Merry Non-Descript Religious Festival

I did promise a horoscope in this post, but I’ll leave it until later. There are more pressing matters at hand, namely, Christmas.

Enough people hate Christmas that I would be doing no one a favour by adding my own cynical and probably hastily concocted rant to the orgy of writing that has already been done on the subject. It would be hard to parallel the spleen-venting exhibited by Will Self in “Grumpy Old Men”, with words along the lines of: stuffing yourself to the point of death, toppling over while emitting a burst of flatulence and lying there with your slippered feet twitching in the fetid air. So let’s take a different tack, as a homesick sailor with a minor cannonball wound in his right side might say.

We all know the story of Christmas and the nativity, or we think we do. But in a triumph of investigative journalism, I have uncovered a more accurate version of events. Caution: This is heavily blasphemous, and is intended in jest. Religious folk of sensitive sensibilities press "Back" now.

The Story of the Nativity
As recounted by Jesus Christ, Superstar, to Martin Bashar, with their heads tipped at a slightly doleful 45 degree angle:

Some time ago, there was a woman called Mary, who took pride in the trimming of her privet hedge, loyally devoting her time between chores and trips to the Nazareth branch of Homebase to the leading of a fulfilling and pious life, austere but faithful, moral and humble. One time she had scarcely unloaded the shopping onto the kitchen floor, when out of the corner of her eye, that tell-tale red light from the answer machine caught her hypnotically. Her first ever message. She had often looked at the machine in the past, puzzled, musing on how great it would be if someone would invent the telephone so that the answer machine could finally have a use. But here, paradoxically, that red glinting light betrayed that some great event had unfolded.

Gingerly, she tiptoed over the strewn shopping bags and pressed the dust-covered button of the machine. It was the Angel Gabriel, and he told unto her that she would give birth to a beautiful bouncing baby that was the son of the Holy Bearded One, without having ever bumped uglies, and to fear not, for Joseph her husband would also be informed, so that he would not have to send an inept Relationship Detective stalking after her, culminating in the usual guilty verdict and the inevitable dispatching of a sniper in her direction as was fashionable at the time. Mary was much shocked by the news, as it would mean having to give up smoking, but she conceded that perhaps an event of this scale was more important than fulfilling the daily nicotine high. In any case, a shepherd wandering about the hills had discovered a substance secreted by sheep on their point of climax that turned out to be a suitable substitute for nicotine. It’s lonely in them hills.

At this point, the Israeli government, which presided over Nazareth and other nearby towns in its ‘territory’, ordered that families return to the town of the bread-winners birth to pay taxes to that most ordered and merciful government which had looked after their interests with such gusto and with only a minimum of artillery fire. In one of those anomalies caused by intense bureaucracy and bloody-mindedness, the town of Nazareth was under curfew, with soldiers shooting people indulging in the wicked activity of transport. Thus people had to make their way under cover of stealth to their birth-towns to pay their taxes to said government and avoid the ritual punishment of dunking for being in arrears. The journey was only 70 miles, but as their donkey did not have an Israeli number plate, they were stopped at several checkpoints, where they had to plead and perform small dances. To make matters worse, they were further delayed when their donkey broke an axle, and they had to be taken onward by a friendly passing taxi driver – “I wouldn’t normally, but as you’re pregnant and, well, it is Christmas…”

When they got to the outskirts of Bethlehem, Joseph’s place of birth, they found a group of power-hungry soldiers who were barely out of their cots jeering and poking their gun barrels at the hapless taxi driver, refusing to let them through. An argument ensued in which shots were fired, but luckily there were only superficial injuries. In time, and after serious bribery, they were allowed on their way, by which point Mary was heavily in labour. They arrived in Bethlehem to the sound of heavy shelling. The IDF was midway through an operation to clear the area of militants, later declaring the mission successful after they announced the killing of the ring-leader, a four year-old girl, and her second-in-command, a blind orphan. Every hotel that the taxi went to was full of journalists from BBC News 24, Sky and Al Jazeera, and so in desperation they retired to a barn after evicting the poultry which provided target practice for the assembled soldiers.

The virgin birth, like many events supposedly ordained from the heavens - such as the horrific earthquake in 18th century Lisbon, tsunamis that drown hundreds of thousands and cataclysmic volcanic eruptions in Indonesia that cause global weather effects that persist for years - was not entirely palatable in the aesthetic sense. Now, audiences at this time had not yet been inured to scenes of graphic gore by such events as the Alien Trilogy, The Seven Years War or various Japanese gameshows as over-dubbed by a mirthful and slightly-too-nonchalant Chris Tarrant, so the outright horror provoked shock in the assembled. Accordingly, one of the onlookers exclaimed, “Jesus Christ!” as the vast tangle of limbs, cords and fluids that, like most child-births, could well have been coloured by a painter vomiting onto an easel. That name stuck for the baby, and many historians have recounted how it was fortunate how the exclamation was not, “Gordon Bennett!”, or “Janet Street-Fucking-Porter!”. Indeed, it would have brought the vast majority of Sunday school goers to tears that no amount of scones could subdue.

Meanwhile, three wise men decided to follow an especially bright star in the sky that was said to lead to Bethlehem and the virgin birth. As most people know, many stars rise and set like the sun, and this star was no exception. Every night it would rise in the east, travel slowly in a grand arc to the west, while the hapless wise men followed its course on land in a large curve westwards. As the star set, they would resolve to carry on following the next night, after catching up on much needed sleep during the day. The next morning, they would head back east to where the star was rising and start again. The first wise man died of starvation after lying crippled for four days after a particularly vicious happy-slapping, and the second was eaten by a puma around day ten. The third wise man, Caspar, who later took on a Hollywood role portraying a friendly ghost that did not scare children into shitting themselves, took up the gifts of the other two, and wisely decided around day fifteen to use his SatNav instead, reaching Bethlehem by the evening.

The baby was presented with the three great gifts which, apart from the gold, make little sense in today’s materialistic, crass and immoral word devoid of religion and filled only with cynical half-wits like myself. So it came to pass that a lowly barn-baby made his name famous, for his charming chivalry, selflessness, good humour and links with the music industry.

A Short Piece of the Interview Transcript:
As recovered from a bin in Wood Lane by a tramp trying to retrieve a piece of falafel, still moist to the touch but with spicy malingerings reminiscent of his own spell as a Foreign Correspondent in the Middle East:

Bashar: What were your first thoughts as you emerged into that barn?
JC, Superstar: I did wonder how someone as supposedly important as myself could have ended up being born in such a place. Even under a pool table would have been more dignified. A quick look in the Yellow Pages after all the crowds had gone revealed plenty of more luxury places, such as the Hilton on Al Quds Street, and the tastefully redecorated Nativity Hostel only 200 yards from the barn. It was the gifts I was more disgusted with, in truth, the gold and frankincense weren’t even chewable. And the model of the Mir space station was downright unrealistic, it never had solar refractors that shape.
Bashar: When did you first suspect that you were the son of God?
Superstar: My religious education class at primary school was the first inkling. I saw a stylised picture of myself being born in that barn. That, and the incident when I turned our Special Needs teacher into a toad.
Bashar: That business with the loaves and fishes, it was reported widely on Sky News at the time, how much of that was fabrication?
Superstar: It was a little exaggerated by the press, but they had this sale of bread on in Lidl’s, plus I had some leftover fish in the freezer from that fishing trip with Moses in the Autumn. I long to do some proper fishing though. I do feel his method of splitting the lake down the middle causing the fish to instantaneously drop dead onto the lake-bed took some of the joy out of it.
Bashar: You realise what you just said is not historically accurate?
Superstar: How can you call someone the son of God and then deprive him of the ability to practice Time Travel?
Bashar: Fair enough. What would you say were the most challenging aspects of your position in society?
Superstar: The paparazzi are a constant headache. Not one bloody issue of Heat seems to go by without a picture of me picking up some milk from Costcutter, and some slanderous, venomous caption about my alleged tight-fistedness. Being descended from a deity doesn’t mean you can’t be thrifty.
Bashar: Fair point, can I have your autograph?
At this point, two laser beams shoot from Superstar’s eyes and through Marty’s hand, causing it to melt as his clipboard, now revealed to be hosting an obscene doodle, clatters to the ground. The interviewer collapses onto the floor writhing in agony. The interview is brought to a quick close as the Health & Safety Executive are called in to mull over the accuracy of the ‘Interviewing JC Risk Register’ that had been submitted prior to filming.

An un-edited version of this interview will be shown on Bravo in the Spring. JC’s new book, My Father’s Stepladder – Prying Insights Into What Makes God Tick, will be available from all good bookshops on January 14th. He can also be seen presenting Have I Got News For You on February 7th.

Merry Christmas.

The Telescope’s Lure

If I were feeling charitable, I would quietly add astrology to the ever-lengthening list of “Things I Don’t Get”, along with cigars, India, contraflow bus lanes and God and leave it at that. But this being a seasonal time of year (whatever that means), I am spoiling for a fight with this ropey and imbecilic concept.

Way back in 3000 B.B. (before broadband), several people of the notably underemployed variety looked up at the stars and then looked back down at their filth-stained landscape - full of people lancing each other’s boils and murdering cats, dropping their babies off ledges while grasping for the gin bottle and writing words with too many ‘e’s at the end, throwing excrement at the blasphemous in the stocks and generally wallowing in a steaming pit of bilious fluids and eking out an existence straddling the bread line all the while trying to maintain some kind of pious dignity because their creator and tormentor must be appeased or else they’re fucked and will be sent to a place in which worms gnaw at your eye and there ain’t a great deal you can do about it – and they thought, the sky must hold the answers, because they sure as hell aren’t down here. “In the stars, people!”, they said. “Up there your fate is decided, not down here. Even yours you lecherous kerb-suckler” (kerb suckling being an important profession at the time).

So we see the dubious beginnings of the ‘science’ (Kiran quickly swallows down momentary rising of phlegm) of astrology. A while ago, my mum came back from abroad brandishing a piece of paper in which my fate had been decided by an astrologer or snake-oil salesman, based only on the time and date of my birth. I have been here before. I have been told to sign my name doubling my first initial to “KK” as this would rectify an imbalance in the Numbers of Purity or whatever and redeem my sinful life into a new-born existence inextricably linked to the planets. No matter that it left me one ‘K’ short of a vicious sect of yore. Anyway, said bit of paper was interesting as it charted my life and attributes from birth, and therefore gave me over two and a half decades of history. Apart from discerning that I was male (and I think they had to be told that first off) and that I am argumentative, and that I was likely to have a serious disease when I was three years old, it was pretty bollocks. And it also predicted a serious disease at three-year intervals which miraculously failed to transpire. Though luckily this life-map was wrenched from my mother’s hands, when it turned out she had got the year of my birth wrong, negating the whole thing even in her eyes. Well who keeps count anyway. I haven’t since I turned 26 or 40 or so.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t actually find astrology a physically dangerous belief in the same way that religion or homeopathy are, it’s just that there is something vaguely unsettling about it. All those charts, all that smoke and mirrors, knowing that in tandem with the work of astronomers, that there is also astrology, a parasitical barnacle appended to the astronomer’s arse, mimicking their actions but then running off on a tangent to dupe the weak-willed into subservience. It is about as appetising as a televised circumcision. If astronomy explains the walls and the ceilings that provide your shelter, and the cooker that kills the bacteria in your food, then astrology is a drunken cousin who comes down the chimney and shits in your soup. Or perhaps I’m getting confused with Santa.

Anyway, what is great is that, once again, science dicks on superstition. People are said to be born under a constellation, meaning that the Sun appears to be residing within a certain constellation at the time of birth. The Sun traverses the entire apparent sphere of the sky in a year, and sits in each of the zodiac constellations for about a twelfth of that time. The thing is:

a) The constellations aren’t even approximately the same size, so these zodiac periods all differ wildly in size. The sun is only in Scorpio for one week of the year, not a month.
b) Due to something called ‘precession of the equinoxes’, 86% of people have the wrong star sign (i.e. mostly they are one sign out, though a few are two signs out). The whole map has ‘shifted’ since the Plague Era when people drew up their maps and charts.

On the last point, this is due to the tilt of the Earth and the way in which the squint axis (which causes the seasons) itself rotates very slowly relative to the Sun over a period of 25,765 years changing the star we designate the pole star every few thousand years and realigning the position of the celestial sphere in relation to the ecli… la, la, la, yawn…

Once upon a time there was a little advertising executive called Samantha who was thirty years old and lived on her own in a cottage made of marshmallow imbued with asbestos so that the gentle fire in the hearth did not cause any undue damage and she had an ickle fluffy rabbit that she loved called Monsieur Fluffboots. Of course Samantha lived in a wonderful land of milk and honey called Rainbow Land which is situated in north-eastern France and can only be reached by rubbing your left-shoulder against the Rainbow Tree which can be found thanks to a yellowing treasure map left in a Starbucks in Reims by a group of dispirited pirates way back when.
Samantha loved her ickle fluffy rabbit and she used to talk to it constantly, muzzling her face in its fur and tickling it and giving it anything it so desired, as long as that was talcum powder or brandy.
One day ickle wickle Monsieur Fluffboots got very sick and sneezed great swedges of mucus onto the walls of his hutch and Samantha got very upset so she went and told her therapist who told her to get a fucking grip because it is only a fucking rabbit. This made things alright for a while, the sensitive charm of her therapist allowing her to get through the difficult days ahead. But Monsieur Fluffboots got more and more ill, refusing his brandy and insisting on gin and tonic, which was very expensive as it had to be imported from outside Rainbow Land, and whole lorry loads had to be reversed backwards and forwards so that their left sides rubbed against the Rainbow Tree so they could gain access to the kingdom of the Rainbows.
As the days wore on, Monsieur Fluffboots left eye swelled and turned blue and then at last burst, causing him to kick his ickle fluffy bucket and go up to the fluffy pink clouds and harp-playing rabbits and marsupials of wabbit-heaven. Awwww.
This made Samantha sick with rage at the injustice and she climbed up a nearby tree never to set foot on the hallowed turf of Rainbow Land again. There she would sit for hours, weeping, eating marshmallows, and hugging the steadfast ready-embracing tree that had offered her comfort in her time of woe.
Samantha’s mother was a kindly old woman who was able to bake pies that steamed satisfyingly and brought all the ickle squirrels and robin red-breasts to the ends of tree limbs whistling happy tunes whenever her and her pies were there. Samantha’s favourite was a marmalade pie, but day after day her mother left them on the ground next to the trunk and still the little advertising executive never touched them. One day, several years later, the ten-foot high rotting mass of decaying marmalade and pastry became too much for Samantha and she jumped into the middle of it and smothered herself all over and it all got a little pornographic and this is the point when you always wake up isn’t it…

…Welcome back. As I was saying, this slow movement of the ecliptic (the path along which the Sun appears to move) means that if you think you are an Aquarius, you are probably really a Capricorn. And just to really mess things up, a thirteenth constellation has hijacked part of the zodiac. It is called Ophiuchus, and is slotted awkwardly between Scorpio and Sagittarius like a bald-headed alcoholic miraculously appearing in your tourist snap of the Winston Churchill statue in Parliament Square. So if you were born in late November, chances are you are actually Ophiuchus (pronounce it “Oh fuck us”, it’s close enough), the Serpent Bearer, which means you are great at handling feathered boas and the like. Unless by ‘bearing’, they mean it in the ‘child-bearing’ sense, in which case, lucky you, you are going to be giving birth to a snake at some point. I imagine that is even more upsetting if you are male.

There then, is my guide to astrology and its merits. “But it’s only just a piece of fun”, I hear you say (I do believe in telepathy), and it’s Christmas, think of the children.
All valid points. Which is why in the next post, you will get your very own real horoscope, courtesy of my alter-ego, El Keranu, who likes incense and tie-dye clothing and acupuncture and alchemy and the good word of the Bible and the mystical flowings of ying and yang and those zen gardens that have a small rake and a tiny sand pit too small to drown even a stunted toddler in. Until then…

The Reflourishing Act and The King Salmon

Ever so often, from behind the miraculous Cabinet Of The Future that I bought in a car boot sale in Yoker, back when such events weren’t hijacked by skag addicts toting skips of stripped-out copper piping for paying for that bloodshot habit, I find an article from the future. I have kept this mostly to myself, as releasing such information generally plays havoc with bookmakers, who have a nasty habit of setting about your knees with crow-bars, and also, frankly, because I am evil. But here I thought I would share one such article, from a local newspaper about 20 years hence:

EVENING CHIMES, 3 July 2027,
Glasgow, People’s Democratic Republic of Scotland.

Our Illustrious Leader, King Lexus Salmon, decreed a year ago this day the commencement of the 2026 Reflourishing Act, that we may all in the near future revel in the beauty that has become of our fair city in the years since independence. It is the duty of this esteemed organ, which is in no way affiliated or steered by Our Illustrious Leader or Our Highly Esteemed Government, peace be upon them, to detail the ways in which every Scot’s life, be they man, woman, child or botch-job post-op hermaphrodite, has been enriched by our Leader’s policy founded on the principles of love, beauty and freedom.

Already, the impact of the Tartan Army’s invasion of North and South Korea five years ago has meant the disabling and dismantling of their ship-building industry, meaning the re-opening of yards up and down the Clyde. Happy workers could be seen hobbling with mirthful delight etched upon their faces, meatball tins in hand, apprentice workers shirking off playful cuffs to the ear from their elders. The ripping up of tarmac has continued unabated, with rail-layers working around the clock to re-instate the tram lines torn up decades before by Folk from the Labour Side.

With the oil crises precipitated by the Iran War, the Venezuela “Police Action”, and the 2nd American Civil War which has resulted in Bush gaining an unprecedented sixth term in what is now termed the United States of Florida, King Lexus Salmon was quick to defend Scotland’s policy of shunning oil. “We have seen, in our lifetimes, the horror, hatred and sheer belligerence resulting from this little black substance which, truth be told, doesn’t even taste that good. Except the North Sea variety of course”, several people were seen to swoon at this oratory genius, theatrically pressing hand-back to forehead as they went under, “The time has come to look forward!” he went on, bellowing at the fire afore, “Trams! These are the vehicles of the future”. No sooner had these words been uttered, than these green and orange contraptions were wheeling about the roads, though a manufacturing fault meant that within a day the vast majority had piled up in depots and route-ends, reverse gears having been mistakenly omitted. This was palmed off eloquently by the administration as a minor hitch, and “A price worth paying for progress”.

Those cynics who dubbed the “Let Glasgow Reflourish” campaign “The Great Leap Backward” are starting to eat their words, watching with awe as thousands take to the motorways with their jack-hammers, breaking up the tarmac before the stone-masons cart in their quarried sandstone to once again thrust their solid tenement edifices skyward. Progress comes at a cost, of course, and a dubious decision was made not to close the roads before their destruction, “Can you imagine the carnage? All of Scotland gridlocked! We will close the roads when there is no road left to close”, Transport Minister Scott Raille was quoted as saying while striding to his waiting tram, before lifting a briefcase in front of his face and punching a photographer. Meanwhile, several drivers were admitted to the city’s hospitals with injuries after driving into lumps of sandstone, and, in one notable incident, driving into a freshly-planted tree on the Seaward Street off-ramp. Thousands queued up along the Broomielaw to buy souvenir pieces of the Kingston Bridge in scenes reminiscent of post-Cold War Berlin. Commentators speculated that pieces sold so far amounted to three times the volume of the original bridge.

Clattie Dreg, Owner of the Stomped Englishman chain of pubs that has been one of Scotland’s most outstanding success stories since independence, reported that there had been a 200% upturn in alcohol sales, as people drank away the misery of living in the newly re-built slums, part of the much-lauded, “Drive for Authenticity” that has adorned the banners in George Square since the enactment. The upturn in numbers of children admitted to clinics with rat-bites in the new hovels was trumpeted as “A tremendous achievement” by Health Secretary Annie Chess, and a true sign that “Scotland is embracing the character and grit, warts and all, that got us through two World Wars and will get us through the impending Third”. All around city centre streets last night as every night these days, joyous crowds in varying degrees of consciousness swaggered and laid about, sipping on their greened-with-town-gas milk bottles.

In the east end, many dance halls that had not seen the light of so much as a solitary disco-ball for some decades suddenly kicked themselves into life; men in cloth caps mingling with the glad-ragged girls, all frolicking together in scenes reminiscent of a late-night film in which romance is interspersed with moody exchanges of glares, standings of pints, and the odd sharply-curtailed scuffle in a piss-stained alleyway. Elsewhere, the old gangs made their return to the centre, the peripheral housing schemes being gently bulldozed street-by-street and coaxed into piles of masonry and concrete, never to rot, only to crumble and exfoliate with the battering of the seasons. Shug Sharpe, CEO of Silhouette Razor Blades went teary-eyed in front of our reporter as he recounted how he had longed for these days to return. “It is so nice to see us return to our values, namely, the use of the good old-fashioned razor blade to settle a score. I have watched sadly as the youth of yesteryear turned their backs on these beautiful implements, in favour of more coarse items like bog-standard knives or, dare I say it…”, he looked around and when he was sure they were alone, whispered, “Guns”. Business had been booming, especially at the newly constructed Tram-Thru facility in Garscube Road where punters can merely lean out the tram window and swap their Five Jock Note for a ready blade. He plans to open another branch in Cumberland Street in the autumn.

The final touches of soot-daubing were being added to the tenements lining Dumbarton Road last night, in a city-wide drive to undo the sand-blasting that ‘disfigured’ the city in the 1980’s, reinstating the industrial heritage that, as King Lexus put it, “Coloured our past with eye-dazzling shades of grey and so will colour our future for evermore”. King Lexus also hinted last night that the HMS Thistle Bru was in the final stages of fit-out in preparation for its voyage of discovery to Panama. Admiral Lyon Jackson was said to be wetting himself with anticipation.

Next Week: How has it affected the pigeons? Our “Whatever Happened To…?” series concludes with a piece on Lulu, and The Truth Behind the Squirrel Killings.

Other Famous Salmons:

Though our illustrious leader be a great salmon himself, there are other lesser salmons around. Here, courtesy of the Evening Chimes, is a guide:

Salmon Hayek – Famous actress, best known for her role in popular flick “Leaping the Falls”, about a coming-of-age Texan girl-salmon and her trials at the hands of her mischievous snake-charming stepfather and his playful goat, Sonny.

Salmon Rushdie – In the heady days following the lifting of his fatwa for offending a notable religion practiced by Puffer fish, he has gone on to found a successful college for young salmon writers. Following complaints from the Racial Equality Commission, this was broadened to include all fish, except halibut because said religion disapproves of getting battered.

Osalmon Bin Laden – Notorious terrorist and harbinger of doom. Often seen toting a Kalshnikov while his latest video release is played on infinite loop on Al Quatic, a cable channel dedicated to the mercenaries of the deep.

Salmon Flaps – Pornographer extraordinaire, who specialised in the much-coveted “waterfall shot” and who choreographed zoological masterpiece, Deep Stoat.

Jaws – Vicious bastard of a fish. The Great White Salmon is said to have outwitted Captain Ahab and his harpoons long before the advent of whales in 1772.

Let Them Eat Kayak

Or alternatively “Darwin Story Evolves”, or “Och aye canoe”. Paul Merton and the tabloids have the monopoly on puns in this instance though, so no more from me.

In my nine years in London, these are three of the things I learned:

1) Never fall asleep on a Night Bus.
2) The entire UK construction industry, from the loftiest CEO to the lowliest asthmatic work-horse that drags a wagon full of steel to the building site every morning, is irretrievably fucked.
3) If you sit down, press your knuckles against your forehead and strain hard enough, eventually you will either have a dump or a creative idea.

By a link more tenuous than a weather-beaten rope bridge across an Andes gorge, I’m guessing that John Darwin and his wife wished there had been an entirely different outcome when practicing option three - for their idea, though creative, was completely unworkable. In case you have been on another planet, or you have enough of a life (unlike me) to avoid populist soap-opera news and its mind-contorting whims, this is about the unfolding story of a canoeist who disappeared among the decommissioned ghost ships and grey waters of the North Sea near Hartlepool, back in 2000.

After £60,000 spent on helicopter, RNLI and police searches, and possibly even with the input of the little-known Militarily Trained Otter Squad (indispensable for uncovering mines in the English Channel during the Second World War, the poor furry suicide freaks), the search was called off. The people put down their newspapers, shook their heads and went back to their cups of tea, lamenting about poor Mr Darwin succumbing to a Giant Octopus, Great White Shark, prehistoric sea scorpion or any other thing that could explain the total absence of a body.

It is a fairly common occurrence for people to die from the elements in this country. This is a wet place, and an island, and so people drown, and it has some quite seductive hills, and so people die of exposure in them, quite possibly adorned in the “khaki shorts and flip-flops” so hated by Billy Connolly. Duly, those far from the story forgot quite quickly about it, possibly within minutes of its third- or fourth-priority airing on the national news. When the story was dredged up again, rather unlike John Darwin himself, most people did not have any recollection of the original disappearance.

But how things change. In a quirk that has amazed all, and certainly entertained Charlie Brooker if not all of us, Mr Darwin has come back from the dead and walked into a police station in London, claiming that “he thinks he might be a missing person”. On the first day that this story broke, it was treated with the kind of innocent happy-go-lucky reporting normally seen in the “And finally…” section of Metro. That it involved an apparent death need not harm the jovial nature of the story. After all that self-same “And finally…” column featured a man in Germany who allegedly lived off only cabbage and beans and suffocated to death in his own flatulence. Apparently a few of the people who retrieved his body from the bed also succumbed to the fumes and had to be hospitalised. A poor man died, but the story still provided us with much-needed mirth amid the gulping of other people’s sweat that occurs during the daily commuting headlock.

The fog of innocence seemed to lift quickly in the canoe saga though. First, the confounding news that John Darwin had been arrested. Then the focusing of the media noose on his wife in Panama, cue panoramic shots of a strangely futuristic and skyscraper-littered Panama City, looking every bit the tax–evading hideaway. Then, apparent genuine shock from the wife, but the confusion mounting with the amount of time she seemed to be taking to reunite with her long-lost husband. Then outrage from their sons who apparently knew nothing, one of whom then disappeared mysteriously leaving his girlfriend a note that he had gone abroad. Nothing like some well-placed anger to throw the dogs off the scent (and hopefully down the stairs to be impaled on a rake, I detest the animals). All of this allegedly of course, no one knows anything with any certainty yet. And lastly, but most brilliantly, someone types in the Darwin’s names and ‘Panama’ into Google, and a photograph taken last year shows them happily standing together along with the estate agent pops up. It reminds me of the time I posed with that body-bag. Really bad move, but at least I got an Open University degree in Bathroom Tiling out of my time inside.

The unravelling of this story has captivated the nation, but it has done so in quite a different way than we are used to. This story is different; there is no hysteria, just gentle but definite interest. The story is so rich and amusing that a fiction writer would have trouble crafting something comparable even when uninhibited by boundaries and physical realities. It climbed quickly to number one on the news priority scale, and has remained perched atop this infamous throne for a number of days now. The government must be happy that something so frivolous at least seems to be taking the heat off the dodgy donations stories that had occupied us before.

This mystery has all the great hallmarks: Houdini-style disappearance, family rifts, flights abroad, public U-turns on national news, rampant amnesia, sweaty and nervous visits to a Catholic church, false doors in flats, scrawled notes and packed bags, ashen-faced understatement from a Cleveland police spokesman, an incriminating photograph… Pink Floyd could write a concept album on it. All the story needs is a furry animal or two, a guest appearance from Paris Hilton and a subtle finger of blame pointing at binge drinking culture and unilateral military intervention and we’ll have ticked all of the boxes.

Mrs Darwin returned to the UK and is as we speak being questioned by police. The life insurance people won’t take this apparent abuse of their service sitting down. With every day that goes by, the story gets murkier and murkier. Fascinating. The story has more holes in it than a moth-eaten shirt kept in a stuffy Oklahoma drawer since the Dust Bowl migrations. But enough of this or we will drown, again unlike Mr Darwin, in a sea. Of metaphors that is (groan).

Instead, here is my guide to How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found (and no, no link to the Radiohead song of the similar name, you have to pace yourself or you will find yourself on a bridge parapet, sack of coal in hand, staring at the river beneath you and wondering how cold it will be). This might be useful should you ever have to flee, especially from the Law (rub hands with glee to maintain warmth):

1) Change your name to something very prevalent in the general population. John Smith is good, as it is ubiquitous. John Doe is not so good, as you will be automatically implicated in court cases for people who need to remain publicly anonymous. Actually they will still find you. Haven’t you heard of CCTV? Only use as a last resort.
2) The old plastic surgery trick. Go under the knife. Cheap surgeries can be done on the street in Glasgow and with often minimal blood loss as our knifemen are technically adept and enjoy to practice. With any luck, you will lose quite a bit of weight as well. A well-placed pool of melted set-square can puff out those unsightly gouge marks.
3) Chameleon Blood Infusions. Since global warming brought more tropical climates to our south coast, chameleons have been arriving on their little lizard boats in droves. They often arrive unannounced in such towns as Hastings, Littlehampton and Bournemouth and often go unnoticed in the general population, many within the service industries, and they have even carved their own niche in the lucrative paint-mixing industry, adept as they are at colour emulation. However, some of them fall on hard times, and do not find such ready acceptance. Many resort to alcoholism, and their most steady source of income is the selling of their blood to people, like yourself, who want to be able to blend into their surroundings so as to avoid discovery. The going rate is £10 a pint, and two pints should be more than enough for you to turn into a chessboard or a psychedelically-patterned curtain in an instant. Hang around the waterfront at the aforementioned towns and whistle the Archer’s theme tune to attract the blood-letters.
4) Become a viking. For many years, this used to be an idle pass-time for people with pots of money and oodles of leisure time. These days, a Viking package tour will set you back a fraction of the cost, and you can go back and reclaim the Norse kingdoms without need of a passport or National Insurance number. Horned helmet optional but advised.
5) Deify yourself. Easier said than done. But as a god, you will be worshipped by millions and be immune from prosecution. Just the ticket when you are being hunted down by the authorities for starting that earthquake. Learning the harp, adhering to a strictly focused exercise regime that will build your biceps into an aileron-shape capable of flight, and installing a megaphone amplifier in your throat, hooked up to the battery supply for your pacemaker (for that godly “Wizard of Oz” effect) won’t disappoint.
6) Live in international waters. For this, you will need a dinghy, an oar, and several decades supply of food. Once there, it will be impossible to be prosecuted or extradited. Whatever you do, don’t use a canoe though.
7) Powder of Sympathy. This substance, popular in eighteenth century France among madmen, alchemists, would-be navigators and injured dogs, can be mixed together from Copper Sulphate, mixed under the auspices of the Sun when it is in the constellation of Leo. When an implement that has been used to wound someone is dipped in the powder, it triggers a sharp pain in the victim. Lightly wound the judge in your impending court case and then while the case is being heard, continually dip the knife in the sympathy powder. The pain will cause him to adjourn the trial. Then quietly slip out the fire escape and away! Away!
8) Become an Avon Lady (cross-dress if necessary). No one knows where the fuck they went, do they?

Ah, Mr Darwin. Such a fall from grace. To think you could have stuck with the earthworm studies and world-changing biological theories. Charlie Brooker reckons that they should be let off for entertaining the nation. I reckon it won’t be long until they are up there with great current-affairs personalities like celebrity terrorist-tackler, Smeato.

Brakes to the Grindstone

Somewhere during a murmuring sleepless night recently – too much taurine - staring at the jagged France-shaped hole in my ceiling, I collected a few splinters of thoughts together regarding a new predicament. It may have become a little muddled, shelved as it was between other thoughts such as my recurring fear of an upcoming but fictional exam, and a prolonged scene of harmless affection involving Claire Danes. Bless her wee cotton socks.

Anyway, in the sweatshop world of data entry, I was thinking that there is one reason to maintain efficiency, and two reasons to abort it. The reason for efficiency is driven by the obvious fear of being laid off for non-performance. It is no shock that your labours are catalogued on lists and poured through. I found a mysterious stack of my spent data sheets balancing on an in-tray with my initials appended, due for filing. I found a group of people sitting by my desk one morning when I arrived, discussing the merits of so-and-so, and how many database entries each had done. All these people whose fate they were deciding were only initials to them, they had no idea that one of their number was listening while waiting anxiously to get his seat back and paper-cut his way through another day.

The two linked reasons for procrastinating, on the other hand, are firstly that you are paid by the hour, and therefore naturally find merit in increasing work time at the expense of efficiency. The second reason is the distinct possibility that your work might run out, and that you will be cast into the street, inevitably in the pouring rain, to wheedle home in a lamenting state and roll up all your empty timesheets and burn them under a chimney flue so that you can at least you can try and delude passers-by that you are choosing a new Pope, however unlikely that act is to take place in Streatham or wherever.

But these contradictions add up to the work-equivalent of seeing a 15 mph speed limit on an open motorway.

In the end, I, along with others who started at the same time, will fall victim to that very last reason, the finite nature of the work, next week. In the horribly imposed competition, done on sleuth, we were willed to go as fast as we dared, knowing we were racing towards a wall, but preferring to hit the wall in the distance rather than be dragged screaming off the course mid-way for slipping behind as at least that way we stayed in the race the longest. I suppose that had we been more organised, some kind of union or cartel kind of arrangement could have taken place where we gained some kind of mutual benefit by grouping together at a slower pace. Applying Game Theory and the Prisoner Dilemma to the real-life scenario of keeping a job didn’t really cross my mind as I don’t fully understand it, and the intricacies of ‘Generous Tit-for-Tat’ and other statistical lunacies pale when you are confronted with a large stack of paper. But it is still a harsh lesson to learn a fortnight before Christmas. The bar scene in “A Beautiful Mind” illustrates this nicely.

Now I realise that in order for companies and capitalism to work, there can be no other way for them to operate. And that is not to say that I am not about to dig up Marx from his Highgate resting place and tote him around on a stick down Oxford Street, standing beside the “Golf Sale” people and extolling the virtues of seizing back top-hats’ profits for the liberation of the masses. It is just an observation. On a side note, an accountant friend once told me of his desire to read “Das Kapital”, Marx’s tome pleading his economic case. Normally the word ‘seminal’ would be used here, much as it is customary to use the word ‘eclectic’ when referring to Jools Holland’s show, but I feel the author’s name speaks for itself. We finally found it towards the end of a day filled with aimless absurdities and considerable dog-earing of a travelcard. We had expected an awe-inspiring political pamphlet like The Communist Manifesto which is slim, readable on a medium-length city bus journey and thought-provoking to the extreme. By which I mean that you step off the bus cross-eyed. The thing actually turned out to be split into volumes, each of which was so weighty that to fondle it out from the bottom shelf and lift it to reading height would have contorted your spine into an irreversibly damaged shape, possibly consigning you to your bed for life, and able to amply claim that device of income redistribution by the state we call Incapacity Benefit. Perhaps that’s ironic or something.

My real point is not to weigh one economic system against another, I have neither the knowledge nor the insight to achieve this, nor is it to advocate one method of work as opposed to another. It is simply to ask this: Why the fuck are we all going so fast? And what is this going to cost us?

The world is full of technological innovations that were supposed to turn our lives around, to free us from the all-waking-hour necessity of gaining nourishment, inviting us to pursue leisure. No need to grill bread, here’s something called the toaster. Need to get to work? Why not live miles away and we’ll slap down some tarmac so that you can jump in a vehicle and be there in minutes. What’s more, you can now separate out from your neighbours in all the new space afforded, and spend your ample down-time fulfillingly in the expanses of park in between. The vacuum cleaner was widely marketed as the tool that was going to liberate wives from house work. Yes, this magical suction device will mean you can make the home spotless in a fraction of the time, meaning that you can take your children to the lovely new park after their morning toast for hours at a time, marvelling at that motorway on-ramp that made all of this possible.

A couple of years ago, I read a report that the human race has accumulated more information and data in the last five years than in the entire history of the species prior to that. In the couple of years since that report, it would not surprise me if we had near doubled that amount again. There will be no end.

I don’t deny the beauty of technology and the outstanding effects some of it has had on the human race, I just wonder whether at some point we might all realise that in some aspects we have been chasing our own tails. I have long wondered whether there is a state of equilibrium for the amount of discomfort that we can experience collectively, and that some ‘improvements’ only serve to change the position of this equilibrium. This would be fine if this point of equilibrium was at a point of comfort. But our nature means we must push it as far as it will go, to a level bordering on the intolerable, and there we shall stagnate until relief pushes us onto a differently situated but equally intolerable position. But there is an absolute cost as well. This new position can arguably be worse, as lifting the benchmark forces everyone to meet the new target. Compare it with, say, the measures made in the UK to allow people onto the housing ladder. Banks allowing mortgage-lending at higher levels relative to salaries and other policies to make borrowing easier have the laudable aim of letting people access properties which higher prices had sadly ruled out. However, everyone has been given this same chance, the equilibrium of what people can afford moves upward, and it is against this new benchmark that all people will now have to climb. And they wonder why bricks are like gold dust. More on this in later posts.

Of course, all this means that everyone has further to fall when it all goes wrong. One defective rung of the ladder, let’s call it the sub-prime rung, might rot through, causing everyone to tumble. And in every walk of life where this principle of endless efficiency gains become more and more vulnerable as time goes on, and the boundary drifts further ahead, like the horizon you can always sail towards but never reach. The problem with this theory of undoing the endless acceleration and turning it into a collective deceleration that will allow us to move the point of equilibrium to a place more comfortably within the capabilities of our ape-descended minds, is that it only works if everyone does it. Or if we do it in total isolation, Amish-style. Unfortunately for us, this is probably a futile enterprise.

Unless, that is, my plan to found my own state on a very small area of a third-floor flat in Glasgow comes to fruition. I realise this idea has been travelled to the nth degree on TV programmes and the like, but my state is special as it is going to be founded on a hopefully harmless ideology. It will be called The Republic of Lethargy, and the order of the day will be the living of life at a reasonable speed. And in a group, it is only fair that that falls to the speed of the slowest member. Procrastination, rather than being seen as the thief of time, will be seen instead as the borrower of life. There will be no king or queen, only a democratically-elected chairman, who, as the name suggests, will be required to remain seated at all times (on a commode though, for hygiene reasons) so as to eliminate the possibility of he or she partaking in a fitful burst of pointless work. My flatmate and I have already made admirable steps in eliminating all unnecessary haste, slobbing of a workday evening under duvets in the lounge. In order to maintain the sanity of the weak-willed, a state religion will be introduced, though it will be optional and possibly only practised by those under the temporary umbrella of despair. As one of the aforementioned duvets in the flat is decorated with the character, Hamtaro “Little Hamster, Big Adventures”, I feel it is only fair that Hamtarism become this religion. I am sure nothing sinister can come from the expansion of a state founded on a sole economic idea and a flimsy religion. We wouldn’t have the energy to fill in the paperwork to buy a missile anyway.

Anyway, so I plead with you, please come and join the Republic of Lethargy and help end this circus once and for all!

In recognition of this plea, and it is especially directed at the millions of needlessly frantic people in London, here is an invitation to listen to a beautiful song named Go Slowly by Radiohead. Even if the original meaning of the song is not entirely related to this blog entry, perhaps its leisurely pace will convince you of the merits of avoiding breakneck speed for a while. Not all races are worth sprinting. Round that last corner and you’ll be within sight of the cemetery.

You shouldn’t take any of this too seriously though. I am just bitter about losing my job. I should be able to find another one from the temping agency hopefully. That is, if someone else doesn’t get there first.

The Jags, the Healthier Alternative

There is another way to support football round here. One that doesn’t involve the fear of having your belly ripped open for wearing the wrong shirt in the wrong pub. Why not have a go at the other options? There at least half a dozen other league teams in the Glasgow area. It is a sad state of affairs that the state of play in this city is such that you might want to scurry scared from its most popular teams, but that is the unfortunate state we are in.

So it was in this resigned spirit that last Saturday a few of us dragged ourselves out of bed even though overnight the Atlantic had somehow been evaporated into the sky, mooring fishing boats, sperm whales and a Soviet-era mechanical shark (with attached bugging devices to uncover the inner discussions of capitalist halibut) on the beach at Largs. Above, ever-ready to spill, the upturned ocean chopped and bulged, black as coal, poisonous intent within. It had awe-inspiring patience. While I faffed about looking for shoes under the bin bags, scraping mould off a plate so that I could cut toast on it, cursing while I looked for my keys, trying to brush my teeth without the brush slipping, banging my gums and triggering a fortnight-persisting ulcer of eternal agony, all the while my hands fingering from the still undissipated alcohol, the sky looked on and said, “Not now, boys, just hold on there, await my signal.”

Six flights of stairs, several dog barks and a slam of the front door later and the lot came down. A plague of water. I did what any decent human being would do, and ran fearlessly across the road with the elegance of a three-legged horse on hot coals. In doing so I was narrrowly missed by those colostomy bags-on-wheels, the four-wheel-drive. Bastards. At the local barbers, I learned about such things as the new supermarket (which will be run by coke dealers), the new business that had opened up next door (run by coke dealers), and about the local coke dealers (run by national coke dealers). But all this is a pre-amble to the impending visit to the ground of the glorious third team of football, the mighty Jags, yes, Partick Thistle!

I do not support a football team anymore and I have pretty good reasons for this. But given the opportunity to watch football, in Glasgow, without people singing about being up to their knees in so-and-so’s blood, or about committing gratuitous sexual acts to a head of the clergy, I couldn’t really pass up. So it came to pass, on a day dreich even by Scottish standards, that we braved a freezing monsoon to climb up a hill to a lonely stadium. Everything of note in this city is up a hill, there are eighty-eight of them (in your face, Rome), something to do with glaciers I believe, and they are so prevalent that it even makes walking places “as the crow flies” an often regretted move. Fucking crows, see how they laugh at us with their squawking and how they mock us with those devil wings. Sorry, I had a bad dream about them once, luckily my mattress was still dry when I woke up, but it was a close-run thing.

Firhill stadium is in a strange place. Locked in a desolate location, one of those many parts that have had random tenements smashed to the ground in Le Corbusier-fuelled “artist’s vision” city-planning, it perches on the side of aforementioned hill, clinging like a barnacle, and looks almost like a temporary fixture. Indeed, it is one of those teams that I always fear may make some cost-cutting exercise and move to some random town like Aberfoyle, alienating all its supporters much as Wimbledon did years ago but I’m sure they’re far more sensible than that. Now I have already professed to knowing nothing about football, but it is a laugh, and it allows some of the most spectacular people-watching (albeit, sporadically) available. And also they have pies, delectable, bite-sized, rough of crust yet melding soft through the inside, toasting warmly within you like a single internal ray of sunshine amidst the horror of a Scottish winter.

Of course, like any hard man, I came well equipped with a sturdy Ribena bottle only to have it removed and binned by a police officer. Well, you can hardly blame them. Who can forget the blackcurrent-fuelled orgies of rage that saw European football plagued by casual violence and thuggery in decades past? The sight of grown men lamping each other over the skull with blackcurrant cordial bottles will become, in centuries to come, an iconic image for use on tapestries. Indeed historians (now sadly beardless for the radioactive fallout of the next world war will have rendered the hirsute extinct) will comment wisely, stroking their sideburns and giving sure-eyed, scientific glances while removing their spectacles to make salient points about the blackcurrant invasions of yore, the effect of thousands of angry young men taunted by a small leather ball and the horror of an entire generation in the advanced stages of pie addiction. I think we should set to work on these tapestries immediately, lest the memory fades. The Great Bovril Flood of ’04 could be beautifully invoked using embroidery, I feel.

The strange thing about the policeman (remember him?), is that he actually asked me whether he could have my Ribena bottle. I might have tried politely refusing, but then that would have been the start of the tear gas, water cannon and repeated baton charges, while I flailed in his general direction, blinded, using the girl next to me’s scarf (with girl still attached). I might have caught him in the throat with a particularly vicious woollen bauble but it is no use putting these things down to chance. I have been outwitted by a bin, several kerbs, at least two flights of stairs, a glass balcony door (haven’t we all?), a telephone and several other inanimate objects in my past, so perhaps I should leave tangling with trained police officers for a little while. And I am meant to be preaching pacifism Jags-style anyway.

Most of the sheltered seats were taken over by shivering folk huddling themselves up for warmth, and also some cunning labels to show the seats reserved for season ticket holders. The labels seemed warm enough but I fancy the people were only minutes away from wheeling some bins in and setting them on fire, allowing them to do the pat-the-flames manoeuvre with their mittens. For reasons of cost, I suppose, the roof doesn’t quite reach over all the seats, and the sodden ones down the front were free. We shuffled along and then sat down, our arses having been numbed by the cold before they even made contact. The sleet was like a poor man’s light show, with spectacular choreography of left-leaning, right-leaning, the occasional vertical and even the odd upward draft of rain scattering afore as if afflicted by the gravity in an Escher print. Making a shot in this wind would be interesting at least.

The actual game was entertaining enough. There was a good sense of desparation reflected in the pace, though at no point did anyone bring out a shovel and proclaim that he was digging for victory, as may have occurred in games of lesser standard. Lest it be forgotten that the most dramatic scoreline in professional football’s history occurred in Scotland. A trouncing of Bon Accord by Arbroath 36 (count ‘em) nil. The players of the former are now presumably in alternative employment doing dressage, show-jumping or any other equestrian pursuit where you are actually meant to let things go between your legs. Luckily play did not have to be abandoned for flooding, as the water only got about neck high, but it came down in torrents. We soon started to resemble the stereotypical gurning Scotsman, face screwed up against the sleet, crevices etched into the face, pinched by the cold and numb. The skin so frozen that even raising an eyebrow seems to release a crack of noise. I am torn between whether this is a better or not stereotypical image than the kilted behemoth in a field of corn, sunshine lapping down, shot putt in hand as he aims for some-or-other piece of wild game to slaughter that he can then sling over his back as he stomps merrily down the hill to his wife, Leanne, for her to slave over on the stove while the weans catch the potatoes as they frolic in their pen.

Partick Thistle were 2-0 up until the last five minutes of the game. The man sitting in front of him, who was nothing short of a lyrical genius. He managed about twenty different intonations of the word, “cunt”, ranging through spat-out, inquisitive, coughed, staccato, and my own personal favourite, the sneer. He also came out with some more drawn out comments, clearing his throat as if addressing a crowd, and seeming to grasp at an invisible lectern as he did so, “Aha. Yous lot’ve left yer wive’s daein the late night shoppin’ while you sit here an’ watch yer team get fucked”. I should mention that they were playing Saint Johnstone, from Perth which is very, very north. The last town before you get to the proper Highlands. They have those feathery, clipped accents that are quite becoming, not like our nasal drawl. At one moment, that same man turned round to say our pal, who was from Greece and still very much in learning of our local dialect, “You know, I’ve got a wet arse”. His wife then added, “I bet you feel much happier for knowing that”. He nodded in reply a little too eagerly.

Then suddenly all bets were off. For no reason, a penalty was awarded for Saint Johnstone, which they scored on the 90th minute. Cue whistling, demented slaggings and a pouring out of hatreds until we were knee-deep in the viscous stuff. Even eight-year-old children were pouring out words that they had instantly plucked from the air and thrown forth from their lungs in ecstatic rage. It really was heart-warming how you could boil up that much hatred, even without religion to stir things up. It makes you rest easy and believe in the inately passionate nature of man. At least, I think that’s what the announcer said.

The announcer, by the way, has the second-best job in football. She was having a whale of a time. Apart from seeming to get a substituted-off player’s name wrong “No wonder we’re getting fucked, that man’s been deid since 1968”. Someone seemed to be up there in the commentary box tickling her feet with that gopher carcass (there’s always a gopher carcass involved) while she tried to keep her composure. I would dearly covet that job. Of course the best job in football is the mascot. Partick Thistle’s mascot is absolutely brilliant and I love it. It is like a puffin*, drawn by a deeply autistic child with a penchant for purple. The child’s typical landscape drawing would have involved a lime green sky. This puffin thing has a multi-coloured beak which makes it look like it hurried home after a hard day fishing with rampant nookie on his mind and took a wrong turn accidentally braining himself in a Dulux factory. This mascot made an appearance for about five minutes on the edge of the pitch, trying his best to take people’s mind off their slowly developing hypthermia by flapping jovially. Inside, maybe, was a grown man weeping away while looking at a passport-sized photo of his family that he had stuck to the inside of the costume, though I do hope not. He then went for a ‘jog’ around the pitch, before patting one of the ball-fetcher-boy’s heads and then slinking off down a concealed exit. Oddly, I couldn’t see any holes where he could have seen out. I can only assume that he has trodden the hallowed turf of Firhill so often that he knows every little clump and divot by toe-touch alone. That’s devotion for you, as the advert goes. He was never seen again. I can only assume that he was set upon by other Glasgow team mascots and then taken to an out-of-town shopping centre car park and shot, gangland style. Lucrative business this dressing-up-in-animal costumes lark. Just watch “Death to Smoochie” (a box-office flop but a fantastic film). That would be a real shame. If anyone has seen a purple puffin being beaten with sticks by a bear and a hound, you should contact Strathclyde Police.

Anyway, after Saint Johnstone scored their penalty three minutes from time, they then hacked in another goal in the final minute, and a devastated crowd bayed for the referee’s blood for awarding the earlier penalty, which had now contributed to an eleventh-hour 2-2 draw. A large-faced woman led the abuse, concocting a several minutes-long speech using several newly invented curse-words without taking a breath and turning a level of scarlet that even momentarily melted through the permafrost. We screamed until we were hoarse, and chanted “Cheat, cheat, cheat”, and when the officials finally left the ground I had a feeling that there were some plastic surgeons out back ready to change their identities. They might even have hired that finger-print-melting identity-destroyer from Men in Black. Fitting for a referee don’t you think?

Despite the result, a thoroughly great experience. My toes have almost thawed now, which is lucky because sucking them isn’t half as much fun when they are numb. Don’t worry that deserting the Old Firm is going to sap some passion out of your football crowd experience. The path to the Jags lies open and with it every high and low you could ask for. I have no knowledge of football, but I know good entertainment when I see it…

* - On doing a little research (typing three words and clicking the mouse a couple of times), it transpires that the “puffin” is in fact a toucan. It is called Pee Tee and is my new hero. It is too late for me to pick a football team to support anew, and like renaming a boat, I’m sure switching team allegiance brings monumental bad luck. But I support Pee Tee. May he reign supreme and see us to the end with a cheery flap of his wings.

That Absence In Full

Whatever happened to willpower eh? What happened to the noble ethic of tying yourself down to a decent repetitive task and seeing it through to the end? It is with a heavy heart, as Robin Cook would say, that I confess that I have let this particular routine slip. The one of expounding half-truths and semi-chewed opinions using the fabulous medium of the humble weblog I mean. But I have an excuse. Oh yes. This is what happened, and you may want to sit down for this, for it is quite harrowing and I got really really wet.

About four days ago I was inspecting a manhole, for no other reason that that the lid had been partially placed on it at a jaunty angle, and it seemed vaguely artistic. Now, I have no pretensions of understanding art, but it may be that the awesome beauty of this everyday object tossed with gay abandon into an unfamiliar pose was enough to send me swooning and I duly collapsed into said manhole.

There it was dark. And wet, note earlier comment. At times like this, you have only a few options:

a) Weep uncontrollably – we’ll come back to this one.
b) Summon some kind of superhero using the rims of your spectacles to glance sunlight into a Morse code distress signal. Or better still, morph an image in the clouds of your chosen distress signal in plain English, if your glasses have this facility, so that even the Strathclyde Police may come to your help. Those of you with 20-20 vision or contact lenses are fucked at this point.
c) Using your nail file and/or pick-axe, dig your way out, causing untold damage to the pavement the fixing of which will be more than amply paid for by your outrageous council tax.
d) Holler like an orphan trapped in a water-wheel.

Of course, unbeknown to me, bounding across the fields and pastures of the PC World car park was a four-legged friend opening up exciting option (e): Salvation By Border Collie. Her timing was unfortunate. No sooner had she started to alert passers-by to the fact that there was an animal trapped in the manhole, than the hunger pangs began to bite. I had been down there at least 20 minutes. I promptly shot the dog and marinaded it in salsa sauce before ingesting it whole, in the manner of a snake, which did my digestion no good.

Later in the night, I slowly realised the horror of my situation. Had my hunger really been so burdensome that I would sacrifice my only hope of escape? Indeed. It was then I decided that weeping would be the way forward. By weeping enough, I would be able to fill the manhole with water, thus bringing me to a triumphant, and buoyant, conclusion to my adventures. As the murky saline sloshed against the bridge of my nose though, I realised that I was drowning, and decided that I would have to sacrifice the weighty boots dragging me down. With further disillusion, I noticed that the water was just draining slowly into the rock beneath me, and that I would never weep enough to float myself to the surface. In desperation, I tried to think of the truly upsetting injustices in the world, like impending global conflict, and that new one-way system on the South Side, but alas to no avail.

I wiped the leftover dog hair from my mouth and decided on a course of action. You may or may not know, or care, that there is a large belt of coal that runs from the Ruhr Valley in Germany, under the North Sea, through the northern part of Britain and all the way across the Atlantic to Pennsylvania in the States. This explains the geography of the coal industry in these regions. Anyway, by judiciously picking my way through the coal seams, I made my way westward towards the promised land, knowing that the only way I would ever see the azure sky, the bronze stone-lapping light of sunset and all those above-ground things we hold dear in our everyday lives, like orchards, wooded hilltops and pterodactyls, I would have to pick myself free, wherever the seam might take me.

The subterranean passage was a fantasy world of dark blacks, lighter blacks, and here and there the odd playful sparkle of charred black all set against the radiant background of pitch darkness. My eyes grew accustomed to the dark and changed shape accordingly. Somewhere around mile nine, the fingers started to become calloused and gentle bruises turned to scabs which sloughed off to reveal a reptilian under-skin. The fingers appeared to become more varnished and claw-like, grappling with the endless coal ahead and only occasionally stopping to feel nimbly around unexpected obstructions – the metallic clink of gas pipes, or the supple curves in the bones of a forcibly expired gang member.

Long story short, I made it to Pennsylvania a few days later, and surfaced through a disused raccoon tunnel that had fallen on hard times. I was welcomed into a rickety barn by a withered-looking man, but I had cause to mistrust him, for his beard was too short. He said his name was “Stew” but that people called him “Lumber” because he was as quick-witted as a felled tree trunk. He told me that he did not understand this statement and would I please explain it to him. Something must have got lost in the translation because he then imprisoned me for what seemed an interminable amount of time, feeding me on corn and threatening that he would send me to the guillotine if I didn’t lay an egg damn soon. But by now, my digging claws had evolved into machine-like tools of escape and freedom was cheaply won.

For a time, I lived as a wandering hobo, lankily making my naïve way with a song between my lips and a lightness of step (which comes from a diet of corn over many weeks). Hoboism is not nearly as romantic as you will suppose. People spit at you. They unravel that cloth that you have tied to the end of your stick and spit into that. They jeer at you, and spit at your boots. They spit in your food, and on your donkey. It is a low low life. Eventually, I thought that I heard home calling me, but quickly realised it was the rumbling sound of those oysters repeating on me. The gathering storm lay within, false signal or not, and I had to head home.

Luckily my facial hair was enough to convince those friendly people at customs that I must be expelled from the country as quickly as possible, and after only the briefest of cavity searches – they didn’t even use the Suction Device - I found myself passing the sweet Statue of Liberty herself on an ocean-going liner bound for Liverpool. Those were the heydays of steam shipping of course, back in mid-November 2007. After a brief mishap involving an iceberg and Kate Winslet, which was all sorted out with a bit of back-slapping, tobacco in the pipe, politely declined shrimp-on-sticks, a charming orchestra with a tasty bassoonist, and a toast to appease the Ice God, Thaw, I made it ashore on a plank of wood, where I emerged from the water looking like a male version of Ursula Andress, but with larger baps.

I write to you now in-between surgeries to have my long-suffering hands transmuted from Godzilla-face-tearer back into their original stumpy, human form. In manhole world, many months had passed, but I am surprised to note that, here in Glasgow, a mere four days have elapsed. Which is only long enough for four government scandals.

“Beware ye the lure of the manhole. In its darkness lies the ruin of pity” – Neil O’Pinion (2002), famous potholer and necrophiliac whose bestselling book, Me and My Stiffy is in all good bookshops now.

Something In The Way She Rains

It was freezing the other day. I knew this because no less than three different (and completely unknown to me) people told me this:

First Person (at the bank): Freezing the day, eh?
Me: Oh aye.

Second Person (at the hospital. No, nothing serious): It’s pure freezing, don’t you reckon?
Me: Oh aye.

Third Person (at the chip shop): Pretty cold out there!
Me: Oh aye. Should get one of those things up there I reckon (I point at what looks like an electric bar heater on wall).
Third Person: (Gives me shifty look, looks up at the ‘heater’ which I now gather to be in fact a fly zapper, then looks away and shakes head slowly).

In the third instance, I managed to get away without any physical injuries, despite having suggested to a total stranger that he go away and electrocute himself if he is cold. No Irn Bru bottle through the teeth even.

Of course the other reason I knew it was cold was that my fingers had turned blue. This is especially impressive when you consider the ethnic nature of my fingers (my current fingers were adopted after the ‘car door incident’).

It did get myself to thinking though. Why this fixation on the weather? Is it that strange British genetic implant that makes some people find the shipping forecast on Radio 4 alluring? Does it hark back to the pagan Stonehenge days when the sun ruled above all and that globe of fire had its own spin in determining our fates? Could it be, that at some time in the past, the weather had a far more significant impact on us? Did a Wednesday afternoon with sunny spells and scattered showers used to be an ominous sign that the God Thor was unhappy with his latest sacrificial offering of a stuffed goat in lieu of the actual virgin goat that should have been slaughtered, only Boadicea had taken a liking to it with its masculine and rugged features? Part of me wants to say that it is because we have little else to talk about, apart from reality television and how much blood can be extracted from a football coach during a live radio phone-in before he dies, but I fear that is to simplify.

Britain must have the most mediocre and boring weather in the world. It usually only lightly rains, and if it rains a little harder all the infrastructure gets royally fucked, so unaware of extreme weather are we. If it is windy then a few tiles blow off the roof, but cows do not get swept into the air and busty blondes do not run around ahead of frightening storms with scientific equipment and laptops with swirly Fisher Price graphics shaped to look more fanciful than they really need be. With the ridiculous cult of personality that we seem to have inherited from across the pond, we have even elevated to cult status Michael Fish, the weatherman so used to this pattern of banality he could not predict an actual storm.

Now I don’t mean to belittle the weather disasters on our beleaguered island, nor deny that it must be the work of terrorists, but it is not as if we are living on the bulging side of Mount Saint Helens (and if you do, you would do well to get yourself incarcerated for shoplifting or something, as the only people surviving that eruption in 1980 were prisoners). We do not have tidal waves or monsoons. We are almost as short on weather disasters as on natural disasters. No, that black cloud is not nuclear fallout from Dounreay power station, and that funny red coloured running thing is not a lava flow, it is a river full of migrating smoked salmon with dill. The rumble you just heard was the Dial-a-Bus going over a speed bump, and did not feature on the Richter scale.

I did once hear from a girl in my class - the house of whom kind town planners had placed near the lowest point of a flood plain on a spot which had probably in all fairness been known to flood for centuries as proved by a map of 1745 which designated the district as a “Beware Ye Flashe Floode For ‘Twas Terrible Afore” zone - that the water does not ring the doorbell and then lap over the step into your front room after blowing a brief raspberry at the single limp sandbag that the council provided you with, all while holding a clipboard, as you would expect in a British flood. Instead it bubbles up through the floorboards, which must be a bastard if you are playing Twister. Incidentally, why are electric plug sockets so low down meaning that only five inches of water will knacker them? Eh?

Where were we? Oh yes, we do not even get forked lightning except maybe on a leap year, and even when we do the newspapers have to reprimand us for doing foolish things like wearing metal-wired bras in parks. Apparently that was the reason for some girl getting struck in Hyde Park. I knew those implements were unnatural. We once had a blizzard, but then I still lived in Scotland then and the weather can occasionally be more fun. Glasgow is on the same latitude as Moscow, as no less than three Geography teachers told me, though as I had no idea where, or what Moscow was, this was lost on me at the time - it could have been a tropical paradise as far as I was concerned. The temperature did get so low though that it was two degrees away from freezing people’s contact lenses to their eyes (minus 34 Celsius, since you ask). Cheaper than laser treatment anyway.

In Britain, the tornadoes are so pitiful that one can come along every decade or so in a built-up area and overturn Mrs Lampton’s plant pots, cause havoc with the privet that had been kept pristinely pruned by her long-suffering husband, even with his back, and set off a car alarm that of course everyone ignored, and still make the National News, with voyeuristic saps from a fifteen-mile radius crunching up the streets all around with their vehicles just to get snaps of the ‘damage’ on their camera-phones, so that they can submitted to some news agency website that you, having been infected with that British Weather Curiosity Bug will even interrupt that one-hour-and-counting Facebook session of a Thursday afternoon to have a gander at. And then your manager finds you out and you come in the next morning to a note on your desk saying that you’ve been fired and all your belongings are in a skip outside which by the way is double-parked and has therefore been towed two hundred miles to the pound in Chester and you then have to spend the rest of your life dividing up your dole money between buying food and acquiring the equipment required to carry out your ‘eradication plan’ against the snivelling IT bastard who mumbles acronyms to himself and who reported your internet usage to the big man.

I can only come up with one sensible and scientific suggestion as to why the weather appears to be such an urgent and omnipresent topic. I believe there are a significant number of people in this country who are soluble, and so afraid are they of getting caught out, they cannot even risk migrating to a less damp place. If this is the case, I think the government should intervene. They probably know the whereabouts of these Solubites. The government always has more power than you think – take Stalin’s attempts to have crop-dusting planes spray the clouds with Amazing Chemicals if rain threatened to dampen some victory parade or other. Mind you, with our joined up government, one department would sanction the use of cloud-busting planes, and the other department would have them shot down onto a residential area shortly after.

But Solubites are demanding of our attention. Of course you haven’t seen them leaning against doorways with their coffee cups. What if it rains? But they are there, and their plight is real. There can be little more harrowing than walking down the street with your friend when all of a sudden it starts drizzling and he grimaces slightly before fizzing up like an Alka-Seltzer. And isn’t there an antidote? I’m sure there is something you could mix in with little dearly departed puddle-of-Johnny that will at least let the important bits of him stick as deposits to the inside of a conical flask. Then there is just the small matter of some sellotape and a skateboard to restore full mobility, and we can work on the verbal communication and the aesthetics later. Incidentally, if a friend of yours does melt into a viscous pool, do not store their remains in your fridge in an empty peanut butter jar with its label still on. I speak from experience.

If anyone has any other answers (though I reckon I have hit the nail on the head), I’d like to hear them. Now beware of that frost underfoot.

Bugger me, it’s that totally unnecessary third-person bit again:

Kiran is now in full-time employment as a Data Entry clerk. As of next week anyway. This will suit his beaten-to-death-by-engineering brain just fine while he figures out what else there is to life.

This was the practice session, conducted under armed guard:
10110100010101 Next,
00110001011110 Next,
1101011110 Damn,
Backspace Backspace Backspace 0001100 Etc.

He promises to try not to mail a list of every married couples’ pin-number to a statistician using the bog-standard post. Not even if it has an attached post-it note saying “Private and Confidential. Really boring list of no use to thieves” included as an added security precaution.

That Corner Of Europe Again.

Instead of the first-person rant of whinging that I exhibited yesterday, I had originally planned to react to Andrew Rawnsley’s column in the Guardian about the shaky future of the Balkans. I’m glad I delayed it. With Simon Jenkins today also wading into the debate, (see here) it seems that finally this issue, in the media at least, is rearing its head and making its presence known in a way that is now necessary.

December the 10th is when it could all go horrifically wrong. That’s three weeks on Monday. But first, a momentary pause. Possibly more than any other contemporary conflict, this is one that cannot simply be waded into with wild gesticulations and emotive language. Of course none should, but this conflict is more prone to mouthing-off without understanding than any other, in my opinion. This is not an ‘A’ versus ‘B' conflict like with Israel and Palestine (simplistically put), or the thankfully stalled civil war in Cote d’Ivoire. It is not a geopolitical storm that is coloured mainly by territorial ambitions, such as the plethora of rumbling conflicts in the Caucasus. It is not a straight oil-grab like Iraq. It is not even a chaotic mess of shifting allegiances as much of the conflict in DR Congo appears. The Balkans is a mess where all sides have concrete convictions and where no-one’s interests match anyone else’s. It is more like some corrupted Venn diagram with hopeless overlaps containing thousands of people and with new bubbles being spawned with every convulsion of the whole ugly nightmare.

So leave the keys in the bulldozer unturned for now. I will attempt to avoid the same mistake, I have spent enough time trying to twist my mind around this terrible conflict for long enough to know that nothing short of a specialist Master’s in the subject, or perhaps prolonged exposure to it from all angles as a politician can prepare you for the complexities that it heralds. Instead I am going to try and highlight the problem and a very abridged version of why it has come to be, and what there is to lose.

The problem is essentially this. The Balkans have acted like a motorway intersection for the politics, cultures and religions that have breezed through Eastern Europe and Western Asia to pass through. Each has left its indelible mark, from Islam to Christianity to the Greek Orthodox faith. From the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires through to Soviet occupation. It is all desperately complicated.

I can safely claim to have tried to read three and a half books on this subject and yet this, I admit, is not nearly good enough to enter my two cents worth. But I’m still going to. Lambast me if necessary. The ‘half book’, by the way, will possibly prove to be the most useful, in terms of knowledge-building, of the lot. That is if I could get my muddled brain into it. I bought it five years ago and have been intermittently reading it ever since. Have a go yourself, it is great, possibly the authoritative book on the subject: Misha Glenny’s “The Balkans”, but the situation it tries to describe is confounding at best and stomach-churning at worst. Though, like all good political books, it has been read (and commented on favourably, in this case) by Jeremy Paxman. I really don’t know how he finds the time to do all this reading. I am in awe.

The result of all this complexity is that we now have a confederation of independent and aspiring-to-be-independent states that all have different relationships to each other. Ever so often the map of this area changes. The last change happened only a short time ago, when Montenegro declared independence from Serbia to become (as it still is), the world’s newest country, as well as a new Eurovision team, unfortunately. Thankfully this breakaway passed largely without incident. Other times, the lines on the map of this precarious region twist and writhe and subsume into the grasp of death many thousands with every contortion. I almost believe that through the crimson fogs of hell there is a demon with a blackboard and a piece of chalk messing around with the boundaries when he has a spare moment. When the world looks a little too rosy perhaps.

So why the Tenth of December? That will be the final of many deadlines to impose some kind of agreement on the outcome of the Kosovo situation. Ever since Serb armies were kicked out and that country convulsed into its own downfall, causing the welcome incarceration of Milosevic (who that same demon spared the just fate of, dying as he did in prison) but also suffering a rocky journey, including the assassination of a following leader, Kosovo has been on shaky ground. Neither gaining statehood nor being subsumed into Serbia, it was effectively put under the administration of Western powers. The idea was presumably to come to a permanent resolution on it when all the tensions had died down a little, and ever since it has teetered like an ornament on the edge of a mantelpiece. The price for letting it drop is high.

The danger now is that Kosovo will simply declare itself independent, to the anger of Serbia, and Kosovo’s Serb-minority population, sparking off a spiralling collapse in the shaky peace that has held since the end of the last century. Some Serbs see a spiritual reason to keep Kosovo Serb. It has been seen as a holy grail, a land which is rightfully theirs in folklore, for religious reasons, their Jerusalem. It would take a firm hand unafraid of bloodshed to slap away those ambitions in one fell swoop, whether justified or not. Then there is Albanian intentions with the region. Kosovo is 90% Albanian, and independence for the country could see it slip into some Greater Albanian region that would then itch to include parts of Greece in its newfound borders. There is the problem of whether Kosovo even presents a viable option as an independent state without Western intervention. Simon Jenkins states today that the country claims more aid than any country in Asia or Africa which may seem suddenly unsustainable if it gains nationhood. Though this conclusion could be challenged when one considers the ample aid received by Israel in much the same vein. Then there is the question of where Croatia, Bosnia, Vojvodina and a whole host of other regions lie, each with more or less vested interests in the former Yugoslav region as a whole (thankfully, another potential complication can be avoided if we treat Slovenia as a homogenous region, making steps to move away from this mess). Then we have the eagerness to save face by Western countries, by allowing Kosovo its independence, and opposite and equally strong pull from a newly nationalistic and resurgent Russia to protect Serbian nationalism.

Jesus, if I wasn’t already sitting down, I would need to sit down. The above is not even a tenth of it. For nine years, proper resolution of this problem has been put off, but now it has finally bubbled to the top of the pond. Macedonia has made a break for it, Montenegro strode into the independent world, and now Kosovans are asking why their turn has not come. I can’t see any commentator coming up with an answer, I sure as hell don't see a way out. It is like trying to please one individual in a crowd to the detriment of the other five. And whatever you do it will be the same. You will please a different person and piss off the other five. Does this unfortunate region really need to bleed again to force a timely and permanent resolution? Or is it really true that this region is damned to ever-shifting borders and scrappy civil and cross-border conflicts?

This region has even lent its name to a word, ‘Balkanisation’ that has been galvanised in the minds of all to simply stand for the wrenching apart and lasting division of an entity. Many have said that the only solution to the area was the kind of binding Greater Yugoslavia, a loose coalition of nationalities as presided over by Tito, no matter how unpalatable the side-effects were. It might be that we are paying the price now for the satisfying of nationalism in the horrific wars of the 1990’s and that this is merely the final chapter in a genocidal conflict that started with the secession of the first state over 15 years ago.

This was a conflict in which previously happy neighbouring families were convinced almost overnight to murder each other over newfound patriotic loyalties. A conflict in which even the word ‘genocide’ found two new concrete definitions. Firstly, codifying that mass-killing of only males could also be considered genocide, as they were unarmed, and stipulating 8,000 as a number acceptable to be labelled as such. This precedent was found on considering Srebrenica. Secondly, it realised that in defining ‘genocide’ was the destruction of people, it submitted that mass rape also constituted genocide, as occurred when rape was used as a deliberate policy by the Serb armies to water down the gene pool of a certain ethnic group. The gravity of this conflict should never be forgotten, and its potential to reignite should never be ignored. There will clearly be plenty of unsettled scores here ready to seep up through the cracks in the ground that were not sealed properly in the previous decade.

What mustn’t happen is for politicians to hide from the inevitable deadline. In the middle of all the worrying and head-shaking over Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Darfur and all the rest, all of course deserving of sensitive resolution, it would be a travesty to let this issue in a corner of our own continent to become obscured. It would be wrong to have it treated as an inconsequential secession of a miniscule state from a country deserving of punishment. It’s easy to sound a bugle for Kosovo’s independence as a final shame on the heads of the Serbs. Many have pointed out that in a conflict of this complexity, the customary search for ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ in the Hollywood tradition is pretty much futile. The balance in those wars swings against the Serbs, certainly, but it is so unclear in its details that to base present decisions on a need for collective punishment is dangerous.

The trying of Serbia’s war criminals, and the search and conviction for those missing ones should be the just punishment to the country for its atrocities To mete out punishment for a past conflict that is intrinsically contained within the settlement of the present situation smacks a little of the reparations demanded from Germany in the wake of the First World War. And talking of that era, lest it be forgotten that that very war started from a single act in the tinderbox of Serbia? It would be melodrama to portray the present situation as likely to have similar implications. Given the horrors that have gone on in the Balkans in the recent past, however, not even the slightest chance on allowing a new outbreak of armed conflict can be allowed.

It remains to be seen how much influence other leaders like our own will have over events. The best that we can hope for for now is that this issue does not fall off our politicians’ radars. It remains to be seen how much influence global leaders will have over events. And amid all the fear-fabricating that is going on to fuel evermore extreme policies relating to the War on Terror, hope that it has been realised that, not too far away, an aching finger is about to be lifted from the pause button of a venomous conflict.

Feeling Vacant?

I warn you now that this is an even more subjective post than normal. If you’ve been hearing rants all day, perhaps you’d like to go and do something more therapeutic, like drowning a therapist.

Last night a minister braved the driving rain and proximity to the huddled and diseased masses on public transport to make his way to a television studio and tell the nation in a low and self-assured voice that there are 660,000 job vacancies in this country.

This was in the context of a debate about the level of incapacity benefits being handed out. Still, it was nice to see a politician call himself, on behalf of all other politicians, “silly”, when explaining how it was easy to see why people who had been registered as simply unemployed were now trying to get onto the larger incapacity payout. They should give all these politicians a big hat with “dope” written on it that could be worn in the House of Commons in place of that childish jeering that happens whenever anyone fouls up. Or to anyone who mentions the name of their own constituency more than seven times in a single sitting. While they’re at it, they should have a “corner” that MP’s can go and stand in when they have disgraced themselves. Gordon Brown could himself have been sent there when he accused the opposition of “deliberately misleading the public” on some or other matter and was reprimanded and advised to use “more temperate language”. David Cameron could have been sent there for his famed cycling-ahead-of-ministerial-car debacle and about a billion other misdemeanours.

This is a difficult call though. Generally it is the speaker who decides such matters, and as the Private Eye has made abundantly clear on occasion, our present speaker is a little erratic. I fear it would have to be “Gorbals Mick” himself that would have to stand in the corner many a time. Perhaps they could give him two large embroidered “eyes” on the back of his gown so that politicians could still address him in the proper manner during debates. Perhaps the designers of the new House will take this into account, and maybe even prepare a special temporary “corner” in Lakeside Shopping Centre or wherever the House will move to in the interim.

Personally, I would like to know where these 660,000 job vacancies are. I have no doubt they exist, but is there a list somewhere? I am not greedy, I merely want to fill one of them so that I can once again make my very tiny contribution to the burgeoning British economy. Who knows, a few thousand of them filled and it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back (well someone has to, I mean they have ridiculous stamina and need to be cut down to size or else they will get complacent and never win another athletic championship). We may even gain a few overseas colonies if we can fill enough of those vacancies. Or better still, and much less sick, we could find an estate agent masterfully trained in the art of deception to invent a few. I would happily draw a new map to be put in all those little ones’ textbooks, bless ‘em. We could fabricate an island out of pumice stone and landfilled plastic bags in the middle of the Atlantic and call it Narnia. We could even build an IKEA there to sell the necessary wardrobes. Think of the jobs it would create.

The odd thing about walking around the city centre in pursuit of a job is the things that jump out at you. These are things which were there all the time, but only now seem of sudden and throat-seizing significance. That passing bus with something like “New Call Centre at Whatever Quay. Recruiting Now” (they lied, I checked, they should have torn that advertisement down in favour of the generic “Santa (Glasgow region) number 12 of 30 happily bouncing children on his lap in his Lair at Roguehill Shopping Centre from 1st Dec”. Then there was that sign on the side of the bookshop that was been partly obscured by an umbrella, saying “Vacancies”. Once the woman had finished communicating with Neptunians on her i-Phone and single-button mouse add-on, she moved away to reveal the word “NO” written above.

And then there was the warm and friendly announcement outside another store that read, “We are recruiting now for driven individuals adept at customer relations and the provision of an excellent quality service in return for excellent pay. Ideally will be available to work late shifts, weekends, Christmas Eve, Boxing Day etc.” I went into the shop and was pretty much turned back out again.

In case you have not already donned your cynical hat (and if not, why not?), let me paraphrase this announcement for you:
“We are looking for people with lots and lots of experience in customer service so that they will be able to cope adequately with the hell that is catering to people driven insane by Yuletide-frenzy. Must be able to ward off predatory and armed males and females using nothing more than a cracked CD cover and standard-issue store-cattle-prod. Cool under pressure, you will think nothing of clearing away a dismembered corpse (a victim of Retail Rage) and carrying on with decorum all the while expounding the virtuous name of this large multinational company which has you, as a valued employee, saved on our database as a nine-digit number because we care and because you are not human, you are a robot. A ROBOT I tell you. Must be willing to work 24/7 for minimum wage and not weep when missing Christmas. Gruel provided on Thursdays courtesy of the Board”.

You know it is getting desperate when I still thought (and think) it would be a rewarding experience nonetheless and when I was genuinely let down as I was turned away. The situation, as it occurred, by means (to protect identity) of a string-vested Alabama man with razor-sharp stubble, leaning forward, palms flat on thighs while sitting on a stoop in front of the shop:

MAN (with his infamous drawl): What d’you want, boy?
ME: Err, a job, here’s my CV.
MAN: I don’t want ‘yo damn CV you dumb cracker (strange, as I am of Asian appearance). We lookin’ for excellent quality customer service. An’ you look laak a right fuckwit. Any experience?
ME (cap in hand): Uh, no sir (might as well get in character), but it’d be right kind if you’d grant me a chance though, ah kin communicate.
MAN: Kin you hell! (Waves pipe in my direction) Set the dogs on this son’f’a’bitch.

So unfortunately this particular chapter of employment is not open to me at this time. Onwards, and another inviting sign pops out, this time above an Evening Times seller’s head in bold writing, “Hundreds of Vacancies Every Monday” and forty pence and a free can of Pepsi later I was on my way with it tucked under my arm. I tried to ignore the headline about the 34 year old mother raped in her own flat somewhere in the city. A timely reminder that I am still in a heavenly situation compared to most.

The Travel Centre looked inviting (it had an open door and no customers inside) but the woman was definitely not in the mood for stupid questions. “Ah don’t know about any vacancies, ye’ll hoff tae get oan the SPT site”, she barked, before seeming to reach for what could have been her special hobo-poking stick. The SPT site wanted people with cash-handling skills that could work in East Kilbride, so another no-go. I know you’re not supposed to eat money, the non-chocolate kind anyway. Does that count?

Not helping things is that my strangely-mute temping agency has disappeared back to its home planet after furnishing me with exactly one possibility in the last three weeks. And that was so far out of Glasgow that the working day would have been over before I got to the front door. The entire Victorian-era six-storey building housing the agency had vanished and in its place lay a patch of wasteland at the corner of two city centre streets, with a small flag waving limply in the wind amidst the rising steam. The flag on closer inspection read, “Fuck you. We have your bank details.” Not that I can think what they would do with them. Perhaps they will make a one-off Christmas donation into my current account as part of their Empathy Drive. Perhaps people will be hospitalised with pneuomonia in hell.

So, with the light fading on my once-glorious idea of an alternative dream career, and with both the “Follow Your Dreams”, and the more realistic “Know Your Limits” mantra now progressing yet one more rung down to “Get Anything, You Dick” it is time for another re-evaluation. There is the horror of swallowing the pride and going back to my vocation, but I don’t believe we are docking with that port quite yet. Or there is the Job Centre in Partick. I hope that as I head towards it tomorrow, at a 45 degree angle due to the driving rain, and with my scarf wrapped maniacally around my forehead like a bandana to prevent brain-freezing, that the centre will emit the radiant glow of infinite possibilities. Or failing that, the minimum wage data entry job that my now-disappeared temping agency failed to find. One sobering thought is that there are perhaps thousands of people in this city who have been continuously unemployed since the demise of Clydeside’s heavy industry. We’re talking forty years here.

A dream is a thing with no ceiling, no floor and no walls. And though it has no boundaries and no parameters, this flimsy concept is yet used by many including me to define some kind of possible progression in life. But if you want to remain rooted in terra firma, maybe it isn’t so wise to leave your head up there with the harps and the wispy bits. One thing at a time, though. Sincere apologies for standing you in front of the vent.