16. Never mind ordinary victims – what about the rich & famous?

Some people do not understand contemporary priorities.

Frankly if I have to look at one more picture of a starving person when I could be looking at a weepy celebrity going on about how upset they are looking at a starving person, I’m going to get very  irritated. Isn’t it  much better to be able to focus on a nicely dressed, coiffure’d western woman who is thin from fad dieting than some skanker who is emaciated from lack of food or cholera? It’s just as bad when you consider racism. Frankly I’d far rather hear the latest story of eye-wateringly rich footballers calling each other names than ordinary day-to-day racism perpetrated against people who probably don’t do anything more interesting than try to survive on a minimum wage (which of course is different to a living wage – in which case could someone explain what ‘minimum’ means?)

I had to laugh at my daughter the other day when she complained about being teased because – whilst she appears to be white some kids at school have noticed that her mother is a ‘wog’. Poor silly fool. Who does she think she’s is?

Don’t get me started on child abuse. There are still bits and pieces leaking through about the victims of abuse when what is of real interest surely is who said what to whom at the BBC or via twitter and who is suing whom for what vast sums and which newspaper hates which T.V channel the most.

Why don’t ordinary victims just GET REAL. If they want the world to listen to them why don’t they sign up for Big Brother or I’m a Celebrity Look At Me, Look At Me, Look At Me.

Some groups and institutions have, fortunately, got it dead-on. Take government posturing on prisoners voting rights for example. Some folk think the real issue is that huge swathes of the country are more interested in voting for the latest Karaoke act on X Factor than their political representative - pshaaaw. Well done D.C. I say and hurrah. Also thank heavens (maybe literally) for the Church of England. What a scorcher that was. I was sweating I can tell you. There was some danger that their historical (founding?) principal of misogyny might be about to take a back seat to real issues like physical and spiritual poverty but by a very narrow majority they saved us from that.

Alleluia.

Next week – perhaps - some hints on how to make Monopoly more interesting.

15. I know what you did last weekend… & a couple thousand stalkers!

OK – this week’s blog is – what-I-did-last-weekend (very facebook – get me)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXyyFipQyQI

PLUS the winners of the fabulantastic 1^st International Euphemism Competition (run on this blog)

In line with the competition rules (see Blog 13) all the winners have been chosen on the basis of nepotism i.e. they are either people I like, people who owe me biscuits, people to whom I owe favours, folk I like. At no point was the quality of the entry an issue – just to be clear…

In first First Place is 3-D artist and fantastic Performance Poet (my fave piece remains ‘Bin Laden shops in Asda’) Wajid Hussein. Wajid’s euphemism relates to the term 'Randomly Selected' (in relation to searches before flying) = ‘HIM’. It makes me all sentimental as it reminds me of the days when my lot filled this slot – ah the good old days.

In second First Place is Oonagh Joslin (poet, flash fiction champ, editor of Everyday Poets, baker of the finest roast hazelnut shortbread ever) Oonagh’s euphemism relates to the competition reference to a ‘Fair Judge’ = ‘dark haired, dark eyed, dark skinned, ex solicitor, solicits 'takers' for a book she can't give away and a cupboard full of out of date biscuits’.

In first Second Place is John Martin Johnson T.V. screen/script writer with such series as Call the Midwife under his belt who is now doing an MA in screen writing at Goldsmith’s. He did not indicate if this was his own euphemism – he merely says it’s his favourite – but I don’t care. ‘Hard working families up and down this country’ = ‘People I've never met’

And finally – in second Second Place is Dan Mc Cole creative, Limerick wizard and fellow outsider, ‘It's been suggested I do a stand-up comedy course’ = ‘people at work are fed up with me being rude’.

N.B.

Anyone claiming that these were – in fact – the ONLY entries will be sued!

14.Death, Existence, Futility, Human Arrogance & the Universe

This week – a short poem about death, existence, futility, human arrogance, the pointlessness of vanity, war, greed etc and so on and so forth…

I once read that an introduction to a poem should not be longer than the piece itself. The great thing about a blog is that you can ignore the arbitrary rules made up by other people; you might bang on for pages about a piece that is only a few lines. Also you can take very large subjects and hammer them in thirteen words as in this piece called Clock or you can take well worn subjects like dragons or contemporary relationships and ramble on for hundreds of thousands of words like I do in my novels and no one can slap you on the back of the hand with a ruler (like my piano teacher used to do - not for rambling obviously but for playing really badly and not practising).

Clock

No tic will ever return

The toc will burn

Only the sigh

Lingers

(by amanda baker 2012)

As for last week’s euphemism competition, in honour of the British Honours system I think I’ll just ask my friends who would like to win and who is most likely to take me out for coffee and a bun and post the winner next week. I think that’s best.

2012 International Euphemism Competition

13. As Promised…

The 1st International Euphemism Competition (run by this blog)!

To make up for the gloom of last week’s blog and as a cheerful counterbalance to the US elections here it is. *Bleaders are invited to submit for my perusal, themed euphemisms which will be judged randomly and when I can get round to it. The best one or two or however many I feel like, will be awarded fabulous prizes. The euphemism could be political – like the two referred to in last week’s blog. It could be a Spoophemism – something that if we weren’t polite we would just call a lie e.g. the claim that this would be ‘the greenest government ever’ = actually not green at all! They could be euph-homme-isms e.g. –‘T.V. chef’ = bloke who can’t cook without an audience. They could be eu-femme-isms e.g.  ‘Witch’ = smart woman from the Middle Ages. The main thing is they should have a slightly cynical cutting edge to suit the current climate; humour would be good but is not essential. They will probably not be actual euphemisms in the actual sense of the actual word but euphemistic euphemisms so to speak. You could choose a social euphemism e.g. ‘credit’ = debt. It could be an artistic euphemism ‘brave theatre production’ = you’ll be crying with boredom by the interval - and so on and so forth and so on.

The Rules

In the interests of realism, I reserve the right to choose people I favour or people who are reassuringly like me (so mixed race ex lawyers, ex councillors, ex arts officers, ex waitress author poets stand a good chance). The closing date will be a moveable feast but possible about 10 days after the posting of this blog. Winner or winners will have their euphemism in a future blog credited with their name and any basic personal info they provide and that I deem suitable. I may or may not read all the entries and if there are no entries I may make them up – along with the entrants. Winner or winners will receive one of my books (see right hand blog column). If the prospect of that prize reduces any real winner to tears an alternative will be offered in the form of a digestive biscuit with the winner’s name written on in coloured icing sugar (depending what I have in the cupboards) and only if the winner has a reasonably short name. The biscuit will be posted to the winner and I take no responsibility for the state of the bicky on arrival – or non-arrival.

The competition is free to enter (I’ve no idea how to attach PayPal to a blog) but anyone entering – even if I don’t read their entry - should consider themselves beholden to me for at least a cup of tea at some unspecified time in the future.

Euphemisms should be mailed to the e-mail attached to this blog in any font you like and any language (but if it’s not in English you won’t win).

(closed)

*Blog Reader

12. Armageddon will not be televised...

I enjoy a pacey, paranoid action movie as much as the next person.  Give me Bruce Willis saving the world at the last second with a self-satisfied smile any day over another Jane Austen twee fest. Show me silver screen worlds exploding in Technicolor, tidal waves engulfing everyone apart from the main character plus love interest, asteroids missing the earth with only meters to spare, sudden freezes that only the good-looking survive. Dish up alien invasions from creatures able to cross galaxies but unable to anticipate a sucker punch from Will Smith. Tremendous. In reality the four horsemen of the apocalypse aren’t galloping out of the gates of hell on their white, red, black and pale green stallions, they are plodding about even now on knackered old nags in a dull, bored way because frankly they’ve nothing to do.

Is it too extreme to suggest that the woman parading down the high street with the $1,000+ designer handbag may as well be walking round with a sick child under her arm? Might the guy driving the sports car fuelled from products that could have fed people, just as well line up twenty sub-Saharan villagers and run them over? Ok, maybe that’s a bit dramatic for this blog space especially when theorising that Armageddon could be a surprisingly limp affair. All I’m suggesting is that like a Hollywood blockbuster, the event in all probability will not live up to the testosterone-charged trailers. It may just be a metaphorical dismal couple of hours in the dark where nothing significant happens and then it’s over.

It’s not that designer stuff is intrinsically bad nor is the fast car or any number of things that we don’t need; it’s just that life has a very simple equation to offer us, one we are constantly told is more complicated than it is. If some folk have too much others get too little. Let me say that again – if some folk have too much other folk have too little. There is no getting round it or under it. There is a connection between some people owning three cars and living in mansions and other people living on less than a dollar a day. Why does saying that feel like claiming moon is made of cheese? Perhaps because vast amounts of energy and money go into maintaining the more comfortable collective falsehood that there is no direct connection. We believe the world somehow got so complicated that 2+2 no longer = 4. But is it an unfathomable mystery when desperate farmers grow cash crops such as tobacco, commercial flowers and coffee instead of food for their families?          

During the Blair affair with Britain we got used to the phrase “difficult decisions” which was euphemism for ‘the wrong decisions made in the face of the absolutely bloody obvious’. Though he was not the first to employ this euphemism it settled, through persistent use, as a staple of political rhetoric. In the same way that Cameron’s “I’m absolutely clear on this” as double speak for ‘this may sound like bollocks but I’m saying it anyway’ is bedding in. The idea that things are way more complicated than logic or common sense suggest is a notion we are force fed to steer us away from seeing that the emperor is wearing no clothes. The brother in arms of this falsehood is that someone who makes ‘difficult decisions’ is off the moral hook.  Sister to these two bastards is the notion that ‘there isn’t anything we can do’.

Let us deal with the first tired old horseman representing conquest and social inequality. Has there ever been an era where inequality has, in the light of our knowledge and technical skills, been more inexcusable? What I’m saying is that if our Victorian forebears could see that it was wrong, it’s got to be more wrong now. Close to home, how many of us have considered, when choosing a bank or law firm, checking what proportion of senior employees are state educated before giving them our business? I’m state educated and I haven’t.

As for war – there are more conflicts raging round the world than you could shake a stick at – using more sophisticated technology and on-going for reasons that defy not just ethical considerations but basic common sense. Death and disease are bestial bedfellows and never more so because we know so much about preventing and avoiding much of the disease that leads to premature death. Do you need to say more than that we have Viagra but no cure for Aids? The new strains of deadly malaria were upon us without adequate medicines when we’d known for years that they were heading our way or at least their way. Now that aesthetic (cosmetic) surgery is spoken of as if it’s as normal as going to the dentist, it seems outlandish to ask why personal or public resources are being spent in this direction when children die in obscene numbers for want of a diarrhoea tablet costing pence. When I was last asked my opinion on animal testing I had to say I might be more positive about it if the medicines and knowledge we already have were being used to their full effect and for everyone.

Stuff Botox and ‘shopping therapy’, if you want to feel better about the life you have, spend a week in a refugee camp and it’s likely you will have a very rosy view of your existence when you return. You may even have younger looking skin; certainly you might lose some weight. Meanwhile the bees are not pollinating properly, the ice caps are reducing, the coral reefs are dying and a huge percentage of preventable western disease is the result of affluence. The system we idolatrise is based on shoring up this monstrosity. It is ultimate pyramid selling and the pyramid is one of humanity. 

"This is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper"

T.S.Eliot (The Hollow Men)

 The four horsemen of the apocalypse returned to their hellish caverns a long time ago and are playing scrabble to pass the time. We have unemployed them.  The world is already the cancer patient in denial still puffing away on that cigarette. Armageddon will not be televised because it will not happen in a sudden identifiable place or time, it will not be dramatic and it will not star Bruce Willis. It is happening now in a bland, slow, miserable way. If you stand still you can sometimes smell it in the air, sense the paradigm shift, feel it like a depression.  

At some point we will become aware that we recognise the plot and the narrative is near the end but there will be no one around to see the credits roll.

A Draft from the Attic...

In the interests of Randomness

A Draft from the Attic

For my 40th birthday I ran away from home to the middle of not quite nowhere.

Leaving the official writing project anaemic and gasping for oxygen, I scribbled an idea and sample scene for a BBC sitcom writing competition I’d found on the net. Four months later and I was down in London with 7 writers who also crept past the other 4.500 entrants and snuck through short listing. The reward was 5 days at licence payers’ expense discussing comedy writing with BBC comedy glitterati  in-between breakfast, coffee, lunch, coffee, tea etc etc etc.

Apart from the deliciously uncomfortable guilty deceit of pretending to be interested in T.V. (see blog 6.) it was a really lovely holiday which I obviously deserved.

Fast forward to now and a fried computer. Rifling through my IT ‘attic’ i.e. the files that survived on the hard drive, I came across a bit of a draft of one of the scenes from that project. It’s not in telly script format but in the interests of randomness, which is ever a good cause, here is a bit of that draft from my attic…

circa 2004/5

House Normal

CATH.        John I think you are overestimating the importance of what you define as normal.

JOHN.         Am I? How many of your clients have a mother who takes her dead husband’s ashes on church picnics? How many of your clients have a white brother who thinks he’s Bob Marley and a black sister with an Anne Widdecombe complex?

CATH.        Okaaaay – what about work?

JOHN.         Better. (he smiles in what he hopes is a modest way) Did I tell you about the management training course?

CATH.        Yes – that’s really great (cath yawns)

JOHN.         New opportunities, prospects, horizons, goals…

CATH.        (impatiently) Yes, yes, yes, and Bob? (john is momentarily lost) …the guy you share a work room with?

JOHN.         Yeah, yeah.

CATH.        Well last time you were here I suggested you listen more carefully when Bob was stretching his mind and try to understand him. You had said that his ideas got your brain into “spaghetti”.

JOHN.         Did I?

CATH.        (referring to notes) Yeeees.

JOHN.         Oh right yeah.

CATH.        So?

JOHN.         So I tried.

 (A SWITCH BACK TO JOHN’S OFFICE. JOHN IS TRYING TO CONCENTRATE ON WHAT BOB IS SAYING. BOB IS IN FULL FLOW)

BOB.           …it’s really straight forward. In ‘The Lord of the Rings’ the ring represents the anus and or vagina. The whole purpose of casting the ring into the fires of Mount Doom is to obliterate degrading, base physical sexual desire. The towers equal erections – yeah? You know if people would just accept that all art and by definition therefore life is about the desire to have penetrative sex followed by death the world would be a less confusing place. (once again john can think of nothing to say)

 (CUT BACK TO CATH’S CONSULTING ROOM)

CATH.        Wow – I’d really like to meet Bob.

JOHN.         You see that’s my point.

CATH.        What is?

JOHN.         Bob wouldn’t come here because he thinks he’s normal.

CATH.        We’re going to have to deal with this normality obsession John.

JOHN.         Yes that’s what I -

CATH.        Time up.

JOHN.         Sorry?

CATH.        Time’s up. I’ve got two OCDs and a Bradd Pitt fixation to get through before five. See you in two weeks. (John looks as if he had something significant to add but thinks better of it and leaves)

My One Night Stand with the Ghost of Bill Farrell

Whitenigahs

If a ghost is a manifestation of a restless spirit then I’d bet my last sonnet that Spennymoor Settlement is haunted by the ghost of Bill Farrell.

Toynbee Hall, earliest and most famous establishment of the Settlement Movement was inaugurated in 1883. The idea was simply that forward thinking men and women of talent, altruism and education should,

“…share themselves with their neighbours”

                                                Cannon Samuel Barnett 1883

As parts of the North East fell into the mire of mass unemployment, exacerbated by the 1926 general strike, a very special man found his way to S.W. Durham. That man was to do much more than share himself – he gave over the vast proportion of his energy, creativity, intellect and working life to a small industrial area called Spennymoor. William Farrell established a Settlement in April 1931 that exists today primarily in the guise of a modest amateur theatre but which gave birth to much of the artistic and creative brilliance which is recognised internationally as emanating from that era and area vis-à-vis the Pitman Painters.

With what we in poetry circles refer to as an ‘intimate’ audience, I found myself performing in that history-weighted venue wondering a little nervously what Mr Farrell might have made  of a mixed race woman entertaining with comedy performance poetry. Ever the innovator, broad minded and egalitarian, I can only surmise his welcome would have been warm and encouraging.

Certainly my father, had there been a Settlement to attend and a figure like Bill Farrell to encourage him, might have fared better in a world of rigid strata which was the post war, pre flower power England. Fourth son of a foundry man who suffered debilitating workplace injuries, my father was in many respects the epitome of a Whitenigah. Viewing him posthumously and with adult eyes, I no longer find it strange that a white working class boy, who may never have spoken to a black person, should fall for my mother – a black immigrant from the colonies – different from him in every conceivable way – even down to class and education. My mother was educated at a colonial girls’ school where only the King’s English was spoken. I suspect it may partly have been her otherness that drew him. If you feel rejected or an outsider in what is supposed to be your own community, isn’t it easier to be a genuine outsider in someone else’s? Though he had a couple of very close friends from his boyhood, my father was never happier than in the company of my step-grandfather who was from St Kits. He was completely content and at ease with my grandmother’s large social circle from Guyana, Trinidad, Tobago and Jamaica. He danced to Reggae, drank rum and ate black eye peas ‘n rice with fried chicken as if he too was a descendant of slaves.  At his request, his ashes were scattered over Kaieteur Falls.

Pivotal in his life was something which happened at a tender age. Despite passing the infamous 11+ exam with flying colours, he failed the nastier and less official social test. Having been denied a place at grammar school by his social betters, his natural intellect was forever frustrated. If only my father had met a Bill Farrell – someone who would have looked beyond his background and the state of his shoes.

Although from the intelligentsia, Bill Farrell motivated the Whitenigahs of S.W Durham and I was fortunate enough for one night to have my mug shot on a poster with Arnold Hadwin’s Settlement motif depicting the masks carved by the artist and sculptor Tisa Hess.

In its heyday, Spennymoor Settlement provided an educational and creative outlet for adults, developmental play for children and hope for the future. Looking through my local Adult Education leaflet recently, I noted that even if there had been a course I fancied there were none I could afford; depressingly there was also an obvious grammatical error on the first page.

I find it hard to believe if my father were alive today that he wouldn’t have benefited from a Settlement setup. Much that culture has to offer now seems derivative to the point of dizzying nausea and the most enduring thing the current education system is giving many youngsters is debt.