wet

The kitchen is full of wet newspaper, soaking up the water pushed up by the pressure of a months rainfall (old reckoning) in a day soaking through the limestone. Down the hill, it’s worse. They were giving out sandbags for the first time since the big flood alleviation scheme was finished a few years back. Down river, it was much worse than that. Cities flooding, power and transport gone. Helicopters. Evacuated people. Dead people. Sounds bad, eh?

Well, put like that it does. I suspect a few of you instantly, internally thought ‘that's exaggerating!’ Well, no. I’m not using the standard detached tone of news speak perhaps, but the facts are pretty bald. Chunks of Leeds and Sheffield inundated, power cuts and cancelled trains. Four people are dead.

Nothing, of course, compared to sub-saharan African droughts, to Katrina, to Philippino mudslides. Nothing compared to tomorrow. Look at the news, and it’s measured, if breathless tones. Look at the pictures. Think on the chaos, disruption, misery - and death - of a months rain in a day. Think. What does a years rain in a month look like? What does a years wind in a day do? What does a decades tides in an evening do?

And what are you going to do about it?

And when?

fat

A while back, I saw “Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei” a German film about a bunch of anarchos who brake into rich peoples houses and rearrange their furniture as a piece of art activism. As part of this action, they paint a slogan on the walls, either 'Du hast zu viel Geld' - ‘you have too much money’ or ‘Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei’ literally ‘the fat years are over’. This should be engraved above the door of every office, bank and government building in the ‘developed’ world. And every school, hospital, pub and club. Because they are. And we do.

Climate change is not only happening, it is now probably beyond us, no mater what action we take or what activities we choose to cease, to prevent it being catastrophic. Many projections give us 40 years more of cheap, plentiful energy (in economic terms) energy, irrespective of where we’re getting it from, and that includes nuclear. And renewables. The rate our economies are projected to grow at, and indeed are required to grow at to maintain our lifestyle, let alone permit the rest of humanity to get close to having that lifestyle, ensures we’ll be lucky to get even that. We’re overdue a 1918 level ‘flu pandemic. Many of our oldest microbiological predators are already resistant to the antibiotics we use to control them, we have only a few left that still work on some organisms, in some cases only one. The cases of TB and and post operative infection are already climbing.

We are about to enter a new world, one more like the one our grandparents grew up in, where scarcity, uncertainty and upheaval are our handmaidens and death stands constantly at our shoulders. In short, the world where the vast majority of humans already live. We were not kind to them on the way up. I doubt they will be particularly helpful as we fall. Even if they wanted to, they are not in any position to be. We’ve seen to that. And I don’t suppose our children will be very happy with the situation either, and as for their children…

I’ve said before that we are living through the last days of Rome, and I stand by it. We live in a bubble, artfully constructed and rigourously protected by a lot of hard and dirty work conducted out of sight. Like them upstairs in an Edwardian country house, we have grown completely used to a way of life we have no idea what it takes to maintain. We shall be known as the generation that peaked. 50 odd years of growth and plenty, security and comfort, give or take the odd blip. And before you start banging on about how hard it is / was for you or someone you know, yes some of us have had it tough. But try a year in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or Darfur. And that’s the position for whole populations; that’s the norm, not the extreme, for a huge number of our fellows.

I’m not interested in a misery contest though, or some sort of liberal guilt fest. Just a sober, accurate recognition of our position, and our probable future. A society that thinks not being able to get enough play station 3s for Christmas is a crisis is suddenly going to have to realise what a real crisis is. And we’re not going to like it. We’re not going to cope. And it won’t matter how much money we throw at it, or how clever, or brutal, we are. We are running out of stuff, out of space and out of time. The film, which I liked, by the way, was called The Edukators when released in the UK, the name the group gave to themselves on their missions to unsettle the rich. Well, we’ve all got a lot to learn if we’re going to hack it where we’re going. We’ll have to relearn the cycles of famine and plenty, the uses for rubbish and the virtue of old things. And the ways of living on lean pickings. The fat years are over, and with them the Empire of the Fat.

Roach Hotel

Keep your new pyrethroids
Keep your DDT
Keep your fucking Lindane
They mean nothing to me

We evolve
We breed
We evolve
We breed
We evolve
We breed

When you apes go under
We’ll be in charge round here
So keep that carbon spewing
Our hour is drawing near

We evolve
We breed
We evolve
We breed
We evolve
We breed

When the earth is warm and damp
As it was once before
We will take a rightful place
Feasting on your corpse

We evolve
We breed
We Evolve
We breed
We evolve
We breed

Six legs
The Future has
Six legs
The Future has
Six legs
The Future has
Six legs

ten years

There is a song by David Bowie 'Five Years' and its been frequently stuck in my head recently in that vague half concuss kind of way for a while now... and it finally surfaced as I connected it to the fact I keep hearing from many people around me that to stop runnaway climate change we have 10 a years.

Ten Years.

Ten Years?

TEN YEARS

As part of the Rising Tide US Tour I am currently on I explain feedback loops which are the damnedest scary doomsday part of climate science. Its freaky stuff and its real.

The facts are all there, and as people working actively on climate we speak about them every night. Live with them every day. It so often feels like we are breaking the 'bad news' to people which, when you think about it, its really absurd that with all the structures of so called 'education' and 'information' that this vital to the continuation of life on earth, message is not getting across..

So what about those structures eh?

Many peoples of the world know things are broken, their lives, communities and ecosystems have already been torn apart to support our fragile bubble of wealth & consumerism. But the privileged world needs to move on from collective denial - a manipulated, anaesthetised by tv, media & consumerism, controlled collective denial we are stuck in.. but how would the news be broken?

Bowie wrote 'Five Years' in 1972. I doubt climate change specially was at the forefront of his mind back then.. But I sat today and really listened to the song that had been bugging me, that I've heard many times, and never really listened to. I realised that so much of it resonated with me and individual lines that had sounded like Bowie randomness suddenly became sharp & clear about human reaction to despair and powerlessness. "Five years - "And I thought of ma and I wanted to get back there" "I never thought I'd need so many people".

How would the privileged word take the news? Can we visualise a day like bowie did 36 Years ago when the Newscasters all announce the earth is really dying - and we have 10 years. Would denial jump straight to despair? Is it better that this news flows from person to person, community to community so everyone can have that moment to wonder why we don't know this? Why this news has been suppressed or ignored? To not hear it from the governments & corporations and then turn to them for false hopes and answers? To challenge those systems that have been repressing reality?
.
The big difference for me is with the 'Ten Years' is... yes we have 10 years.. Ten Years to halt runaway climate chaos. Ten years to save the planet.. Ten years of work to do before its really to late. Better get busy then.

How about starting with that structure?

xx cookie

pssst.. 'Ten Years - pass it on'

deposition

I was walking passed the new water feature at the railway station in Sheffield today, a big piece of public sculpture, carrying on the theme from the previous ‘regeneration’ of the peace gardens. It’s a stepped series of shallow pools that follow the contour down from the road to the station. Each pool empties out over its brim into the pool below, before the last pool ,which contains a fountain, empties into a gutter below it. I, in an uncharacteristic bout of trusting idealism, suppose that the water is recycled round the system. I also suppose the water pumped by electricity and the stone all came fresh from a big hole in the ground somewhere, all at great cost and effort.

It is a luxury, an unnecessary edifice placed to beautify a public space, it speaks, nay shouts, of our wealth, the stone we can spare, the water we can waste, the power we can fritter away. As new clothes go, they are well cut.
And, I have to confess, they are well cut. If we lived in some Iain M Banks style post scarcity utopia, it would sit very nicely in some space on a Culture GSV. But it doesn’t, it sits in Sheffield, product of a culture that seems to have no real grasp of scarcity, though constantly surrounded by it and it’s consequences.

And then I see the silt, graded by the flowing water into light and heavy sediments, large and small grains. Silt that has come from I know not where, blown or washed in, from the feet of paddling children or the hands of the homeless grabbing a quick wash before the City Centre Guardians move them on. But it’s there. Accumulated, deposited buy the eddies and surges of current into sinuous skeins and shoals of sediment. Mapping out the invisible dialogue between water and gravity, a glimpse into the world as felt by fish.

And accumulating. Left to its own devices, and it won’t be, someone will notice and clean the stuff out, it would steadily accrue, slowly forming sandbars and banks. These would slow the flow of water, releasing still more sediment, finer sediments, form the streams fluid grip. Eventually, the banks would break surface, and grasses would take hold, rushes, shrubs, and then tress, willow and alder would come, and all those roots would gently work themselves into the blocks and slabs, and the water would flow freely. Well, until someone turned off the tap, or the tap ran dry.

We arrest succession. We hold the world in an infancy that suits us and our purpose. It wants to grow up, and the way we’re behaving, it could well get its chance. Very soon. There may be a beach beneath the paving stones, but there is also a forest between the skyscrapers.

bleak

Last night, I cycled to the station to get a train into the big city for a night out. I got to the station a good five minutes early. The train never arrived. In fact, after about twenty minutes, nothing had gone through at all. This, I know, is not a good sign. The most likely explanation - engineering, that all purpose railway label for SNAFU. ‘Security’ is becoming an equivalent in everyday life here in the UK, as it was in the North of Ireland twenty years ago, as ‘Insurance’ is in the States. The label for ‘circumstances beyond our control imposed by the Authority.’

So far so normal, there is no special timetable up for the replacement bus service, which will probably not take my bike anyway. After an hour and a half, a number of things happen. Two busses arrive, none of them going the right way. A group of walkers arrive from a minibus, and a bloke and his two kids turn up. The walkers are venture scout types, lead by a Striking Blonde who makes a point of subtly getting the names of everyone she doesn’t know, and orders all the information to hand and prioritises her options for action. I like her despite myself. The bloke is one of those old Scally types who tries to be everyone's mate, laughs at all his own jokes, chain smokes and looks like a shaved weasel. His kids complain how it’s ‘mental’ that the local pub has started letting gay people in. I keep an eye on me bike.

To cut a long story with no narrative short, a bus does show, but it’s too late for me, and I’ve sort of got hacked off enough to bail anyway, so I go home, drink wine and play yahtzee in French with the Neighbour. That’s what passes for fun round here. Striking Blonde has spent ten minutes on her mobile, getting names and details, making mental notes on who to complain about, and to whom. She gets the ages of Scally’s kids, to attempt to speed the bus situation up. Scally considers going down the pub, and getting the last bus to a village down the road where he has a mate.

The key things here are ,however, only just being got round to. Firstly, my two years in public transport have been a complete waste of time, and continue to be. I doubt if the nine people who shared the damp hour in the station car park will be trusting the railway again in a hurry to get them home. And secondly, public perception of climate change is woefully behind the truth, as illustrated when Scally commented “Well, look on the bright side, if it wasn’t for that global warming, we’d all be dying of hypothermia.” The point being, we have, it seems, about 9 years.

9 years to develop the infrastructure and lifestyles that let us - not some future, perfect generation, but us, here and now us - live a life we feel happy with in a way that lets everyone else in this world who wants to , which will be the vast majority, live to the same standard. And my public transport job, where it takes six months to get two bus stops that hardly anyone uses fitted with solar lighting while, in that six months, thousands upon thousands of cars have passed those bus stops, is not going to do that, not in nine years, not in ninety years. And while most of the population are thinking, through no direct fault of their own, the way Scally was, they aren’t going to make the changes themselves. Not In a million years.

We’re fucked, plain and simple. Change is, now, one way or another, unavoidable. And we aren't going to get of our collective arse and meet it head on, we’re going to sit about until it smacks us in the face, then cast around for somebody to blame. Anyone but us. The great festival of scapegoating that will mark our civilisation’s descent into oblivion will consume the weak and the difficult, but not I suspect the rich and greedy. They have friends and structures, police and guns, prisons and extraordinary rendition. They will cling on to their comforts and hug them close as the end slowly laps at all our feet. While we fight for the dwindling scraps on the ever shrinking land, in our Resettlement Camps and Controlled Areas, under Special Provisions and Temporary Measures, and whatever other labels the Authority can think of for “stay in your box and do as you fucking told, or else.” Scally will cop it first, as he’s to old for the army, and too dodgy for the police, but Striking Blonde will not be far behind, unless her dad owns half of Cheshire and she is actually a Captain in signals. In which case, I’m glad she only got my first name.

Not that it matters much about the order. The rich and greedy will go too, deprived of the labour to provide them with the fruits of surplus value, and the resources to feed their appetites. You can’t buy your way out of a mass extinction event. Some of us will cling on and make do out on the bleeding edge of getting by, as will those with even less in more unfortunate parts of the world, they’ve had more practice. But it’s going to be messy, and it’s going to be soon. Not some future, cursed generation, but us, here and now us. Here I am facing the Last Days of Rome, and I am wasting my time.

floodculture

This is a rough text i produced a while back, for a flyer to try and get people involved in a collective “floodculture” project.
The earlier post is a random fragment, written with this project in mind.
i don’t really know where it is all going…

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

“notre espoir ne peut venir que des sans-espoir”
[our hope can only come from the hopeless]
graffiti, paris 1968

punk did not die.
it got old instead,
had babies,
got a job,
got a pension plan...

...and now...?

no hope.
no future.

and not much time left to get angry...

everything i try to write
reads like a disaster movie trailer.
humankind is hitting the last slippery spiral to irreversible climate change

genocide :: ecocide :: suicide

and we are watching it in t.v. as entertainment in between commercial breaks…

peoples reactions are deadened.
we have collective compassion fatigue
and we have a couple of years to take action before it is too late.

government is no solution.
corporations are no solution.

so this is the challenge.
apocalyptic psychotic
from bombculture to floodculture
stop believing in the future.

this is not a joke
this is not an art project
what the world needs now is anger

the leader of the most powerful country on earth, with an unquestioned faith in his divine right to rule and the absolute power of the centralized state, was the namesake for louisiana.

when he died in 1715, louis xiv had built france into the dominant power in europe, but he bankrupted the nation. most people lived in poverty while the king built an empire.

during the empire’s demise his great great grandson louis xv ruled france and its possessions, which included the colonial city of new orleans. he lived for indulgence and luxury as his people descended further into despair. it is said that near his end he uttered the words

"après moi le deluge"
after me come the floods.


après moi…le deluge

// art // writing // music //
// information // action //

:::: as the waters rose ::::

the end,
when it came,
came slowly.

by then it wasn’t even news

we were drowning in the bullshit
we’d known what was coming for years
some people changed a few lightbulbs
and most learned to silence their fears

keep on saving money
keep buying the latest clothes
mining coal, watching tv,
recycling, voting green
they kept on making babies,
as the waters rose

you can close your mind
and hope for a future
emotionally and financially secured
the world will still end on tuesday.
destruction, mutually assured.

you can keep your life insurance
lock your doors
paint your windows white
hurry past, look away, look embarrassed
…don’t walk the streets at night…

we will stalk the streets with our madness
our ability to conceive of disaster,
even when it is manmade...
we will wear our masks as a warning:
the end of the carbon age


NO HOPE
NO FUTURE
and we are coming for your children.





dad kept on lying.

he lied about the war
he lied about oil terror
he lied every night on the news
he lied about climate change
and you are the ones left to lose

beginning. middle. end
hope. stops. here.

and you have only got a few years left
to get angry





"it is no longer success that counts
people will have to know that there was resistance"
[claus schenk von stauffenberg :: 1944 july plot to kill adolf hitler]

heresy

One thing (OK, one among the many) that pisses me off is the way that the ecology / environment debate has become a good vs. bad issue. It's been made a moral or ethical thing. It's all 'green' products and ethical consumerism, choices packaged by how bad for the planet they are, like some karma supermarket. It's the Environment Movements own fault, and the hair-shirt puritan faction within it. You know, the beards from the 70s who went to hide in Wales in teepees and make their wives weave their clothes from the wool the sheep left on the hawthorns. They have consistently pushed morals rather than the science. A matter of 'Save the fluffy ickle baby seal' rather than 'removing the major food source for a top carnivore in an energy restrained ecosystem is going to result in serious destabilisation.' And you can see why. Cheap guilt trips and appeals to aesthetics are much easier, especially when much of the public and most of the media are getting on for scientifically illiterate.

Unfortunately, as a consequence of this now almost completely entrenched moralistic attitude to the environment, we now have the situation where, religion like, people are motivated to 'do the right thing' by guilt, rather than reason. Which, of course, has the consequence of breeding resentment and making the 'bad' choices guilty pleasures. How absurd a society where spending hours cooped up in a metal cylinder breathing recycled air full of 'flu viruses and screwing up your internal clock is regarded as some kind of decadent naughty but nice transgression. Further, the moralism breeds a new load of 'holier than thou' puritans who declare themselves a superior elect and constantly decry everyone else, which is especially nauseating if the puritans also happen to be rich and/or privileged. This is not only a complete turn off, but, like most self satisfied religiosity, a recipe for theocratic oppression and tyranny. None of which i am a fan of. Worse still, perhaps, it leads to a confessional style of dealing with our relationship to the environment, the whole 'I got a smaller car and don't have a dishwasher, so I'm allowed a massive plasma screen telly' approach.

And it's all wrong. In the factual sense of the word. There is no moral imperative to our interaction with the rest of the environment, or at least none that matter. We will not be judged on our conduct by a buxom Earth Mother at the end of it all. If Gaia does exist as Lovelocks 'super-organism' like planetary self regulation system, it's a blind idiot Goddess, with no consciousness or conscience. Any judgement will be the cold, thoughtless outcome of nutrient cycles, climate systems and energy flow, of entropy and thermodynamics. And they do not respond to prayer, sacrifice or philanthropy. The 70s beards' sheep are still full of PCBs and Chernobyl fallout, because you can't retreat from ecology, no matter how 'right on' you are. Ecological sustainability is not about salvation, it's about survival. You walk on the pavement not because walking down the middle of the road is wrong, but because it's stupid and will get you killed.

panic

Now I'm worried. I've noticed the signs for some time, and been aware it was probably coming for about 20 years, as a result of my education. However, this 'Winter" has really done it. Willows in full leaf at the end of December. The grass still growing, strawberries for bonfire night. And today, the First of February, and everyones out in shirtsleaves. in Sheffield. Well, not everyone, I'm not, I'm dressed for Winter, and suffering. It is properly warm. Even my generally unaware mates have twigged. It's really happening. Which almost certainly means it's too late, whatever that means.

Well, my guess is it means trouble. The years of plenty are over. Our freeloading days are over, it's time to pay the rent and fix the place up, or it's eviction without our deposit. We either do it now, the easy way by mutual agreement and co-operation, or the hard way later, when the sea comes in and the guns come out, when the flood drives the refugees across the shrinking land. And I'm not talking about generic Sky News refugees, distant and, well, not white (although there will be millions of them), I'm talking about a fair chunk of the populations of Hull, London and Liverpool. Amongst many, many others. I'm talking 'Resettlement Camps', resource allocation and ration books. I'm talking 'Unity is Strength'. I'm talking about the plans that are sitting on various hard drives, encrypted Top Secret that the State has in case they where wrong and the Green Scaremongers where right. The tools are already being assembled, in various Criminal Justice and Terrorism acts (read them if you think I'm been paranoid), in various new Agencies and National Police Units. In ID cards. DNA databases. Lists. Photographs. Names. Addresses. They will decide who poses a threat, who can be offered co-option, who ends up in the football stadia. And the last people they are going to want around are those who can say we told you so, especially if they have a track record of being organised, stroppy and anti-authoritarian. I'm talking my mates. I'm talking my family. I'm talking me. Maybe even you.

Goodnight, this is the Voice of Fate, live from London. England Prevails!

satan

I’m outside Charing Cross, drinking a coffee. There is a small area of seating, and I’m one table back from the edge. On the edge table, a young couple. To my left, four student types. I’m wearing a linen jacket, panama hat and my home shirt, and I’m writing a blog on the laptop.


I become aware of someone ranting loudly, near the couple. A stream of consciousness rant about shoving something up someone’s arse. Before I can fight the reflex prejudice, but the image of a beardy, staggering, pissed old bloke comes to mind. One of the couple says,

“Do you mind?”

I look up. I realise the beardy, staggering, pissed old bloke, for it is indeed he, is talking at me. And I’m not even wearing me bloody trenchcoat. He’s still going,

“…not you you fucker him he’s fucking he’s the devil he is stay away from my cigarettes devil I should shove that up your bastard don’t come near me fucking Canadian bastard you’re evil you are sitting there with that that…” etc.

I maintain eye contact, slowly close the laptop, which seems to be the source of some of his irritation, and zip the case shut. This is an almost reflex protection measure. I say nothing and keep my expression impassive. Everyone within earshot is watching, nervous, embarrassed and a little afraid. There is the distinct threat of violence, and the signature of it’s equally distinct partner, adrenaline, in the air.


However, my would be adversary decides not to pursue his attempt to unmask me as the Antichrist, or relent and offer me a cigarette. He starts to back off, and shuffle away, keeping eye contact and mumbling until he round the corner. I reopen the laptop, and take a drink. Everyone is still staring, some still in slightly comical ‘frozen in mid sip / sentence / motion poses.


I decide, spontaneously, that a tension breaker is required. Relying on my wit and sangfroid, say,

“Well, that’s the price of gin these days for you. Still, ‘Canadian’ was a bit low.”


This does the trick, a few people actually laugh. I get back to typing. I reflect. I could have said something sympathetic, or at least understanding, that made it clear I was not afraid of beardy, and that the last thing he probably needs is fear and ridicule. But I didn’t. I think ‘you total bastard!’


Still, that’s going to be par for the course when my 1000 years of Infernal Diabolic Rule reduces you mortals to a state of agonised servitude, so you’d all better get used to it. And you can forget about nipping out for a fag break, too.

crap

I’ve just tried to take a crap on a train. Didn’t bother, as the bowl was full of paper, and the tank empty, so it wouldn’t flush. And in my current state, well, I’ll spare you the details.

This is, though, not an unusual experience. Attending to basic hygiene on trains is becoming increasingly hard. There is often no water to flush, or wash hands with. Washing hands is a current concern of mine. But, most irritating of all, is the loo roll. If there is any, you are expected to pull it out through an aperture of such restricted size, that it basically acts as a shredder. You need to coax the sheets out one by one, and end up with each fifth attempt yielding a functional sheet. I asked a guard why, recently, and was told it was to avoid theft. Yes, that’s right, the shredders have been installed to stop people nicking the bog roll. I can just imagine the board meeting…

Suit 1. Very good, it’s great to see we’re making real progress in achieving a financially stable, cross-service, non-flavour deviational catering provision with built in costumer choice restriction. Great work, team. Now, the next item, sanitary systems delivery in a cost constrained budgetary environment.

Suit 2. Yeah. Thanks. Right. We’ve progressively rolled out an all-fleet refit of hygiene related paper issuing systems with hard engineered theft elimination protocols as standard. (Pauses to allow emphasis of ‘as standard’ to sink in.) As you can see from the spreadsheets (cues a powerpoint slide) this is delivering a month on month suppression of theft related paper loss of between 7 and 19 percent! These are unprecedented outputs, and I think this train operator can be confident we sit at the bleeding edge on this one.

Suit 3. See where your coming from, Mike, but (looks down laptop screen) if we could cue table 4.2, we can clearly see that this is hitting our bottom line.

(Stunned silence)

I mean, our comparable paper related outlay is actually showing an elevation above the high level prediction trend line of 3 to 7 per cent! Over the last quartile, this represents a real world cost of a full 2.76% of our total revenue take!

Suit 1. Hang on, you trying to tell me that this whole paper non-theft compliance policy is costing us money, Steve.

Suit 3. Bang on, Mitch. And that’s before we factor in the full costs of the paper issuing equipment refit, which amounts too... (scrolls through some more spreadsheets)

Suit 2. (looking peeved) Just a moment, here, guys! These socially excluded transgressors were perpetrating massive incidences of unauthorised paper removal! Any inaction in the face of such activity would be tantamount to approval, this is a moral issue. It’s a new world out there, and, post 9-11, we have to consider more than the bottom line. It may be costing us to eliminate paper theft, we may actually be using more paper to deliver the same hygiene related functionality, but we need to take a stand here. That paper’s our paper, and it should damn well stay ours till it hits the tracks, and I’ll quit squash before I let some filthy arsehole have it any other way!

Suit 1. See your vision, now, Mike, like your thinking. Could be a Queens Award for Industry in this for you.

Suit 3. Gotta hand it to you, you were just too darn out of the box for me there. Nice work.

Suit 1. Good, glad that’s sorted. Now, active information cross compliance platforms for on demand timetable distribution frameworks. Anyone got a clue what the fuck that means?

monday

I hate going to work. It’s wrong. The imposition of it, the arbitrary, artificial, super scaled, sheer bloody pointlessness of the vast majority of it. It’s got to go, all of it.


So, why don’t I just quit? Why do I do this every day? Well, most days? Let’s think.


1. Fear? Partially, I suppose. But I’ve done much scarier things.
2. Conditioning? Perhaps, partially. But it’s not like I’ve got a mortgage and a conventional lifestyle to support. Not by some distance. But cultural pressure is a strong thing.
3. Duty? Unfortunately, yes, to some degree. I actually like most of the people I work with, and my bailing would cause them some problems. But not so many that a months notice couldn’t be used to sort them out.
4. Sheer bloody mindedness? This, I fear, is the snare that has me. I am of the belief that by quitting, I’ll be letting ‘Them’ win. How did I come to subscribe to this monumental piece of Doublethink? I shall attempt to explain.

Most of the people I work with do not seem believe change is either as desirable, as possible, or can be as quickly brought about as I do. By doing what I do, how I do it, I am in some way convinced that I am actually making things better than they would otherwise be. The Job is not a bad one, it’s about as ethical as you can get, it pays OK and I have a large degree of, cough, ‘freedom’, within the given paradigm. Nice long chain, comfy cage. I even get a hall pass.


This is the most subtle and dangerous trap of all. The trap that binds you in, without requiring you to recant. The trap that holds you in slowly tightening, velvet jaws. The trap that gradually brings the walls in, and leaves the windows open, until, after reading an article in the Metro (aka The Daily Mail Lite) on the morning commute, you finally close them and fit the locks all by yourself.


I really should know better at my age. I know it’s not that scary outside. Quite the opposite, in fact. And I will come out play, just as soon as I finish this…

gloria

I’ve had a great summer. Not even the sub-kafka absurdity of my job in the twilight world between Machine Bureaucracy and Corporate Inertia, not the impending annihilation of my (and many other) species through our collective folly, not even the fact we got done two - nil away at Bolton last week, can take the gloss of it. I’m happy. And hungover.


So, I hear you ask, what’s that all about then? You in love or something? Well, no, unless it’s the something. Basically, and this where it all threatens to get sentimental, I reckon it’s all down to me mates. They do incredible things. Outrageous, audacious and unconstrained things. Things driven by love, anger and a deranged belief that through action - personal action - the way we organise our world can be transformed. That the stupid, ignorant and complacent patterns of behaviour and belief that have got us into the mess that passes for modern life can be slowed, stopped and eventually be reversed. That, despite lives and times that constantly would seem to demonstrate the opposite, we are not all shit-for-brains, hopeless gluttons on a one way shopping trip to oblivion.


If it wasn’t for them, I’d have given up years ago. It’s sometimes got pretty close even with them, to be honest. But I haven’t, because they haven’t. As someone said, a very long time ago, “Mind shall be harder, heart the keener, spirit the greater as our strength lessens.”* They may well fall. We may well all fall, with no hope of anyone to record or remember it. But I will fall with them.


*For those who are interested, the quote is a translation of the Old English lines “Hige sceal þe heardre, heorte þe cenre, Mod sceal þe mare þe ure magen lylað” taken from the Battle of Maldon.

transit

On my way to the station. I suspect a number of my pieces will start this way, as it’s one of my best thinking spaces. Much of my poetry has it’s roots in the walk to the station, or the wait for the bus. Yes, poetry I’m afraid. I’ll give you fair warning, you’ll probably get some of it later.


The sun is bright and late summer, a cool breeze stirs, a flash of blue as a kingfisher takes flight. A lone jackdaw paddles slackly through the humid air as a small peloton mirages across the T junction. So far, so Grantchester Meadows.


I cross the road. I’ve pushed the button, but the main road is all at red, and no one is using the filter from either the main road, or the lane. So, I cross. As I get close to the other side, the lights change – not to green, but amber. A fat, balding guy in the lead car of the small queue applauds, in a manner that can only be described as sarcastic. I mean, that’s how I read it.


I suppose it could have been a compliment on my choice of hat, or football shirt. But that’s not how it felt. How it felt was ‘how dare you use The Road in a manner which in any way could impinge on my divine right to get to the next set of lights a second quicker that I now will be forced to by your desire to get to the station in time to catch your train.’ OK, I admit he had no way of knowing I was going for a train, I doubt he even knows there is a station around here, and I wasn’t actually that late, but, no need to ruin a perfectly pleasant walk.


Self absorbed, overfed, carbon spewing bastard.

sick

I have, not too put to fine a point on it, being suffering recently from dodgy guts. I will try and avoid any unpleasant details, but feel it is only fair to warn you that my squeam threshold is quite high.


Now, I can normally throw practically anything at my digestive system and it will be quickly and efficiently dealt with. I do have a reputation for a little socially questionable ‘gassing off’, and I would have to admit that my diet, while not exactly conventional, is also not hugely wide ranging. I have been described as fussy, but that’s mothers for you. But, for my part, I have no complaints.


This summer, though, I have had two incidents of disturbance. And not your average five pints and a curry disturbance, but full on gastric insurrection. Complete with incapacitation, violent purging, weight loss and ‘oh shit, why is that so yellow?’ moments. Like Peter Crouch, nothing for ages, then loads at once.


I could, fashionably, put this down to a number of possible causes.

1. Stress. I mean, modern life is so hard. Time for a two week yoga break on Pathos.
2. Not eating the right food. I should obviously start eating wheat grass and eliminate all other wheat products.
3. A build up of tension in my bowels. I should pay a therapist lots of money to clear my chakras, or (resists urge to insert crass pun).
4. Despite the opinion of two NHS doctors, I am actually very, very ill, and must immediately seek the attentions of a private healthy care specialist.

Alternatively, I could just remember to wash my hands more at festivals, and urge everyone else to do the same. Oh, and stay off the cider.

vanity

Last Saturday. Off on a date. A proper one. With a fair chance of getting an invite in for coffee. So I decide to make a bit of an effort.


Shower. Think a little more about clothes even than usual. Clean teeth. Shave, even though I didn’t actually, by my normal standards, need one. And, of course, I cut my self. Just on the collar line. A neat line of small nicks. Not enough to really bleed for any length of time, but enough to ensure any shirt I wore would rub just enough to open them up and get bled on.


I pondered this event, and came to a few snap conclusions:

1. I am mystified why anyone would choose to shave more than is absolutely necessary, and doubly so why I still do. This requires more thought.
2. I decided to wear my home shirt, as we were playing that day. If that caused things to go badly ( and I had no reason to believe that it would, and I was right) then so be it. No point pretending to be someone your not.
3. If I’m going to shave, I must shave tactically, to reduce the occasions of razor use to a minimum.
4. Shaving is best done some time before, liken the night before, you want to appear shaved. If sandpaper is a problem, you can always claim to grow stubble very fast, before ‘fessing up to the truth.
5. It might just be possible that our squad rotation policy needs limiting a little.

bank

I got a leaflet in the post this morning from the bank, and I noticed that they are still using an old image on their ethical policy leaflet. You may know the one, a riot cop is baring down, face a dehumanised black mask, round shield raised. A long baton is grasped in a gauntleted fist, held high and level above his helmet. It’s a powerful, iconic image, and is used by the bank to convey the emotional context of their statement that they do not support ‘oppressive regimes’.


Fine. All very ethical. However, that image isn’t from, as most of it’s recipients probably expect, Pinochet’s Chile, or Franco’s Spain or Saddam’s Iraq. If the original image was shown, you would see the cop is on horseback, and the word POLICE is carried on his shield. The bank actually used to use the version where you could see this. It is an image from Thatcher’s Britain, from South Yorkshire in the miners strike. A fact the bank have altered the image to disguise.


And I’m not surprised. It does, I suppose, raise some questions. Like what they mean by oppressive regime? And which of these regimes they don’t support, exactly? Because they quite blatantly had no problems with the regime they borrowed their poster boy for tyranny from.


They do actually define, in small type at the foot of the image, that they regard an oppressive regime as one that engages in civilian murders and executions, a bar set far lower than the image suggests it is. The point being, they have picked an image that conveys something at odds to their actual policy, a contradiction that forced them to alter the image to avoid making this obvious. It gets worse when you look at their subscription based premium account. But, more of that another day.


More surprising to me, though, is that anyone thinks this make much of a difference anyway. Banking is basically, after all, about storing and moving money, and charging for that service. The bank can impose some controls on the first degree of separation of with whom and how they trade, but not beyond that. There is currently no separate, parallel, ethical international banking system, just as there is currently no separate, parallel, ethical international capitalism. Only niche markets within it of slightly lighter tone, depending on how much laundering is done between me and the death squad.


You pays your money and makes your choice, but don’t ever kid yourself the money is clean.

echoes

October is here, the season of ghosts.

Walking to the station, I am past at the foot of the hill by a red hatchback, driven by a ghost. The same shade of blonde, carelessly cast back in a ponytail. The same small frame, betraying the constant, nervous energy within. The same expression, lips held between the teeth in pensive concentration. Just a flash, a transient few frames as the car past by, up the hill. I was a little shaken, and checked myself, turned and pointlessly looked at the hatch as it swung round the corner, beyond view.

We see what we expect to see, and what we want to see. It could have been her, 20 years older, but what are the odds? And what if it was? There was no moment of brake lights as she stopped and backed up, asking for directions. No scrunch of gravel as, five minutes later, the car pulled alongside and the voice asked if I was who she thought I was. And there was no expectation that there would be, these things only happen in films, don’t they?

Until they happen to you. Rare and shocking, they hold you in the lamps beam, stumbling to even grasp what’s suddenly happening before choosing to grasp the moment, or let it slip away.

When they do happen, whatever the consequences, the disruption and turmoil, grasp them, grasp with both hands and hold on tight. Such moments are rare in our brief lives.