Small Town Thinking.

Frozen wet faces looking down at the pavement
Walking like zombies this isn't how it was meant,
Soaking wet jeans and dreams of a better world
Lost dreams of a Prince as befit still a little girl

Heartache and small towns guide one another
Tormented lifestyles haunt sister and brother
Minds that stay closed some for a generation
You stand in the kitchen, you know your life station,

Those thoughts of a life and a carved out career
All lost for those fags and the nights on the beer
But darkness brings dreams that small towns can't punish
Away from the red necks those sneers you admonish

For you can be wild and free in that moment
Not shackled by chains or hurt by the torment
So take your dreams with you and fly to your freedom
Let narrowest minds have their small town, it needs them

You stand so much taller when your heart does the talking
They search every corner, but you've started walking
Long shadows cast fingers that seem to be pointing
The cost of a conscience, it won't stop the wanting.

So you place all your dreams on a cloud that invites you
And never look back, as those shadows can bite you
You learn as days pass that the heartache's just wain
Your dreams in the night time will lessen the pain  
.

Is life in your bubble so tough now your out?
Or dreams made of scenes that make you scream and shout? 
Well fuck all the doubters the angry old shouters,
The old men and their shitty ways
I will ditch this small Town with it's inexorable frown
I'll be dreaming the rest of my days.

George lays one Punch and the City Bottler takes all.

As if to just remind us all, right on cue, that we are currently being governed by the latter day equivalent of Punch and Judy, out comes the naughty Crocodile (Georgie Porgy Osborne) to tell us all that he intends to slash the budgets yet again, thereby hanging the poor old baby (UK Businesses) out to dry for another year ensuring instant misery.
Before the good old British Public had finished the last scraps of Turkey or turfed the tree out for recycling along comes Georgie the evil Crocodile to frighten the living daylights out of an already punch drunk audience (The Public) to tell them that things are going to get a LOT worse, Oh yes it is!  For sure George is definitely not BEHIND YOU!  In fact the only thing George is behind is in his thinking, the last thing we want to hear at the start of a brand new year  from a talentless, nondescript, lightweight politician whose total business acumen amounts to a game or two of Monopoly at Christmas, is that things are going to get worse.

Here is a thought for you George, it is in fact NOT you that has steered the economy out of the abyss, neither is it the fat finance sector, who, by the way, now see their wallets bulging to bursting point once more, it wasn't quantitative easing, it wasn't government policies, it was in fact the very people you are now once more condemning to more misery with your ill-timed and ill-conceived words, it was the small business sector. The fact they kept their heads and saved this countries backside and carried on regardless through their entrepreneurship and determination means they single-handedly kept this country afloat, but you being a politician, you do exactly as you are supposed to do, you take the credit where it is not due, you think it's your policies that are working, so you say "More of the same!"
I really do wish the real crocodile was behind our incredulous Chancellor and just as he opened his mouth to frighten the UK economy into retreating to the bat cave for another year, the Crocodile opened IT'S mouth and swallowed this prize idiot whole.  How stupid does stupid get? The last thing any of us want to hear is more woe about how the government can't spend, or how it can't let go of the purse strings, when in reality it is about to plough a £40bn swathe through the English countryside with #HS2, a train that no-one, but the City based money men who will provide it''s backing wants.
 I suggest that Mr "Crocodile" Osborne keeps his rather enormous mouth firmly closed until he has something worthwhile to use it for, I would have thought an announcement that the Government is set to pump £40bn into the creaking transport infrastructure of this country as a whole and not just into a London based gravy train, would have been greeted with the response it would so deserve, unfortunately George is a puppet of the financial sector, like all the other puppets in Parliament and everyone knows what happens when an accountant is left to run a real business, one can only fear the worst when you actually consider exactly where the City sectors hands have to be placed, in order to get the results they want from their puppets... Whose got the baby?  Oh I think we all know whose got the baby George.

'Twas the day before work starts again....'

OK so its back to work time for many tomorrow (Monday 6th) the credit card bill will drop through the letterbox, the alcohol cupboard will go back to two tins of Guinness from Xmas 1999 and a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream that's so old the top has cemented shut, the house will seem that little bit smaller yet again under the weight of Lego and One Direction paraphernalia and you will find out the new coat you had off the other half isn't waterproof.   On top of all this the car will want taxing, the backlog at work can be seen from the Space Station and that little nerd from accounts wife has bought him a new Range Rover for Xmas and he has pinched your parking space.
You wont be on your own, The drinks cabinet will be identical in every cramped house in your row, the clothing dilemma is perennial and the Range Rover will be on the never never. As for the workload at least keeping busy will help you forget the credit card bill. This will be scant consolation to you however as the post Xmas blues start to take over. The thought of work through the next cold wet icy and snowy winter months will look as appetising as Granddad's Xmas lunch after his teeth fell in it, your get up and go will have gotten up and gone and your Mojo will be on Go Slow, the only respite will be from the odd work mate forced to wear their new Xmas jumpers to work. Later in the day you will remember that while you were vegging out and playing with the daughters new laptop you also signed up for 12 months online at the local gym and the new instalments of £30.00 a month start on the same day your car tax is due, worse is to come because your training partner is your Town's answer to Usain Bolt and he is keeping you to your word, despite five o'clock coming along and you are feeling more Dead-grave than Redgrave.

 Of course it will get worse as you get older. Have you noticed how older people rush to get food in for Xmas day?  OAP's stampede the bread counter and load enough milk in their trolleys to keep Cleopatra in her favourite baths for a lifetime, they buy enough Pork Pie to build a scale model of the Burj Khalifa and fill it from head to toe with Chocolate Santa's and Reindeer. They park anywhere and walk over top of you if they can't get round you, why Tesco and Sainsbury's car parks were so full of OAP's on Christmas Eve even June Whitfield was laid off by The Over Fifty Plan..
You will be fighting over the grand kids, playing the "I am offended but will try not to show it" card if your off-spring don't battle Tsunami's and hurricanes to be with you on Boxing day, while managing to fall asleep just before the Queen's speech comes on, despite insisting all morning that you are desperate to see it. So if the thought of getting up in the morning is a daunting one then rest assured you are not alone. Millions of us will be in the same boat and paddling it for all we are worth until next December.... when we will do it all over again!.

Have a great 2014 and thanks for all your support in 2013 x

The United Kingdom. A different viewpoint.

There is something moraly and ethically wrong with a society that has to resort to food banks for the poorest families, while answering the call of prison inmates who complain about the size of the portion they are handed out.
 Here's a thought, why not put these criminals to work on the pot holes and ditches that now litter and flood our under financed highways and pay them say £50.00 a week. Then tax them on their earning plus a £15.00 "victims surcharge" and hand that out to the poorest families now using food banks?.
Oh wait a minute, that is FAR too obvious, first of all it would "breach the prisoners human rights" ...(dont worry about their victims human rights as they don't count in the wishy washy liberal world), secondly it makes far too much common sense, you remember common sense? It got us through the last two wars and saw off the Nazi invaders with a flea in their ear. Can you imagine just what our left wing brethren would make of the Nazi party now? Why they would have a voice and be allowed to spread hate, go through airports in their swastika emblazoned "traditional dress" have their passport pics taken doing a Nazi salute, it is after all their "human right".
I am tired of seeing the hard working hard fighting decent people of this country being outvoted-out-maneuvered and out-talked by a bunch of perennial idiots who continually fight for the so called underdog when in reality the underdog is common sense and those same decent people. The NHS is dying in front of our eyes, instead of putting more Bobbies on the beat we make a new job called "Police Commissioner" and he crticises the already under funded over-worked foot soldiers while taking home 4 times their annual pay.
The fire service are another one and dont start me on our schools, Michael Gove should be frog marched to the Tower for taking away my children's childhood, he is little short of a dictator with a warrant card. Then the funny handshake brigade are all salivating over the profits they will gather from #HS2, a railway line the country can neither afford or wants, but trust me the money men will get it, they run the country and so called "Parliament" is but their lap-dog to be used how and when they see fit.

While all this happens what do our elected brethren do to right the wrongs? Do they stand up to all this lefty nonsense and fight for the common man?  Do they point a finger at those with clip boards and fluorescent bibs and shout "No More!" Do they tell Europe to take it's "Human Rights" overkill and stuff it? Then tell them the British people have had enough?. No. They don't.
Instead our wonderful eclectic elected members play the continual blame game with each other in order to secure another four years of lucrative government for their paymasters, in the Tories case it's the banking sector in Labour's case it's the Unions, I won't mention the Liberals as even they don't know what camp they are in so how the hell would we?  There is not a single man in government today that I would vote for, not one, Jesus Christ I couldn't name another MP below David Cameron and his two counterparts such is their miniscule contribution to this countries welfare, while they fiddle Rome burns.

So having complained what could I do about it? You notice I said "I" not "we".
Such is the way of politics now that unless you are committing your oath to one of the "three" idiotic numbskulls that currently fight and bicker over our country as it goes into its death throes, you are in no mans land, so perhaps we should infiltrate one of them and try a military coup style take over and call the new party "Solidarity".... it worked in Poland.
 The reality is, no-one is going to do anything, as British people we put up and shut-up. But... and I say this in hope more than knowledge, I have seen what the British public can do if they are pushed too far and woe betide any politician that tries to stop that Tsunami. Be very careful Westminster, there are an awful lot of decent British law abiding citizens who are sick to the back teeth of your meddling, mishandling and total lack of leadership, not just one party but the whole damned lot of you, I cannot think of one Oxford or Cambridge student that i would entrust with our country, you have no experience of real life, in short you lack common sense and damn does it show.
 It is a well worn joke that the only man who entered parliament with honorable intentions was Guy Fawkes, it might give these spineless idiots a taster of just what their meddling in Afghan and Iraq has done to our under supported armed forces facing explosions and mortar fire every day, I bet the noise of Churchill spinning in his grave sounds like a Chinook on full throttle in a tin shed, oh for the days of a real political leader with some guts to stand up for Britain, God knows they are needed now and it could indeed be their finest hour.

Indulge me.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/From-Mid-Wales-New-South-ebook/dp/B00HL4JTVO/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_1

The New Year comes....

Happy New Year.

The table sits in darkened room
Its fare all spent its contents strewn
All use now ended, empty shell
A place where memories now dwell.

For this is last years empty table
Feasted on by all those able
Some who sat and joined the fest
Have left our mortal life to rest.

Friends anew have stepped on board
As life continues rest assured
For in the light of room next door
The circle starts again once more.

A brand new table full to flowing
What's entailed not ours for knowing
Life will guide you have no fear
So take your place for this New Year.

Dine on newly laid out feast
When hope and faith are all increased
And welcome what the new year brings
As midnight bells chime 12 strong rings.

Have a good 2021 all.

The BBC Bland, Boring,Contentious.

On a day when a common thief has his life and times celebrated by no less than the British Broadcasting Association one wonders just what we can expect to see in the future.
 I wonder had Genghis Khan been around when the BBC had reporters, cameras and large amounts of taxpayers money to waste then no doubt he would have had two live docs and an invite to Celebrity Come Dancing, oh and no doubt he would have explained that his past was his past and he is a changed man, just like Biggs said he was "once a crook", sorry Mr Biggs, once a crook always a crook.
You see, I hate to put a dampener on this party but the facts speak rather louder than the man himself, that in itself is no small task given his gob was big enough for 10 such bullies of his ilk. This is a man who savagely beat a train driver over the head because he wanted to steal. That's all there is to it. He is no hero, he shouldn't rest in peace he should rot in hell and the BBC should follow on in his footsteps for once again wasting our money on such clap trap. The fact this program about a a sadistic pure thug comes so soon after the ridiculously extensive Mandela coverage should not be surprising, indeed I am awaiting a huge announcement that the Beeb have done a fly on the wall documentary during Mandela's funeral and followed the family around until the burial and even now have two reporters and an outside broadcast team monitoring "life after Mandela's death" followed by "Has he risen yet?"
Don't get me wrong, Mandela was a man of true grit, he was not an angel and in fact at one point was deemed a terrorist after the ANC turned to violence, but the big difference between Mandela and Biggs is that Mandela did it for a cause, to help free his country, Biggs did it for greed to fill his pockets.
So why is Auntie Beeb showing highlights of a low life's career instead of the highlights of say Jim Flint's career for instance, who, as a decorated Lancaster Bomber was 100 recently and sadly passed away today?
Simple. Biggs was a big mouth, a low life, a crook, but he also believed in his heart of hearts that he was a respectable villain and he dragged ALL  the wishy washy liberal minded middle and upper class with him on a wave of undeserved notoriety and ill-judged respect. The rest of us ditch walking lower classes knew exactly what Biggs was, a thieving bully and a scumbag, no more no less. The reason an ex Lancaster pilot doesn't get headlines is because he is a working class hero and God help the BBC if it dare be seen to support the common man, how vulgar.
 If I were in charge of this country I would scrap the BBC in a heartbeat, it was once a bastion of Britishness, a fortress for truth and righteousness. Now it is politically guided, prejudiced and incapable of giving the majority of its real audience a balanced or unbiased view of our world today, if it had a back bone it wouldn't be showing anything about Biggs, let alone two shows in two days and I for one will not be watching, although Genghis Khan on Celebrity Dancing would possibly get my vote, well at least the judges would be a little more respectful.

Take me to your leader...

The untimely death of Paul Walker in the early hours of today serve as an all too regular reminder that this life we are given is a fickle mistress, indeed the same goes for those poor souls lost simply doing their job or having a quiet drink in a Glasgow pub on a Friday night. The fact is we assume much in life but in reality we are here for the moment whether we appreciate it or not and nothing will ever change that, but the vast majority of us look on the optimistic side of life and for the most part it is thankfully seldom wrong.
While we are on the subject of making more of our time on the planet it would seem that over the past few years we are turning more and more to our leaders for answers that quite frankly they can't give and when they don't supply us with exactly what we want to hear we blame them for all that is wrong, that sounds fair surely?
Well no it isn't fair and it isn't even feasible, in fact politicians are just spokesmen and women, they are no different to us, they have no magic wand or secret formula to life in fact many of them will have seen much less of real life than those they would seek to give advice to. But this is a double edged sword as the more we complain to our leaders the more they intervene, the more they intervene the less we like it, Catch Twenty Two never looked so good.  If we actually changed our own attitudes and looked at our neighbour with more tolerance we could make big changes ourselves without the need for outside assistance, if we bothered to be the citizen that we all think we are instead of actually are then we would have many more answers to those questions we keep firing at politicians. We all know the local drug dealers, we all know the local thieves, we all know the illegal workers, we all know the untaxed car driver or the persistent drink driver, you may know all or some of these listed and this is but a short list, but if that is the case why do nothing?
May I suggest we do nothing because we expect our leaders to do it? In fact some of you are probably busy compiling a "Dear Deirdre" to your local rag as I write this about the hooligans in your street and the lack of Police on the beat which would suggest as I said earlier that our brighter future is in our own hands not those of Westminster ex-graduates who are about as Au-fait with modern street lifestyle as Boris is to a good hair cut bless him.  Have a great Sunday. 

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.






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