Tell Me About It!

Tags

assertiveness, mansplaining, Rebecca Solnit, self-confidence

I don’t just do blogs, you know. I’ve gorra website, me.

Or rather, I haven’t. My website doesn’t exist. It can’t do because the url is impossible. Or at least it was a few years ago. Despite the fact that I’d been paying good money for it and maintaining it for years, it couldn’t possibly exist.

Not that I can remember exactly where, when or whom, the facts is as follows: I’m sitting in a caff or a pub or at a gathering of some sort, when I tell some geezer, some portly, bewhiskered self-styled übergeek, about some of my shit and tell him it’s on my website. He asks what my site is called and I tell him: it’s Lucidity Limited UK, all lower case, lucidity dot ell tee dee dot uk.
No, no, it cant be that, he says.
Well, I replies, it is.
No, no, no, he insists, it can’t be, there’s no such second level name as ell tee dee.
Well, that’s as may be, I reply, but I seem to have one.
No x 4, that’s impossible. No such thing.
I try to be friendly and say maybe they stopped doing them since I bought mine about ten bloody years ago, but many noes later he insists that’s never been the case.

These days of course one could just whip out a smartphone or tablet and prove it, but then there seemed nothing I could do to disabuse him. His sense of certainty was overwhelming and I almost found myself doubting the name of the site I’d been using since the last minnellium.

What is it with these people who are so sure of themselves? Back in the 70s I drew up a set of ‘Lowe’s Laws’, one of which was that people were right in inverse proportion to their self-confidence. Maybe that’s just to compensate for my own lack of it; “according to Lowe’s Thrid Law, that means I’m probably right most of the time”. Yeah, right.

I hate the term ‘mansplaining’ for a number of reasons. Mainly because it’s just such an ugly verbal construct, with no deference to the natural order of consonant clusters nor to any basic rules of etymology. I don’t doubt the phenomenon exists, I don’t deny that it’s a symptom of an underlying disease of society. But what niggles me most is that I have been a victim of it so often, I begin to wonder if I might actually be female. I’ve even suffered it from females, ffs!

The very wonderful Rebecca Solnit listed a number of examples of patronising explanation she’d suffered at the hands (well, mouths) of men. With one or two, I’d take issue, and trot out my belovéd ‘to a man with a hammer’ line — in at least one case, the bloke had given good reason why he had a particular expertise that was not relevant to his having a dick. But the one that struck me most was a tale about someone giving her and a friend a long spiel about a book he’d read that put some topic in a new perspective. Every time she tried to interrupt or say, “yes, I know, because…” yer man was like, “ah, you think you know, but this book points out …”

It was some time, apparently before her less polite friend managed to stop the guy long enough to tell him that Ms Solnit did indeed know, because Ms Solnit wrote the fucking book!

And I recalled that this happened to me. I was without the helpful friend, but a guy where I worked, from a different department, gave me the same kind of lecture about a report he’d just read, regarding the implementation of some software project or other that shed very interesting light on yaddah yaddah yaddah. So it took me a while to stop him long enough to tell him I wrote that report. Even then, to maintain his assumed superiority, he probably managed to convince himself that, though I may have written it, I hadn’t also read it.

I am a repository of useless and arcane information, ‘a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles’, I admit it. So I do know some silly things (though woefully few useful ones). But an assertive denial often has me backing away, politely (I like to think, though you might just say ‘cowardly’). At a party almost exactly thirteen years ago, when I should have been working to save the relationship with the love of my life, I got instead into a futile discussion with a student, when the word forensic popped up and I used it in its correct sense as denoting something done for the law or the courts.
No, said the beardy twat, it means ‘scientific’.
But I believe (I personsplained) it’s a derivative of the Latin word forensis, as in ‘of the forum’ or public space. Nothing I could say could bend him from his belief that it simply meant scientific. I should have thought to ask, in that case how could someone be a forensic artist? I should have asked our hosts for a dictionary or something (again, this is just before the coming of all-knowing smartphonery) but as usual I just backed away mumbling ameliorations.

Ah well, that’s enough examples (Ed). You probably knew all this already.

Whatever sex you are. Or I am.

 

Gone Clubbing

Tags

portrait, Scottish Portrait Awards

Tonight to my Club, and the Scottish Portrait awards, in the presence of the BBC cameras, to see who will be crowned best portraitists with paints (or other materials) and camera. To offset the glamour of all this, have to be there early to shift all the tables from the dining room and set up for the ceremonies.

Furthermore, to complicate matters, ’twas a case of, “Yesternoon to my Club to deliver a decanter (as one does) and return home sharpish” — which turned rapidly into an afternoon of blether and a rather late homecoming.

So the time left for bloggish activities has been reduced. As has the time for getting on with the current mip (masterpiece in progress).

Shaving, ironing a shirt and all that sort of rot seems to be priority.

So go away.

Who the Fulke’s That?

Tags

Charles Lamb, Essays, Fulke Greville, Hazlitt, Philip Sidney, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Your rambling blogger has vague memories of the day when he found out that essays were actually a literary form, and not just an instrument of torture, wielded by sadistic teachers. Since then it has been an all-too-sporadic delight to dip into the works of Elia (alias Chas. Lamb), de Quincy, Addison and the other ‘bloggers’ of their day, not to mention his beloved Montaigne from further back and farther away.

For many readers today, when any communication of more than one or two brief paragraphs will be met with the abbreviation TLTR, the works of these old luminaries may seem too prolix (what a change even between my first and last partners-in-life, the first who complained when any missive was under six sides of writing paper – or whatever the carrier pigeon could manage – to the last, who would refuse to read anything more than 50 words). But it’s just a matter (unless you’re an inveterate reader of wordy, 18th or 19thC lit) of getting your head into ‘wallow’ mode and being carried along by the prose, which is, let’s be honest, often about quite trivial subject matter. But that’s part of the joy of the essay: explorations of the quotidian in scintillating form.

And one of the great exemplars, which your correspondent knows less well, was old Billy Hazlitt (hero of my one-time neighbour, Michael Foot). To me (let’s drop the third-person affectation for now), the only way to enjoy these old ramblers and idlers is in equally old hardback editions, probably from Everyman’s Library (I will go with thee, and be thy guide, In thy most need to go by thy side). And ’twas with such a volume that I wallowed recently in a warm bath, both of words and water, reading Mr Hazlitt’s Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen. The author recounts an evening’s blether with some fellow wits, including Lamb, where those assembled end up discussing which folks from history they would most like to have met and had discourse with.

As I believe has already been said in these files, our own coterie at the Proms concerts, back in the 90s, had a game we called We’re Going Down the Pub, a mock tv panel show where we discussed a number of real or fictional characters with whom we’d like to go drinking. One crucial rule was No Shop Talk, ie no taking Joe Stalin for a pint, only to ask him why he slaughtered so many of his people. And Hazlitt’s bunch seem to have had a similar idea; they discuss more the companionable nature or otherwise of their intended visitors. Also they fight shy of those, like Shakespeare, of whom they would be too overawed to chat with.

And, among some fascinating and odd suggestions (such as Guy Fawkes), one of Lamb’s ideas is … well, I shall let Hazlitt tell you:

Lamb then named Sir Thomas Browne and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, as the two worthies whom he should feel the greatest pleasure to encounter on the floor of his apartment in their nightgown and slippers, and to exchange friendly greeting with them. At this Ayrton laughed outright, and conceived Lamb was jesting with him, but as no one followed his example, he thought there might be something in it, and waited for an explanation in a state of whimsical suspense. Lamb then (as well as I can remember a conversation that passed twenty years ago — how time slips!) went on as follows. “The reason why I pitch upon these two authors is, that their writings are riddles and they themselves the most mysterious of personages. They resemble the soothsayers of old, who dealt in dark hints and doubtful oracles; and I should like to ask them the meaning of what no mortal but themselves, I should suppose, can fathom.

Now my only prior knowledge of Fulke Greville (now Wikipedially extended) was his connection with Warwick Castle, near to which I once dwelt. He is buried in St Mary’s Church, and it is said (especially by guides to credulous tourists) that his ghost returns to the tower in which he had his rooms. As the Great Towers website (honestly) tells us:

Greville’s ghost returns to the castle to walk the room that was once his study. Here witnesses have reported catching fleeting glimpses of his sad shade staring at them from the dark corners, or feeling his presence at the place where he once composed such prophetic lines as:

If nature did not take delight in blood,
She would have made more easy ways to good.”

 

But mainly it struck me that each generation will have its celebrities and its idols, many of whom (with the exception of the Shakespearos) will be forgotten a century later. Greville was an outlier even in Hazlitt’s day, as Ayrton’s reaction shows, but who now even knows he was a writer? And who apart from scholars reads Phil Sidney, for that matter? I only know him as the geezer who said that heaven must be like eating foie gras to the sound of trumpets — and that wasn’t him at all but someone called Sydney Smith! Astrophel, that was P Sidney. Never read it. Probably never will. None of these ever featured in WGDtP, that’s for sure.

 

So who would your erudite chatterer go for these days, as an off-kilter choice? Someone I hadn’t heard of back in the last minnellium, but have since translated and even bigged up on these pages before, methinks. ‘Nun’ other than Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, author of Hombres Necios (see Hashtag Yo Tambien, 1st May 2019).

As I said back then, she was amazingly erudite, had a library of 4,000 books, spoke Latin, Spanish and Nahuatl and wrote on many topics, not least her polemics on male double standards and the importance of making education available to women. From her writing one gets a sense of a very witty as well as wise woman, with a deep humanity and engagement with life. So, assuming my ‘gaditano’ Spanish is up to the job, what a great person to pass some time and tequilas with, ¿verdad?

And as, despite her putative ‘calling’, she famously entertained lovers of both sexes in her cell, who knows how a visit might develop? It’s not all about the blether, you know.

After all, we’re not allowed to talk shop.

Pennies Fall on Penny Falls

Tags

bristol, Brunel, Game Show, Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll, Tipping Point

(Little Godspeed You! reference there)

Yes, gentle reader, you knew it would happen one day. Your merry blogger has found national fame. Ish.

Mr Crisp used to say that the way to become a virgin was to appear on television, after which people who would usually walk by on the other side of the street, averting their eyes and saying, “Don’t look now; it’s that terrible man!” will now rush across, at the risk of losing their very lives, to say, “We saw you on the telly!”

Well, that doesn’t apply to mid-afternoon game shows, for the sad and lonely. Nor, one suspects, does the old adage, attributed to Mr Coward and others, that ‘television is for appearing on, not for looking at.’

But, sixteen whole months after filming in Bristol, now it can be told. Telly has been appeared on, a number of acquaintances have watched it and, thanks to kind editing, your hero doesn’t look too bad.

Well, relatively speaking. They did cut out the comment that the tie was by Versace, and that was why they shot him.

The game was Tipping Point, based on the penny falls arcade games, where one inserts shitloads of coins at the top and nothing ever falls out at the bottom.

On this version, stuff does emerge. Counters (mustn’t refer to them as ‘coins’ on air!) are dropped into the machine as a reward for answering (mostly) simple general knowledge questions correctly. Four players begin, each round eliminates another until the victor is left to insert a star-spattered jackpot counter and get it out again by answering six questions, for one, two or three counters each.

The whole show is available until mid-October on STV player in the UK, should you be so masochistic (23rd September edition). If you do watch, please note that editing makes it look like he passed after hearing the whole question “In 2006, When the Sun Goes Down was a number one hit for the band called Arctic what?” and is thus ignorant of (Who the Fuck are) the Arctic Monkeys. He isn’t. He even has that recording (which was embarrassing at the time). The ‘pass’ was pre-emptive — after the word ‘When‘ in fact — on the assumption he wouldn’t know many 2000s chart hits and wanted to get to the next question quickly.
And ‘silverside’ sprang to mind about five seconds after passing the question to his opponent.

Who cares. He is, as they say, cringing all the way to the bank. And has spent most of it alleviating debts and putting stuff aside for unexpected bills and (at his kid sister’s repeated insistence) funeral expenses.

But the last thing he says is “I’m going to have to write a poem about this now.” And on the plane back from Bristol, he did. Here it is.

Jackerpotty
[Apologies to Lewis Carroll]

‘Twas Brizzle, and the Isambard
Did shipsteam in the stovepipe hat
Suspendy was the Cliffyroad —
And other shit like that

“Appear on Tipping Point, my son!
You Mastermind, Countdown the weeks
All Pointless is Fifteen to One
And Eggheads is for geeks”

The buzzy mushroom thrice he pressed
He played his counters, one, two, three
One rival had a jammydrop
One left in poverty

Too soon he passed the Indyband
But still he answered quizzlies four
Another victim fell too short
And now he had the higher score

He dealt with subjects far and wide
He knew of mixed up flutterbies
His dodgeball foe was brushed aside
And left without a prize

Excitedly, he stood alone
He gibbered like a nervous goon
He hardly let the Shephard speak
He answered questions far too soon

Although impaled on ozzygroups
He answered all the others well
He counted labourleaders till
The jackerpotty fell

“And hast thou found thy tipping point?
Come to my arms, you daft old ponce”,
His sister yawned in apathy,
“Don’t spend it all at once”

‘Twas Brizzle, and the Isambard
Did shipsteam in the stovepipe hat
Suspendy was the Cliffyroad —
And other shit like that

(May 2018)

 

 

The Grated Brutish Fukoff

Tags

arepas, Great British Bakeoff, reina pepiada, saffranspannkaka, saffron pancakes, Street Food

Put me in a kitchen with a skillet or a saucepan and any number of ingredients and I’m as happy as Larry, assuming Larry is a miserable bastard whose spirits can be elevated slightly by frantic activity with a meal at the end. I can stir, fry and even stir-fry with the best of ’em, and even risk my productions on other people, without expecting more than a token mortality rate.

But I ain’t no baker. Even something that would be scoffed at by the telly contestants in bread week and scoffed happily by the judges, seems to defeat me.

Yes, that’s me putting the kaka into saffranspannkaka med salmbärssylt, the Gotland speciality. Saffron panakes with dewberry jam and cream.

Undersugared, undersaffroned (you know how much that stuff costs?!) and overcooked, I think. A friend had them in Visby earlier this year and raved abbout them. Another friend recently returned from mainland Sweden with jars of the jam.

But as neither your friendly gastro-gnome, nor any mainland Swede he’s spoken to, has ever had the pancakes, he’s not sure if the texture of warm, coagulated rice pudding is correct. If it is, he can only question his cruising friend’s taste.

And then there’s arepas. The delicious Venezuelan breakfast dish now becoming a streetfoot staple over here. I have the right flour, the advice of a Venezuelan amiga, and any number of recipes, most of which agree they should be cooked in ten to twenty minutes.

But whatever I do, however nicely crisped and browned the outside of these patties might be, even after an hour in a hot oven, the inside seems uncooked, like — well, like a warmer version of the soft dough I started with. Using a cast iron skillet as a budan (or griddle), frying and then baking, even pricking and slamming in a microwave. Mush.

At least I have had the real thing, so I know these are not how they’re supposed to be. I guess I should go to Orinoco on Leith Walk and watch what they do. And eat some with their very own reina pepaida filling — avocado, chicken and mayo with some jalapeños (peas optional), which I did make well and appears in the pic.

I think it’s all about the base — arepa dough too dry or maybe too soggy, pannkakakakaka using the wrong rice?

Who knows? It’s back to sausage and mash tomorrow, methinks.

I can do that.

Sdrawkcab

Tags

conventions, Edinburgh Fringe, Stand Up Comedy

Your friendly blogger has an innate allergic reaction to branding, formulae, mantras. Whether it’s the constant repetition of changed … forever [v last week’s entry] or 17.4 million voters or Radio Three’s repetition of New Generation Artist’s Scheme, he reacts negatively, possibly as an instinctive form of defence against their constant drip drip drip. Worryingly this is maybe what the plot of Quatermass and the Pit is getting at and you will be heaving telekinetic rocks at your correspondent when the next cull comes round (very soon, I fear).

While attending a number of Edinburgh Fringe comedy shows, from the stars of stage and telly, to the up-and-coming (or down-and-unlikely-to-come) stars of tomorrow, the formulaic aspects seem so jarring and jading and, for this outsider freak, spoil the pleasure. Don’t regular audiences ever tire of the performer’s own voice bidding them welcome him or her to the stage or the faux enthusiastic holler of How ya doin’, Edinburgh? Are you well? ?

OK, some, especially Paul Foot, play with those conventions a little, but from that intro to the naked callbacks and on to the claim that you’ve been a lovely audience, I’ve been Jolly Jim Jardine, and goodnight. it all feels like the same old same unoriginal.

Some years ago an encounter with some comics and other entertainers in an Edinburgh pub led to the idea of doing a double act with a more experienced performer (no names, no pack drill). This led to threats of violence, but also to the idea of a double act split over two venues. The conceit that grew from this was that Lowe and Jardine (let us say, for ’tis not a real person) have agreed to do a double act, written it and booked places for it, but a fight over top billing has led to a breakdown in communication, and the booking of two venues. After an exchange via mobile phones, each would stubbornly go on with his half of the set, which would have to be written (like a concentrated Ayckbourn idea) so that either set would be funny but only seeing both (in either order) would reveal the full humour. About five minutes got written before shiny things once again distracted your loyal simpleton.

This year’s ‘big’ idea is to piss about with the aforementioned conventions. The first idea was to play the inexperienced comic, with a card, read from in a desultory fashion, at each point acting out the realisation that the actions haven’t matched the intent; eg walking to the front of the stage before reading, Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage … oh.

But then it seemed it might be fun to do the whole damn thing in reverse. Either reversing the sense — from an opening, I’m going to be Dai Lowe, you’re going to be a wonderful audience, through to Gentlemen and ladies, did you have a good time? Please say goodbye to Dai Lowe — or actually doing the usual stuff but in reverse order (ending of course with the explanation of why it’s being done so, just before saying, Please welcome to the stage …).

This leads to the question of writing routines or gags than can start with the punchline and still amuse — and adding a few call-forwards in the early stages. You might think that they just become callbacks again, but not if the extended use of the theme comes some time after the brief (and probably baffling) ‘reference’ nearer the end — or should that be start?

Many a comic would blanche at the very idea of the above blog post. Most pros are miserable buggers in real life, terrified that anything funny they say might get nicked, and that’s a much bigger worry if it’s a whole concept getting purloined. But I’m a solitary, slow-moving, lazy bastard, who will never get round to realising either notion — so if somebody can make one work, they’re welcome to it.

I’d appreciate a comp though, when the show’s in town.

Frustranslation

Tags

Brassens, Filles de joie, French song, George Brassens, prostitution, translation

It has occurred to your devoted servant that many if not all of the pomes he has translated, from Spanish, Welsh, Russian or whatever foreign tongues, have been on the subject of love and its close companion, sex.

This has led to the idea of working towards a presentation, show or set with the brilliantly witty title (I’d be a fool to deny it) of Lust in Translation. Yes, take a while to admire the clevertude.

And this brought to the foggy plains of memory a project, equally doomed to the back burner, of translating, perhaps even performing (if learning a few guitar chords were not beyond him), some of the works of the great French troubadour, George Brassens. Interpreters of his Belgian counterpart Jacques Brel, far too histrionic and mannered for the present writer, are cinque cents a douze, but poor Georgie boy seems terribly underappreciated.

The song that had presented the greatest challenge was his Complainte Des Filles De Joie (as embedded above), which was adopted by French working girls as an unofficial anthem. It is built round the idea that the euphemistic terms (parole, parole — words, words, or maybe ‘it’s true, it’s true’) are ironically less than apt — the ‘girls of joy’ don’t laugh all that often.

Now, many of his lyrics rely on street slang, and no two languages have quite the same set of evasive names for ‘indelicate’ subjects, so the original idea was to completely rewrite it, in a more anglicised style, abandoning all those repetitions for a start. But then, drawing on the excellent example of Jake Thackray, perhaps the only Englishman to make a success of coming close to the French style of song, and a frequent translator of Brassens (and Brel), an attempt has been made (taking so long this blog entry is already nearly three hours late) to render something close to the original style and even, in a few places, a translation of the actual content.

No doubt it still needs a lot of work, and it will be interesting to see how it fits into the overall scheme of things. It does sit alongside Sor Juana’s Hombres Necios (see Hastag Yo Tambien on May 1 ’19), from 300 years earlier, as another scathing attack on male hypocrisy, as long as we sandwich it with hilarious Welsh poems about failing to get laid, and a few more romantic pieces.

So this is the first draft. See what you think (warning: fucking explicit lyrics)

The Complaint of the Ladies of Pleasure

Behold the ‘ladies of the night’ [x2]
The ‘working girls’ who sell delight [x2]
And all of the other nice names you’ve heard
It’s only words, it’s only words
Like all of the other twee names you’ve heard

The French, they call them filles de joie
With typical je ne sais quoi
Yet joy is so rarely their reward
It’s only words, it’s only words
No, joy is so rarely their reward

Night and day they walk the street
It really buggers up their feet
The cost of their shoes is quite absurd
It’s only words, it’s only words
There’s no tax rebate for the costs incurred

Not making love, just joyless fucks
Giving blowjobs really sucks
With unwashed gonks who smell like turds
It’s only words, it’s only words
With unwashed gonks who smell like turds

At least they never feel rejected
If you can’t keep your mast erected
It’s only an income stream deferred
With soothing words, with soothing words
It’s why payment up front is still preferred

The fallen women of the town
But who the fuck has dragged them down?
The moral picture’s far from blurred
It’s only words, it’s only words
To me the morality’s far from blurred

The bourgeoisie, they call them ‘whores’
The coppers chase them out of doors
And always that constant risk of ‘sterds’
It’s only words, it’s only words
Like ‘pox’ and ‘clap’ and other sterds

Oh, every day they’re there to ride
So many times they play the bride
|But for them the chimes are rarely heard
It’s only words, it’s only words
Those wedding bells are rarely heard

Come all you punters, johns and tricks —
With all your poxy, oozing pricks
Never enjoyed but just endured
It’s only words, it’s only words
You’re never enjoyed you are just endured

Oh but for fortune, my dear brother
That tart could well have been your mother
So think before you laugh or curse
“It’s only words, it’s only words”
Just think before you just make things worse

25/7/2019

Eat Your Heart Out, Oscar

Tags

Brexit, Change UK, liberal elite, populism

Thinking about the rise of an ever-more rabid ‘Brexit Party’, and the slide towards fascism that seems to be co-ordinated worldwide, I came up with an aphorism or whatever you call it.

To me, as a pleb with politico-philosophical pretensions tagged on, the most depressing sight just now is the old ‘liberal elite establishment’ (ie the good guys), playing into the hands of the alt-right, populist nasties. There’s an irony, in that liberal values are based on a genuine desire to make the world a better place for the worker and the poor and the less able (even if one would rather not actually mix with the smelly thickos), while it’s only a matter of (brief) time before a triumphant right starts repressions and oppressions (first they came for the quinoa set, but …) that clobber us working class sods hardest, to feather their already luxurious nests and satisfy their lust for power.

Anyhoo, here’s my ‘witticism’. I may have overworked it a little, but as it says in my novel, Fardel’s Bear, If brevity is the soul of wit, I’m fucked.

Judging by their reactions to the Brexit Party*, the ‘liberal elite’ and political establishment, typified by ‘Change UK’, are like guests at Belshazzar’s Feast, who know there’s something written on the wall, but don’t see any need to read it.

In fact they’re trying to get a man in to paint over it.

But he’s gone back to Poland.

(*in other lands, insert name here, AfD,Trump, Orban, Bolsonaro, etc)

 

And a brief footnote: I keep seeing people describe the polling for the BP as them ‘surging into a lead’. If this were a First Past the Post election, indeed that would be a lead and give them a good chance of forming a government. But the Euro vote is PR (d’Hondt method), and 33% of the vote is anything but a lead. 67% are not intending to vote for them. Just bear that in mind. ☺

Crackers

Tags

biscuits, careers, IT, jobs

Being a chatty, friendly (ie annoying) kinda guy, I have, in my many years of what passes for life, spoken to many fascinating peoples. As in the most part they all are. As Quentin Crisp so rightly says, to say someone is boring is to criticise ourselves; it means we have failed to make ourselves into the wide open vessel into which they can pour their entire lives.

And when it comes to conversation starters, apart from, ‘Where are you from?’, the most trite and tested has to be, ‘and what do you do?’

Well, if it’s good enough for Mrs Windsor, who am I to bust a gut looking for anything more original?

As to the former, it makes a tiny number shrink away as if afraid I will be finding out their illegal immigrant or on-the-run-from-the-mob status, which they could hardly signal more clearly by that very reaction; and on one occasion earned me an irate lecture about asking such an intrusive, personal and silly question on first acquaintance. Hmm, touchy.

I just saw a tv documentary in which a guy giving people customised profiles for dating sites says the best start-line is something like, ‘pineapple on pizza: yes or no?’ but I’m just wanting to get to know people, not to knob them.

But the job/profession/hobbies question has been most instructive. It’s odd, because when I had one of those paid work things, I hated to be defined by it. I would often answer, ‘What do I do? All sorts of things: I paint, I write, I read, I cycle around …’. If I was in a perverse enough frame of mind, I might add references to eating, sleeping and even masturbating. To which the response would always be, ‘no, I mean what’s your job?’

Now, even ignoring the fact that most of my colleagues would question whether I ever did ‘do’ my job, I used this opportunity to rant about not being defined by the shit I did to put a crust on my table; rapidly, and largely by subtext, I told the questioner enough about me to send him or her on their way, wishing they’d never wasted their time.

But down the years I have often found myself asking other people about their jobs, and the most interesting or odd ones — even ones that sound unspectacular but still out of the ordinary — have made me think, more than anything, “why the fuck did our careers advisers at school or uni never tell me that option existed?”

I recall walking up Rosslyn Hill with a pram-pushing young mum who was taking a maternity break from her job of finding luxury hotel rooms and buying them wholesale to sell on via cheap deals (and this would be by phone or coupon in those pre-interweb days). Now, I was just coming to the premature end of my career in what was latterly called IT; of course, careers advisers, especially back in the early Seventies, didn’t have to think hard about what job a computer science graduate (third class) would be likely to pursue. One could get a well-paid job programming the damn things if one could spell ‘kompewter’. But how quickly I would have changed course, if someone had told my callow, twenty-one-year-old self that one could get paid to go round the world on expenses, checking out top-class hotels!

Of course I would have been aware of my other dream job — paid food critic — but even there, I, familiar only with the the simple conveyor belt of school–uni–IT, would have had no clue as to how to become one.

So it’s intriguing to consider all the amazingly varied things folks can actually do to earn their salt.

And what made me think of this? Well, I was sitting at my computer typing away at last week’s blog entry, and a sudden disaster, followed by a careful examination of thirty-plus ‘flour-based food products’ (as Wikipedia calls them), caused me to wonder what sort of person would ever choose the job of sitting by a conveyor belt, assiduously putting microscopic cracks in whole packets of rich tea biscuits so that the majority of each breaks off, moisturised by the slightest dunking, into innocent bloggers’ mugs of sodding coffee. I hope it’s well-paid, you bastard!

Work In (You Call This) Progress (?)

Tags

grime, humour, poetry, rap, work in progress

I’ll be honest with you, it’s been a mucked-up week. I’ve bought bridges for banjoleles, shirts and ties to go clubbing in (for which reason I may not be able to post a blog next Wednesday but will report on the events the following Wodensdag) and set up the Fringe show online catalogue entry (among other shit).

So not only have I dedicated no time to blogging (again) but I also have failed to write the pome/rap/grimey piece that I was hoping to add to the show repertoire.

So I’ll cripple two birds with one hockey stick and share the rubbish I’ve sketched out so far, pretending I’m doing it to give insights into the writing process. The end product will be interesting to compare, as it will either be a shining piece of sociological satire and wit or a crumpled ball of paper in a bin. Place your bets now …

As is often the case I started with the punchline and have tried to justify it with a whole load of preceding drivel … which goes like this…

They used to say if something isn’t broke, don’t fix it
Now it’s more a case of if you isn’t woke, don’t mix it!
I used to think of culture as a pick’n’mix counter
Takin’ anything from anywhere in any size amounts, yeah

I listen to Flamenco while I’s knockin’ up a curry
And sing along in Tagalog; I didn’t really worry
‘Bout performin’ silly verses in a crap Welsh accent
Never gave a lot of thought ’bout what the fuckin’ hell that meant

Now enjoyin’ somethin’ comin’ from another race or nation
The PC crowd, they calls it cultural appropriation
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxs’thing about sex/sexuality

And you can’t be sayin’ nothin’ without someone gets offended
…………………………………………………………………

blah

blah

blah

blah

then the brilliant final couplet that might get a laugh but which I don’t want youse guys stealing before I’ve found a place for it.

So now I want to go to bed. Go away.