Sunday, 1 October 2023
Sunday, 3 September 2023
Tuesday, 23 February 2021
Monday, 26 October 2020
Saturday, 24 October 2020
Saturday, 20 June 2020
Saturday, 16 May 2020
Thursday, 12 December 2019
Thursday, 5 December 2019
Monday, 2 December 2019
Sunday, 1 December 2019
THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS? . . . HO! HO! HO!
Lately, I’ve found myself wondering, what if. . . .What if, archaeologists one day discover the remains of a fourth Wiseman who didn’t quite make it to Bethlehem? What if, perhaps having consumed too much wine and then having found himself separated from the other three (who went on to become famous), he followed the wrong star east and the donkey on which he was riding, stumbled over a cliff?
Or what if,
global recession forces Santa to close his factories at the north pole and
shift production to China adding thousands of unemployed Elf migrants to our
already over-stretched social housing lists and having to claim benefits. Mr
Rumplestiltskin, with his ability to weave straw into gold would no doubt be
inundated with job offers in today’s economic climate, but who would employ an
Elf that can only build toys?
Unsure whether
I can enjoy Christmas anymore, these are the genre of ‘…and finally…’ news
reports I would rather listen to, than the more familiar ‘how many more
shopping days left’ news reports we will soon start hearing on our radios and
televisions.
Because, as
usual, even before I've even consumed a mince pie or strung a silver bauble
from my tree, the January sales will have already started with TV commercials
seducing the masses into parting from their cash faster than a pick-pocket
extracts cash from a victim in London’s Oxford Street.
During the next
few weeks we will give liberty to consumption and greed as consumerism reaches
new levels of depravity and children write ‘must have’ wish lists totalling
more than I paid for my first car, despatching them no doubt by email or text
message.
Is it any
wonder then, that our inordinate appetite to satiate Christmas expectations
leave so many of us in debt and utterly miserable. Children, become slaves to
trepidation at the thought of saving enough pocket money in order to buy
pleasing gifts while grown-ups implement creative accounting strategies to
stockpile enough food and beer to sustain an average family for six months in a
nuclear bunker.
What if then,
if we could teach ourselves and our children to understand a little more about
some of the traditions surrounding this midwinter festival, and less about
consumerism, we may all then learn to be content in the absence of procurement
and be thankful for what we already have.
The magic of
Christmas that I grew up with has long since past. The traditional twelve days
of Christmas, in better days - a duration of modest celebration, has been
replaced by a chip and pin extravaganza while seasons greetings are now
delivered to me by text message leaving my mantelpiece bare. (Note: If you
can’t be bothered or just don’t like buying cards, then try picking up the
phone and speaking)
We may well
muse that when Pope Julius Ist declared in the fourth century that Christ's
official birthday would be held on the 25th of December, he didn't envisaged
the festivities being whitewashed by commerce with such wrath, sixteen hundred
years later.
I remember my
joy as a child one Christmas morning unwrapping a magic set, a Slinky and a
chocolate selection box. Nowadays, failed lazy broods stomp their feet and
demand overpriced brain deprivation technology of any nature, just so long as
it plugs into the back of a television set.
Never shall I
spawn a child so repellent, preferring to tutor healthy activities far removed
from the mire of a plasma screen.
I admire other
world cultures and their ability to embrace contentment through modest
expectation, unlike this wretched country where people are judged according to what
gadgetry they possess and where contentment is a commodity to be purchased.

Tuesday, 13 August 2019
LUCKY STRIKE
Quite some time ago I was shown
being interviewed on Sky News because I’d just made a bet with high
street bookmaker William Hill claiming that I would be struck by lightning
before I ever won the lottery. They accepted my bet and if this ever happens and I survive,
I’ll collect ten grand.
Yet despite recent heavy thunder
storms I never even came close. However, I recon if I was to come
back in my next life as a cow, it would be a completely different ball game. I'll
wager that if you select any cow at random from any field then the odds
are it could tell you a story, or knew a cow that could, about a cow
friend or a relative from a different herd, that was killed by lightning.
Any dairy farmer will tell you
the same thing that it would not be considered strange or unusual in
any way, if, following a heavy thunderstorm, a head-count revealed a cow deficit.
With almost constant life-long exposure to the elements, overall
body mass surface area and their not so clever concept of safety in numbers by
everyone bunching together under the same tree, it only requires a single
bolt of lightning to wipe out any number of cows in a single strike,
leaving the farmer presumably to just write them off as spoiled goods like a
shop-keeper might do if he came across a packet of broken biscuits during an
audit.
No chance then of my bet
being accepted had I been a cow and presumably I suppose I’d be wasting my
time shopping around for a long term life cover plan with benefits. Because
even if I did tick all the right boxes to most of the questions put
to me by the insurance underwriter – when it got to the one where he said ‘when
grazing, where would you usually go to seek refuge and shelter during an
unexpected thunderstorm? If I replied ‘under a tree’, I think he’ll just make his excuses and leave.
Further questions would
inevitably raise issues pertaining to the high methane content that cows
are known to produce with implications directly related to an incident reported
last year in the UK when a coach full of foreign tourists supposedly witnessed
a cow suddenly burst into flames and explode.
I hope that any of you who read
this, won't misinterpret my ramblings and presume that I have some kind of
twisted issue with cows, because in actual fact I empathise and have a great
fondness with cows believing them to be underrated and misunderstood.

Collecting my winnings and enjoying
the money of course, is wholly dependent on whether or not I become one of
the two thousand or so people who are killed globally by lightning each year.
This necessitates my coming into contact with lightning for an astonishingly
and inconceivable brief duration, just short enough for me
to sustain no more than superficial burns with standard
blistering and scattered areas of melted body hair - but not long enough that
the soles on my shoes start smoking.
It’s estimated that the Earth’s
surface is struck by lightning around 100 times a second or over 8 million
times each day, so the actual real odds of anyone of us getting struck is
around 1 in 600,000. Compare this to the absurd odds of winning the lottery
jackpot at 1 in 14,000,000 and you can maybe understand my reasoning but also
understand quite clearly why William Hill limited my bet to no more than £10 at
1000 to 1. It took William Hill a several days to consider the
mathematical probabilities before getting back to me and accepting my proposal.
This subject does naturally pop up
during conversation now and again creating some interest and the response is
always usually the same starting with perhaps disbelief and then amusement,
generally then followed by a few wise cracks or silly remarks with implications
that I’m probably some kind of crank. But more commonly what
people always end up asking is what made me bother to go ahead and proceed to
actually make the bet when the general rule is that a daft idea is by its very
nature destined to go no further.
I remember I got exactly the same
reaction when I once painted the entire exterior of my house in tangerine
orange colour paint and people called me barmy. Then again when a newspaper
printed a letter I had wrote condemning the high expectations of today’s youth
and suggesting that Santa Clause be killed off in a freak accident . . . I was
labelled then by some readers as a complete crackpot and so you can imagine the
response from my customers when I had a pub in London some years ago and I woke
up one morning and discovered a crop circle shaven into the back of my head . .
. so there’s no point wasting more time going into the specifics of every other
time I’ve been labelled a fruit-cake and the reasons why, because it would just
simply take me too long.
But I do wonder how it's possible
that there can be so many people out there apparently devoid of any sense of
fun whatsoever and are so quick to label others as complete idiots or
completely off their rockers?
Are people for some unknown reason
losing their primary sense of fun, imagination and recklessness that they
surely must have had and used during their childhood, leaving their lives as
bland and as colourless as the magnolia coloured paint throughout their homes?
I recall when you could look into
the minds of others and see all the colours of an English summer garden but so
very often today all you find is an empty backyard with perhaps if you’re very
lucky, a hanging basket. Those memorable moments when just the exchange of a
few simple words with a complete stranger during an unexpected fleeting
encounter could leave you almost invigorated and in an odd sort of way feeling
rather good about yourself, have become somewhat infrequent.
That same magical and colourful
imagination that once accompanied me throughout my childhood remains pretty
much in-tact and is used probably on a daily basis operating safety from inside
a somewhere deep inside my head. It
is probably my favourite place to go and spend time, a retreat, often serene
and very unique with no boundaries and where nonsense is manufactured
and foolish ideas are stored. A place where cows can relax
and where colours never fade.
Saturday, 27 April 2019
THY SHALT NOT GET CAUGHT COMMITTING ADULTERY
Alexandre Dumas 1803-1870
I was still reeling from the shock of seeing a bearded, middle
aged man, wearing a T-shirt that read, 'I eat pussy like fat kids eat cake',
when I was informed by a customer that odd noises could be heard coming from
inside the ladies toilets.
A couple aged in their late 20's and in a state of undress, were
having sex in one of the cubicles. So, after pressing my ear against the door
for a short while, I waited until their rhythmic thrusting reached a crescendo
then banged hard on the door telling them to stop what they were doing and
kindly leave the premises.
Now normally, this kind of conduct isn't too uncommon in some of
pubs, particularly at weekends, but what made this particular incident require
more than the usual suspension of disbelief, was because while the man made a
rather embarrassed and hasty exit from the pub, the woman walked brazenly back
into the bar area and calmly sat down . . . next to her husband.
Now at the time, I felt sorry for him because he looked a decent
sort of chap, and it occurred to me that the last thing he needed right now was
to be humiliated in a pub full of drunken people, so on this occasion, I
decided not to pursue the matter any further. However my conscience later
nagged me for not telling him what his wife had been up to.
But let's be honest, it can only be a matter of time before her
appetite for impromptu sex romps with strangers betrays her, if it hasn’t
already, and when it does, I hope the poor bloke finds out discreetly as a
result of his own subtle suspicions, rather than seeing dodgy photos of his
wife on facebook or reading another man’s crude exposé along with his wife’s
mobile number scrawled on the toilet wall at his place of work.
And so whether or not the husband found out exactly what
happened that day, I'm afraid I cannot tell you because I don’t know and
anyway, it makes no difference to the point I am trying to make, so let me cut
straight to the chase.
The fact is, in these modern times, while love still embodies
loyalty, commitment and red roses, Lust on the other hand is interested only in
satisfying it’s own deviant urges and habitually achieves this rather
skillfully by guile.
Infidelity has become the scourge of modern society driven by a
tsunami of cultural change drowning us in the sexualization of young girls,
inappropriate subliminal allusions and erotic imagery, all peddled so
methodically by the mass media - specifically the medium of television, that
now accounts for having the biggest influence on our lives in the entire western
world, second only to religion.
In all my years working in the hospitality sector either as a
pub landlord and more recently as a doorman, I have encountered extra marital
sex on such an astonishing and unbelievable scale that I have sadly come to feel
and with good reason too, that the probability of absolute true loyalty and
dependability existing in any relationship, surely is about as likely as a
giraffe balloon sculpture winning next years Turner Prize.
We’re told that the most common reasons for infidelity given by
straying spouses are sexual frustration, curiosity, boredom and revenge, with
the third person usually turning out to be either a friend, associate or
somebody we know.
Personally, I suspect that for every one person careless enough
to be caught cheating behind a partners back, there are probably another five
or so interactions carrying on who's participants are simply far too cunning
and devious ever to be found out.
Such is the power of lust that precedes an affair and the immeasurable
devastation generated by exposure, the absolute genius and brilliance of
subterfuge employed in the pursuit of deceiving a loved one, is unparalleled to
that of a close up magician who with unfailing sangfroid can deal a royal flush
from a shuffled deck of cards.
Our pair bonding ritual used to take place over a period of
weeks or even months when genuine courtship was about respect, chivalry and
doorstep kisses. But today, a man and a woman who have never before set
eyes on each other can strike up a conversation during happy hour and by the
time last orders have been called, their brief courtship has already been
consummated over a stack of rattling beer crates in the back yard with a
post-coital cigarette smoked together out on the front pavement. It gives a
totally new meaning to the term speed dating.
Unfortunately however, it's human nature to want more than one
sexual partner, especially after so many years of living together. It's a
survival trait in all of us allowing us to replace either the hunter-gatherer
or the child bearer, lost by a sudden death. It's this default genetic program
that helps sustain the ongoing survival of our species.
In fact Stamford University did a study which showed physical
chemistry has a shelf life today of just nineteen months showing that society
forces 'happily ever after' on us when biologically we're programmed to cope
with multiple partners. You can't fight nature.
And if you read Professor Jared Diamond's book, Why is Sex Fun?
It explains the link between promiscuity, natural selection and concealed
ovulation. He teaches us how evolutionary forces have shaped our sexuality
and how concealed ovulation and sexual receptivity in women today, make
possible our unique combination of marriage, co-parenting and adulterous
temptation. Albeit, we are a long way from perfection but then isn’t that
precisely what evolution is all about?
It has been said that the advance of civilization has not so
much moulded modern sexual behaviour, as that modern sexual behaviour has
moulded the shape of civilization.
Anthropologists suggest that recreational sex is supposed to be
the glue that bonds a couple together while they cooperate in raising children,
but as we all know even the strongest glue weakens under too much pressure.
When you consider that the 2010 mid year statistics for
PaternityLab.co.uk revealed that 1 in 3 DNA tests carried out by them proved
negative. In other words - 34.55% of men tested (those who had reason to) were
found not to be the biological father. Perhaps then it's only logical that
paternity home kits have finally become available to buy over the counter in
Boots.
To put things into perspective then, let’s get one thing
straight - we are not robots that can be controlled by encoded robotic
programming. We are flesh, blood and bone human beings, created by a miracle of
nature and graced with feelings and emotions that determine our very own unique
and exclusive psyche, ultimately administered and maintained by the awesome
power of our brains.
Inside each of our brains there are 100 billion neuron cells
that are responsible for sending out signals. And, each one of these 100
billion cells connect independently to another 25 thousand cells, constantly
processing information in ever changing relationships. And with all these cells
working together, our brains have so far evolved with the capability of making
more connections than there are atoms in the entire universe.
Because of this, each and every one of us is unique among all
the people who have ever lived on earth. In fact scientists propose that we
each have a virtually limitless array of complex emotions that dictate what
someone feels at any given time, depending on the thinking experience and
memory of the individual. And for this reason alone, no two people can ever be
‘made for each other’ as we like to believe.
Our unique minds are so extraordinarily unpredictable,
unexplored and mysteriously deep. To understand exactly how it functions and
controls each and every thing we do, would be like claiming to comprehend and
understand every single thing there is to know about our entire solar system.
I’m not saying that every person in a relationship has been
cheated on. That would be a ridiculous statement to make! I’m merely saying
that no matter how strong sexual relations are between a couple in a
relationship, if other aspects of mutual interest and compatibility that binds
two people together are put in jeopardy then on average, most relationships
will not sustain much longer than about two years at the most without one or
the other falling out of love through boredom, frustration, curiosity or revenge.
Even the mightiest monumental architectural structure can be
bought down by subsidence that starts with a tiny crack.
When a link in the chain of love that joins two people together,
becomes weakened by say, too much time apart, a failure in communication or
maybe just another volatile domestic argument, then consider the following;
when you take into consideration the complexities of the emotional switchboard
inside our brain, that part of us that controls our fear, love, pain, hate,
anger, elation, greed, envy, shame and lust, to name just a few, and then
interact these emotions with other powerful forces such as anger, memory,
temptation, curiosity, jealousy and motivation etc. All that’s needed then are
some powerful external influences such as alcohol, drugs, companionship,
pheromones and sexual imagery. Then just stand back and see what happens.
I reckon that even way back in the Jurassic period, cohabiting
cave-couples got bored with each other and on occasions, played away from home.
With no recreational activities to partake in other than drawing animal doodles
on cave walls and with conversation limited to nothing but endless meaningless
grunts, presumably then, sex was the only other way of passing time with your
partner and understandably became rather dull and repetitive.
So please forgive me for being presumptuous, in my closing
paragraph, but I can't help wondering how many hard working cave-men returned
home from hunting unexpectedly early one day, due to say - an injury sustained
after wrestling with a mammoth, only to walk in and find their women having sex
with the good looking neanderthal who lives in the cave down the road?
Saturday, 2 March 2019
Tuesday, 26 February 2019
WE'RE ALL BECOMING TELEVISION ZOMBIES

A proud mum and dad were overjoyed this Christmas as they relaxed one evening while enjoying a few cans of bitter and smoking cheap booze cruise fags, when their eighteen month old son, Kyle, finally spoke his first word!
Faltering slightly as he scampered toward them clumsily with his little arms outstretched, Kyle hesitated then stared upwards into his parents' eyes that were by this time widened with anticipation, and with the TV remote control gripped tightly in his little hand, he goo gooed, then dribbled, before calling out “EASTENDERS!”
This scenario perhaps should not be mocked, because I presume without question that this is a common scene in households all over the country today.
One of a newborn baby’s first experiences in life is to be breastfed while the mother, no doubt, watches daytime television from her maternity bed.
Then, later in the crucial formative years, television becomes the full time babysitter conditioning the child for those prime years when he or she will spend twenty hours a week slumped passively in front of the box. Until finally, in old age, they find themselves residing in a nursing home dumped in front of a television screen for eighty hours a week, while they wait to die.
Ironically, if they manage to attain popularity of some worth, their funeral may even be shown on television in high definition.
In an age where ‘chewing gum for the eyes’ dominates so many peoples’ lives, I stopped impulsively calling in on friends without prior warning many years ago and in particular over the Christmas period, through fear of interrupting and spoiling their meticulously planned television schedules. Would my audacity, I wondered, ever be forgiven for presuming to receive a warm reception in the middle of a sizzling soap ratings winner?
T.S.Elliot warned us about television in the 50’s. Eminent psychologist Dr Eric Sigman wrote a bestselling book about it called Remotely Controlled and Pink Floyd’s Rodger Waters even composed a bestselling album maligning it and aptly naming it, Amused to Death. The album cover depicts a monkey sat in front of a television set - a cynical nod at modern man.
Despite arguments that TV has both good and bad influences on our culture, in my world it represents awfulness tantamount to attending a naturist’s picnic in a pollen field next to a free range bee farm.
Television is no longer a medium for entertainment. It has become an instrument solely for the purpose of advertising, with the spaces between filled by low budget toilet trash targeting the masses.
Commercials desensitise us as suspension of disbelief is spliced by a commercial for constipation replacing Di Nero or Johansson in the midst of an epic that took years to choreograph, cost tens of millions of dollars to film and resulting in some of the worlds most inspiring and artistic cinematography and film score ever produced.
It’s strange how people complain about occasional junk mail falling onto their doormat but allow high pressure advertisements in Dolby surround sound and moving coloured pictures into their living rooms all day long.
I remain puzzled therefore, why entire rooms are arranged around television sets. Kitchen cabinets have them built in, satellite subscriptions are often prioritized over more important financial demands and social events are structured around them.
Rodger Waters, when interviewed about his album said "And I had at one point this rather depressing image of some alien creature seeing the death of this planet and coming down in their spaceships and sniffing around and finding all our skeletons sitting around our TV sets and trying to work out why it was that our end came before its time, and they come to the conclusion that we amused ourselves to death."
Consequently, if my councillor friend’s desire for a new Radical Party comes to power, as his confidant, he’s pledged me the position of Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. And once there, I shall move to enforce strict unprecedented sanctions against all television companies including banning all soaps, reality shows and commercial breaks during all programmes. And should my authority be challenged I will petition for a complete period of prohibition.
Please therefore take this letter as a warning to all of you who continue to reduce the brain development of your children and have a TV free happy new year!
Express & Echo
Saturday, 17 March 2018
Tuesday, 13 March 2018
Wednesday, 12 April 2017
The Day the Earth Stood Still part 2
The majority of
women have half a glass too much and let down the barriers a little, then they
wake up in the morning riddled with guilt and think they can reclaim their
virtue by saying “I can’t remember”.
David Niven
in The Pink Panther
Let's
suppose that an incredibly superior race of extraterrestrials have been
observing our earth since way back in the last millennium.
Now,
finally regarding us in such high esteem in terms of our evolvement from tree
climbing monkeys to modern day homo sapiens, they decide to visit our planet
with the sole purpose of forging an intergalactic alliance that’s considered
necessary for the long term continued survival of both of our planets.
And
just imagine if they were to bring along with them the wisdom and knowledge
that would enable us to solve problems that for years, has baffled our most
prominent doctors, scientists and astrophysicists.
They
may even be able to show us how it's feasible for the concept of utopia and
humankind to co-exist. To live in a world devoid of war, famine, illness and
crime as perhaps they have already been doing for hundreds or thousands of
years.
And
so after many years preparing their finest crew together with a specially
elected body of alien beings chosen to represent the ethos of their distant
planet, they dispatch a spaceship on a treacherous mission travelling millions
of light years through deep space crossing distant galaxies, to visit our
earth.
Then
finally one day, after perhaps many months traveling in a means of
transportation and at a velocity we can’t even begin to understand, they enter
our earth’s atmosphere and with trepidation, make a slow and momentous decent
before finally touching down onto the surface of our earth.
But
then, wouldn’t it be a bloody shame if their spaceship arrived late one night
on a bank holiday weekend and instead of landing say, in Parliament Square or
on the lawn outside the White House, they landed instead in a typical English
town beset with bars, takeaways, racial tension and all the other lowbrow
cultural trappings that now mire this once great country.
Hypothetically
speaking then, let us assume that they land somewhere like Torquay, Plymouth or even Exeter where I currently work.
Can
we even begin to imagine the depravity; degradation and decline that would
welcome our visitors when they gather together for the first time on their
observation deck and take a look out through the window for the first
time? Just picture it … a dazzling array of pulsating blue Police lights
illuminating the hundreds of unruly drink and drug crazed revelers that can
pack one stretch of road at any one time.
Groups
of police officers, some carrying Tazer electroshock guns, CS gas spray and
batons, would be strategically positioned as they usually are at weekends, in
an authoritative exhibition of totalitarian might in opposition against the
unrelenting violence and lawlessness that spills out from our pubs and clubs
and onto our streets each and every weekend.
One
officer can be seen pulling back hard on a rope restraining a ferocious German
shepherd from leaping up and pulling away, eager to chase and bring someone
down using it’s jaws as it was trained to do. While high up, sophisticated and
powerful robotic cameras menacingly rotate, roaming up and down the street, searching.
Suddenly
outside a bar, a brawl erupts between two mixed gender groups and in typically
traditional British fashion, verbal profanities accompanied by a series of
goading and aggressive hand gestures are exchanged in a duel tribal display of
urban pre-battle foreplay.
A
women, barefoot with a tattoo inked across her lower back just above where her
thong cuts into her flab, curls her tongue and dispatches a thick green gob
planting it on the asphalt just forward of the enemy. With a fag in one hand and
a shoe in her other, she yells the familiar battle cry often heard in modern
day suburbia, “LET’S FUCKIN ‘AVE IT!” then dashes forward hammering the
pointed heel down hard into a man's head. The ensuing blood that flows from the
entry wound signals to all the others for battle to commence.
Within
seconds, strangers gather around like children at a playground fight and in all
their excitement, takeaway polystyrene containers spill food over the pavement
as onlookers hastily cram as much food as they can into their already gorged mouths.
Meanwhile,
those others who are so completely drunk that they can't even coordinate the
workings of their own legs, somehow manage to advance forward in unhurried
stages dragging one foot behind them at a time. And with their vacant eyes,
gaping mouths and heads listing over to one side, they resemble film extras
from a cult zombie flick.
Just
a little further down the road, a young woman squats in a shop doorway as
steaming urine cuts a jagged path across the sloped pavement and into the
gutter as her friend stands next to her clinging onto a wheelie bin with her
head lowered and waiting in anticipation for the inevitable stomach convulsions
that always precede the thick surge of rancid vomit that dispenses so
vehemently making that well defined splosh sound that we’re all familiar with
when somebody chunders.
By
this time . . . the UFO's alien mission commander will no doubt be scratching his
huge head and looking rather bewildered wondering just where the hell they have
landed. No doubt he’ll be asking himself whether his navigation officer made a
slight booboo when coordinating their flight path.
But
continuing with his assignment, I wonder how quickly his enthusiasm would
diminish when, with his entire crew observing through the window with bated
breath and with live coverage being transmitted back to his own planet, he
climbs slowly out through the departure hatch and as he cautiously descends the
exit ramp, he inadvertently steps on a portion of cheesy chips tossed aside
only moments earlier by a passing drunk. The ensuing skid snatches his legs
away quickly initiating an awkward looking backward flip and he frantically
reaches out with both hands to grab hold of anything he can in a desperate,
futile attempt to save himself from falling. But as he disappears over the
edge, a scream, stifled noticeably by his thick space-suit, can be heard
trailing behind as he plummets to the ground landing heavily with an
unforgiving thud and startling a young man squatting down just a few feet away
having a dump behind the ship’s landing gear.
Nearby,
un-phased by all this commotion, seagulls squabble viciously over a kebab
strewn over the road while the man who once owned it sleeps soundly across the
car bonnet where he fell.
If
then after seeing all of this, the alien ship’s commander then feels compelled
to run back into the spacecraft screaming, "Abort mission” and
blasting-off back into deep space, then in all honesty, could we really blame
him? This being the case, to lose the opportunity of benefiting from the
knowledge and experience of a race far more advanced and superior than
ours, would be nothing short of catastrophic.
Our
only slight hope for salvation would be if by some slim chance, just one of
their crew would notice amid this shameful exhibition of hedonism and social
decadence, a holidaying family of four who after an enjoyable evening out at
the theatre now find themselves, caught up in this hellish situation as they
make their way back to their hotel.
With
the parents having no option but to walk with their two young children through
this ominous gathering of human garbage, the children’s faces who only moments
earlier looked so joyful now look desperately frightened as mummy and daddy
lovingly and reassuringly lift and carry them, pulling them in tightly.
Having
noticed the children’s fear and witnessing the true extent of the parents alarm
and apprehension, perhaps only then would the aliens, who no doubt have
children of their own would then realize that not all people on earth are repugnant as it
first appears and they then mercifully choose to stay on this planet and help
us rather than flee wrongfully mistaking us to be a species unworthy of
salvation.
Perhaps
if within their already successfully proven agenda of race development and
survival this includes firstly a cull, a procedure we already use successfully
when our cows go mad, followed then by implementing a long term reproductive
program based on the contentious philosophy of eugenics, then personally,
speaking as a doorman, I have no problem with this whatsoever.
Renowned
physicist and award winning science writer John Gribbon, put the human race
into perspective using the following analogy. If you can imagine shrinking the
entire 4.5 billion year history of the earth, into a single 24 hour day period,
then dinosaurs wouldn’t show up until 11 o’clock at night and they would be
wiped out twenty minutes before midnight and get this! - humans wouldn’t appear
until just two seconds before midnight and all of recorded history . . . right
back to the pyramids, would take place in the last tenth of a second.
So
then, taking this into consideration, as a species still so young in terms of
evolutionary advancement, when you consider the enormity and seriousness of the
problems and the mess we have created for ourselves as a consequence of our
hedonistic, deviant lifestyles, I guess it’s safe to say we have pretty well
fudged things up already. Perhaps God’s biggest gaffe was wiring up the
circuitry in our brains too swiftly because as our brains evidently developed
and became larger and as we became more inquisitive, it didn’t take too long
before we climbed down from the trees, learned to walk upright and no doubt had
our first cave party.
A
graffiti artist is reputed to have once sprayed on a wall, ‘God is alive – but
working on a less ambitious project’ and who knows, perhaps this is the case.
But I suspect if the truth were known, God is gnashing his teeth for taking
that seventh day off to play golf instead of staying put and completing the job
efficiently.
ADDITIONAL NOTE:
A
study on the popular Caribbean island of St Kitts in which alcohol was given to
monkeys revealed startling similarities between the ways in which humans and
small primate react to alcohol.
The
study involving one thousand green Vervet monkeys showed that the vast majority
drank moderately by stealing alcoholic beverages from the thousands of
holidaymakers who visit the beach bars every day. Also, the monkeys preferred
to have their alcohol diluted with fruit juice and enjoy drinkng only in the
company of other monkeys who are also drinking (and never before lunch). Around
15% drank heavily and frequently, preferring their booze as strong as possible,
while roughly the same percentage either sustained or hardly drank at all. And
about 5 % turned out to be binge drinkers, knocking it back as fast as
possible, getting into fights and then passing out.
Tuesday, 6 December 2016
Monday, 5 December 2016
MISS XXXL AND HER £200 SHOES
Just
recently, I had reason to stop and ask a young woman for proof of her age
before I would allow her into the venue where I work as a doorman at weekends.
At
the time, storm clouds had been lashing it down for quite some time and doing a
blinding job too, flushing away the urine and chunder that trickled out from
shop doorways while nearby, un-suitably dressed night revellers skirmished for
cover like troops, tactically advancing in a hostile, built up area.

The young woman, who at first appeared
somewhat thickset as she approached from a distance but was in fact enormously
obese as she stood before me, looked utterly
miserable as the unremitting rain pummelled down intensely upon her generous
exterior. Trembling with cold, her drenched hair had separated into tufts that
stuck tight against her forehead then continued down slightly obscuring her
eyes and over her face where by this time, black eyeliner had inked thick
wavering trails down and over each of her cheeks joining together under her
chin forming a large globule, where it hung poised and ready to drip onto her
white tee-shirt.
She was visibly desperate to be allowed in
and I was thankful for her lack of complaint as it took me perhaps longer than
usual in the deficient light to read the small print on her driving licence. In
fact it was only when I stopped to take a sip of my coffee when her patience
expired and she let rip. ‘Fuckin ‘ell mate!’, she screamed at me, ‘I’m nineteen! . . . let me in will ya? I’m freezing an
gettin' fuckin soaked out ‘ere and I paid two hundred quid for these fuckin'
shoes and now they’re getting fuckin ruined! . . . fuckin let us in will ya!!!’
As it transpired, the young lady was indeed nearly
twenty years old and that's when it occurred to me how foolish I must have
been, to have even doubted for one
moment that she could possibly had been any younger?
Surely, it would require
at least eighteen years existing on pizzas, burgers and cake shop
lock-ins to actually balloon to such an
immense size in the first place. There was just no way she could have been so
fat and still been under eighteen years old.
I wondered however why she wore so little
clothes. With no coat for protection, she’d come out wearing just a white tee-shirt and a
pair of dark leggings not quite concealing a thong strap, while her stomach resembled a tsunami
of doughy flesh rolling out and then sort of flopping down and folding back in
under it's own dense mass of solidified industrial chip fat. Her entire midriff
was a repugnant exhibition of human grossness of the worst kind and I decided
to name her, 'Miss XXXL'.
I nodded her in and as she did, she nudged
me, engaging me to turn and glance just one more
time at her entire sodden wretchedness as she floundered through
the inner door and into the bar area where she paused momentarily, presumably
to look for her friends. Then, just as I was turning away, something prompted me to stop and look
back and when I did, I found myself transfixed, open mouthed and in
unmitigated awe, at the steam that was rising
upwards from off her back. Just like it does on horses.
By now, this brief encounter had stirred up an
extraordinary and curious fascination within me and I became mesmerised by her presence, like a
marine biologist might feel seeing
a Humpback Whale for the first time.
She was undoubtedly I felt, a worthy topic
for debate. Perfect subject matter either for an after dinner discussion or
just some lively banter with mates down the boozer over a couple of light ales.
Nonetheless, at that moment in time, the deeper I probed, the more of an enigma
Miss XXXL became. And I needed closure.
I’ve always been amazed how the laws of physics
make it achievable for the applied body mass and weight of an abnormally fat
woman wearing high shoes with pencil thin heels, to be supported and balanced
during the actual mechanics of walking. Surely in the case of Miss XXXL, the
heels should have snapped off when she first tried them on in the shop?
So when I researched deeper into this phenomenon I was
surprised to find that physicists had already beaten me to it. By using computations and theoretical
physics, they determined that a normal 110lb woman wearing stiletto high heels
exerts more pressure on the ground than a 6000lb elephant. This being so, what would they determine the psi of
concentrated pressure to be that emitted from the tiny surface areas of Miss
XXXL’s shoe heels? And furthermore, imagine the outcome had she for
some reason turned hostile knocking me to the ground and then jumping on me.
Based on the extraordinary physics
involved, the next time I see a fat
woman wearing high heels I'm going to feel
almost obliged to walk up to her and shake her hand, slap her on the back and
say 'Bloody well done, Miss!'
But without getting too
carried away into the realms of scientific investigation, I suppose the first thing that immediately
struck me about her, was how a woman like this could possibly
feel justified wearing what she did in a public domain? And why
would she choose to spend two hundred pounds on a pair of shoes? Isn’t this
just completely and utterly pointless . . . like furnishing an outside yard
toilet with flock wallpaper and deep pile carpet?
Another interesting thing I found out was that the
average increase in the protrusion of a woman’s buttocks is 25% when she wears
high heels. So why would any woman with a fat arse wish to embellish and draw
attention to an already existing blight?
I don't mean to sound spiteful and malicious in sharing
this
anecdote with you and I
apologize if I come across in this tone. I am merely expressing my honest
opinions by using words in the same cavalier manner as indeed Miss XXXL chose
to dress that very evening.
And anyway, It is often considered that a
hard hitting approach can often help raise awareness more speedily, in this
case, of the cultural dissimilarities that almost paradoxically co-exist on the
same social platform.
By observing and taking note of how other
people choose to dress and behave, we can perhaps benefit ourselves by
developing a far deeper awareness and understanding of how - the image a person
has of themselves - more often than not is nothing remotely like the image
other people see. Much the same as how we think we sound when we talk and then
we hear ourselves on a recording and think, 'Oh my God . . . Do I really sound
like that?'
Possibly the only real enjoyment I get in my capacity as
a doorman is in observing the individual and tribal social behaviour of night
revellers, particularly on the basis that - like
it or not, we are all primarily judged by others according to how we present
ourselves.
Presumably then it was this ideology that inspired the
quotation; ‘If you dress poorly people will notice the clothes, but if you
dress sharp, people will notice the person inside’.
Maybe if Miss XXXL had been familiar with this saying,
she could have saved herself two hundred quid and used the money to buy a
decent sized overcoat to cover herself up and still had enough money left for a
large kebab or two . . . or three . . .
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