A Centenary

Today we have a surprisingly significant literary centenary. If I had prepared myself a little better for the heavier reviews, I would have cleaned up.

In Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain", the hero Hans Castorp, who has originally gone up to the TB sanatorium in Davos to visit his cousin for three weeks and has found himself stuck there, because he has fallen in love with a Russian female inmate, finally gets to go to bed with the latter for the first and only time. He is thus symbolically condemned to seven years in the sanatorium, with an illness he cannot get rid of and, it is suggested, wouldn't even if he could. He only gets out in order to fight in World War I, which it is suggested he does not survive. Apart from the fact that poor old Hans is described as having grown up in the very street in Hamburg in which I used to live, the central seduction is described as occurring on 29th February 1908, which happened coincidentally to be Shrove Tuesday.

Nor sure what the relevance of this is, but feel it ought to be mentioed somewhere. After all, it is almost certain that this very evening someone somewhere is being seduced, to his of her eternal salvation or perdition...

February the 29th...

And a very happy ninth birthday to my dear friend Cathy, a mother of two. In fact, if I had been born 13 days early instead of eight days late, I’d be celebrating my twelfth myself.

I noticed that the BBC website was promoting a harmlessly humorous debate of who owns the 29th of Feb. As an entirely gratuitous extra day, should we have the benefit of it or our employers? If the former, shouldn’t we get the day off? After all, we aren’t getting paid any more than last February, which only contained 28 days.
A BBC correspondent called “Claire” took the following view:

“Why is everyone always looking for something free? Those of us who get paid monthly get the same amount each month whether that month contains 30 or 31 days or in February just 28 days - I never hear anyone say oh aren't I lucky that I get extra pay every day in February and just one year in four this is slightly less than the others or one year in four I get slightly less pay for each day but three out of the four I could look at it as getting slightly more. It is about time people counted "their blessings" and stopped this constant moaning and joining the ME ME ME society we are developing into!”

Well, why are employers always looking for something free? And if those of us in work were to “count our blessings” might we not find them rather less than those of the bosses who get their enhanced “blessings” win, lose or draw? And is the so-called ME ME ME society any worse than the THEM THEM THEM society most of us are in fact living in?

I understand why people have to work, but why they have to be so fucking servile I will never grasp.

And, if we start thinking about who owns February 29th, perhaps we should start thinking about who owns the rest of our lives.

I always hated scrambled Egg...

About a month ago, I read with some concern that the Egg Bank was peremptorily cancelling the credit cards of 161,000 of its customers, on the grounds that they represented an unacceptable credit risk, or looked likely to become one in the future. Well, that’s me buggered, I said to myself, and braced myself for an ugly letter through the mailbox (well, to be precise, looked carefully through my large pile of post which I had not yet opened as it looked too frightening). Nothing. Sigh of relief, but native wariness caused me to get on with acquiring a back-up credit card without delay.

Then, of course, came the litany of complaints from aggrieved Egg customers; hundreds of them wrote to the papers and the BBC to say that they had been ideal customers, paragons of sensible financial behaviour never missing a payment. In many cases Egg had agreed that the customer’s behaviour could not be faulted, but refused to go back on their decision. The official explanation was that “while some customers in that group may be up to date with their payments and have a good record with credit reference agencies and so on, the probability of them becoming a higher-risk customer in the future is higher than we wish to accept."

Cynics, however, suspected that it was precisely the “good” customers Egg were trying to drive away, as they are not making enough money out of them. As it happens I am in a position to provide supporting evidence for this view. Not only have many “good” customers been targeted, but the “bad” ones have not. I have heard nothing from the customer-sacking branch of Egg, although I am a disastrously imprudent manager of personal finances. I have no regular income, miss payments, max out at inappropriate times and am generally rather a naughty boy. Egg have already refused me a loan once. I get regular correspondence from them, each time thinking that the axe will now fall, but it is always to remind me to set up a Direct Debit to pay their bills. I don’t like to inform them that my bank will no longer let me do Direct Debits, such is my delinquency. My brother-in-law is also an Egg customer, and also an extremely dilatory one in most of the same respects. Neither of us have had any trouble.

So I think it can be regarded as proven that Egg is only trying to get rid of the line-toeing, regular-paying brigade while giving the feckless and imprudent the run of the place. And, as has been often pointed out, a bank is allowed to choose its customers at whim if it wants. The poor people shut out have no legal grounds for complaint. Why the insulting hypocrisy, though? Why can’t Egg just stand up and advertise itself as the bank for the irresponsible swashbuckler, and change its name to Vanity Fair or something? I might respect that.

In the meantime, why are bankers still allowed to walk our streets unmolested, without even feeling compelled to don false moustaches, burqas etc. to conceal their identity? Why do they feel so safe? I saw a Class War slogan in London recently: “The rich only sleep at night because we let them”. Why do we do that? Why?

In the meantime, let us hope that the 161,000 customers so basely excluded by Egg all default on their outstanding balances. Thing is, they’re probably not the type.

So-called benefit reforms

I see the latest government initiative is all about forcing people on benefits to take jobs. I don't doubt that quite a few people have been utterly demoralised by unemployment and might be helped by being given a job to go to - trouble is it would probably be a rather pointless one. And if they try the same trick on the hundreds of thousands who find themselves in the penumbra of mental illness, what is going to happen? Most workplaces these days are totally devoted to the idea of high-pressure long-hours I've-done-more-than-you crap, and how is someone fragile going to survive in that? These vulnerable people are all going to run away or get sacked in weeks. If we had proper government and union monitoring of working hours and conditions people might survive. That means eight hours maximum (and seven for preference). If you want to keep the ultra-competitive workplace, you'll have to accept three million on benefits. And counting. A lot of us can't cope, and don't want to.

Not exactly unexpected.....

We notice that the bodies of murdered children are being found, with probably more to come, in Jersey. One of their official representatives was being given a well-deserved grilling by Paxman last night for having said that the main issue was the maintenance of the international reputation of Jersey for the benefit of rich tax-evaders, implying that any murders of children had better be swept under the carpet for that reason.

Now, Jersey is all about rich bastards dodging their taxes. To keep taxes down you have to keep your costs down. Children in children's homes are a dead loss in economic terms. Getting rid of them makes obvious financial sense. Can anyone really expect anything else from the sort of people who run tax havens? After all, we're being told every day that making rich people obey the law will only drive them elsewhere....perhaps some new tax haven can provide an openly accessible child disposal service?

Equally unsurprisingly, I heard today from the friend who recently started work in a Chinese medicine shop. On her first day, she apparently mishandled the credit card processing machine, having received zero training in using it, and thus a customer's payment wasn't processed properly, costing the shop about £100. It wasn't spelt out, but it sounded like she will have this amount docked from her pay. Is this legal? Five will get you ten that it isn't. Do the non-unionised Chinese shops think it can be done? Five will get you ten they do.

Bring on the economic collapse!

When the hard Left and the hard Right find themselves in agreement it is usually not a pretty sight. But today I came across a piece by one of my favourite ultra-reactionary writers, the late Simon Raven, which I thoroughly agreed with. It came in a review of Anthony Sampson’s “Anatomy of Britain”, written in 1962, a long time before the dreary Blatcherism it prefigured:

“What it amounts to, then, is that the cure Mr Sampson proposes (more and more technical efficiency, professionalism at all levels, smart sales talk for our products) is far worse than the disease he diagnoses (complacency, nepotism, charm, the amateur spirit). But, says Mr Sampson resolutely, if we don’t take the cure we shall die, i.e. we shall go broke. Myself, I am beginning to think this might be a very good thing, if only because it would mean an end of those hatchet-faced middlemen guzzling up smoked salmon in Quaglino’s. What is wanted is less industry and more Horace, who points out that the surest way of being happy is to make the best of what you’ve got. All this talk of production and competition has gone on so long and so loudly that people have forgotten what they’re competing for. The answer is six feet of earth, and that pretty quickly; once you get that into your head, it is clear that Latin verses are every bit as relevant – or irrelevant – as money-grubbing or Sputniks, and make far less noise and smell.”

Yes, bring on the banking collapses, bring on the high taxes which might drive the rich out of London – make my fucking day – bring on the plunging house prices, which promise at least to make the Daily Mail an entertaining read for once, out with the horrible non-jobs in pointless sectors like consultancy and PR, which only exist because there’s too much money sloshing around, and let’s all get back to making a living out of things which have a bit of point to them. I wouldn’t even mind slogging away at Latin verses to achieve that.

An ethnic problem, from a non-racist angle

I have made no secret of it, nor am I remotely ashamed, that I have married into what HRH Prince Philip would call the slant-eyed community. It is, on the whole, a nice thing that my wife the Iron Buddha has plenty of compatriots in the North-West of England. However, there is a darker side to all this jolly multi-culturalism.

I think it is generally accepted that the main problem with multi-culturalism is the temptation to some “communities” to cling to the negative aspects of their traditions as well as the positive ones. In the case of M*sl*ms this of course involves a psychopathic obsession with making sure their womenfolk are not getting laid. Among the Chinese it tends to be an obsession with the idea that workers must know their place, and it is face down in the shit with someone’s foot in the small of your back.

We know someone who has just started a job in a Chinese herbal shop. Nothing against Chinese medicine; it has x thousand years of tradition and presumably has some evidence of success or it would have died out, notwithstanding the fact that Western science can’t work out exactly how it works. But the way it works in this country is worth a comment.

A large number of people of Chinese origin in this country are, let us gently suggest, of somewhat dubious immigration status. Most of them are quite well educated and culturally inclined to work quite hard and do what they’re told. Thus employment conditions in the Chinese restaurant and Chinese medicine sectors are less than ideal; people are employed on conditions amounting to “take what’s on offer or fuck off”. Those who, like the person I mentioned in the last para or the Iron Buddha, have perfectly regular immigration status, are expected to work on the same basis. “If you don’t want the job, there are plenty that will.” Who says the 19th century is dead?

Above all, the first law of sensible employment, that you join a trade union, has no currency among the Chinese. It might annoy the boss, you see. In China, trade unions are in cahoots with the boss and are used to put on entertainments to keep the workers docile. I know a top-class opera singer who was only discovered working in a Chinese textile factory’s trade union song-and-dance troupe. But in England you can chuck har-gau dumplings by the million in a Chinese restaurant without much danger of hitting a trade union member, or, probably, anyone working on or above the statutory minimum wage.

The cultural problem here is that there is nothing in the Chinese tradition to support standing up to your boss, or threatening union action or industrial tribunals. And they are encouraged to think that working in a Chinese environment means working to Chinese rules. Duibuqi (sorry), it doesn’t.

Our friend in the herbal shop came across this issue again and again. No, you can’t have a quarter of an hour to have your lunch. Yes, we work seven days a week. And the incredible cattiness you would expect from people competing against each other for the boss’s favour with no safety net; our friend was actually better qualified than her boss but had to hide the fact most meticulously. No, the fact that your presence happened to coincide with a sixfold increase in sales wasn’t due to you in any way. And this for £14,000 a year for a qualified doctor. Don’t like it? Soon find someone who will.

Time to put the trade union movement on to monstering the Chinese restaurant/healthcare sector. The fact that I bet the Chinese aren’t well represented there will be helpful to us.

Of course my Chinese friends aren’t keen on this, because they know who controls Chinese businesses in the UK, and they aren’t people you want to get the wrong side of, being fond of machetes and such. But it’s about time we rolled these people up. For one thing, it will enable the Iron Buddha to establish a proper business without competition from scumbags.

Petty bourgeois Nazis

Bloody hell there are some horrible things going on in this world. Just for once I’m taking a break from banging on about the rich and what bastards they are, and sweating the small stuff; the horrible way in which people just off the bottom rung of society treat those they consider beneath them. That of course was how the Nazis worked; picking up all the people who had made a tiny bit of social progress and giving them full licence to dump on those below them (as P J O’Rourke said, the beauty of well-organised fascism is that it gives every piss-ant an ant-hill to piss from).

Social workers. (Or, as my friend The Exile invariably describes them, “social work filth”.) They may not be all bad – although I maintain it’s a branch of work into which only clag-brained thickoes go – but the fact that their doings are so often shrouded in darkness by order of the so-called “family courts” – bloody hell how George Orwell would have loved that name – means that they deserve every bit of shit which is thrown at them by The Exile and others. If some pig-ignorant drongo decides you are either too chavvish or too posh to look after your kids, they can be kidnapped at dead of night and disappear entirely into the murk of the secretive family court system. And these people defend all this with “the best interests of the children”, which of course only the half-educated drosswits, rather than the children’s parents, can decide on.

Sure, there are some parents who, usually due to drugs or other extreme personal inadequacies, are not in a position to raise their own children, but it certainly isn’t only junkies this happens to. Anyone who might have got themselves onto a social services computer, possibly due to inaccurate data input, is in danger of having their kids removed by force under cover of official secrecy one might think more appropriate to an anti-terrorist strike.

One of the things that set us Brits apart from most other countries is that we have a tradition of accountability; things that government agencies do tend to get reported and commented on in the press. Not so with “family court” proceedings – there we all have to keep schtum. Although it is – rightly – said that not all social workers are total kidnapping bastards, I’m afraid that until a bit of transparency is restored we will have to adopt The Exile’s view, and regard social workers as completely unfit for human company until we are allowed to know what they do and how. Until then – they’re scum. They may be able to read, but we're justified in alleging that they can't. Don’t buy one a drink. Ever.

Wharrabout the Wurkers?

I know nothing ought to surprise me about this New Labour government, but every now and then something that you knew was there all along just bobs up and hits you on the nose. The Broonites are now trying to steamroller a group of Labour MPs who are trying to ensure that temporary agency workers have the same rights regarding pay and conditions as permanent ones. A no-brainer, you’d have thought. What part of “minimum wage” and “statutory paid holiday rights” don’t they understand? But no, a Labour Government is opposing this and fighting to defend the right to exploit.

It has to be said that Polly Toynbee is, as usual, spot on on this subject. Good old Polly can talk as much shite as anyone, but she’s the only journo I can think of who is prepared to grind on with the necessary persistence about poverty and low pay. Even on the Grauniad, among thousands of idiots whittering endlessly on about the Middle East, she seems pretty isolated. She wrote a book about low-pay jobs, Hard Work, which bears comparison to The Road to Wigan Pier.

She’s on good form this morning: pointing out that being “flexible”, a great Government buzzword, always means workers being flexible about their holiday entitlements, not employers being flexible about working hours; that good employers are perfectly happy with the equality proposals; and that the MPs running this campaign are not just the “usual suspects” from the hard Left. (One of the MPs involved, generally a Blairite loyalist, was once, in an earlier incarnation, my own boss, and so I can vouch for him as a decent employer, though sometimes sailing very close to the wind regarding sexual harassment and invariably three sheets to it from lunchtime onwards.)

So even in the world of Blairo-capitalism views vary widely. And who do we find holding up the bastard end of the spectrum of opinion? The usual crew of rich whingers, led by the CBI (Capitalist Bastards International), banging on about how giving some rudimentary protection to the lowest paid will “destroy jobs and damage competitiveness”, the same refrain they’ve been singing ever since someone first suggested taking eight-year-olds out of the mills and mines. Competitiveness! These people aren’t interested in effing competing. Their only argument is “Well, if I’m not allowed to win 36-0 every game, I’m going to take my ball home.” The rich don’t just want more money than us: they want it all. Every penny going into a working person’s pocket is an affront to them.

Can we have a real Labour Government, please? Polly for Prime Minister, anyone? Denis Healey back as Chancellor – let’s hear those pips squeaking again.

It could be peace....

Well, I may have saved myself from total implosion by striking a deal with my ex-wife (assuming the deal comes off, no more to be called the Queen Bitch, to placate my younger son, henceforth to be referred to as Enormous Oaf II). Nobody ever wins this game, except the lawyers, so I suppose the fact that I feel that it was a bit of a shit deal is a good sign. I expect she does too. As always happens on these occasions, we were being egged on by lawyers, who know that, win, lose or draw, they'll be quids in. (The question of the appropriateness of human rights for lawyers is one which will have to be gone through at greater length elsewhere. Like bankers, I can't help believing there ought to be a season for shooting them as sport.)

Anyway, I might shortly be in a position to get my life on track again...

Once more unto the breach...

This week has been spent arguing in an increasing state of desperation. Two weeks after I wrote to the Queen Bitch offering an out-of-court settlement, she then sent me a peremptory do-what-I-say-or-you're-dead e-mail, making me a counter-offer and saying I had two and a half days to accept it, otherwise her lawyers would land me with the whole costs of the subsequent court hearing. I was, at the time, in Hamburg. Fortunately on my return I had already booked a meeting with my lawyer, otherwise I'd never have been able to arrange one in the time. We discussed the thing, and I decided, with adjustments for a few disputed calculations, to accept the offer. Today I was told that the offer had been withdrawn and would only be considered if I produced certain papers which I haven't got. Otherwise I get landed with all the costs, etc., etc.

Now, obviously, in cases where children are involved, one tries to keep the open rancour under control. But, after this, not any more. My children have already suffered enough under the divorce and the fact that they have a mother who belongs in an exceptionally secure zoo. Don't ever think you can settle a divorce case amicably. The vile malice against a man who's chosen to reject her, simply because she is horrible and he only realised it too late, coupled with the almost bankeresque greed, will always come out in the end. Don't really know what the solution is - I have a friend who's doing seven years in Belmarsh for trying to hire a hitman, and I'll be interested to hear his views - except to suggest that getting married should be a thing one just doesn't do. It goes against the grain to espouse (ha! ha!) such a trendy viewpoint, but basically the state doctrine of marriage is that possession of a pair of cojones means that a) everything is your fault and b) you are not entitled to any money or freedom ever again. The girls who charge seventy quid a time, or whatever, are hugely morally superior. God bless them.

Slight Break

Just got back from Hamburg. Hamburg is a seriously fun place, consisting of a thin crust of haute bourgeoisie barely covering a vast reservoir of people with actual lives. I tend to stay on the Reeperbahn, among the Polish restaurateurs and Colombian whores who make the place live, as well as a Chinese eater where I have them all trained to bring me the proper stuff from Chongqing instead of the watered-down pap they give most Westerners, and where the young Chinese waitresses are really rather special...

The Good Men of Sodom

Have just been down to the ghastly money-mincer which is our capital city. Why do I do this? The answer is that I still have, besides a couple of enormous louts who carry my Y chromosome, a number of what is quaintly known to us old fogies as "friends". Remember friendship? It's what used to happen before contacts and networking and staying in the office all night. I think of them as the Good Men of Sodom, not because the majority of them belong to the woofter persuasion, though they do, but in reference to the Book of Genesis. For the ignorant pagans among you, it is reported that God decided that the city of Sodom deserved a bit of splatting (not, in fact, because it was full of gays, but because it was full of rapists) and Abraham begged God to spare it because there must be a few decent chaps there. But he couldn't even find five, so Sodom got the Hiroshima treatment. My point is that London, because of all the rich bastards who have squeezed the life out of the place, must surely be on the Almighty's to-do list, except for the fact that I maintain that there are just enough sound people there to ward off the thunderbolts. So, you chaps, and you know who you are, just remember that if enough of you move outside the M25 at the same time, you may not find anything to come home to....

More Rubbish

Another attempt to tackle the "what does one do with all the domestic shit" question. Found a little card given me by the council telling me how to separate it all out. Doesn't help much, as doesn't say what you do with kitchen waste, which is the most worrying one as it a) smells to heaven and b) attracts rats, and my views on being overrun by those characters are close to Winston Smith's. Also I discover that bottles and jars have to be washed before you dump them, and that, for instance, aluminium foil must be cleaned. Now, my experience is that, when you wrap a roast up in aluminium foil, the foil a) gets cut to bits when you're carving, and b) sticks to the roasting tray, covered in gunk, and is only prised away with great difficulty. The prospect of cleaning it is a bit on the remote side. How the fuck can they seriously expect you to clean aluminium foil before throwing it away? Only in an environment where no-one dares oppose anybody who sounds "green", however much of a tosser they may be.

Won't be here on Friday when the bin-men come next, and they'll kill me if I put the bins out before Thursday evening, when I won't be here either. So nothing for it but to put it all in the car and then ho! for the dump, or recycling centre as it is of course called. That took a good half hour, as private cars are only allowed into the "household waste" bit, and the relevant bins for half the stuff can only be found in the bit you need a permit to drive into. Bugger all this. I'm thinking of taking up fly-tipping as a hobby, as well as smoking.

My friend The Exile (check link) suggests that the smoking ban is not enforced by the Plod, but only by council enforcers, and that therefore if one worked at electing councillors who refused to employ such enforcers one could render it optional and subject to local democracy, which it ought to be. He is right in principle. Trouble is, in the present climate finding people to stand on a clear platform of defying a PC Act of Parliament is simply unrealistic. If it were possible for public figures to stand up that openly against the political and media establishment and still get elected, we'd never have lost the miners' war of 1984-85.

In WH Smug's yesterday I saw a computer magazine featuring on its front cover an article on solving problems with one's Windows system, under the headline "CRUSH PC GREMLINS!" Oh how I wish we could....

Mustn't offend anyone

Just heard a wonderful one from Stephen Fry on QI. “The marriage suffered a setback in 1985, when the husband was killed by the wife.” Mustn’t offend women – who knows when one might experience a perfectly understandable need to kill her husband? “Well, she had to, didn’t she?” “What do you mean?” “Well, she did, didn’t she? That proves she had to.”

Likewise, in today’s Telegraph: The Home Office has produced guidance for civil servants (I was one once) saying they mustn’t refer to Islamist terrorists; just say “criminals” instead.

Sorry. Fuck that. Some women are bitches and kill their husbands, when the latter don’t do everything they’re told to. Some Muslims think Allah tells them to blow people up. They are Islamic terrorists. And a probable majority of other Muslims support them.
Now sue me.

Bugging Scandal

Who gives a flying fuddleduck whether an Al-Qaeda terrorist suspect (otherwise known as an Al-Qaeda terrorist, due to get extradited to the USA where they’re not as fricking soft as we are) gets bugged when talking to his MP? Hasn’t Sadiq Khan MP got more worthwhile constituents to talk to? Someone in Tooting needs to be asking this. It’s probably worth knowing when this bastard wants to talk to someone who’s not supposed to get bugged, because it would seem to indicate that he’s got something to say that he doesn’t want to get overheard. And that’s precisely the sort of thing we ought to be overhearing.

Why is David Davis making a fuss about this? (Well, we know the answer to that.) Why does he care?

Look, no-one gives a toddly-doss what happens to Al-Qaeda and their supporters. No, we don’t want to be a country where people get kicked to death down the cellars, but if they’re Al-Qaeda I’d be prepared to turn a blind eye. What’s the bleeding point in letting them out of prison? What do we expect them to do next? Well, I hope, get their arses bugged off until the end of their days, if we can afford that sort of thing. Otherwise, send ‘em somewhere else where they’ll get themselves strung up. See if I care.

Arseholes in Sainsbury's (well, what a surprise)

It’s rather crappy to blog about things that happened in Sainsbury’s, but I promise not to make a habit of it.

This afternoon, after further lawyer/bank related pains of hell, I nipped into Sainsbo’s just for a couple of odds and sods, not a big shop. Trouble is, when you do that, your shopping basket just screams out “Sad Old Git Living On His Own”. (Madame has gone down to London.) Only two of the five items were alcoholic (I’m drinking the second one as I write). But I felt like declaring to everybody: “I’m not a middle-aged alcoholic saddo! I’m married! I can get my leg over! Look, here’s my wedding ring!”, except it wasn’t, because I threw it at the Iron Buddha during our last row, and she picked it up and Put It Somewhere, as wives will.

Anyway, one advantage of having a small, sad-bachelor shopping basket is, as I thought, that one can take it through the “10 items or less” check-out. Thither I sped, and during the roughly five minutes I was waiting, three people, one in front of me and two behind, tried to unload enormous baskets full of stuff, and had to be told by a patient-but-rapidly-growing-less-so checkout assistant that they were only allowed ten items at a time. What’s with these people? There were three large-print signs up, and all the little plastic prisms dividing one punter’s shopping from another bore the same legend. What part of “10 Items or Less” don’t they understand?

And there was light.....

Just had a strange 40 minutes. I may be a sad old git sitting in front of my computer as a substitute for a life, but this time I had an excuse. At 7 p.m. all the lights went out - a good old-fashioned power cut, reminiscent of the glorious winter of 1973 when I was thirteen and at boarding school and power cuts were fun, fun, fun, not to mention leading to the miners destroying Heath's government.

I thought about inching along the corridor to the fuse box, but soon realised a) I knew where the fuse box was but, having only lived here three weeks and not having had occasion to look into the cupboard yet, I would have stood no chance whatever of finding a fuse, and b) a glance out of the window told me that every house along the street had suffered the same fate. (Torches? Candles? In a house I've just moved in to? Do me a favour.) In fact every house within sight - my first impulse, being the man I am, was to take refuge in the Fox & Goose, but they were equally blacked out. So I went to sit in the car, as the only source of light, until it occurred to me that I might as well go back into the house and switch the computer on, as the battery was charged up. At least that provided enough light to find the gin and tonic I'd been drinking....

I am in love...

once more. Just discovered a Ladino singer. (What?) Ladino is the language of the Sephardi Jews axpelled from Spain at the end of the 15th century, It was the mother tongue of Elias Canetti, who won the Nobel a few years back for writing books no-one has actually managed to read, but which are, I am assured, jolly worthy. Anyway this lady is called Yasmin Levy, and hangs out in Jerusalem. I'd have gone to see her in Manchester last week, but for the fact that I was engaged in a life-or death marital struggle at the time. But the woman is gorgeous, and does the world music thing like there's no tomorrow. Besides, she's an Israeli, and thus can do no wrong in my opinion, rather like Yossi Benayoun in his Liverpool shirt.

The joys of political incorrectness...

Somehow the brisk and bracing weather has had a stimulating effect on my political incorrectness glands.

Last week I went back to my old stamping ground of Hamburg, where they have just followed us in introducing a smoking ban. Being reasonably sensible people they have left all sorts of loopholes - I asked a couple of my friends who run pubs how it was affecting them, and they said it wasn't much, because they had separate smoking rooms, which I don't think is allowed over here. Another pub has reconstituted itself as an official smokers' club, members only (but I suspect membership criteria are not that rigid). But then maybe the Germans are only interested in ensuring that non-smokers can have a smoke-free environment if they want, rather than calling down the wrath of God on sinners.

Meanwhile, as the Independent reported, the first person to fall officially foul of the law was ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Schmidt (whom God preserve) is 89, smokes approximately the same number per day, and has for years made it clear that anyone inviting him and/or his wife had jolly well better provide ashtrays. A big Hamburg theatre invited the old couple (she is only a couple of months younger) to a premiere, extended the proper courtesies to a respected elder statesman, got grassed up by some arsehole, and so the old chap is facing charges.

This is the really insidious thing about the smoking ban. My new local in Lancaster after my move is utterly delightful. The place is run by a female Al Murray called Joanne. The first night I went in there it was karaoke night, fortunately for me, who has been described as "the deaf man's Pavarotti". I stepped up to the mike to sing "Delilah", telling the audience that they could throw knickers if they liked. "I'm not wearing any, luv," came back quick as a flash. Later in the evening, noticing it was past midnight, I asked Gordon what time the pub closed. "You'd better ask Joanne, she's the licensee," he replied. "What time does the pub shut, Joanne?" I asked. "It shuts when I shut it, luv."

The licence is actually till 1 a.m., but it basically shuts when Joanne wants to go to bed. There's a sign up saying "no children after 8 p.m." but I've seen them running around at half past twelve. But the smoking ban is rigidly observed. No-one is going to complain about late hours, as everyone who's there after hours has a direct interest in being there. But any arsehole can raise a complaint about someone smoking. Even Joanne daren't smoke in the pub.

Fuck them. Fuck them from a great height. Meanwhile Dawn Primarolo is saying that middle-class people are still drinking more than they should and "it's got to change". Now, I am not always aware of what I do when I'm pissed. But I'm pretty sure I never married Dawn Primarolo. That alone would give her any locus standi in how much I drink, or anything else I do within the law of the land. The woman I am married to, though in her heart her views don't differ much from Dawn's, expresses it a bit more tactfully.

But fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck them. Can I be arsed to go to all the trouble and expense of taking up smoking just to spite them?

The other pain in the fundament, following my recent house-move, is rubbish disposal. Obviously, a move generates huge volumes of stuff that needs chucking away. Chucking anything away, however, is now as difficult as a master's degree in nuclear physics. Last time the bin men came, my wife was told she'd put the wrong bins out in the wrong order (and probably with the wrong stuff in them) and so they couldn't take them. They did, however, give her a closely printed card with detailed instructions, which I have been trying to make head or tail of ever since. And woe betide you if you put any paper in with the cans, or glass with the plastic, or if you don't wash the insides of horrible plastic bags thoroughly, or anything like that. So I have been driving stuff to the local dump, knowing that no-one is actually supervising and so you can get away with chucking out almost anything. Can't people tick a box on a form, maybe involving an extra £50 on one's council tax, saying I CAN'T BE ARSED WITH ALL THIS, and just bunging it all in the wheelie like we used to? But even the mere suggestion that I might want to would make me the equivalent of a Nazi war criminal in some people's eyes.

Again, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck them.

And don't get me started on mucking Fuslims......

Women! (reprise)

I mentioned a couple of posts ago how women who have landed a man tend to turn their brains off rather. Splendid example today. Iron Buddha and I were planning to go down to London in midweek, me to see various friends, sons, etc., she to meet up with a lot of Chinese people to celebrate Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year being on the 7th, she told me they'd be meeting up on the evening before. So I arranged we'd go down on the 5th.

On Thursday evening she told me, without warning, that the get-together was in fact on Sunday 3rd, so could we go down on Saturday (today) instead? (That is how good the Chinese are at forward planning. World War III will be a piece of piss.) No, I said, I've got to see my lawyer on Monday about this damned financial dispute with Queen Bitch. So, I told her, I'll get you a train ticket to London, and come myself a few days later. I had to do some fancy footwork in making arrangements with the friend we'd be staying with, but all was done and dusted.

This morning we got up and she spent hours fannying about with various articles of clothing. After a long period of time waiting at the front door fully clothed to take her to the station, she finally emerged. Once we were in the car on the way to the station, she asked: "I haven't got my passport. Does that matter?" I mentioned that it wasn't a bad idea to have some sort of ID, but it wasn't life or death. "Have you got all the details I wrote down for you about how to get to our friend's place, and the mobile number of the guy you have to get the keys off?" "No," she said, wide-eyed. "Well, how the hell do you expect to get there, then?" I promised to write down the directions for her again from memory, and call her later to give her the mobile number. We got to the station and I did all this. Then "I've forgotten my wallet and don't have any money or credit card!" Fortunately we had fifteen minutes, just enough for me to run to the bank and get some cash out.

My younger son has learning difficulties, but has been travelling on his own since age 13. He wouldn't have left the house without papers, money or clear instructions on where to go. And it's not as if she's had a pampered upbringing. This is a lass who was working construction sites at age 11 because she bloody well had to, and was single and making her own way in the world for 10 years until I came along. Since she's been here she's done fuck all except cause trouble. If I didn't love the silly woman I don't know what would happen.

A Holiday in Hell

Apologies to readers (both of them) for recent absence from bloggery. The last three weeks have been utter hell, with more of the same to come. Moving house is purgatory at the best of times, and these weren’t the best. It started with pretty near the worst week of my life. Doesn’t quite make it to Number One – the seven days in August 2000 between being told I had cancer of the oesophagus and being told I hadn’t will take quite a bit of knocking off that perch – but it’s right up there. This was to be the week of the great house move, and for once I thought I’d got it organised quite neatly. Secure the new house from Monday 7th, arrange to move out of the old one on Thursday 10th, giving us three clear days to shift our stuff; arrange for our furniture to be delivered from Germany on the 16th; in the meantime, as we would be without a bed in the interim, bought one to be delivered on Friday 11th, having arranged accommodation with a friend for the night of the 10th. The whole thing required a few thousand squid, so I applied for funds to be transferred through my German bankers on 18th December. All bases covered, you might think.

Except that the money wasn’t there. No doubt the various bankers involved had “borrowed” it for a few days, to put it on the horses or something, and no doubt they’d all taken a couple of weeks off over Christmas like everyone else, but anyway it wasn’t there when I needed it. The estate agents for the new place were as nice as pie, but totally inflexible: no money, no keys, not even allowed to transport stuff to the house to await full occupation. (I suppose they’d have got sacked if anyone up the corporate hierarchy had found out they’d broken procedure.) Anyway, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on the phone from 9 till 5, trying to find out where this damn money was, while the Iron Buddha did as much packing as she could. Trouble was, the domestic atmosphere deteriorated markedly during this period.

I can’t really blame her; we were facing actual homelessness, and the area in which a major cock-up had occurred was undoubtedly one for which I had the responsibility. It wasn’t really my fault, except that I should have made allowances for any degree of bankers’ incompetence and done the transfer about a month earlier, but I have no excuses: at an atavistic level, a man who can’t even put a roof over his woman’s head is a failure by any standard. All this burst out in a fearsome row on the Tuesday evening, where my shortcomings were read out to me in no uncertain terms. This resulted in my storming out of the house in despair, getting into the car, and heading for Scotland. I have not found it possible to maintain my alcohol reduction programme during this level of stress, and perhaps we had better draw a veil over my blood alcohol level when I hit the M6 around midnight.

However, no harm befell me or any other road user, thank God; and halfway to the border wiser counsels prevailed, and I decided to retrace my steps and return to Lancaster. Around Carnforth I was doing no more than 80 when my clutch blew out and I could do no more than to glide over to the hard shoulder and slow gently to a halt. And that, as far as my Saab 93 went, was that. It was 1.30 a.m. The full-scale storm of earlier in the evening had burnt itself out, rather like my clutch, and it had stopped raining, but the wind was about Gale Force 8. This being the middle of the night on January 9th in North Lancashire, I presumably need not play Eeyore and point out that it was neither Hot, Close or Stuffy. Just-between-ourselves-and-don’t-tell-anybody, it was Cold.

I should, everyone told me, have picked up one of the roadside phones and sought help. But I had no number for the RAC with me, and, besides, I have long since lost faith in the possibility that any public telephone will actually work. There was also the points a) that my brain was no longer in working order after the bombardments set out above and b) that I had no wish to be discovered in the neighbourhood of my car by anyone who might be furnished with a breathalyser. Anyway, I walked four miles, and had almost reached Lancaster when the Highways Agency, who had already spotted my defunct car and put two and two together, picked me up. They wouldn’t actually take me home, but gave me a lift to a hotel where a cab could be obtained, and promised to bring my car to my address in the morning. Couldn’t have been nicer.

On the Wednesday, having got to bed at five, I got up to discover that I still had no access to any money, and that the Highways Agency had not brought my car as they had promised. So the previous days’ slog of trying to chase up banks who couldn’t care less was at least varied by the task of trying to find out what the hell had become of the car. (I should at this point credit the Iron Buddha for bringing me a penitent cup of morning tea and swearing never to go for me like that again; unfortunately, I am writing this in retrospect and in the knowledge that the oath lasted two and a half days.)

By the time I had located the car it was 5.30 p.m. They had taken it to a recovery place instead, enabling them to charge a fortune for me to get it back. I rang the RAC. They said they could go and pick it up, but according to their rules I had to be there when they did so. Ah, I said, thinking of my transportless state, well, can you pick me up and give me a lift there? No, according to the rules they couldn’t. Well, the buses in this sort of area would have stopped running by then, and failing fifty quid’s worth of taxi, there was no way I could do it. I told them to commit an anatomical impossibility and went to the pub. Next day, Thursday, I could see myself having to empty the flat and become homeless by 9.30 a.m., and find shelter for a gobby wife and about fifty-three plastic bags, while simultaneously sorting the damned car out.

My “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” moment came on my early awakening next morning when I saw it was lashing down with rain. What better conditions to complete a major logistic operation with no car? Fortunately the wife had done well in organising a man with a van, and I had done well in organising a massively supportive brother-in-law, so both we and our stuff had a place to stay. As on every day this week, I had remained sober so long as there was stuff to be done, but once that was no longer possible, had got massively rat-arsed. I had just started doing this when word came through that my money had arrived. Sadly, it was quarter to six and the estate agents were closed, but at least the end was putatively in sight.
Spent the rest of the evening in one of the best pubs I’ve found in Lancaster, full of disappointed and articulate middle-aged men so I felt right at home, before going on to the brother-in-law’s and a good night’s sleep.

Next morning the horrors continued. We went to the estate agents to do the financial biz, when I remembered we were having a bed delivered that day, the only one we had until the rest of the furniture was delivered from Germany in five days time. The buggers wouldn’t of course let us into the house till the finances were all in place, which would be around lunchtime, so I rang the bed company to find out what time the bed would be delivered. Any time between now (around 10) and 1 p.m. , they told me. I got my arse in a taxi and went to the house, sans keys, getting a where-the-hell-are-you call on my mobile en route from the bed company. Just a moment, I told them, and arrived just in time to take delivery of a bed in bits, which had to be stood against the outer wall. Fortunately, within the hour, I got the nod from the estate agents that the money had come through, and they brought the key round. So we were in, only mildly disconcerted by the fact that an alarm instantly went off which nobody had told us about. As we had as yet nothing but a bed, we decided, on invitation, to stay another night at the brother-in-law’s.

So far so good. Unfortunately the stress had proved too much for the Iron Buddha and she unleashed the row from hell, with all dirty linen waved all over the room. After an uncomfortable night on the sofa, I really thought this was the end. Besides, I had mislaid my medication in the horror, and woke up feeling like I had about six hours to live unless I found it, a feeling which may even have been soundly based. Driving back with all our crap to the new place from my brother-in-law’s, I had to pull in to let a wailing fire-engine pass. “Bet that’s our house burning down,” I said to the IB.

But it was all sorted in the end, leaving me feeling as if I’d survived the siege of Stalingrad. (I’ve always believed in reading a really harrowing book during really harrowing times, to remind me that, however bad it gets, it could always be worse. I read Robert Conquest’s “The Great Terror” while waiting for my cancer tests seven years ago. During this move I completed Antony Beevor’s two books on Stalingrad and the fall of Berlin.)

And hanging over me the whole time was the upcoming court case against the Queen Bitch, which I hadn’t had time to pay a minute’s active attention to – and even once the move was completed, how the f**k am I supposed to find the relevant financial papers in all this mess?