Live Free or Die

The state motto of New Hampshire. Much in the news at the moment, as there’s some sort of presidential primary going on there today. It’s rather worked its way into my core, as I largely agree with it; I’m not frightened of death, and I am very frightened of living without freedom. Obviously not in the sense that most Americans, including those in New Hampshire, understand it; Americans live in a state of slavery to their employers which I would find rather comparable to life in Nazi Germany. I have to say, though, that (in feminist parlance) freedom is not an absolute value but a gendered preference; women don’t believe in it at all. I wonder if Hillary Clinton has the brass neck to cry “Live Free or Die!” to the voters of New Hampshire. If she does, fifty quid says she gets the horse’s laugh.

Women don’t believe in freedom for each other. Look at the whole “fashion victim” business, and the diet and thinness obsession. It isn’t caused by men, though no doubt some men see chances to make money out of it. It’s caused by women who have made the sacrifices just not being willing to accept other women not having bothered to do so. Women who are thin have suffered to be thin, and they aren’t prepared to see anyone not undergoing the same suffering. It’s all part of Cipriano’s First Law of the Perpetuation of Oppression: If you’ve eaten shit, the last thing you want to see is someone not enjoying their lovely faeces.

And, of course, once a woman gets her hooks in a man, it’s like the Red Army in Eastern Europe in 1945. There will be free elections, except everyone knows who has to win them. Any kind of objection is depicted as a typical example of outdated reactionary revanchism, and thus is usually stifled before it is expressed. You want to spend some time on your own? Sorry, that wasn’t part of the deal, and how on earth could you have possibly thought that it was? That’s really hurtful and inconsiderate. Don‘t you understand that you’re in a Relationship now? The idea that any of your time or your money is your own is the ultimate betrayal. As regards betrayal, women have completely reversed the old male double standard on infidelity. They see a huge crime in sleeping with another woman’s man, but if the man is single it’s no problem, even for married women. That’s not infidelity at all.

And the way a woman who has landed a man turns her brain off. Immediately, all responsibility for any sort of arrangement becomes yours. No address, phone number, or any other practical fact is ever remembered again. She might have been running her life successfully for ten years before she met you; all that stops instantly. Suddenly you are responsible for everything in the world, and had better accept this with a stiff upper lip; the slightest visible wavering will never be forgiven.

Work is horrible, and bears no resemblance to any sort of freedom, but is embraced by many men as the only permitted way to get out of the house. Brits and Americans, in particular, are notorious for staying impossibly long in the office; what this mainly shows is how reluctant they are to go home.

Isn’t it time we started making it clear that we dump them when they become unbearable, or even moderately difficult? And that we’re prepared to take ourselves beyond the reach of divorce courts? After all, it’s not worth any divorced guy working in the West. Thailand, for instance. Just think of it. Thirty quid a go, max. A clear improvement on "all your money and all your time, forever". And don't take any notice of people who say it's shameful to pay for it. Everybody fucking pays for it. The only question is how much.

Banks Again

Spent the whole day sitting by the phone trying to get my money out of one bank into another, in order to pay the deposit on the new place I was supposed to be moving into yesterday. Endless prevarication, of course, largely based on the principle that no bank is prepared to disburse its customers' money until they have had a few days to extract some juice from it, and even then only if they feel like it. Still, I'll probably have a roof over my head by the weekend. Spent the time waiting for arseholes to ring back reading Antony Beevor's account of the fall of Berlin; as I mentioned before, this tapped into a rich vein of fantasy, with tanks approaching up the Commercial Road while the air force pounds EC3 into rubble, a last stand forming around the east end of St. Paul's while snipers pick them off one by one; meanwhile Oxshott and Chobham and Woking have been overrun by the Red Army, and bankers are being winkled out of cellars and strung up outside, while the victorious soldiers are getting pissed on all the champagne they've unearthed. As a champion of legality, I do of course hope that enough of the guilty are spared to face an enormous Nuremberg trial, after which they'll get strung up just the same. Meanwhile, in each provincial town, red and black flags are flying from the windows of each bank branch, and the managers are sweating in anticipation of a People's Court consisting of their customers, who will wield powers of life or death depending on how they have behaved and how many £60 fines for petty overdrafts they have imposed. But none of them will ever again be allowed to take any job more elevated than cleaning lavatories (possibly - though this will need further thought - equipped with nothing but their tongues).

Banks! Time Libertarian-Communists Got Nasty

Stand Up! if you Hate the Banks!

How these universal oppressors are still allowed to walk the earth, without getting lynched by everyone they walk past, is a testimony to how wet we have got in the post-1945 era of European peace. I have to say I've spent the last few days reading Anthony Beevor's accounts of Stalingrad and Berlin, and been both horrified and rather impressed at how Germans and Russians treated each other, and wondered how civilised/decadent we all must be these days not to subject bank executives to similar treatment.

I arranged to move house about six weeks ago, and needed (because I don't have a regular income like a good corporate slave) to put up six months rent as deposit before moving in. Wanting to move in on 7th January (i.e. today) I gave instructions to my bank in Germany to transfer money. On December 18th. The silly sods misunderstood my instructions and I finally got them understood on 27th December. Was the money here when I needed it today? Was it fuck. After spending all day making phone calls under heavy artillery fire from all kinds of womenfolk saying it was my fault, I discovered that the bank had only activated the transfer on 2nd and 3rd January. Thus I can't move into the new place and have to move out of the old one the day after tomorrow. Meanwhile I am probably faced with another bleeding divorce. Why do we have to be so enslaved to these bloody people? None of them is ever going to encounter me again without at least a punch in the teeth, I can assure them. And once theCity of London has been levelled by the International Socialist Air Force I will be there on the outskirts shooting fugitives for certain.

Serious Lancashire II: Get Orf My Land - I spoke too soon

Bought a spinky new pair of walking boots and was determined to get them well filthy. This time drove off up the Lune Valley to a little place about ten miles out of town, and yomped off along a route called "The Lunesdale Walk", tricked out with little blue plaques with arrows on them to assist with the choice of quagmires that faced one at the corner of each field. This went fine until about four stiles in, when the zeal for private property of the local farmers began to get a bit oppressive. The Lunesdale Walk could be clearly made out, but the landowners on either side had seen fit to demarcate the borders of the public right of way with some very solid barbed wire; the fences were, on average, about two feet apart. For a wide bloke wearing a lot of clothes, it being January, this was tricky, but Messrs Barbour did not let me down. I thus progressed about a quarter of a mile to the top of a hill, where things got rather more difficult. Ahead of me, I could see that the barbed wire fences to my left and right were attached to the same tall pole, barring the way. When I arrived at this pole, I could see that a gate was attached to it, parallel to the way I was going, and that at the other side of the gate was another tall pole, attached to another two barbed wire fences marking the rest of the path. This is a bit off, I thought, but nil desperandum. With some effort (at 47 and seventeen stone it is no easier to get one's leg over literally than it is figuratively) I traversed first one fence and then another, and was back on the path. But not for long. Ahead of me was the most enormous heap of shit I had ever seen. I have on many occasions described things that vexed me as enormous heaps of shit, but had not seen anything quite like this in real life before. The heap had been erected on the farmer's side of the fence, but, as is likely to happen with large piles of soggy manure, it had slid and spread out and covered the entire two-foot breadth of the path. Well, I said to myself, are you a man or a mouse? You've never let huge piles of crap defeat you in the past, have you? (I have actually, but never mind.) We can climb this, can't we? So I tried. Unfortunately it's not been any too dry in Lancs so far this year. My first step sank my left foot to the ankle. The second removed the right boot completely from sight. I could see this wasn't going to happen, and I had better let discretion be the better part of valour. I retraced my squelches back to the car.

So I didn't actually hear the words "Get orf my land!" but a ton of shit and about three Dachaus-worth of barbed wire speak louder than words. I don't actually wish a murrain on the cattle of the owner of Curwen Hall Farm, but he might be a bit more careful about blocking off public rights of way.

Worthy but Dull

First bit of good news of 2008: I’ve now done three days off the booze (more than I managed in 2007) and I haven’t got the shakes or the screaming yips and have yet to espy any pink mice scuttling from the skirting-boards. That means any dependence I have on alcohol is psychological and not chemical. That figures – I haven’t been sleeping well (though I wasn’t in December either), I have been pretty darned grumpy, and more than anything I’ve been BORED; bored blue with green tea, grapefruit juice, Shloer and elderflower pressé, much though I like them all once in a while. Bored with not being able to sign off a day at a sensible time, but having to make it through the evening in full sobriety till the bitter end. Have got more work done than usual, but it’s all a bit uninspired. I just hope my bloody liver’s grateful.

Meet the new year - same as the old year

Cricket commentator on Sky Sports this morning wishing everyone a good 2008 – “Let’s hope it’s a peaceful one, and one devoid of disasters”. Well, ay-men to that. Trouble is there hasn’t been a year devoid of disasters since the dawn of time. To be brutally honest, what we mean when we say that is “Let this be a year in which all the disasters are happening to somebody else”.

Early news on the rezzo front: didn’t drink a drop, ate a ton of fruit and went for a brisk walk in the Trough, this time unaccompanied by process servers. Result: fearful acid stomach, couldn’t sleep, and weighed a pound more this morning. Well, heigh-ho.

Viva la Città della Cultura!

I see that Liverpool has launched its reign as European City of Culture with a performance of the unlikely patriotic opera “Emilia di Liverpool”, by Donizetti. That’s always been a favourite of mine, principally for the famous tenor aria of Geraldo*”Non Mai Piú Andrai Solo” – that wonderful swelling line “Andate, andate, con esperanza nel cuore” before the final climax. And then the gentle, lullabyish Chorus of Dockers “Dolce far niente”. The final confrontation, “Dove Son’ I Miei Hubcaps?” is also one of Donizetti’s most memorable. There is also a deeply moving scene set in “a small Alpine village near Liverpool” – probably somewhere on the Wirral – which shows the great Italian’s mastery of diversity; the contrast to the Act II quartet of Giorgio, Paolo, Giovanni and Ringo could not be greater.

Bravo, il Maestro Scousetto!


*e i Fattori di Pace