will go to the car-boot sale instead.  I don’t smoke but his tobacco tin with a horse on it had clearly been in use so I’ve kept that.  There were also a few serendipitous moments; a knob on our cooker had broken and Tony had a spare cooker knob, not matching but workable so now we can use our grill again!  The knob did not match his own cooker so why he had it… who knows?  Also I’d been looking for the old style glass, dimpled beer tankards to drink dark beer out of and couldn’t find what I wanted anywhere.  I now have three, one with a horse on it, courtesy of Tony.  I’ve swapped my wallet for one he had even though I’m not sure he had used it, mine was more functional but I just want to be able to say this was his.  Finally, there was an old Timex sports watch, not working, no strap, worth bugger all.  But I want to get it working, put a suitable strap on it and wear it.  Again, I’m not sure whether it was a watch he owned or something he picked up thinking he could make money from it, either way it will remind me of him.

The task is now almost complete at least as far as clearing the bungalow is concerned, still some cleaning to do and a washing machine (faulty) to dispose of.  There is lots of broken up furniture and rusty old tools to take to the tip, at least three runs in a little Toyota Starlet.  My Sister-in-law has all the tools that may be usable to go through, clean up and then possibly sell but that may require another car-boot sale; we already have more than enough for one.  Soon, very soon, the little bungalow in Chidham will be empty, the landlords will no doubt do it up and someone will be moved in (sort the bathroom out you bastards).  I think that before we started clearing it out I’d only been in the bungalow twice, both times to help deliver heavy items.  I think it’s fair to say that though this was Tony’s home for some time it’s not the home his daughters grew up in and will remember him from so though it will be sad to see it empty it won’t be the saddest of all the sad things that have happened recently.  I can say though that whenever I walk, cycle or drive by I will wonder who is in there now and I will remember Tony.  It really is a lovely little bungalow. 

Pictures of me...

I have had a few issues recently and haven't been writing much as a result.  So, here's a few recent pictures for anyone who is wondering how I'm doing.

I can lose myself in Chinese art and American girls

Originally posted 6/8/2012

The Cure, girls, and Cure girls

So… I was at work and I’m going to be off for a week so I asked my huge fan, the lovely Kate, what should be the subject of my next blog?  Kate, with hardly a pause for breath, suggested I write about my ex-girlfriends because I’m always so funny when I talk about them.  Eh?  I didn’t know I did that!  I then started to wonder in which ways I spoke about my exes and hoped that it wasn’t in an excessively bitter way (I assume not as there is little a woman would find amusing about another woman being slagged off by a man, I’m sure).  So, I had a think about it. 

Basically, I can’t write a blog about exes as I am still on speaking terms with so many of them.  Well, some of them.  And I want to keep it that way.  I still talk to these people because I like them and generally one or other of us (usually the other) decided for whatever reason it wasn’t working out and we should be friends and somehow we still are, though after gaps of years mended by the wonder of social media networking.  So, I’m not going to write specifically about my previous relationships and I’m certainly not going to write about my sex life, all you need to know is that I am VERY good.  But I am going to write about girls and girlfriends, sort of.  In that insular, self-regarding way that is fast becoming my trade mark… and with a theme.  The theme being one of the things that defines me as a person; in the same way as Nick Hornby felt he was defined as an Arsenal Fan in Fever Pitch I am, or I suppose was, defined as a Cure fan.  And I like girls who are Cure fans, who look a bit goth but not too much, dark hair, pale skin, perhaps a bit of red lippy, dark clothes…(hey Kate, how you doin’?).  You see I used to be a massive fan of The Cure.  And it was all because of a girl.

Without saying too much, Lucretia (the names will be changed to protect the innocent but not very imaginatively) was at my school and we are still in touch via Facebook and she is married with children and I have no wish to embarrass her.  Not that I have much to embarrass her with as this was such an innocent time.  It started out with a bit of joshing at school, in that way that awkward boys who like girls but don’t know how to deal with it still do.  There was nothing nasty, just gentle mickey taking.  We talked about music, as being such a big Simple Minds and U2 fan obviously I was really serious about music and had started to denigrate music I felt was beneath me in the snide and insidious way that was to make me such a massive tool for the next few years.  But we had a few things in common, I forget what now, probably liking Siouxsie and the Banshees or something like that, so I started to take an interest in other bands she liked.  I initially dismissed The Cure as a pop group that wrote love songs, clearly I did not know anything about them at all, but as my crush on her grew I decided to seek them out.

This was 1988.  There was no Spotify or You Tube and it was not easy living in a village even to go out and buy an LP or cassette and making that commitment to a band you hadn’t heard was a ridiculous notion.  I honestly didn’t know any Cure songs at this stage, I must have heard some on Top of the Pops or the chart show on Radio One, Sunday evening, which I would listen to, fingers poised over the “record” button on my stereo for anything I liked.  Evidently anything I’d heard by The Cure never made it on to my chart show tapes.  As luck would have it my sister had a compilation album, I think it was a Smash Hits collection of some sort, which had The Lovecats on it.  So Lovecats was the first Cure song I am aware of hearing and I just thought it was mental.  No Poe faced seriousness with a message like Jim Kerr et al were knocking in to my ears on a regular basis, just fun and zany, mad-cap, don’t give a crap about the rules fun.  I think if I’d seen the video at that stage I’d have gone in to apoplexy with the silliness of it all.  I was hooked.  By the summer holidays, after I’d taken my exams, I had a Saturday job at Waitrose and could afford to buy myself a few records.  My first Cure album was Japanese Whispers which wasn’t really an album but a collection of three singles and (most of) their B-sides.  It was of a similar sound to Lovecats; upbeat, disaffected pop music, a bit psychedelic in parts, proper music despite the throw-away fun nature of these particular songs. By now Lucretia had become my girlfriend, in a very sweet, hardly ever saw each other kind of way.

A 17 year old me with one of my first Cure albums... the T'Pau poster belonged to my brother!

Next I got hold of Standing On A Beach, their singles compilation, on vinyl so I only got to hear the singles and not the extra tracks on the cassette.  I’m fairly sure the next album I bought was Faith, one of their austere works from the early eighties which was probably because I wanted to impress Lucretia with how serious I was.  Though this would become one of my favourite albums of all time it was quite a leap of… er… faith at the time because it was so bloody melancholy.  At least The Smiths had tunes?  I’m not convinced that the sublime beauty of the album really appealed to me at the time but I carried on buying up their back catalogue.  The first time I heard “One Hundred Years” was actually on the Concert live album and I remember, it was a grey dreary day at college and I was caught up in the guitar line.  Then I bought Pornography (the album, I didn’t buy porn at this time at all) and the ferocity of the track on its studio form was the final part of the jigsaw.  I was a Cure fan.

My friend Mark and my brother Chris (their real names as I’ve never kissed them) had also started to get in to The Cure and we were all toying with the image but once I’d heard Pornography I started to grow and back comb my hair.  Not long after I went to a party with Mark, kissed his ex-girlfriend while I was drunk and got found out and dumped.  Now I had some real angst to pin my music to and my love for The Cure became focused around their trilogy of Seventeen Seconds/ Faith/ Pornography.  What a miserable little git I became. 

By the following May I was still single, still a miserable little git and still mad on The Cure (and had started to listen to a lot of what we then called gothic music; Sisters Of Mercy, Mission, All About Eve and so on).  And the biggest thing in the world, ever, was about to happen.  In May 1989 The Cure released the Disintegration album.  This marked not only a change in status for the band who truly became megastars after this but it was the first album released as a new Cure album for me!  I bought it on the day of release on cassette so I could listen to it straight away on my crappy personal stereo.  I also bought tickets to go and see them at Wembley Arena.  One thing was missing though, I wanted to have a Cure girlfriend to share the experience.  As it was, my brother was now friends with my ex, Lucretia, who wouldn’t talk to me.  His friend was going out with her friend, who I also know through Facebook… hello Clare!  I went to see The Cure with Mark, Chris and James on July 23^rd 1989.  Lucretia and her gang went the day before. 

My ticket for my first Cure show

Drummer Boris Williams signed my pound note!

It was October before I did get another girlfriend, by now my hair had grown somewhat and in its back-combed glory I had a certain cool look to me.  I was also quite pretty by then.  This girlfriend was called Katie and though I did more than kiss her I have used her real name as we are not in touch, very much my decision.  Katie was very much in to her music, more so than me.  She was a year older, much more confident as a person and did things like going to Marxist conferences in London and smoking cannabis.  She introduced me to a lot of other music, Throwing Muses for example are still one of my favourite acts of all time, and she taught me a few things and I got to see her naked so I’m grateful to her but frankly we were from very different backgrounds and I eventually my immaturity got too much for her and she dumped me.  On Christmas Day. 

Me, December 1989 in Chichester

She wasn’t much in to The Cure so that is pretty much her part in the tale apart from…

A few days after Christmas I went in to Chichester to see her so she could explain things and that day I saw Teresa for the first time.

I then went out with a girl called Sarah who was lovely and liked The Cure a bit but not excessively but I was very much on the rebound and then a girl called Helen who only went out with me because Reuben Pope didn’t want to go out with her and I was the next cool thing.  She was tall and pretty and quite nice and liked The Cure a bit but not excessively.  Then I dumped her to go out with Teresa. 

Teresa is not her real name and we are still in touch and I like her (as a human being) enormously so I am going to truncate this part, far shorter than the importance in my life would really merit.  Teresa liked The Cure a bit but not excessively.  During my time with her we went to see The Cure at Crystal Palace for The Garden Party, a mini one day festival also featuring All About Eve, Lush and James.  We had an argument during The Cure’s opening number but the day ended OK.  The Mixed UP album also came out, shortly after we moved in together.  There were bad times but many more good times.  It didn’t work out.  It was very sad but it was a long time ago.   I had two more girlfriends quickly after her and it all went a bit awry.  Neither of them liked The Cure.

Over the next few years I embarked on a series of short term relationships, none of which were very serious with various girls who weren’t especially interested in The Cure though some of them had the look I liked.  I saw the band again in 1992 as a single man, presumably hoping I’d meet some ravishing, goth-ish Cure obsessed girl. It never happened.  I lost interest in them for a couple of years but when Wild Mood Swings came out in 1996 I was back in to them in a big way, going to see them twice with Mark and Chris and not meeting any Cure girls.  I had, to be fair, stopped looking the part for some time.  My hair was always short, my clothes much more casual. I didn’t stand out in any way, I was bland, vanilla.  Normal.  It was not a good look for me, a very small fish in a very big pond, I made no impression on anyone, not even people I knew at the time remember me much from this era.

It was in the mid-nineties I met the person who has most kept me off the straight and narrow regarding music.  It is true that I’d started to listen to some of the more mainstream “alternative” music, having gone through grunge I quite enjoyed the more upbeat sensibilities of Brit-Pop and was listening to a lot of Blur, Oasis, Pulp, Sleeper and so on.  I also started to take more of an interest in techno and dance music but have never been very knowledgeable about such matters, despite my half-hearted attempts to get in to clubbing which mainly involved going to Thursdays (a club near Chichester) or occasionally to a club in Portsmouth.  In 1996 I even went on holiday to Ibiza but realised whilst there that a clubber I am not! Now that is a blog worth telling.  

Charlie was and still is a big fan of Depeche Mode.  His taste in music was still developing when I met him and he is these days much more of an anorak, more of an extremist when it comes to music but back then I possibly had a slight edge on him.  I was of course already aware of Depeche Mode and I introduced him to the Cure and then we kinda introduced each other to various types of non-mainstream music.   I’m sure if either of us had been a cute chick then we’d have made a lovely couple.  But neither of us are.  Charlie shared my fondness for Cure-ish girls though but so far I don’t think he has found one either.  Anyhoo, as my tastes in music realigned with the left-field I again started to find my own identity in my image. 

What I did have around this time were penfriends.  Several of them, from The Cure’s unofficial newsletter, Curenews, all of them female, mostly from Europe and the USA.  Most of them very lovely to know and more than easy on the eye.  Yes, there were a few crushes.  One of these almost resulted in a trip to San Fransisco to meet a Polish/American girl called Ania but it all went wrong at the last moment and I was left crushed.  Still, some lasting friendships resulted, I am still in touch with Karmen and Marlo.  I know Karmen is still a big Cure fan, Marlo possible less so.  Both are still very cute.  I’m very glad to call them friends still.

Before the last Century ended I had time for one more on-off and semi disastrous relationship with a girl that Charlie once snogged when I was in the toilets while we were all out at the pub together.  Such was my strength of feeling towards this girl that I didn’t really care much at all when I found out, it was in actual fact far funnier that the guy who blurted out what had happened had mistaken my erstwhile girlfriend for another woman who we were out with one night and gave Charlie away in front of her husband for snogging his wife, which he hadn’t.  The husband was none too pleased until I figured out what had happened and put his mind at rest.  What I didn’t know was… no, I can’t repeat that.  Let’s just say for a while Charlie had his Cure girl.  The dirty dog.

Come the year 2000 and I’d given up on finding any kind of girl who’d stay with me, let alone one that was a Cure girl.  So of course I met somebody, asked them out, she never got round to dumping me (Joke!  If you are reading this wifey I was joking!) and we are still together and married.  My wife is not much in to The Cure, in fact our musical tastes don’t often cross, but she knows that they are the biggest influence on me musically and has learned to tolerate them, as opposed to, say, Smashing Pumpkins which she considers to be an appalling cacophony, if I ever want to get her out of the room I just slip Gish on and she’s off.  She has been with me to see P J Harvey and Kristin Hersh, partly because I wanted her to see women that I thought were talented and iconic but mainly because she can drive and has a car.  She also came with me to see Jeff Beck so I accidentally introduced her to Trombone Shorty, the support act who she likes very much.  I have seen The Cure several times since we met but there has never been any question that I’d ask her to come along.  My love of The Cure has changed, they are now like old friends who I’ll always love no matter what tripe they put out (half of 4:13 Dream, for example).  It is a thing I do with Mark and Chris and Charlie but not with a girl or my wife.  I’m sure she is not too worried that she hasn’t seen them, if she had tickets to see Billy Joel I’d certainly not expect her to offer me one of them, in fact I’d beg her not to.  The Cure is just one of the things about me, not all of me, and there are many things now that are us.  The trips to Crete and Paris and to China, the naturist evenings, plays and movies, our cats, our home. 

Fancy dress on my 80s themed 40th birthday party..

I’m sure I’ll continue to buy anything The Cure release.  I’ve seen them ten times now so I’m not desperate to see them again but pending ease of getting tickets, travel et cetera I would certainly consider it again.  I’m never going to be as obsessed as I was when I was buying up their back catalogue and watching the videos excessively to get Robert Smith’s hairstyle right back in 1988, of course not.  I was 16 then, I’m 40 now and not nearly as mental as I may appear.  In the same way I’ve long stopped wanting for a Cure girl as I found a girl that cured me.  I still think it is a cute look and would possibly make a great niche porn site but beyond that, it is a part of my life that has long passed. 

However, should Cure bassist Simon Gallup ever make me an offer…

I Miss The Comfort in Being Sad

Originally posted 14/7/2012.

Yesterday I was a sad panda. 

It started when I had to cycle to work because I had no money for train fare, a mere 13 days in to the month.  Then, when I had started work I looked at the diary for next week and found I’ll doing a few things I’d rather not be doing.  Then I had to sit through a meeting taken by my insufferable buffoon of a manager who, like many managers, has no ears to hear when we are telling him why shit aint working. Then I had too much to do and lost my temper and swore at a colleague who, though being a knob at the time, really didn’t deserve it.

In the greater scheme of things I have absolutely no “right” to be sad.  I have a roof over my head and food in the house.  I’m not seriously ill and neither are any of those who are dearest to me.  I am married to a woman who has lovely breasts and still lets me see them.  I have two lovely cats who give me lots of love and I get to play on the internet a lot when I can’t afford to go out, which is most of the time.  I get Sky, Spotify, have a Kindle Touch and am a Planet Rock subscriber so most of my media wants are taken care of.  I’ve repaired the relationships that I damaged in my past, or at least the ones that matter.  So why so sad, Glad?

First of all, when people say things like “you’ve got no right to be miserable” they are talking utter pig-poo.  Of course one has the right, we live in a relatively free country where despite what the right-on may think thought control has not gone as far as telling people how to feel “or else”.  If I want to be fucked off then I bloody well will be.  If you win £100 million on the Euro lottery thingy you still have the RIGHT to be pissed off if you choose to though you will of course look like a total dickhead.

Secondly and most pertinently, people who are depressed don’t generally choose to be and on the whole would rather not be.  I got past the idea of being withdrawn and insular as a way to impress girls when I was 18 and even then I never thought it was a generally good approach to life in general.  Depression is an illness that many are prone and have little choice in, notwithstanding medical treatment.  Can you imagine a world where we say to people “what right do you have to get asthma?” or “how dare that millionaire football player say they suffer with Ulcerative Colitis”?  Yet change either ailment for depression and it seems to be fair comment.  Stan Collymore is a fairly reprehensible person by most standards but I when he announced he was suffering from depression his manager at the time insinuated he was some sort of fairy, as if depression was a made up illness for weak and lazy people.  In his case, mental health issues would explain a lot of his subsequent behaviour. Sadly, mine too.

I have been prone to bouts of depression since my teens and it has no doubt affected many areas of my life; a crippling lack of confidence at such a vital stage of my mental and emotional development has had long term repercussions on my “success” in life.  It may sound big headed of me but I have underachieved academically and in vocationally; most people that know me well would probably agree.  Most of this is down to self-confidence.  True confidence makes up for so much else.  I don’t mean that superficial, wear-it-on-the-sleeve kind of confidence that so many young people like to announce they have because clearly they don’t.  I mean that deep, ingrained belief in oneself, that idea that anything truly is possible with enough application.  I’d very much like to be more handsome, slimmer, more stylish and so on in many, many regards but with enough confidence one can more than compensate for any lacking in those areas.  Sadly, I am not that confident.  It varies from day to day but my opinion of myself varies from thinking that I’m an ok guy with some good points to utter disgust.

Some years back now, when the brown stuff hit the ventilator and I went to see the mental health nurse for a diagnosis I was in such a state and so alarmed at my unpredictable behaviour that I thought I was bi-polar.  I was not.  Most people who think they are bi-polar do so due to extreme mood swings, like the ones I was having that lost me so many friends but like me most of those people are not bi-polar.  People with bi-polarity disorder are effectively crippled by the intensity of their lows and a danger to their own well-being when high.  I was not suicidally low and though my highs led to some foolish behaviour, particularly regarding spending, I was not going out and trying to buy aircraft carriers on credit.  It sounds interesting to say “Oh yes, I’m bi-polar” but believe me, you don’t want to be.  So I got diagnosed which was actually quite a relief.

You know those cards you can get for your desk that say “You don’t have to be mad to work here… but it helps” or some similar banality?  I want to get one made up that says:

“You don’t have to have traits of a borderline personality disorder to work here but if you do you’ll fit in fairly well”.

There, I can’t even be mental properly.  “Traits of”!  Effectively I have some elements but not all of a Borderline Personality Disorder with underlying depression; coupled together this causes anxiety that I shouldn’t really have as I have little to be anxious about!  The “borderline” part of the diagnosis needs to be understood.  It does not mean that this is almost a proper disorder (though in my case it is almost a proper disorder).  Borderline means pretty much on the border between different behaviours; manic, depressive, disorganised, compulsive, obsessive and so on.  This is where the wild mood swings come in.  Though my “traits of” diagnosis did in part make me feel I was making much ado about nothing it was also a relief in that the actual process of being diagnosed had made me write down how I thought of my own behaviour in many different aspects, thus helping me recognise what was fairly normal and what was, frankly, just a bit odd. As a consequence I can in most situations now tell when my feelings, which used to overwhelm me, need to be controlled and my disorder taken in to account.  As an example, I used to often feel bitterness towards groups of friends if I felt that I was being left out in some way, now if I start to feel that way I can talk myself up again, make myself realise that I am entering a destructive cycle of withdrawal that will alienate me further if I am indeed alienated at all.  The thoughts still come but now I can step back from them, analyse them and tell them to fuck off.

As for fitting in fairly well in my work place, I can think of at least three people in my office who are considerably more mental than me, who appear to have quite serious defects in their personality but appear to be oblivious to how they are perceived by others.  Another colleague is quite open about having depression, indeed has it much worse than I ever had, yet her behaviour is a lot more normal than my own, at least to my eyes.  Ultimately it is far too easy to pin how we behave to some medical or psychological reason rather than admitting we are at fault in other ways.  I could say I snapped at my colleague yesterday because I have traits of a Borderline Personality Disorder, depression and anxiety but it is more likely I snapped because I was pissed off and didn’t want to deal with the ‘phone call I was dealing with.  The increasingly bizarre behaviour of some of my colleagues could be down to a personality disorder or they may just be oddballs with no sense of self-awareness.  And I may have lost friends, got in to debt, flirted and got drunk for mental health reasons but it may just be that I was an arsehole.  Either way, I am reapplying for admittance to the human race so please bear with me.

Music to watch girls by...

Originally posted 16/6/2012

Music and me and why The Smiths is NOT hanging music

The above title may seem odd and you may very well disagree with it.  It comes back to a drunken argument I had with someone who described The Smiths as “hanging music”.  I responded that anyone who hangs themselves on the basis of being upset by a piece of music is probably best off out of it and not necessarily a great loss to the world.  I was then rounded on and accused of suggesting the guy I was arguing with should hang himself, which was never my point but I reluctantly apologised, not being one for confrontation. But I stand by my point.

The person describing The Smiths as “hanging music” did not like The Smiths or Morrissey and had therefore probably spent very little time or effort in listening to their music.  I have the same opinion of Lady Goo-Goo, her music doesn't interest me (her public image less so but that is another blog altogether) and thus I do not feel qualified to criticise it.  So why pick out The Smiths rather than say Joy Division or The Cure?  Firstly, Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division, made it very difficult to defend them against accusations of making hanging music by, er, hanging himself.  And, frankly, Joy Division’s oeuvre is entirely bleak and nihilistic, without exception.  The Cure actually support The Smiths argument to an extent except that whilst making beautifully sad songs their pop efforts are out and out pop songs and this is where they differ from Moz et al.

There is, undeniably, a desolate quality to The Smith’s entire canon, to deny this would be foolhardy but most of melancholy therein is lyrical and vocal.  In the most part, listen to an awful lot of their catalogue whilst ignoring the voice and you will hear the up-tempo rhythm section of Rourke and Joyce pumping out eminently danceable lines over which Marr’s jangly, infectious melodies lift the emotions.  There are exceptions of course, but on the whole there is nothing particularly “depressing” about the music itself.  Then, of course, there is Morrissey.  Without a doubt Moz was a crotchety old man in 1982 when he formed the band and has grown more and more comfortable in that role ever since.  His views on meat eating especially take no prisoners, not one for sitting on the fence our Mozza.  But unlike a lot of; for example; gothic music, which delights in being as Poe faced (pun intended) as possible Morrissey owes more to Wilde, Coward or Bennett with a definite air of mischief and humour running through his works, often self-deprecating in the manner that only someone who truly adores themselves can achieve (and I should know). There is more Kenneth Williams than Kafka to The Smiths, an aspect which sadly declined but did not totally disappear in Morrissey’s solo works.

Still, the “hanging music” is an easy epithet to throw at many of the music acts I enjoy by those who actively dislike them or are just uninterested. I can quite understand why people don’t want to listen to miserabalist music, not everyone listens to music the way I do in the same way as not everyone reads or watches movies like I do.  There does seem to be a different attitude to music by some however who would happily sit through a film or endure a novel with a dark theme with a morally ambiguous ending, they will say that the artistic merit of the work deserves respect, irrespective of any lack of morally uplifting principle or feel-good factor within.  So, why not hear music with the same critical sensibilities?  Mozart’s Requiem Mass is an unspeakable beautiful piece of music but man this guy was pissed off when he wrote it, should we therefore deem it “too heavy” for general consumption (general attitudes to “classical” music notwithstanding)? Some of the darker songs by The Cure and most of what Joy Division put out have an innate beauty to them, often dichotic.  There is at times in the music I listen to, sometimes deliberately but perhaps often entirely coincidental, a juxtaposition of ugly sounds blended with an aching sadness that touches one in whichever organ one deems responsible for emotion.

There is a chicken-egg dilemma to some, who generally should have better things to think about, as to whether people listen to miserable music because they are depressed or do they become depressed by listening to miserable music.  If I had to agree with either possibility I’d go for the former, as a person who has suffered bouts of depression from my teens I was drawn towards a music with the emotional depth that I empathised with.  But… I listen to lots of music.  Yes, I enjoy… and I mean ENJOY listening to The Smiths, The Cure, Joy Division et cetera but I also like a lot of upbeat rock music, techno, electronic pop and may occasionally even be found tapping my feet to a Lady Ug-Ug song whist probably not knowing who it is.  The reason I listen to the music I listen to is the same reason as why most people listen to the music they listen to.  I like it.

Nothing's shocking...

Originally posted 16/6/2012 

Nudity, sexiness and being outrageous

I have any theories on the human condition that with a little more education I would perhaps have been able to expound upon and map out in to a successful psychological work, bringing with it fame, fortune and hot, nubile lovelies submitting to my every whim.  But that was not to be because I was conned in to doing a fucking Business Studies BTEC and spent my college days surrounded by utter arseholes.

Nonetheless I am today presenting to you one principle I have established to be true without any doubt and anyone who says it’s not true can go do one.  It is actually two theories but there is only one word different in each so I will lay them out together.

The least outrageous/sexy people are those who believe themselves to be outrageous/sexy.

And this brings us to Lady Plop-Plop.

Except it doesn't as I know very little about her and can’t be arsed to do the research.  I’m using her as an example that she perhaps does not deserve to be made but my general perception of Lady Boo-Boo is that she is outrageous and sexy and she is sexy in that knowing way that makes people sexy because they know they are sexy.  I don’t find her sexy.  I think she looks like a poorly attired shire-horse but I am equally sure she’s not that keen on me either and I am digressing.  This is not a blog about how many not very amusing ways I can bastardize Lady Blah-Blah’s name.  Which is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.

Now, I’m not particularly good-looking.  This is not false modesty, it is not fishing for compliments; I think I’m a great guy and I have many qualities that make me absolutely smashing to be with but being ravishingly handsome is not one of those qualities.  By the same standard I also don’t feel that I my countenance is hideously monstrous, unkind comparisons to Paul Potts and Barry from Eastenders brought swift rebuke.  I mention this for a reason and I will get to that reason momentarily, alright, stop nagging!

I recently carried out a brief social experiment on Facebook and Twitter.  It was brief because I have a very poor attention span and I lost interest very quickly but the one response proved categorically that I am absolutely correct.  I made several posts suggesting that I am in fact so very attractive that I make angels cry, on the basis that if I say it often enough people would start to assume it is true and in fact believe it themselves.  Unfortunately I negated the “often enough” part by getting bored quickly and instead ranting about not liking Marmite or crane-flies or small ginger boys or something.  I did receive one response from an online friend, to be fair after I’d blown the ruse myself, essentially saying that in fact people who depend purely on how other people perceive them physically are just very shallow.  And I agree.

I’m not for a moment suggesting people shouldn’t care about their appearance, far from it, I myself am very vain but not because I think I’m stunning but rather because I feel I need to make the effort.  I’m self-aware enough to know that if I was rich enough I’d be all about clothes and haircuts and personal trainers because I want to look… ok.  Being a shallow, mostly heterosexual man I like ladies who dress well and look after themselves and the men I find attractive don’t tend to be beer-guzzling no-necks in polo shirts and trackie bottoms. But those people on TOWIE, for example, make me want to sick up a little.  Clearly these people of both genders can only allow themselves to be judged by their appearance and thus take it to extremes and end up looking ridiculous.  True beauty for both male and female is natural and can perhaps be helped along by our efforts but cannot be duplicated.

As for “sexy” people… really.  I've seen documentaries about people who are “into stuff” and these people are always talking about how they are “very sexual”.  What they are trying to put across is they are sexier than you or I because they do sex things and have to make sure everyone else knows about it, why else would they be on a TV programme  putting their cock in a vice or sanding their nipples?  Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.  I’m not for a moment judging people by what gets them ticking over in the bedroom or location of choice, I myself have some highly unorthodox interests in Nun outfits that I won’t expand upon here.  What I am judging is how these people wear their sexiness like a lapel badge.  Trying too hard doesn't nearly cover it, a psychologist would have a field day with the hang ups and shoulder-chips made manifest by such blatant “Me-Me-Me-Look-At-Me” behaviour.  I’m very much of the belief that true sexiness can only be achieved by accident.  It is in a glance, in a pale white neck, a brush of hands, a clever riposte, a flick of hair over the ear, a well-chosen stylish outfit, an act of kindness, an understanding disposition.  It aint making sure everyone knows what your pants look like.

And so on to nudity… never far from my thoughts.  I haven’t made much of a secret that I am a “naturist” or at least I don’t reject that label out of hand despite not necessarily pinning it to myself.  I prefer the term to “nudist” as I my belief is that there is something natural about being naked in the sun with a breeze on ones back which goes beyond just wanting to be seen naked or looking at naked people.  Yes, some “naturists” are just exhibitionists.  Mostly men, you’ll find them on the beach endlessly walking up and down and occasionally manipulating their gentlemen’s appendage to be at its optimum size.  And there are naturists who are swingers just as there are swingers who aren't naturists, thankfully these people keep their circles largely separate though there are some exceptions… Brighton beach has a problem in this regard.  Generally people who congregate together without clothing under the naturist banner have anything but sex on their minds.

To me, naturism is about being, not seeing or being seen.  For legal reasons, people who want to get their clothes off outdoors tend to go where it is allowed and thus are with other naked people and the acceptance is another part of the deal that is so freeing from the standards set upon us by society.  One can be naked without being judged.  I am not going to pretend I do not enjoy seeing a well turned out nude body but in the same way I can appreciate a rose without feeling the need to pluck it, it is a matter of aesthetic enjoyment rather than a sexual need.  For every fit hotty on a nudist beach there’s an old lady with a mastectomy, an amputee, a huge fat man and, well, a me. 

I have no wish to convert anyone to naturism.  It’s something I came to by myself and I have been lucky enough to find a partner (could put the full stop there in fact) who first accepted this facet of my interests and then joined me in it.  If others try it and enjoy it then I’d be happy for them but equally the thought of someone enduring public nudity when they are not comfortable with it is anathema to me.  It is much harder for women because of the way society judges female body shapes and also because of the pervy minority of men, who are never too fit looking themselves, who abuse naturist locations for their own jollies. 

So, whilst I am happy to admit to being a naturist I don’t want to force this upon anyone else.  I don’t think I’m outrageous for going nude, I honestly don’t see what all the fuss is about.  When undressed my elbows and the backs of my knees are as naked as my penis.  I’m not interested in shocking anyone, nothing good lies therein.  I do however enjoy social contact with others who are interested in this lifestyle choice and thus thee may be some naturist content on my website at some point up to and including me in the buff.  If so, it will be keep to one section and I’ll make sure it is known where so nobody can be bamboozled in to an accidental sighting of the Minty candy.  Watch… or depending on your views, don’t watch this space. 

Bruce Wayne, Auf Wiedersehen, Dirty Harry make my day…

Or “Here are a few of my favourite things”

Parts 1 to 5

Originally posted 8/8/12 

OK gang.  I've had a few weeks where everything has seemed hard and tiring and I've made a conscious effort to try and be at peace, to rest, to meditate and to be in touch with my inner-hippy.  I have purchased some books on Zen, the thoughts of the Dalai Llama, aromatherapy, healthy eating, herbalism, Reiki and so on, a veritable mish-mash of different concepts and beliefs to be sure but I want to keep my options open.  I also want to re-join the gym and do yoga.  My body is a temple!

Until the temple is open however I thought I’d expand upon the introduction part to my website by talking about some of my favourite things; after all, what could be more positive than talking about stuff one likes?  I don’t expect everyone to agree with anything I say, that much has changed about me since I was younger and I am now happier being friends with people who don’t like everything I like, it leads to more interesting conversations!

Some of these things may seem really obvious, some less so, some a little surprising and some you may find quite crass; I apologise in advance if any of this makes you feel any less of me.  So, let’s get started with…

Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes was a cartoon strip which was written and drawn by Bill Watterson, it ran between 1985 and 1995.  It was syndicated to over 2,400 countries worldwide, including The Daily Express in the UK, which is where I first discovered it.  We never read the Express in my house but whilst at school I did a variety of paper-rounds to get some spending money and would take time out to read the funnies, check out page three, et cetera. 

Calvin was a six year old American boy and Hobbes was his cuddly toy tiger.  The main theme of the strip was that to Calvin, Hobbes was real and in frames not featuring any other characters he was drawn as such, not actually real tiger sized, cuddlier and anthropomorphised, but clearly different to the obviously stuffed tiger toy that appeared in other frames.  The “real” Hobbes had a very well rounded character, with his own foibles and imperfections and a love of tinned tuna. Other characters included Calvin’s long suffering parents, Calvin was portrayed as a very real six year old boy with a talent for getting himself in to trouble, and his friend/enemy Suzy Derkins, a school mate who was often used to give a balanced, female perspective on situations.  Though Calvin was a child and was thus imbued with the appropriate sense of innocence and wonder, he was also a flawed and sometimes selfish male human with a sense of cynicism that was a dichotomy to the rest of his character and this is where the real skill of Watterson is clear, he has used this six year old boy to vent his frustration with an increasingly cynical and harsh world. 

Watterson would sometimes, particularly in the longer, Sunday strips, indulge in flights of fancy which showed off his artistic talents.  These would usually be based on the day dreams of Calvin, often based around his Spaceman Spiff alter-ego where Watterson could pander to his fondness for 1950s style sci-fi or frequently around dinosaurs, the Tyrannosaurus being a particular favourite.  Occasionally Calvin would be portrayed as a Chandleresque private eye or he and Suzy’s games of “let’s pretend” would be drawn in a realistic style, the two protagonists as adults yet juxtaposed with their childish dialogue, eventually the premise falling apart in the last frame.  The genius of Watterson was in the writing.  The storylines are not only frequently laugh-out-loud but also contain moments of pathos that are tear-inducing.

In 1990 I was given my first Calvin and Hobbes book, “Yukon Ho!” by a girlfriend of the time and over the next few years I went on to buy everything that was available.  I love Calvin and Hobbes and could sit and read all of the books over and over again; if I still had them.  For once the reason I don’t have something anymore is not because I sold it, my reasons are much more altruistic in that I passed the books on to my nephew that he may also appreciate them.  I miss them very much and he had better look after them or I WILL rain down upon him in furious vengeance.

Over the years I've met various people that share my enthusiasm for this cartoon strip and it’s probably no coincidence that I've always got on with them, I think Calvin and Hobbes appeals to a particular type of person; intelligent, sensitive yet with a reluctant cynicism because of the hardness of the modern world and a very dark, subtle sense of humour.  If you haven’t read the strip, please do, just Google it, if you are already my friend there’s a good chance you’ll like them.

Star Wars

By the above I mean the original trilogy of “A New Hope” which we always just called Star Wars (and I will refer to hereafter as Star Wars), The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  Not the new films, I think they are poo.  I’m not trying to look cool, I really don’t like them at all but as this is a POSITIVE blog I’m not going in to my reasons why, let’s just say it goes far beyond Jar Jar Binks.

When Star Wars came out in 1977 it was always episode four, this was not added to the later re-mastered versions as some believe.  I am very suspicious about the idea that it was always intended to have a back story that would later be made; it is much more likely that George Lucas, director and producer, wanted it to look like one of those Saturday matinee pictures that he grew up with that were made as a series of films.  It was this mystery that only added to the allure of this film for the five year old me.  It was one of the hottest summers on record and my parents took us all to see Star Wars, which I’m fairly sure I’d not heard of.  This isn't so strange; at the age of five I was not really aware of anything beyond my home and school and several years later when I went to see the SECOND Indian Jones film I was not aware of the first one and had no idea who Indian Jones was apart from he was played by the bloke who was Han Solo.

So, roughly 35 years ago, when I’d had one year in education, I went to see a movie; do I remember anything about it?  A surprising amount actually!  I’m not 100% sure where I saw the film but the chances are it was in Havant, the old Empire (later Cannon) in East Street.  I saw a lot of movies there as a child as it was slightly nearer than the Granada in Chichester, which will be mentioned when we get to 1980.  We only briefly had a family car before my teens so usually travelled by train, Havant is definitely most likely.  I do remember the “ A long time ago, In a galaxy far, far away…” and then the thrill of those opening notes from John Williams’ score blaring out over the rolling text, disappearing back in to a space-scape, then the Imperial cruiser following the rebel ship, firing laser cannons as it went.  I was hooked.  I loved every second of it and felt something akin to genuine grief when the movie finished.  This was back in the days when a film may not appear on one of our three television channels for years (I can’t be sure but I think I’d seen Empire before I saw Star Wars again), nobody yet had a video recorder and even if they did, Star Wars was not officially available for a long, long time.  We spent that summer playing at Star wars, I always wanted to be Han; Han was cool because he had a waistcoat and a side blaster which at that time I mistakenly thought was cooler than a light-sabre.  Then came Star wars figurines and toys.  My brother and I had a few; Mark Palin who lived across the road had loads.  We’d make every excuse to play in his house and always wanted to play Star wars.  He had the Millennium Falcon, which was Han’s ship and I coveted beyond anything else.  Mark was an only child and sometimes said he wished he’d had a brother.  I’d have swapped him mine for the Millennium Falcon.  It was three years before the next installment of the Star Wars saga and if that seems like a long time now, consider how long it was to a five year old.  You liked Star Wars did you?  Well, in just over half of the life you've already lived, you’ll get to see part two. Or part five.

To be truthful, I don’t think it occurred to me for a moment (notwithstanding the fact that at five not much occurred to me ever) that there would be another Star wars film.  It seemed very neatly wrapped up; the Death Star was destroyed, Peter Cushion (sic) was blown up, Daft Vader (sic) was spinning around in this Tie-fighter forever, Han got a medal… all done.  By 1980 I must have been aware though as I was getting The Empire Strikes back comic before I saw the film, I don’t remember at what point the realisation dawned on me but I can only have been delighted.  In the summer of 1980 I was eight years old, I was at Junior school and was only slightly more world-aware than I had been three years earlier.  Every Monday I had to hand my dinner money over to Mrs Plested, my teacher, for the week.  One Monday I forgot it.  I brought it in the next say but Mrs Plested didn't ask for it and I was too shy to say anything.  I was so worried about it that I hid it in my room.  I’m not sure but I think it was £2.  This came in handy later as when my sisters announced they were taking me and my brother to see The Empire Strikes Back I wanted my friend Graham Nash (not the one from Crosby, Stills and Nash, that would have been weird, this one was another eight year old boy) to come with us and managed to produce the £2 required for the train and the ticket in.  There was all round suspicion from both families as to where the money had come from (we told them we’d found it in the street) but as they couldn’t prove any wrong doing they eventually let us go.  There, now you know!

This time it was the Granada in West Street, Chichester that we went to.  What I didn't realise until today was that The Empire Strikes Back was the last movie shown at this Cinema, so we are part of Chichester history.  At the end of the run The Granada closed and was empty for a number of years before it became a McDonalds in the late eighties and is now a very swanky branch of Next.  The movie was of course ace, loved every minute of it.  I was halfway through the story in comic form so the ending was still a surprise to me, I loved the Hoth battle and was both frustrated and gladdened by the ending as though it was a very dark way to finish the installment with Han missing and Luke bereft of a hand, there was no doubt there would be another installment.  It didn't occur to me it would take another three years.

Empire did provide me with some valuable references in life.  First of all I could use Yoda to describe any old and withered yet wise person I encountered (such as Miss Boon, my first English teacher at secondary school), describe any traitorous or treacherous person as a “Lando” but the best one ever involved a fairly minor creature, the Tauntaun; the bipedal, camel like creatures that the rebels use as transport in the snowy wasted of Hoth.   Years later, in a restaurant in Paris, my wife ordered Andouillette, which our guide book described as a chitterlings sausage.  Unfortunately neither of us knew what chitterlings are.  Tripe, that’s what.  The scene in Empire when Han slices open the tauntaun with the light-sabre and then spreads it’s guts over Luke to keep him warm is a perfect simile for the first time Becky cut in to the Andouillette.  “I thought they smelled bad on the outside”, choked Han.  I concur.

Return of the Jedi, the third part in the trilogy but episode six in the saga came out in 1983.  This was the summer between leaving junior school and starting secondary school, my childhood really did end this summer and Jedi was a good metaphor for this.  I would have been 11 when I went to see it, I can’t remember who I went with but possibly my Sister Carolynn.  Of course I enjoyed it a lot, even at the time the Ewoks who now sicken me.  There are some great aspects to the film; Leia in a gold bikini, Jabba becoming the go-to humorous reference for any fat person subsequently encountered, The Emperor getting a proper speaking part… but it wasn’t the best part of the trilogy.  There are now certain parts to this film that set my teeth on edge.  The Ewoks being cute.  Ugh.  Chewbacca doing a Tarzan style holler as he swings on a vine.  The bit where Leia is Luke’s sister seeming tacked on (and then the realisation that she snogged him once… ewwww!).  And the delivery of the line “You rebel scum” being the worst since “Mummy a naked American man stole my balloon” (American Werewolf in London) which at least had been delivered by a small child.  Yoda is better produced than in Empire, but dies.  They also kill off Boba Fett who was the second coolest character after Han.  I enjoyed it and even played with some of my brother’s Jedi toys (the speeder bike was especially fun) but with a sense of… well, I was getting too old for this really.  And I did have a point.

Jedi was the first of the films that seemed to be made for children.  Though the first two appealed to kids there was no obvious attempt as cuteness in them.  The Ewoks buggered all of that up.  I don’t hate them like I do Jar Jar but that scene in the Endor battle where an Ewok tries to rouse his friend after an explosion and realising he is dead, weeps over his body… well, you’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.  I’d still rather watch Jedi than any of the first three episodes though, I really would.  I went to see all of the “new ones” when they came out at the Cinema, having watched the original trilogy I felt I had to, but they all failed to immerse me more deeply in to the Star Wars universe.  That is not to say there are not some excellent elements to the later films; the pod racing set piece, the three way sabre dual with Darth Maul, Yoda fighting.  But there is so much that is wrong and some appalling acting from people who should have done better (“You were right about one thing master, negotiations were short”, smirk).  But enough of this moaning.   

Subsequently, George Lucas has vandalised the original trilogy by re-releasing them in a re-mastered form.  He just had to add little bits in and the part where Han steps on Jabba’s tail particularly rankles, surely Han would have been executed on the spot?  I cling dear to the memories of how it was and remember when we recorded Star wars off telly one Christmas (it was followed by a Duran Duran concert which we had the first half of, my brother accidently turned the video recorder off whilst kicking a satsuma across the room), watching and re-watching it over the following summer holidays whilst playing a ZX Spectrum game called Penetrator (!) and pretending it was a Death Star assault:

“You’re too high.”

“Stay on target…”

“You’re too high!”

“Stay on target”

Kablooie!!

“The force is strong in this one”

“I have you now!”

Kablooie!

“What?!”

“Woo-hoo!  Okay kid, let’s blow this thing and go home!”

Oh, happy days.

Epilogue:  The trailers for the new J.J Abrams directed film looks amazing… and I never use that particular superlative unless I am amazed by something.  Role on Chrimbo time!

These are a few of my favourite things… continued (originally posted 9/9/12)

This time ‘round I’m not going to write so much about each topic as there is a heck of a lot to get through, so let’s get going…

The smell of strawberries:  

Strawberries taste fine, they are OK, nice with clotted cream on a scone, sure.  But they smell divine, absolutely wonderful.  I grew up in a lane with a strawberry farm at the end of it so there is an element to the smell as being evocative of nostalgia but it goes beyond that.  I’d rather smell a strawberry farm than eat a strawberry and the former does not necessarily make me want to do the latter.  I do have a very delicate proboscis, not to the extent of Grenouille in Perfume but enough to make smell actively enjoyable and fresh strawberries, preferably still growing, on a warm sunny day are my favourite.  Other favourites are rain on fresh cut grass (bit of a cliché I know), freshly baked bread, freshly brewed coffee, peaches and the perfume Kate wears with a hint of redcurrant’s, the name escapes me right now but hmmmm… I tried to get me good lady wife to get some but she hates to be “told” what to do so I have to surreptitiously pretend I need to talk to Kate every so often at work so I can get a whiff.

Chinese Food: 

King Prawn Chow Mein

If I could only have one type of cuisine ever again I would chose Chinese.  I couldn’t chose between Cantonese and Szechuan which are the two most common in the UK but as these do tend to be generic terms for a much wider spectrums of taste it would be churlish to go down that road anyway, I’d look like a pretentious fool (even more than usual).  My earliest exposure to Chinese food was when my parents would occasionally get a takeaway at my childhood home in Southbourne.  I’d like to think they got it from the Golden Chopsticks (still there) but my father being who he is I think he decided the best Chinese takeaway was in Havant and went there instead.  I don’t remember getting Chinese food of my own, we probably got chips or something, my mother though always had the same; a King Prawn Chow Mein and I would get to finish off her noodles and beansprouts.  I loved it.  It was years before I got a prawn of my own but the taste was developed from there.  As I got older I adored Chinese food more and more and it has helped me become the gargantuan oaf I am now.  Chinese food is not generally very low fat, not in the form we get it in anyway.  I am so fond of Chow Main, Chop Suey, Foo Yung, Crispy duck, Beef in Black Bean… even Chinese curry sauce that it played at least a small part in wifey and I choosing China as our honeymoon destination.  

We went on a tour that took in Shanghai, Suzhou, Beijing, Xian, Guilin and Hong Kong.  The food was lovely… mostly (some of the soups looked as if the washing up had been done in them) but it was largely generic tourist fare and we were too scared to go far from the unknown on the few occasions we could choose what we ate and less often just couldn't understand the menus.  In a market in Beijing for example there were several small cafés we could have tried but the menu was in mandarin script and I did not want to accidentally order a thousand year old egg (a dish I have NOT made up, it sounds foul... no pun intended).  I did get to have chow-mein for breakfast most days on Mainland China.  By the time we reached Hong Kong I was only slightly fed up with Chinese food and I had an Indian (curry) and a Malaysian (curry).  It was in Hong Kong that I had the most disgusting meal I’d ever had.  We inadvertently went to a vegan restaurant where I ordered fake prawns with fake egg fried rice.  The fake prawns in particular were just little lumps of pink jelly, presumably gelatin free.  I was so astonishingly bad that I took a video of it, which I may link to later if I can be arsed to get the old PC (where it is stored) fired up.

On our return from China I’d ordered a Chinese takeaway within two weeks.

Music:

Billy Duffy of The Cult

There is of course lots of music I don’t like.  But there is so much I do like.  I like music that is about music, not about being cool, popular or famous.  I like music in the way I like books and films; it could be sad, happy, romantic, sexy, violent or so many other things.  I've already blogged about why I don’t think music can be depressing but still people disagree (they are wrong and I am right).  What I don’t get, more than anything else, is people who only like one sort of music; whether that be rock, pop, indie, dance or whatever, I like to keep an open mind on most things.  I like a lot of alternative rock and pop music but I also like rock, metal, ambient, techno, folk, country… well, here are just a few of my favourites:

Abba, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Air, All About Eve, Beasties, The Beat, Beatles, Belly, Bjork, Black Crowes, Blur, Alfie Bowe,  Bowie, Kate Bush, Buzzcocks, Chemical Brothers, Clash, Cocteaus, Cowboy Junkies, Cranes, Cult, Cure, Curve, Damned, Dexy’s, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Ian Dury, Echo and the Bunnymen, Erasure, Eurythmics, Faith No More, Fields of the Nephilim, Foos, Goldfrapp, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Hendrix, Kristin Hersh, Human League, The Jam, Janes Addiction, J&MC, Joy Division, Led Zep, Madness, Mamas and Papas, Manics, Metallica, Motorhead, Alison Moyet, Mumford and Sons, Muse, New Model Army, New Order, Nirvana, Gary Numan, Orbital, Pink Floyd, Pixies, Placebo, Portishead, Pretenders, Primal Scream, Prodigy, Public Enemy, Queen, Queen Adreena, REM, Radiohead, RATM, Ramones, Ride, Rolling Stones, Saint Etienne, Sex Pistols, Simple Minds, Siouxsie, Sisters, Smashing :Pumpkins, Soft Cell, Soundgarden, Smiths, Specials, Stone Roses, Suede, T-Rex, Teenage Fan Club, Thin Lizzy, Throwing Muses, Tindersticks, Van Morrison, White Stripes, White Stripes, Who, Weezer and all the ones I've missed out.

Adult female human breasts:

Eva Green owns some of my favourite boobs

I make no apology for this.  I really like lady-boobs.  And before you call me a perv, it’s not just a sexual thing.  Believe me, as a naturist I have seen more boobies than you've had haircuts, possibly, and I don’t get the raging horn every time.  Yes, as a mostly heterosexual male I do find a nice pair of breasticles sexy but it’s more than that, I find them beautiful.  Breasts come in all shapes and sizes, most women have one slightly bigger than the other and nippleage varies hugely in size, shape and colour.  I like them all.  Of course I have my own particular favourites (It could be you!) but never have a bad word to say about any mammary glands I am lucky enough to get a gander at.  Best feeling in the world? Hugging a lady and feeling boobage held close; not sexual, just nice.

I only have the following to add:

Ladies, check your breasts regularly and support Breast Cancer Awareness:  http://www.breastcancercampaign.org/page.aspx?pid=610&gclid=CNXBtIP7p7ICFUNTfAod5GYAww

Why can men go about shirtless whilst women feel they can’t when the latter is so much nicer to see? Support top freedom:  http://www.tera.ca/

And finally, they really are lovely, up to you what you do with yours but if I had some I’d have them out all the time.