On Leaving Europe: Part II...

So... two days after the EU Referendum result and there's a strange thing happening. The Brexit campaign have got exactly what it wanted with the Leave vote winning and Cameron destabilised. But many Tory MPs are desperate for the now departing Prime Minister, who lead the Remain campaign, to stay on as PM and sort out the mess that their hectoring victory has brought.

Cameron's likely replacement, Boris Johnson, meanwhile, is advising caution on kicking off official divorce proceedings from Europe because he realises the economic, administrative and legislative carnage such a move will unleash.

Leading figures in the Leave campaign are now distancing themselves from one of the boldest claims they made, too, that their estimated figure of £350million per week that it costs to be a member of the EU will be spent on the National Health Service. This £350million figure was always a lie. The Independent Institute for Fiscal Studies said this figure was closer to £175million per week and that didn’t take into account the benefits this secured. But the £350million still lie stuck.

Now both Brexit leading lights Nigel Farage and Iain Duncan-Smith are distancing themselves from the claim that this £350million per week will go to the NHS. Both are denying they ever even made it, despite evidence to the contrary... like standing next to a massive bus with that very thing written on the side and constantly talking about it.

The Labour Party, meanwhile, are taking advantage of the political maelstrom to oust their leader, Jeremy Corbyn. It’s no secret that Corbyn’s elevation was never popular within the hierarchy of the party, and it seems the knives are now out for him. Yet again…

Even more tragic is the dawning realisation among many people who supported the Leave campaign that if the UK wants to trade with Europe, then one of the likely conditions will be free movement of labour… the very thing they thought they’d voted against. D'oh!

The EU, meanwhile, is refusing to hold informal talks until official exit proceedings begin. If this was a game of poker, the EU would be holding all the cards and most of the chips and also own the casino.

Cameron gambled on holding a referendum to silence critics who goaded him over the EU and to quell rebels and critical voices within his own party, and he lost. Now the UK is about to lose big time as the economy and pretty much every other administrative and legislative structure has to be redrawn, and the UK is plunged into mass uncertainty.

More worryingly, there’s also the start of a very vocal and vicious streak of racism being unleashed on immigrants. The architects of this victory, meanwhile, are trying to cover their lies and hoping somebody else will eventually step in to clear up this mess. 

On Leaving Europe: Part I...

A bad thing happened in the early hours of this morning. Some 52 per cent of a voting turnout of nearly 30million Britons voted to leave the EU. The immediate effect is that some £140billion has been wiped off the value of sterling. And there could be worse to come... 

I've always suspected part of England's national make-up is that of the Little Englander, who'll say things such as: 'I'm not racist, but...' then say something very racist. I've also always suspected there are simply a large number of racists and xenophobes in the UK. There's certainly a strong tradition of far-right politics in England. 

But those factors alone can't account for the fact that more than 15million people voted to leave the EU. So what happened? 

The fear-mongering and lies-presented-as-facts of the Leave campaign certainly played a huge role. Some people will have fallen for that in the same way that some people fall for Nigel Farage's 'normal-geezer-who-speaks-plain-truths' shtick. In this campaign, he's clearly lied and spread fear based on those lies. He is dangerous and should not be trusted, yet he has been.

The Remain campaign didn't exactly cover itself in glory either and spectacularly failed to move the argument onto the grounds it should have been fought on: namely that EU membership strengthens our economy and our place in the world, that it ensures basic rights for workers, and that it brings all manner of other benefits, both financial and cultural.

There's a strong argument this was largely a protest vote against a political class who many voters feel increasingly alienated from and disenfranchised by. But this seems perverse. 

The EU have not run down the education system or the National Health Service. The EU also haven't created austerity economics and forced the most vulnerable to swallow cut after cut while telling them it's good medicine that will eventually make them better. Yet, somehow, the EU and our apparent immigration crisis is the scapegoat the voting public have blamed for this. 

Our current economic problems are part of a global landscape and about decisions made within the UK. Austerity economics is one factor and successive UK governments consistently failing to tackle tax-avoiding multi-nationals is another. The EU has nothing to do with how much most people in the UK are suffering from various deprivations. Yet they have been blamed.

Leaving is a perverse logic and I think it's something deep within the national psyche that makes people lash out without thinking, then ask questions later. It's the attitude of the Saturday-night drunk getting wired and belting somebody. The key problem with doing this when the future of the country is at stake, though, is that it has bigger implications than bruised knuckles or a black eye. The UK economy is now on very dangerous ground, and the tremors have already started.

With Cameron now stepping down, further financial uncertainty is also predicted. The UK's triple A credit rating is in danger, too, and, as we have a huge national debt, this could mean even more austerity measures in the pipeline.

And it won't be the wealthy leading lights of the Leave campaign like Farage or Boris Johnson who'll have to worry about riding this out. It will be the vulnerable and the poor, whose fears and prejudices may well have provided a large number of voters for the Leave campaign in the first place.

I've been searching for an analogy to sum this up and the best one I have so far is: The UK's decision to leave the EU is like a self-harmer in the grip of a mania picking up the knife to cut themselves, then blaming the French neighbour and the Polish nurse across the road for the pain they're suffering. 

Well done, UK. You punched yourselves in the face by voting in austerity economics in the last election. Now you've managed to repeat the trick on an even bigger scale by voting us out of a body that at least gave us a fighting chance of retaining some economic stability. Because, to quote Bill Clinton, 'it's all about the economy, stupid!' 

Nice work!

Meatballs...

A few months ago, I cooked a batch of diet garlic meatballs that were probably as much garlic as meatball. Because neither the Missus or myself can be bothered to cook, the remainder of these are now getting used up, and there is a discussion on the best way to reheat a meatball. The Missus suggests frying them so I ask the following: 
'Do you believe you can fly?'

There is a pause.
'Do you mean "Do I believe I can fry?"' she counters, then starts humming the song with a similar title. 

I meant to crack a joke, but I got the words wrong. And she noticed. Do I argue the point and pretend that's what I actually said and she misheard? I decide not to.
'Yes. That is what I meant. I meant to make a joke but I got it wrong, then you took my flawed intentions and made them work in a much better way...' 
'And that's a perfect analogy for how this marriage works,' she replies, metaphorically patting me on the head.

She's probably not wrong. I may well be an idiot.

Midlife Crisis...

Today, I bought the above CD by popular thrash metal combo, Slipknot. I may be extending my musical reach. Or I may be having a midlife crisis. I genuinely have no idea...

Racing Certainty...

A man I have loved for many years is back on social media. Please say hello to pool league chairman, local businessman and ace racing tipster, Malcolm Drudge. 

Find him on @MalcolmDrudge on the Twitter.

Five-word Reviews: Sunken Cities: Egypt's Lost Worlds...

F-amazing exhibition. Go see it.

Cross Bones Graveyard...

Today, I finally visited the site of the graveyard for prostitutes in Southwark, London. 

The Cross Bones Graveyard in Redcross Way began as a cemetery for medieval prostitutes, who worked in the stews or brothels of Bankside under the auspices of the Bishop of Winchester, who also took a slice of their earnings. Sadly, these working women weren't allowed a burial in consecrated ground among 'respectable' people, regardless of how much their efforts filled church coffers, so this is where they ended up.

Used as a cemetery for the poor and the undesirable until the 1860s, it lay neglected and undiscovered for more than a century. The graveyard was then re-discovered at the end of the 20th century and cared for by a group of supporters and friends. 

It's an astonishing place. I may be spending some considerable time here in the future, particularly as I'm about to start work on version two of the play about the Contagious Diseases Acts. 

I also adore the term 'the outcast dead' that adorns the gates.

Back on the Baize...

I’m on a good run at interleague at the moment, having won 11 out of 12 frames against some decent opponents. I’m well aware there are stiffer tests ahead, but I’m trying to do simple things well and it’s working so far.

I’m putting in some table time and I’m on course to be in decent shape when I make my return to county next year. I’m also hoping to qualify for county by finishing in the top eight of the county-wide interleague, which pits the best players from different leagues in Surrey against each other.

In my most recent match, we played an all-ladies team and they had some solid players. I met a few of the newer county ladies, too, and this was good. I also saw a teenager play and her temperament was superb. I went over and had a chat with her parents later and, after explaining that I wasn’t some sort of weirdo, said I’d like to spend some table time with her because I think I could help her game improve.

I’m really excited when I see potential and I think I could help her develop into a really good player. It’s a path I’ve trodden once before when I spent some time with a county junior player and helped him become an England international.

If I’m going back to play county pool, I also like the idea of helping to bring somebody else through. It will help focus me and give me a defined pre-match routine for practice and it will also mean they get something out of it by practising with me.

It’s something I’ve learnt from a decade and a half of martial arts: by teaching others we help refine and define ourselves

I hope she and her parents realise it’s a genuine offer and don’t peg me as some sort of freak.

The 2016 British Soap Awards: Part II...

The first thing to report about the 2016 British Soap Awards was how slick Philip Schofield was as the host. If you've ever seen anything filmed before, you know that it can often go on a bit. But Schofield was amazingly slick and polished and the filming of the awards ceremony itself, which was held at Hackney Empire in London, was pretty much done and dusted in about two hours.

Two of the biggest winners of the evening were Lacey Turner, who plays Stacey Fower in EastEnders, and Danny Miller, who plays Aaron Dingle in Emmerdale. 

Lacey's a very good actress and one of the most recognisable faces on British TV and she's been good in Enders this year, with a sometimes bizarre but emotionally high-voltage story about her character suffering post-partum psychosis. She picked up two awards for Best Actress and Best Dramatic Performance Female and her mental health story also won the Best Storyline gong.

Danny Miller is a real fan favourite and his character's harrowing story about childhood abuse saw Miller pick up the Best Dramatic Performance Male and Best Actor gongs. 

Their awards were probably deserved and the fact that the panel votes were echoed in the public votes probably means there's some sort of across-the-board consensus. I think Jeremy Sheffield, who was excellent as Motor Neurone Disease sufferer Patrick Blake in Hollyoaks, and Rhakee Thakrar, who played Shabnam Masood in EastEnders, would also have been incredibly worthy winners, too.


Two awards that I was delighted by were the victories for Doctors for the Best Single Episode for their 3000th episode, The Heart of England, which saw the conclusion of their Treehouse storyline. This was quietly brilliant and managed to combine child abuse, a shooting and police corruption on a small-budget daytime soap. An amazing feat.

Ruby O'Donell also won Best Young Actor for her role as dilemma-struck teen mum Peri Lomax in Hollyoaks. I'm watching a lot more Hollyoaks at the moment and it's generally pretty good and can sometimes be excellent. My favourite character in it, however, is Nico Blake, the deranged and damaged daughter of Sienna Blake. She's quite compelling and there's something of the night about her character.

The award that cheered me the most, however, was the gong for best soap. This went to Emmerdale and it was thoroughly deserved. The show has consistently been one of the best things on British TV in the last 18 months and it was a worthy victor. 

Its executive producer, Kate Oates, has now moved across the Pennines to run Coronation Street and I expect Corrie, whose excellent live episode went criminally unrewarded, will be back gunning for the big one next year. I hope so. I genuinely love Corrie.

The 2016 British Soap Awards: Part I...

I'm not very good at doing events. I sometimes struggle with small talk, I sometimes don't play well with others and I don't really have the hustling gene necessary to get the most out of such things. I also don't do clothes. The whole dressing-up thing escapes me. 

However, I was invited to be a judge at the 2016 British Soap Awards earlier this year, and I thoroughly enjoyed assessing the entrants, then taking part in the panel day and discussing and debating, then voting for the high points of the last soap year. 

Then, this weekend, it was time for myself and the Missus to don posh clothes and head to the glitzy event itself. 

First up was a haircut, so it straight to the barber's shop for a No.1 all over. Coupled with massive Seth Armstrong sideburns, it was job pretty much done. I had a bit of a shoe disaster so had to improvise, then found I'd lost so much weight that my suits didn't fit properly. 

On the plus side, the lady hairdresser said I had lovely, strong hair and a beautifully defined hairline. I wasn't wearing my specs so I couldn't see if I could repay the compliment by pointing out that she had, too. 

On getting to the event, I met a few people I sort of knew and discovered the following: 
i) Telling the story about my injured penis and how it was held by a man who ended up on the Sex Offenders Register is still quite funny. 
ii) My fellow soap magazine editors are facing the same declining market problems and large corporate insanity that I am.
iii) My plumbing joke is still funny. This goes: 'I'm thinking of a career in plumbing when the world of journalism finally implodes. But that's because I've watched an unhealthy amount of 1970s pornography and it seems to offer a lot of fringe benefits...'

Preacher...

Cards on the table: I am a huge fan of Preacher, the irreverent, violent, macabre, brutal and blackly funny Vertigo comic book series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. So it was with trepidation that I prepared to watch the opening episode of the new series on Amazon Prime. 

But the show opener is shit-bricking brilliant and I have high hopes for the rest of it. 

It was obviously never going to faithfully follow the comic series panel-for-panel, but it's already introduced the key players: disillusioned Preacher Jesse Custer, who suddenly develops an extraordinary celestial power; his love interest and one-woman arse-kicking army, Tulip; and fruit-loop Irish vampire Cassidy. 

There are a few nods to other characters in the comic that will probably develop more fully as the series and its narrative progresses, but the thing I'm most excited about is how they've absolutely nailed the tone of the comic and managed to translate it to TV.

This could good. It could get a five-Herr-Starr review. 

That last thing was a reference to another character in the series. I used that one because working in a reference to the Saint of Killers was far too complicated.

Cue Wank...

I recently needed to get my cue re-tipped and I was also having problems with my ferrule, so I made the trip to Forest Hill in London to see John Parris. 

For those involved in any cue sports, John Parris is well-known. For those not involved in cue sports, John Parris is the world's leading cue maker and he makes snooker cues for Ronnie O'Sullivan, Stephen Hendry, John Higgins and a host of other top players. And me.

For a cue geek like me, visiting John's shop remains a bit of a treat. It's quite a small shop with racks of cues lining the walls, and it has a workshop out the back at the side of the shop. It's an unassuming oasis of absolute craftsmanship in a quiet London suburb. I can spend a decent amount of time in there just looking at the cues he has for sale and admiring how excellent they are.

My cue re-tipped and my ferrule checked out, I returned home and was having a polish of my cue in my office. I also have a few collectible cues, so I was having a bit of a cue polish and sort-out in general. I'm always worried that my tip will fly off is the cue has been re-tipped, so I was working out which other cue to take to my match the following night just in case this happened. Just to put this madness into perspective, a re-tipped cue losing its tip has happened once in my life. But the memory and the fear remains.

The Missus entered my office, looked at what I was doing, asked me if I was a 'cue wank', then left. 

She was right. I probably was.

Strategy...

The Missus is in a playful but combatative mood when I come home from work, and the second sentence out of her mouth is as follows:
'Why do you talk such fucking cunting shit?'

I hadn't even done anything stupid. Or said anything stupid either. 

So I don't answer. This is probably a wise strategy...

Edinburgh: Part II...

First up on the Things to Do in Edinburgh List was a trip to the Beltane Fire Festival. This is  'a dynamic reinterpretation and modernisation of an ancient Iron Age Celtic ritual of a pagan festival to welcome summer', according to the website.

This saw me, the Missus, the Other Woman and the Other Woman's Long-suffering Fella, plus several thousand other folk, gather on Calton Hill in the middle of the city to watch some pagan re-enactors crown the May Queen and set fire to stuff before processing around the hill.

It was quite a fascinating event, mainly because the PA system was awful so you has to fight your way close to the action to have any clue about what was going on. The lighting of the fire from the temple (pictured badly above) was quite impressive, but it also happened an hour later than advertised.

Pagans and pagan re-enactors are clearly no the most punctual of people. There were other events going on but it was a slapdash on the organisation front and information was quite hard to come by, despite the fact there was a printed leaflet.

So we stuck it out for a bit, then left and went to the pub. 

'We'll talk about this for minutes to come,' commented the Other Woman's Long-suffering Fella. I think even he realised he was being optimistic about this prediction.

 The following day we went to Edinburgh Castle, which was a much more organised and enjoyable experience. The Missus tried to attack a cannon and won, and we also had a poke about in the jail cells, which were very good.

In the evening, we ventured out to the Pleasance, which was one of the venues hosting TradFest. This is a lowish-key festival celebrating traditional art and music, and we saw a folk-meets-bluegrass out called Blue Flint. Fronted by two banjo-playing women, they were excellent, and I bought their most recent CDs, Stories From Home. This has been getting a lot of air play at home and I'll be investing in their other two CDs.

Injury News: Part II...

I was looking forward to competing in my first BJJ tournament of the year. I'd made weight and I had some decent training behind me... then my hamstring went doing kicking drills at Hapkido three days before the event. Bugger!

Last year, I missed two of the three events I entered through injury and the pattern has started again this year. I'm not doing stupid things or taking unnecessary risks. I'm just being unlucky. 

So, apart from being a bit grumpy because I don't like not training, I just need to be sensible. My time to compete this year will come. And, while I'm healing up, I have a play to rewrite. 

Every cloud and all that...

Five-word Reviews: Flowers...

Brilliant, original, darkly absurdist comedy. 
or 
Deserves to win a Bafta. 
or
Stonkingly fabulous original comedy series.

Injury News: Part I...

I always felt that the back injury I acquired while hanging a pair of boxer shorts on a washing line was the most ridiculous injury I'd ever had. But there's a new contender. 

We're currently having work done at Brooks Towers and a floorboard was left up to connect some water pipes. The cat, Buffy, took this as an invitation to explore and jumped down five feet and decided to go hunting in the foundations of the house. She couldn't, however, get back up. 

Cue myself and the Missus pulling a up a few additional floorboards and me lowering myself into the bowels of the house to get her out. The gap, however, meant I needed to do some twisting and turning to get the cat, then get back back out. It was a like a shit version of subterranean horror, The Descent. 

On the way out, a few things went click in my back as I dragged myself up. This hurt. The next time, the fucking cat can stay down there.

Edinburgh: Part I...

The Missus bought me a surprise trip for my birthday. She didn't, however, tell me where we were going until two weeks after I turned 47, and we arrived at King's Cross Station in London to embark on our adventure. This drove me slightly insane and she milked it for all it was worth. It's fair to say that she squeezed the teat of secrecy bone dry on this occasion...

The bad news was the leaving point meant the suspected trip to the World Snooker Championships was off. The good news, though, was that it meant something else was happening, and I didn't have to wait long to find out. About five minutes later, the Other Woman and the Other Woman's Long-suffering Fella mysteriously appeared and everything fell into place: a Bank Holiday weekend in Edinburgh. 

Getting to Edinburgh, however, entailed a five-hour train journey with the Missus and the Other Woman, who veered between congratulating themselves on their cunning planning... and ripping the piss out of me. This was made even worse because I felt like somebody who'd been on the end of a Jeremy Beadle prank, but who couldn't repeatedly punch those responsible because it was a beautiful and thoughtful kindness. I fear I am not good at not knowing things.

We did some cool stuff and a long weekend with three people I love very much was ace.