Sometimes.

Sometimes words can fit in place
Like eyes and nose upon a face
Sometimes words cannot be said
So tears replace the voice instead



Sometimes life is full of dreams
All that's gold is not it seems
That distant goal a folly sought
No prize worth having's ever bought



Sometimes fools have great disguises
On the surface no surprises
But look a little deeper down
The Jesters smile or tears of Clown?



Sometimes life allows you time,
To sit in silent sweet sublime
Gather thoughts that make the man
Look in the mirror... If you can.

Pudding?. Stuff That !

Lets get this straight, I am in a strange country and as such things are going to be a little different. I expect that and have great respect for other cultures and their ways and methods, though being English that custom seems a little outdated on our own soil, however that is not my point here today. Life is for living and you have to remember always that you are only here once, so discovering other countries and their habitat should be a priority, though last night I have to admit i questioned that wisdom on my way home from fetching something as simple as a little ice-cream.
If you are British you will know what that is all about, you have finished your sausage casserole and just fancy something for pudding, that feeling of your dinner being incomplete unless you have something sweet to follow the main course. Well over here in OZ the "pudding" element isn't exactly a priority, but to us Brits it's like tea without water, sausage and mash without the mash, football without teenage players crashing their Ferrari's because they can hit a bag of leather but cant drive a wedge under a door... anyway I am sure you get the picture, so it was that last night I was presented with this very scenario, IE no pudding.
This kind of travesty can only happen in a strange land as the UK larder or fridge is always brim full of sticky toffee pudding, spotted dick, trifle and custard, you name it, but the cupboard here in Newcastle NSW was bare, so even though it was dusk I headed out of the door with my dollars clenched firmly in my fist in order to right the wrong, make a stand for the traditional British pudding. Now we don't have SPAR shops over here they are 7-11's which I hope is pretty much self explanatory so in I went and filled my boots with banana-toffee flavour as well as caramel ice cream just to be on the safe side. I have to admit I felt pretty damned smug as I placed my "apres le diner" items in the carrier bag and bid my Asian friend behind the counter a "good-day" after all I was upholding a tradition that stems back to the dark ages they could take the man out of England but not England out of the man, I stood for all those ex-pats that now dwell here and have had pudding beaten out of them by their Aussie brethren, here I was taking one home for the team, the bringer of the sweet stuff after dinner, a proud Brit happily swinging his carrier bag full of goodies and looking forward to tucking in when he got back to his apartment, this was all going so damned well until i turned the next corner.
You see, one should always remember when abroad that you are not in your comfort zone, there are things out there that are alien to you. Well last night i bumped (almost literally) into one of those (different) things namely Harry (for that is now his name) the common garden orb spider who had inconveniently decided to build his massive elephant catching size web from the overhanging trees to the pavement along which I was happily walking along while thinking of my pudding...
Apart from the fact that this was damned stupid because the first person that walks round the corner would destroy it this web was also half the size of Basildon. It was ridiculous and indeed had Westminster clocked it they would have slapped a bedroom tax on it in a heartbeat and thrown said huge spider in the Tower for not getting planning permission while handing it over to a family of twenty five from OzbekistaniRomaniabad or similar, this spider was the Donald Trump of web builders and to make matters worse he was sat bang in the middle of his masterpiece so that you would probably get a mouthful of hairy Arachnid if you didn't spot him in time, how on earth I avoided this side kick from Jurassic Park I shall never know but spot him i did and headed for the safety of the middle of the road. I approached Harry from a different angle from the safety of the white lines and suddenly realised just how big this damn thing was, it was as big as my hand and could feed an African village for a week, you could hear its footsteps on the web (the world wide one), it stopped dead in its tracks when it clocked me approaching and I immediately wondered about it's jumping capabilities, I swear if it jumped on you it would be like Jonah Lomu landing on you from three stories up, it was so big it had a map of Canada on it's back, complete with logging trucks and grizzly bears, it had more attitude than a Rottweiler at a Postman's Ball, it's eyes glinted from the street lights and I am sure it was staring me out, I have to admit for the first time since I first appeared on Australian soil I suddenly realised this IS a foreign country and this was one "not so subtle" difference.
So there you have it, I headed up to the apartment post haste and slammed the door and locked it, closed the windows and started itching and seeing things, looking in my shoes, under the dunny seat, shaking the bath towel and generally being afraid that Harry had somehow followed me home. I sat down and put my ice cream in the freezer, it was now crystal clear to me why our Australian friends don't eat pudding after dinner, the only thing missing from my experience was David Attenborough and a film crew, either way stuff the after dinner pudding, when in Rome as they say, I shall stay in and leave the darkness to the wildlife and pudding to the Brits.






.

Tramps and Thieves.

Just when you think our political system and its participants can't possibly stoop any lower we get more news of lies, mistakes, cover-ups and blunders that have cost us all as a country. I talk of course of Jack Straw's admission that he miscalculated the impact immigration would have on the UK as well as the numbers that would flood into our poor brow beaten communities, the fact that a ten year old child could have foreseen such a calamity will not lessen the fact that this man who was paid by the public purse and was given a job with a duty of care will think that a simple "whoops" said out loud now will see him forgiven.
At the same time we see the Conservative Party deleting speeches from their website that were made at the time they were fighting to be elected. The obvious reason for this is they cannot fulfill their election promises, their excuse for it is they wish to keep the website current and not weighed down with older stories. I am afraid once again we see the same losers, the genuine British public. Just how many more times do we see serious misconduct from a top flight MP or  political party in this country go unpunished? I can almost hear Winston Churchill spinning in his grave. Why would all those brave men and women have fought all those years ago for a country that has ended up being governed by liars and cheats and people who should no more be in office than Biffo The Bear?.
If you were employed to do a specific job based on your experience and your ability then you should also be held responsible if you make a serious error of judgement, yet Jack Straw will make a comfortable living on the speech circuit delivering yet more spin and still getting paid for it, his very presence on these shores is an affront to the British people who will suffer for years to come with an over-populated country because of his miscalculation and inaction while in office, the man should be shovelling snow in Siberia not cash into his bank account. As for our Conservative friends does their self-righteous, ignorant, arrogant behaviour know no bounds? These people must assume that Britain will accept lies and cover-ups as an every day occurrence, they cannot surely think for one minute that we believe their pathetic excuse for blocking past promises made to us during speeches on their website? Oh, hang on, yes they can and yes we as a country probably will, you see we cannot really blame politicians for thinking they can get away with anything when we actually let them, as with modern day youngsters, there are no consequences for lies and poor behaviour so it continues, in fact it just gets worse over time, I fear for the future when days like today reveal such shocking but i guess unsurprising truths.
So, what will it take to right the good ship Great Britain? It won't be UKIP, it wont be Labour or Tory and most definitely not Liberal views. I believe that the issues will only be managed properly by a party that can nurture hard working citizens and entrepreneurs, be hard on Europe and even tougher on immigration, it should back business so that business can back the work force, it should allow Teachers to teach and Police to police, Nurses to nurse and above all be transparent and responsible for its mistakes. It should be ruthless on crime and genuine in its policies and consultation with its citizens, if this all sounds like pie in the sky it damned well shouldn't do, it should be the road map for governance, not a pipe dream.

If the latter sounds like the political scene that you grew up with then you are probably a sixties child too, it all changed with Tony Blair and the "spin word". The Tower should be overflowing and brought back to its previous stature and use, not a tourist attraction, I have a list drawn up if anyone is interested.

Life and its lemons.

I wonder if it is just myself that feels slightly disappointed Banksy has joined the political arena and spoken out about Trade Centre One on his website? Up until a few months ago Banksy had an anonymous mystique that was revered outside the capitol, many in the UK still did not know the cloaked man that inspired a generation to paint what they feel and brought a new chic to what is basically graffiti. I guess eventually we all succumb to media attention if we receive enough of it but I feel that he has joined the ranks of normality in his chosen field whereas before his art had much more power because he was almost anonymous and the very fact that he has been criticised in New York for his work in the area tells us that not everyone appreciates his style, though quite why the Mayor would chastise a near genius for decorating the city is quite beyond me.

Michael Heseltine made the case for HS2 last night, I wonder if anyone has actually told David Cameron that "Tarzan" carries about as much clout in the UK as a meat pie without the chips. He is a "has been" a political dinosaur who along with Kenneth Clarke should have been put out to graze years hence, they are bitter twisted old cohorts who did nothing but stamp their feet and back stab their way throughout their political careers, pretty much sums up the majority of politicians really, but that's another story. The very fact this man asks the UK tax payers to take a "leap of faith" as he so eloquently and convincingly put it shows he is more out of touch with the general population than ever before, how dare he assault the tax paying public's ears with such politically motivated drivel at a time ordinary decent folk are being penalised for having one empty bedroom in the family home, what a detestable individual he really is, it shows he has lost nothing of his arrogance and self righteousness and that this government is so short of politicians with believable clout they are prepared to take a step back to the dark ages to try and get their point over, let's hope one of those vines he swings on is showing it's age and hopefully gives up mid flight, it's time this political grade three listed antique was grounded and hopefully take the ill-conceived over-priced and unnecessary #HS2 with him.

Government is currently looking at increasing the weights and speed of tractors. To you in the City that may be no big deal but to us more rural based bodies it's a disaster in the making. You see farmers are not stupid, they receive hefty subsidies from our European brethren, they get heavily discounted VED for their machines and they also get rebated (red) diesel which more often than not ends up in the family car and Land Rover. If you couple that with land prices growing at their fastest rate since records began you begin to build a picture of an industry that is becoming a monster. So why I hear you ask should I be concerned about thirty two tonne tractors doing thirty miles an hour on our roads? Well one very good reason is that haulage companies deserve fair competition like any industry and if farmers are allowed to "haul" then they are in direct competition and as such should be subject to drivers hours rules, appropriate driving licences and appropriate record keeping, none of which farmers need to undertake, yet a young seventeen year old can drive for fifteen or twenty hours in a field then take a fully loaded thirty two tonne tractor out onto our highways and do thirty miles an hour on tractor tyres and much longer stopping distances, I fear the worst and I also fear that because government has given this such a short consultation time (February 2014) I fear they have not looked at the implications of such a move. Sounds all too familiar from a bumbling idiosyncratic bunch of Eton educated half wits... I may have only been Grammar School educated but at least it gave me something that the present incumbents of government have never had and that's a taste of real life and oh my does it show,

Charity Begins At Home.

How would you measure a disaster? You ran out of alcohol the night before and forgot to get more that day? Your insurance is due on the car and you can't afford it? Or perhaps you didn't get your expected pay rise?
Either way none of the above come close to being on the receiving end of a two hundred miles an hour storm when you were already living in a tin hut. The people of the Philippines have found themselves in such a position over the last few days indeed a new storm is brewing threatening more carnage, it is true devastation on a huge scale with over ten thousand dead and some of those bodies still lying under collapsed buildings and even hanging from trees where they were cruelly tossed.  That to me would be a disaster.
So why do I ask such a question? Surely the answer was obvious? Well actually no it wasn't obvious according to many short sighted people who I am ashamed to say class themselves as British. Having read some of the comments tagged to the bottom of news stories covering the disaster it seems we Brits are starting to lose our compassion for our fellow man in peril. Many of the comments emanated from pure ignorance of how emergency aid funding works, it is set aside and put there for good reason, it cannot be used by a Political Party to bolster our own NHS or help our own homeless it is overseas aid and it is their for such a time as this, most of those commenting on the stories I am sure go through their door at night close it and enjoy a warm home, it may be tight money wise but that is life, no-one said it was perfect but it's hardly third world status. I do however take issue with the European Union grant aid of only two point five million pounds while Britain supplies ten, Brussels is as mean as it is unruly.
I do have to admit I also feel the UK is currently being overrun with too many people who will fail to make a valid contribution to our cause, when people come to London on a Euro Passport to simply beg and send their forty pounds a day "earnings" back to Romania or Bulgaria then clearly the system is broken, we have been saying that for years but systematic governments have ignored this political hot potato as the answer is clearly a move away from Europe which, let's face it will never happen in my lifetime as there is simply not the leadership in place to see it through. But on the other hand when I see comments from basically well fed and watered Brits decrying aid to starving homeless people who are victims of an unprecedented disaster through no fault of their own it saddens me greatly, we are a caring passionate Nation and a proud Nation despite our current lack of a figurehead of worth to keep those traditions in place, if you ever start to doubt that we still hold such values close to our hearts then take a look at the funeral of Harold Jellicoe Percival this week, a lone ex RAF soldier who died at 99 years of age, he had outlived his siblings and had no children, he worked as ground crew with the famous Dam-busters squadron and after leaving the Army lived a solitary existence, but following an appeal by the undertakers for mourners to attend the ex serviceman's funeral over two thousand people including ex-servicemen and women turned up and filled the church and even the street outside in the pouring rain, that to me is what my country stands for and represents, the voice of humility and respect for others, they are values that even Hitler and his mighty armies could never overcome, he found to his cost that you cannot fight truth and honesty.
 So the reality is we still have that heart, but i fear it is a heart without a head to lead it, we have politicians who are now so interbred and image sensitive that their traditional values have been watered down to an almost non-existent level, they are as out of touch with reality as the people who made such acidic comments concerning aid to the Philippines but as much a part of the reason why they were made in the first place. It is time we had some proper leadership in this country and as Sir John Major so rightly said in an article this week, it needs to come from within the ranks not from the Officer and Gentleman's club, we need an experienced and capable pair of hands to help cope with the realities of life in Britain in 2013 not silver spoon fed ones.

A Famous Battle against Periplaneta Australasiae (or Roachy for short)

Apparently Cockroaches can fly.. I kid you not, mind you its not something a Brit would be completely up to speed with as thankfully we have very few of said bugs even more so the airborne variety, though thankfully fly screens on the windows and doors here in OZ usually keep them in their natural habitat but when you do have the odd faux pas and forget to close one then expect to see the insect equivalent to a Lancaster bomber with eminently less rudder control heading your way! I say this with confidence and experience as one came to visit last night as I was watching Demolition Man on the TV of all things, yes you heard right I did say Demolition man, the TV is not one of Australia's strongest points in fact the Brit Sit-Com repeats are a welcome release trust me, which is just as well as they are on all the time!.
Anyway, back to my big flying friend, he came into the room and landed above my head behind the settee, then had another little buzz around until I flicked him off the wall with a newspaper. The problem was he then disappeared..... now I am not squeamish normally but when confronted with a contender for "Fat Bugs R Us" in your living room while relaxed is not my idea of entertainment, even less so when he goes AWOL after the first engagement, I had visions of him plotting his revenge with a quick mouth crawl while I slept, or slipping across a few morsels of food with his germ ridden ass dragging along it for spite, oh yes believe me it was an uneasy sleep last night, not knowing whether I was going to get a re-enactment of Sir Guy Gibson and his Dam-busters crew across the valleys of my Duvet as soon as the light went out was not a great feeling.
Luckily, morning came and I headed for the bathroom still mindfully aware that my adversary was still in the building, I showered and came into the kitchen for breakfast being ever vigilant, even checked behind the settee where the last sighting occurred and nothing, but I was not at ease I had a feeling I was being watched, it was an uneasy truce.
I ate breakfast and tidied the apartment whistling along to my favourite tune as I did so, keeping a beady eye out for you know who. Suddenly without explanation or introductions there he was! scurrying across the carpeted floor towards the glass door on to the Balcony, he was limping from our earlier incursion and was easy prey, I stepped forward with the Telegraph and let him have both barrels all at once, the deed was done I had won the day, the Luftwaffe Telegraph had struck the fatal blow to our hefty flying friend and all was well again, I just need to remember that fly screens serve a purpose over here. I will stand on sentry duty if the door is open again, I am already looking at searchlights and barrage balloons to weigh things in my favour, I have also subscribed to The Telegraph so I have ammunition aplenty, this could be a long and bloody campaign.

#HS2 and jobs for the boys.

To err is human to err and know it is foolish, to err with billions of tax payers money should have been made a treasonable offence at the start of the twenty first century but I doubt that will ever become a reality and it is with faltering hope for the sake of everyone in the UK that this ridiculous #HS2 idea is put to rest before another penny is spent in conceiving and defending it. I am sure the idea in itself has merit, after all it is no secret that the UK has an appallingly outdated, overpriced and cramped rail network, it desperately needs modernisation but in the same breath you could apply the very same statement to our health service, police service,schools ad infinitum, you name it they are all at breaking point. So you may ask and rightly so why the push for #HS2 when there are already so many other existing issues that require re-organisation and additional funding?
Without being a doomsayer one would need to go back to the days of William The Conqueror, a bastard boy of Viking descent who split England up and gave much of the land to his Norman friends before his death as well as placing his son William on the throne, something his older brother Robert obviously disagreed with as they fought until William's death in 1100 and thus their younger brother Henry became king, if you see a pattern emerging here then you wouldn't be wrong, jobs for the boys is another term for it and that is exactly what we have here today with #HS2 albeit slightly be smudged by political smoke screens and posturing and the inevitable spin, the Norman descended land owners are still of the same dynasty and it is those money men of this once great Anglo-Saxon Isle who will yet again rest assured have their way.
You may now be forgiven for thinking that I have slightly lost the plot and that the men in white coats and a straight jacket are but a street away from closing in on this introspective Shropshire man who paints such a picture of skulduggery and cronyism in these modern times but spare me The Tower and a spell in the stocks just yet, for as an Englishman am I not part of one of the greatest democracy's that was ever formed? Am I not granted the right to peaceful protest and a vote at birth? Well, strictly yes but only if our inherited Norman money men say so.

Too many times over the past few years I have wanted at least a say or God help me a vote on critical decisions that are shaping the country of my birth but it seems that right is slowly being ebbed away like the moon talks to the tides to keep them in their place, "resistance is futile" to quote a well known adversary of Captain Jean Luc Picard.  If the #HS2 were put to a referendum tomorrow it would be voted out, the same as the vote on membership of the European Union, these are but two items that I feel I will be able to play no part in and as an Englishman it makes my blood boil, scarce wonder voting in elections is at its lowest ever ebb when it is but a token voice for a clutch of aristocratic nincompoops who couldn't control a food fight at a kindergarten without having a firm of consultants to asses the risk. We are being held to ransom by people so far removed from the actual reality of daily life that their ability to govern is diminished beyond repair and will be for at least the next two generations and that's if we introduce new blood now, I predict the next great leader of any repute that takes up the mantle for the common man and gets his full support will not be of Oxford or Cambridge University descent and education, I suspect they will arrive from further North. The sooner the better for me, I would love to go to a Polling station and see what all the fuss is about I would also dearly love the right to say where and when my hard earned taxes were spent and that would not include yet another useless firm of consultants to assess the impact of such unnecessary follies as #HS2 

I haven't got a plan... so nothing can go wrong.

Somewhat sunburned and finding thirty four degrees an odd combination with the word November I have retired to my writing cave with a peeling face and arms wondering if we Brits will ever be designed for such temperatures or if we should stick to our sub-thirty summers and sub-zero winters. The answer of course is to rejoice in both, the wonders of modern day flights mean we can enjoy the other side of the world in twenty four hours so I guess it's something we should get used to.
This trip has been quite a tough one in many ways so far, the flying for starters and then the heat but also a strange call from the UK that I have never felt before, perhaps it happens when you jet around the world often that eventually your natural home calls out to you, whatever it is it's an uneasy feeling and I don't much care for it. My writing always gets inspired when I am over here however and I have settled into several thousand words a day already and that can only be a good thing, I covered a recent transport show in Newcastle and I found it very interesting gleaning facts and figures off owners and taking pictures of such wonderful pieces of machinery that had clearly never seen the road salt that our UK trucks have to endure. The gleaming alloy and stainless steel on show was testament to the dedication these guys have in keeping their lorries in pristine condition despite the work they do.
There are changes going on all round at the moment, some welcome some not so welcome but with change always comes new challenges, something we humans are very good at creating and even worrying about. It was indeed Spike Milligan who came up with one of my favourite all time quotes "We haven't got a plan so nothing can go wrong" I love that line, it says a lot about the man who said it, his mind was not governed by such restrictions we place on ourselves, he thought in a manner that we mere mortals could never do.


The darkness has descended on Newcastle and another day is fought and won, only time will tell how easy or how hard the fight will continue to be but I for one have never been a quitter so expect to see me somewhere in the melee doing just what I have always been used to doing and that is fighting for survival, I have had a lifetime doing so and that will never change, enjoy your Tuesday UK I am off to welcome Wednesday with a smile.