Happy New Year...

It's getting towards the New Year so I'm already planning 2015 and reflecting on 2014.

Should anyone care, here are my highlights of the past 12 months:

TV: Emmerdale remains the best-written thing on UK TV. Yes. Emmerdale. That soap that used to be about farming. Set in Yorkshire. And, once upon a time, was only shown on Tuesday and Thursday dinner-times in the YTV area. But it is consistently brilliant. To retain that level of quality for six episodes every week over 52 weeks every year is an astonishing feat. Coronation Street is the second-best-written thing on British TV. It manages to maintain its quality, humour and drama for five 30-minute episodes over 52 weeks every year. It's an astonishing achievement to do that. Other good stuff I've seen this year has included series one and series two of Nordic Noir thriller The Bridge, and series one and two of The Vikings. There hasn't been an awful lot else to write home about. That, however, may change when I catch up with series two of Brit thriller The Fall. EastEnders wins the award for most consistently awful TV show of the year: bad scripts, poor plotting, terrible character development... It's a year to forget in Walford. Doctor Who also needs a kick up the arse. But, like Enders, that's also been on the slide for a few years now.

FILM: X-Men: Days of Future Past and Guardians of the Galaxy were bit hits at From Beer to Paternity Towers. Yes, the X-men movie wasn't as good as the original comic story it was loosely based on, but it sort of hung together, while Guardians of the Galaxy was just an utter blast from start to finish. I'm majorly excited about the new Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, which is out next year, too.

RADIO & PODCASTS: Fighting Talk, the Radio 5 Live sports comedy quiz, remains a must-listen, while the Richard Herring Leicester Square Theatre Comedy Podcast has been a source of utter joy this year. I will be paying to money to Richard Herring for this. It's wonderful. I'm amazed it's still free. Other shows I've enjoyed dipping into have included Private Passions, a sort of high-brow Desert Island Discs, on Radio 3, and I'm loving waking up to Breakfast on Radio 3 in a morning since buying a digital alarm clock radio. I don't know enough about classical music and this is a good way to learn more without making a massive effort. The Grapplearts podcasts have also been a good and interesting source of BJJ information this year.

MUSIC: The Kate Bush gig at Hammersmith was a thing of utter beauty and joy and was quite possibly my cultural highlight of the year. The Gaslight Anthem gig at Alexandra Palace and Arcade Fire at Olympia were also fabulous. Seeing The Buzzcocks at Guildfest was also very good. CDs I loved this year include Get Hurt by The Gaslight Anthem

THEATRE: The one thing that absolutely knocked me on my arse this year was Ballyturk by Enda Walsh at the National. Intriguing, bizarre, funny and moving. And I still haven't quite figured out exactly what it was that I saw either. The other thing that I found really moving was John & Jen. This musical two-hander was put on by a theatre company I'm involved in, but it was was really engaging and captivating and took me totally by surprise.

COMEDY: Stewart Lee was as excellent as ever. The comedy highlight of the year, though, was Sara Pascoe. Intelligent and funny. I just wish I'd seen the entire show.

BOOK & COMICS: American Vampire and Batman, both by Scott Snyder, have been brilliant this year. I've also been won over by the Warren Ellis run on Moonknight. The relaunch of Electra also looks promising. The book that's really stayed with me this year has been Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, a sort of pop science, history and sociology book about social trends as epidemics. It's an interesting read. I'll be dipping into more of his stuff.

PERSONAL HIGHLIGHTS: Visiting New York at the start of the year, visiting Cornwall at the end of the year, competing in my first grappling tournaments at the age of 45, having a successful readthrough of my most recent play, retaining my health and my sanity in an ever-more-demanding workplace. It's been OK as a year. 

For You, Buddy...

A good friend lost his ten-year-old boy to leukaemia earlier this year. 

Throughout the two-year battle with the disease, his son had shown immense courage and a refusal to let this horrible disease get the better of him. The friend and the friend's family had shown a similar courage throughout what must have been a horrendous ordeal.

Myself and the Missus attended the funeral. To be perfectly honest, it was a day I dreaded ever since hearing the news of the child's passing. At the same time, though, there was never any question that we weren't going to be there. 

Funerals are never good things at the best of times. But when it's a parent burying their child, the circumstances are about as bad as it can be. Of course, you're there to lament the loss and support the parents. But how do you offer words of comfort in those circumstances? What can you possibly say to offer salve to the wound of where a life used to be?

The service was incredibly moving and, from the church, we went back to a church hall for a get-together, where the father had done a slide show of pictures of his son, so those who didn't really know him could get a sense of him. And there were pictures of him with his family, pictures of him as a baby, pictures of him with various celebrities. The over-riding sense was here was somebody who was just up for life. 

And there were pictures of him with his father, both before he got ill and while he was ill. And you saw the love. It was an almost tangible thing. And you realise that is the thing that's left, it's the thing that remains. The love. And some people never have that or don't know how to give that. But here it was just such an evident thing. 

I remain genuinely devastated for the son's death and for my friend's loss. But I'm pleased that legacy of love remains. The older I get, I realise love is the only thing that really matters any more.

And I hope that love provides comfort at Christmas. Because I know that will be a hard time for him and his.

Thinking of you, buddy. And lots of your friends are, too. Even if they don't directly say it.

TV PItches: No.2...

I'm putting the finishing touches to a new TV project. 

It combines the nation's love of prime-time ballroom, tango, waltz and samba, and its current fascination with ridiculing and demonising the poor, the unfortunate and the unemployed. 

It has a competitive element and it's set on a poverty-stricken housing estate over-run with drug dealers and C4 documentary makers. 

It's call Strictly Scum Dancing. 

It's a sure-fire winner. 

Any TV execs out there? Let's talk...

Nightclubbing...

As a 45-year-old man, my days of going clubbing are a thing of the past. Unless I'm on a night out with my pool-playing friends. Then I am in real danger of forgetting this is the case and that it should probably always remain the case.

We generally end up in such places if we've been out and we fancy a late drink. And this was the case, recently, when several of us descended on a local nightclub in Guildford. It was an entertaining evening as we were out for our friend's 40th birthday. 

This was a genuine hoot, even when it got slightly messy, with him too drunk to stay in the club and a couple of other friends expressing their concern at this to the security staff, who were actually very lovely and professional.

The most disturbing aspect of the evening, though – apart from the other men around my age who seemed to be there to secure themselves a much younger lover – were several young boys who I found arguing in the toilets with the attendant. 

They were clearly educated and were dressed in what looked like fashionable and expensive clothes, and they were arguing with the toilet attendant about religion. They were also drunk but seemed to take great delight in mocking the poor man and bamboozling him with theories of narrative fiction and the idea of religion as a fictional construct. 

Then, on the way out, one of them said the following sentence to his friend. 
'Dude. I CAN'T believe you were arguing with the brush-down man! Duh! What were you thinking?!' 

It was at this point in the evening I should have grabbed the over-privileged little twat by the throat and told him to keep his patronising comments to himself, before asking him when the last time he worked for a minimum wage was. I was then going to ask him whether the privileged name for toilet attendant was 'brush-down man' because I had no idea what the proper title was. But he seemed to.

Sadly, I didn't do either. But I should have done. I did, however, enjoy the sight of him getting rejected by at least three young women over the following 45 minutes. They maybe found him equally repellent. 

And it meant I didn't have to follow him home, kidnap him and cut shit off him with gardening shears to teach him some manners.

Footballers...

Over the past few years, my viewpoint towards most Premier League footballers has become one of contempt and disgust. Their outrageous earning power, their seeming contempt for normal codes of behaviour, their seeming existence in a moral vacuum…

I obviously realise this is a hugely bigoted view, but I'd sort of fallen for the tabloid stories and exposes as the norm rather than the exception.

This year, however, I've seen two examples of things that have made me re-address this view.

The first was at the funeral of my friend's son. The child was a mad Chelsea fan and, while undergoing treatment, he had gone to Stamford Bridge and met the Chelsea players and had formed something of a bond with several of their stars. This is obviously something most clubs take part in, but the genuine concern and subsequent relationship built went above and beyond what you'd expect.

The other example was the commemoration of the Hillsborough disaster. This was a genuinely moving experience and you could see how involved all the fans and all the players were.

There are times that sport, and particularly professional football, can be a grubby business, where the high ideals expounded about sporting excellence promoted on the pitch aren't matched by behaviour away from it. But there are also times when sport and its sportsmen transcend that world and are capable of amazing acts of compassion and kindness.

It's good to be reminded of these things. It's just a shame it takes tragic events to begin this realisation. For both me and them...

Smug Bastard News...

I have tickets to see the Foo Fighters at Wembley next year. 

I am beyond ecstatic...

Fit...

I have a few days off work so I ventured to a dinner-time BJJ class. I've been away from any serious martial arts training for a while with an injury and I'm just starting to tentatively return again.

My instructor was pleased to see me, then pointed to my stomach and suggested I'd piled the weight on in my absence. 

The class was fab but I got ruined at sparring. It was good to be back. 

Even if I am fat...

The Gaslight Anthem...

Myself and the Missus ventured to Alexandra Palace in that London (over-crowded and busy place where we used to live) to see The Gaslight Anthem. 

The Gaslight Anthem are an American new wave/punk band the Missus got into about the time of their breakthrough second album, The 59 Sound, in 2008. Now we're both fans and we've seen them a few times since. 

The New Jersey outfit were touring the UK to promote their fifth and newest album, Get Hurt, which is a more mature and mellow affair than their rockier two opening two albums or their more sophisticated third and fourth albums, American Slang and Handwritten. 

With a growing back catalogue, the Gaslight Anthem as a live act can now weave several newer or slower songs into their set, before kicking in when the band goes into attack mode and launches into their more well-known, high-energy tunes.

Because they've spent so much time touring and building a fan base since 2006, they're a fantastic live act and, in lead singer Brian Fallon, they have a great frontman and a genuinely gifted songwriter. 

The band have already produced five really strong albums and, somewhere along the line, they'll 'do a Green Day' and produce something like American Idiot that resonates worldwide and turns them into global superstars. 

Until then, however, I'm delighted I can still get tickets to their gigs.

Not Good People: Part II...

I have a rehearsed reading of a new play in few days so I'm polishing the script and tinkering. I'm still aware the play needs a bit of layering and it also needs a small, trim but it's pretty much there. I can write. I'm actually not bad with words.

Then, last night, the Missus came out with the following sentence while trying to stab e with a fork:
'I'm not cunting well kissing you, you fucking shite-hawk!'

I'm maybe no so creative with words after all...

Romance News...

Me and the Missus are laid in bed. We are doing what young people call 'chill-axing'. But I'm restless and consequently I'm wittering.
'You see, all you have to do is occasionally feed me, fuck me and let me go out once in a while, and I'm sorted.'
'I suppose you're quite low maintenance,' she comments, not really paying much attention.
'I don't watch much out of life...'
'You're very loyal, too. It's something I've always liked about you,' adds the Missus. 
'Yes.'
'And you do enjoy walking, too.'
'Yes.'
'Low maintenance, loyal, likes walking and sometimes demands food and sex...You'd make a very good dog.'
'But dogs are stupid?'
'Yes. You'd make a very good dog...'

Not Good People: Part I...

I have a reading for a new play in three weeks. The play will be ready by then, but it currently needs a bit of editing and trimming to get rid of the more hectoring elements. 

It needs a final scene, too. But overall, I'm pretty pleased with it. And I've pretty much got my dream cast to perform it, so I'm looking forward to it. 

The play is called Not Good people and it's sort of about apathy and engagement with politics. Writing it has been quite good for me because I tend to work out my own thinking on things while I'm writing and it's given me a bit of a kick up the arse about my own political engagement.

With work hectic and my martial arts training becoming increasingly more important, it's easy to forget there's a wider world out there that you are part of and should more fully engage in. And, who knows, this may be the start of me reconnecting with the political again in a more active capacity.

Of course, it may also not be because I've had a cracking idea for a new commercial comedy as well. But we'll see.

I'll post a scene from the play in the next day or so. See what you think...

Fact of the Day...

Tits-out model, entrepreneur and feminist icon to gullible teens Katie Price (or Jordan as she used to be known) is currently promoting her 42nd book. 

I find that astonishing because a crueler person may suggest it is 41 more books than she's actually read and 42 more books than she's actually written. The latter, of course, may well be true.

Is it more depressing that:
a) She has achieved this? or b) There is clearly a market for this?

I don't know. Should I weep over this or secretly admire her chutzpah?

Holiday: Part III…

St Ives had some great stuff and the highlights for me were:

i) The Leach Pottery, which housed the original workshops where the father of the British pottery movement, Bernard Leach, produced work and essentially founded a movement linking British arts and crafts to the millennia-old Japanese pottery industry.

ii) The Hepworth Museum and Studio (above), where the Wakefield-born sculptor worked in St Ives, and the attached and quite intimate gardens, which displayed quite a lot of her work.

iii) The beaches, the scenery and the coastal walks. Quite lovely.

iv) The Tate, which was much less impressive than either of its London counterparts but still quite inspiring in a much more small-scale and provincial way.

V) A seal. I saw one of these quite close up swimming among the rocks. It was totally unexpected and really wonderful. This one small but amazing thing was probably my highlight of the entire holiday.

We also ventured into Penzance to visit Penlee House, which is another art gallery with an attached museum and gardens. The exhibition on here featured a painter called Leonard Fuller, who was one of the fathers of the St Ives art community. He was a portrait painter trained at the Royal Academy, who saw action in World War One, then came to St Ives and set up an art school with his wife and a former Army colleague.

Hugely influential in the local area, he then broke away from the more traditional school he set up to form a school more allied with modernisn, which included Barbara Hepworth among its members. Fuller lived into the 1970s and continued to contribute to both schools and was awarded a major award for his contribution to the arts alongside Hepworth.

Penzance itself was a bit grim, although most holiday places probably look a bit shit out of season and in the rain. The exhibition at the Penlee, though, was well worth the visit.

Holiday: Part II…

Me and the Missus are in St Ives for a few days. As per usual when travelling with the Missus via Reading, we have experienced a two-hour delay and a six-hour journey is now taking eight hours.

On the plus side, as we travel through Cornwall, it is kicking-out time at school and lots of quite posh children are getting on and off the train with musical instruments.

I turn to the Missus and comment: ‘We’re surrounded by musical youth and we are passing the Duchy on the left-hand side. If only we had a song to remember the occasion…’

She sighs and gives me a look that is part-pity and part-despair. 

I feel guilty and immediately apologise.

‘I’m sorry. You could have married a funnier or a cleverer one. You must feel cheated…’

She smiles, before replying: ‘I’m not worried about funny or clever. I would have liked richer, though.’ Ouch!

Holiday: Part I...

Me and the Missus haven't had a proper holiday all year so we're taking a few days off and heading to St Ives for some chilling-out-innit time. 

And I've adapted a famous nursery rhyme especially for the occasion:
'As I was going to St Ives,
I met a man with seven wives:
He was a polygamist.'

I never said it was sophisticated.

UKIP...

UKIP have their first proper MP. This means British politics is in quite a bad state, even though I can only assume it's a protest vote.

But protest vote or not, it genuinely worries me that a majority of voters can genuinely think that a little Englander from a party of racists and homophobes is a candidate worthy of support.

At times, people and their stupidity makes me despair.

Competition Time: Part II...

My second martial arts tournament. I went to the event with three goals: to make weight; to survive a full five-minute round and not do anything reckless or stupid; and to watch what I could and learn from other people.

And all three were achieved pretty successfully. 

I even picked up a bronze medal after scraping through my opening fight, and I felt I could have maybe gone further if I hadn't suffered a rib injury two minutes into my semi-final. 

But I have no complaints. If anything, I probably over-achieved. It's a single step on a very lengthy journey and not the end destination. The key thing is I'm feeling less out of my depth at these events and I'm adding extra bits of experience.

I now need to recover from this injury as I have another event in three weeks. But I wanted to compete this year and, aged 45, I'm now doing that. I'm a very happy (if a bit of an injured) camper.

Kate Bush: Before the Dawn: Part II..

A seven-word review of Before the Dawn at the Hammersmith Apollo:
Beloved icon enchants fans with stunning show.

A five-word review of Before the Dawn at the Hammersmith Apollo:
Astonishing, beguiling and moving performance.

A three-word review of Before the Dawn at the Hammersmith Apollo:
Transformative, wonderful spectacle.

A one-word review of Before the Dawn at the Hammersmith Apollo:
Beautiful.

Kate Bush: Before the Dawn: Part I...

Very few things these days can reduce me to a nervous, fumbling teenager. I'm a battle-worn hack from a working-class town in Yorkshire, who's have seen a lot of stuff. I'm also not particularly star-struck after interviewing some big names over the years. But the impending Kate Bush concert that I'm going to has me all sorts of giddy. 

The only comparable artist to Kate Bush for longevity and influence is probably David Bowie. Unlike Bowie, though, Bush left the limelight at the height of her musical powers and virtually disappeared, only releasing music when she thought she had something worth releasing. 

So after the initial burst of albums, from 1978's Kick Inside and Lionheart, 1980's Never For Ever, 1982's The Dreaming and the seminal 1985 Hounds of Love, the output slowed down. Another two albums followed in 1989's The Sensual World and 1993's The Red Shoes, then came the public hiatus.

Some 12 years later, the double CD Aerial was released in 2005, followed by the Director's Cut in 2011 and 50 Words for Snow, also in 2011.

The decision to withdraw from the limelight and not play the whole celebrity game, plus her sporadic releases following that, certainly helped create an added mystique to Bush. The fact that she only toured once, in 1979, also means that these new concert dates have generated a disproportionate amount of publicity.

But there is also good reason for that. 

For a start, in an age where most celebrities will happily whore themselves out for any publicity, Bush and her career remain a great reminder that there are artists who are more interested in creating art than is making the next easy, greasy buck. The fact she had success and fame at such an early age, then slowly turned away from it, to focus on bringing up her son and enjoy her family life, gains her all sorts of kudos in my book. 

And the fact she continues to work and create on her own terms is inspiring for artists of all disciplines because it means it can be done. And maybe not all of us are Kate Bushes, but there's a lesson to be learnt there about creative drive and singularity of vision and focusing on what's important. 

At the end of the day, it may be only be music that Kate Bush is creating. But at its best, music can be a beautiful and inspiring and energising thing. And in a world that's over-populated by halfwits pushing appalling product, it's good to have somebody who can remind you that there are still things that are pure and focused and beautiful out there.

PS. And apparently Lily opens the concert. Happy days!

Comic Stuff...

I'm slowly wending my way back into the world of comics and, thanks to a very long train journey to and from Scotland, I finally got round to catching up with a few things I've not got round to digesting...

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Parts I & II
The animated movies of the seminal Frank Miller comic books are, quite simply, pretty brilliant. They're incredibly faithful to the comics, the animation is wonderfully done and the voice artists, such as Pete Weller as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Michael Emerson as Joker, are excellent. Much as I enjoyed the flawed epic that was the most recent Batman film trilogy, directed by Christopher Nolan, the amalgamated film stories weren't a patch on these animated versions of the Miller tales. DC superhero movies generally suck but these two animated films were great. 

Moon Knight 
I'm a long-term fan of comic and novella writer Warren Ellis, and I'm loving the opening five comic books in this new series, with Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellaire doing the artwork. So far, each book is a separate, self-contained tale and it's taking a 'B' list Marvel version of Batman as both superhero and detective and giving him real depth and a genuine sense of intrigue. Loving it. 

The Boys 
I'm a very late convert to this Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson series of graphic novels about an of-the-books team whose job it is to police the superhero community. It's foul-mouthed, it's dirty and it rips into characters and teams from both the Marvel and the DC universes. If you liked Preacher, you'll love this.

Toilet Break...

I went into a toilet cubicle at work the other day.

The toilets themselves are astonishing because I work at quite a flash media company, but many of my co-workers don’t seem to know how to use a toilet. This means I often walk into a cubicle to greeted by a scene that would not look out of place during a dirty protest in a prison riot. 

The scene that met me, however, provided a new source of fascination. In the pan of the toilet were two small buns with white icing on top, bobbing around in the water. 

I simply could not compute.

So either some idiot thought a toilet cubicle was a great place to bring cakes to eat, then thought ‘I don’t want these any more now I'm having a shit…’ Or, worse, somebody is shitting whole cakes.

Either way, it’s not the actions of a well man.

PS. Went in there today and three pens, a pair of rusty scissors and a roll of sellotape were balanced on the toilet roll dispenser. Invent your own narratives…

Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK: Part II...

The Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK exhibition at the British Library is a bit of  a curate's egg. It's good in some parts and less good in others.

The positive bits are that it celebrates some of the history of modern British comics and modern British comics creators, who've done great stuff in UK comics before working at some of the big publishing houses in the US and reinvigorating their key characters.

It's also pretty decent on the history side with nods towards sequential art in a religious context in the 14th century, before moving onto Hogarth caricatures in the 18th century and funny strips in the 19th and 20th century. The links to anarchy and the political content of comics is also well documented.

The negative bits are that it's quite wordy without any large-scale images or blown-up comics panel sequences to break the flow up, and many of the exhibits are small-scale so large queues quickly amass around the various cases.

But, overall, it's quite well done and worth the admission price. 

Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK: Part I...

I am visiting the Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK exhibition at the British Library with the Missus, the Other Woman and the Other Woman's Long-suffering Boyfriend.

After the exhibition, we find a pub and grab some drinks and food. During this outing I am called the following:
Moron (9 times)
Twat (3 times)
Pillock (2 times)
Idiot (2 times)

The Other Woman's Long-suffering Boyfriend uses none of these terms. The Missus and the Other Woman split the insults about equally.

I may be starting to understand what an abusive relationship feels like.

Adultery News...

In my life as a professional word butcher, I get sent all sorts of PR rubbish from idiots aiming for publicity. But I fear this is a new low with a plug for an adultery website masquerading as scientific research.

Enjoy, particularly if adultery is your thing. And, yes, I do realise I am sort of promoting this nonsense but it's through astonishment rather than acceptance.

Huge rise in UK female infidelity, says AshleyMadison.com

* Over 1m UK members have joined AshleyMadison.com, the world’s largest extra-marital dating site

* 51.2% rise in women sign ups to AshleyMadison.com over past 12 months

* 84% of adulterous women don’t want to leave husband

* Profile of an adulterous woman revealed

Ashley Madison.com, the world’s largest extra marital dating site, now has a UK membership of more than 1,000,000, fuelled by married women joining the site.  There has been a 51.2% increase in female sign-ups in Britain over the past 12 months alone – all seeking an affair outside marriage.

A survey of 2,683 AshleyMadison.com women members reveals unique data on the changing face of female infidelity in this country.

The profile of a typical adulterous woman is someone in her 30s or 40s, who’s looking for a long term relationship extra to marriage. She’s had one or two affairs so far, lasting three months or more, she’s in love with her long term husband or partner and doesn’t want to leave him – but she feels emotionally neglected. So she’s looking to fulfil her needs outside marriage and actually believes that her affair/s make it easier to stay in the marriage.

‘Our data is a unique resource used by academics worldwide, there’s no other way to gather information on infidelity,’ says Noel Biderman, founder of AshleyMadison.com. ‘For instance, the fact that the female demographic is getting older in the UK as adulterous women are now most likely to be in their 40s. It seems that women are stepping into the male arena when it comes to infidelity.’

Around 44% of AshleyMadison.com UK members are women, higher than the global average of one third women to two thirds men.  The only other country with a similar pattern is Australia.

More from the AshleyMadison.com Female Infidelity Survey:

What are you looking for in your affair?

Long term relationship, extra to marriage 70%

One night stand/s 21%

How many affairs have you had?

3 – 37%

2 - 29%

4 -12%

Would you leave your long term partner if you could?

Yes 16%

No 84%

AshleyMadison.com was founded by Noel Biderman in Canada in 2002 and is the fastest growing social network after Facebook, Currently the site has 1,106,224 UK users and over 27 million in 38 countries globally.

Competition Time: Part I...

I competed in my first martial arts tournament today. I was like a puppy wagging its tail before I left the house, then the Missus offered the following sage words of advice:
'Just don't do anything stupid, don't get injured and please tap out before anything breaks!' 

And I didn't get injured, do anything too stupid or get any bones broken. 

The only stupid thing I did was maybe enjoy it a bit too much – and maybe think I'd like to do more of these...

More Fashion News...

I am losing weight to compete at a few martial art tournaments over the summer.

I have nearly hit my target figure, but I have now lost so much weight that most of my trousers do not fit unless I am also wearing a belt. And, on the days I forget to pick up a belt, my trousers hang very low on my hips and expose my boxer shorts.

I have become the thing I hate. Or maybe I subconsciously admire the look and am desperately trying to ape it. I am happening, innit bruv. As young people say.

London Comic Con 2014

I attended London Comic Con at Earls Court at the weekend with the Boy. It very much a nostalgia trip for me, offering the chance to spend some time with the Boy over a shared love of all things comic and superhero-based. The time with the Boy was lovely but the event itself was a bit chaotic. 

For a start, they'd shut the online box office more than two weeks before the event opened, so if you missed the ticket-buying window you had to queue on the day. And the queues were huge. I met the Boy at about 8am and we were in the queue for early-bird tickets, meaning entry before 11am about 10 minutes later. We got in at 10.15am.

But queues for pretty much anything were the order of the day. And as the place became more and more rammed in the main hall, you could barely stop at any of the stands as the mass of shambling people tended to move you along in their direction. 

The second hall with the creators was a more sedate affair, but the main hall housed the dealers and the talks and this was crazy. In short, it was too busy, too hot and and there were far too many people. It was mayhem. 

On the plus side, however, most of the people there were lovely. One bloke even gave us two spare tickets for free, which was good because I'd have been pretty furious if I'd have paid £15 per person to essentially get entrance into an over-busy marketplace. 

Some of the cos-play was also brilliant. There were many young and slender Harley Quinns looking demure in tight-fitting costumes, although my favourite Harley was the larger woman who obviously thought 'The fact I'm not a size 10 isn't going to stop me going for this!' There was also a very good Kingpin, plus a woman dressed as Tippi Hedren from The Birds with many attacking birds attached. 

I love most comic fans because they buy into the culture and the cosplay stuff is brilliant. Nowhere else would an overweight man dressed in a home-made X-wing fighter pilot suit be considered sane. But the likes of him, the large Harley and the Kingpin man were essentially demi-gods for the day. And rightly so. I salute them. And I salute all my geek brethren and brethrenesses. 

Of course, there were a few twats. But you get this everywhere. As the Boy stated in a  discussion about something else:
'If there's one thing I've learnt in my 23 years on this planet, it's that some times, some people are cunts.'

Wise words. My parental pride positively glowed...

Fashion News…

I am sitting down on the train into work when it stops at Woking. There is the usual kerfuffle as people stand in the aisle of the carriage, waiting for the doors to open to disembark.

I happen to glance to my right and standing beside me is a young man with low-slung jeans. You know the score, the use of a belt or buying trousers the correct size would quickly resolve the jeans-dropping-down problem. But this chap has eschewed such pragmatic advice and, instead, has his jeans hanging somewhere near his upper thigh rather than his waist.

I then notice he has also freestyled on the underwear department and is sporting a pair of budgie-smugglers. So the sight that greets me is waistband of Speedo-style underpants, an acre of flesh around the hip and thigh, then waistband of jeans. 

I despair with some young people. Buy a belt! You’ll never be able to run away if you get attacked. Which may be quite imminent…

Love Also Is...

Something my fellow comic geeks may appreciate: The Book of Life by Jon Lock.

This was a lovely, limited-edition, good-luck-in-your-new-job, hardcover graphic novel present from the Missus. 

I'm very happy! And slightly suspicious...

Love Is...

A friend of the Missus recently posted something on Facebook about what most women want from a partner... and it essentially boiled down to a bloke who could protect them and also make them laugh.

The conclusion of this musing by the friend of the Missus was that most women essentially want a 'Ninja clown'. The Missus contacted her friend and commented that was essentially what she'd ended up with.

Sadly, I fear the focus of her analysis was more on the 'clown' aspect that the 'ninja' one. But when compliments are in short supply, I'll take anything going...

Reference: Carl of H&M Building Services, Guildford...

We recently hired Carl of H&M Building Services, Guildford, to rebuild a wall in our garden that had been knocked down by a storm.

We contacted him after getting a flier through our door, which claimed he had recently been made redundant and was looking to establish his own business.

We’d discussed the work with two other builders, one of who is an old friend who’s worked for us before. Sadly, he couldn’t do this job as he was to busy. Both other builders, however, told us this was a three-day job, maybe five days at most if we wanted to re-use and clean up bricks from the original wall.

So we employed Carl of H&M Building Services, Guildford, and the job took more than five weeks. The work would be started, then Carl and his colleague would disappear for long periods of time and wouldn’t be in contact, despite us leaving messages asking him what was going on.

On one memorable morning, after we’d expressed our concern that the job was taking much longer than we had expected, Carl arrived, worked for 20 minutes, then went missing for the next five days. Our phone calls went unanswered and all attempts to contact him were ignored. When he did get in touch, it was to explain that he’d had to leave urgently to attend to his other job as a contractor at a school – a job that we were not aware of and did not know would take preference over ours.

He assured us he’d be there bright and early the next day but when that came, of course, he was nowhere to been seen. Once again, days went past without him getting in touch, then we got an email in the early hours of Sunday morning saying he’d been in hospital.

Which was strange, as he seemed to be in rude health when I spotted him coming out of the Wetherspoons pub a few days before at about 11pm.

His non-attendance and reluctance to finish the work was a regular pattern, and for weeks we were left with a half-finished wall and little or no contact from him. Eventually, after more than five weeks and continued requests from us, the wall was finished. To be fair, the standard of the building work was acceptable.

What wasn’t acceptable, however, was the fact that the discarded rubble was never removed at the end of the job, as originally agreed, and, more importantly, the building supplies that were put in the school carpark at the back of our house were also not removed, as originally agreed.

So, if you’re thinking of hiring a builder in the Guildford/Woking area, my advice would be to use anyone else but Carl of H&M Building Services.

He’s unreliable, he offers excuse after excuse instead of completing work to agreed schedules, and he refuses to even have the decency to let you know when he’ll be working and when he’ll be finishing the work you’ve hired him to do.