Kestrel Swilling House of Mystery

A neighbour opposite me moved out some years ago. he has since let his property out to several tenants who have come and gone over the last twenty four months. At the risk of sounding all Daily Mail and elitist (thereby exposing my latent snobbery) the people that have moved in over the years have become incrementally chavvy with every new lease. Before the current tenants moved in there was a very young couple who churned out babies at a rate that directly contravened the minimum human gestation period.

And three months ago the mystery man or woman moved in.

I'm not sure who the mystery man or woman is but I know for a fact they they're a heavy smoker, enjoys strong cheap lager and is probably unemployed. The reason for this is that every morning when I leave for work and every afternoon when I arrive home there is a man or woman sitting on the front doorstep smoking and swilling from a can of lager while staring vacantly into teh middle distance and thinking no doubt anti-social thoughts.

Now, here's the thing!

It's always a different man or woman sitting on the step. Always!

Nonetheless, the cigarettes and alcohol and setereotypically chav like appearance are consistenty present.

Can anyone help me out here? Has some sort of shapeshifter taken up residence on my street or has a very small community centre opened in the house opposite? Is my mysterious new neighbour some sort of crack dealer or escort and all I see is their carcinogen imbibing clients. I certainly hope not as I often see a number of them pushing prams as they smoke drink and exchange ringtones.

Can anybody help me out here? I genuinely haven't got a fucking clue!

P.S. please don't bother to point out the irony that for all my socialist rantings the above post might as well have been written by Richard Fucking Littlejohn.

Re : Kindle

For quite some time now, I've been getting spam e mails encouraging me to pre-order a Kindle.

I have to say it's nice to know that the people responsible for distributing spam mails are aware of my interest in literature as well as my enthusiasm for attaining 'l0ng3r lasting 3recti0ns' and having 'expl1cit dates with H0T local s1ngles'.

Having had a look at the product it strikes me as the most inherently pointless and redundant appliance a human being could ever spend two hundred smackers on!

Kindle, (if you didn't know already) is an e-book reader and it's selling point is that it has the weight and dimensions of a paperback book. Wow! So I can read an e-book just like an actual book for a mere forty times the price!!

Of course it defends itself by boasting to hold up to 1,500 books within its sexxxy digital memory and through some sort of miraculous wireless networking allows you to download e-books from almost anywhere in the world. Effectively this offers you a vast portable library where ,theoretically, a vast catalogue of titles are never more than a click away.

While this sounds impressive, has anyone ever attempted to lug over a thousand books around with them on holiday? Does anyone even need to?!? It often takes me at least 2 or 3 days to get through a decent sized book and the chances of me being able to get through more than five or six for however long a jaunt that I'd propose to take a Kindle on. And I certainly wouldn't want to read more than one at a time, now, would I?

The way they're trying to market it, Kindle is trying to be to books what the i-pod was to music. When you think about it, though, that's all a complete load of rancid penile discharge!
The average pop song is 2-3 minutes in length, necessitating a good few tracks to be on demand if it's being taken out for any longer than ten minutes. Why, oh why would anyone need hundreds upon hundreds of books on demand?

It's not like the downloadable e-books are cheap either! Bestsellers and new releases average at about $9.99 when most of the exact same books are available as hardbacks for around $6.99 USD on Amazon! To convert my existing, shelf warping library into sexxy ephereal e-books would bankrupt me. Not to mention the inevitable piracy shitstorm that arises from the wealth of torrent websites from which e-books can be downloaded for free.

In short, I surmise that Kindle is the most pointless and redundant invention since the penis flavoured condom and I shall certainly find better things to spend nearly two hundred quid on this Christmas!

Tempestuous Times

Well violate my puckered sphincter if it hasn't been an inordinately long time since my last blog post. You will forgive me for this, but my diminished online presence has been the result of being occupied with many varied occupations too dull to go into here. Highlights include marking year 10 coursework and redecorating my in-laws' bedroom.

The Monday before last, however, was the day my hard working and wonderful (though smelly and spotty) cast of adolescents performed The Tempest at the Shakespeare Schools Festival which was hosted by the Preston Charter Theatre.

Both myself and my fellow director (the lovely and talented Lizzy Anthony) entered our kids (our students, not our illegitimate love children) into the festival thinking it would be a great way to get young people to engage with Shakespeare in an exciting and dynamic way.

On observing our competitors' entries into the festival it seemed that we were totally wrong in our belief!

It turns out that the actual aim of the festival was to offend the ancient, decomposed corpse of the bard to the point where he actually rises from the grave and destroys his collected works in shame!

To say that the other schools' entries were shit would be like referring to the bombing of Hiroshima as a minor impediment to the city's public transportation network.

Having said that, I harbour no blame against the students who did their best despite their oh-so-evident apathy and the fact that they'd probably much rather be sniffing glue and cranking out bastard babies. No, my venom is directed entirely at the teachers who conducted themselves with so little sense of occasion, enthusiasm or team spirit you'd think they were there to sort and colour co-ordinate Nick Griffin's cum-stained underwear.

They'd clearly applied this attitude to their rehearsals as well since in the dress rehearsal students frequently fluffed their lines, called for prompts, chatted amongst themselves, fidgeted and committed all manner of sins that Lizzy and myself would have cheerfully disemboweled our students for doing.

First came A Midsummer Night's Dream, or more aptly A Midsummer Night's Doze. Dead eyed students went languidly through the motions with only the animated and charismatic young boy playing Bottom giving the play anything like its much needed comic appeal.

Then came a rendition of Hamlet that was about as respectful to the memory as Shakespeare as exhuming his corpse and pissing into his empty, wasted eye socket. First of all, Hamlet is not a play suited to strong scouse accents! After the third or fourth rendition of "What 'o 'amleh!" I became sure that my brain would implode with rage. But that was before the completely out of place and unneccessary street dance interlude.

You heard me!

A fucking street dance interlude!

In cunting Hamlet!

Our students, however performed with professionalism and aplomb and even drew comments and compliments from the theatre's tech and management staff. Lizzy and I were filled with quasi-parental pride as were the great many other teachers who'd turned out to the theatre to support our students.

For all the pissing and moaning I do about my job it really is a priviledge to be working with such hard working, dedicated and talented kids. I'm immensely proud of them and really grateful that they showed me so aptly what it is I love about my job!


P.S.

Apologies for the stock image but a) I didn't take any photos of the performance proper and b) since the internet is used almost exclusively by paedophiles I didn't want to put myself in an awkward position of putting photos of minors on t'interweb!

BNPeeved!

Apologies for having two consecutive political rants on these blogs but you can blame the world we live in for being so ludicrous!

In just under half an hour the curmudgeonly far right countenance of BNP leader Nick Griffin will be filling my screen as he attempts to hold his own against actual politicians on Question Time.

The news today was deluged with reports of protesters picketing the studios and spewing pints of roiling bile at the BBC for allowing the self deluded Nazi onto the program. Now, as you may have guessed, I'm not a fan of Nick Griffin and I find the BNP to be a loathsome, hatemongering sham of a party that represents a vast fecal stain on the Union Jack. I do, however, feel a twinge of sympathy for the largely elderly and ignorant masses who have voted for the party having been fooled by their empty promises to get Britain back to 'the way it used to be!'.

Of course this conservative argument for returning Britain to some sort of elusive glory of yesteryear is complete bollocks but I can't blame those who feel alienated from their current time to find comfort in the idea of a returning, comfortable bygone year, even if it is one that never necessarily existed!

What really makes me die laughing is this notion that there was ever a monocultural Britain that Griffin keeps alluding to. Trying to enforce racial purity on a nation that the Celts, Romans, Norse, Normans and countless other peoples and cultures have dipped their toe into over the centuries is utterly ludicrous!

As much as I loathe Griffin I'm not at all impressed by the footage I saw of militant lefties being dragged out of the studio by BBC security staff squealing 'Pig' and 'Nazi' at anyone wearing a badge. The camera crews couldn't have chosen to lock their lenses two more stereotypical backpack wearing leftie students that looked like something out of a Viz strip either! Such petulant protestation can only damage the left's credibility.

As much as I sympathise with their sentiment, we have to trust in the people to recognise bigotry and hatred when they see it and to try to sensor Griffin's voice on television only adds to his smug assertion that he's the voice of Britain's silent majority.

I'm sick of hearing the bloated racist cunt bleating on about how he's saying what the people of Britain are thinking but that he is quashed by a media overcome by 'political correctness gone mad'.

So fuck him!

Let him have his say. I seriously don't think his presence on question time will lend the BNP any sense of legitimacy.

Quite the opposite, I think such a forum will allow the people of Britain to see him for what he is.
We have to face the fact that wherever people have differences we must be prepared to face prejudice, but sensoring people like Griffin out of awkwardness or fear isn't the way to combat it!

Tory Blair

I see that fucking reptile David Cameron, smug and secure in the knowledge that he's inevitably going to be my Prime Minister, is going out of his way to rub my nose in it!

Thanks to the Tory twat and his Eton entourage (Etontourage?) hogging Manchester City Centre for their party conference, the center of Manchester is now even more harrowing and incomprehensible to drive around!

How can anyone who claims to have the best interests of the country at heart cause such wanton disruption?

Why can't they use the conference facilities at the Oldham Road Holiday Inn like everybody else? Don't they do the chocolate eclairs in the shape of crying orphans that you like, David?

Actually I'm quite surprised that so many people act with astonishment when I voice my loathing for Cameron.
What really irks me is the party's relentless attempts to depict him as an atypical Conservative Party candidate. Saying that David Cameron is the new liberal face of the Tory party is like saying that Katie Price is then new cerebral face of English literature!

And their slogan, Time for Change?!?

Bollocks! have you actually sat and read their policies?!?

Look at all this shite about getting people on incapacity benefit back into work. New Labour have been banging that draconian drum for ages! Not only that, but such a policy really encapsulates the loathesomeness of both parties!

Say on TV that you're going to get the incapacitated back into work and you'll immediately draw applause from right-of-centre armchair pundits who assume, without a shred of evidence, that everyone on incapacity benefit is a flea bitten dole scrounger who occasionally complains of a bad back and sleeps on a huge pile of money watching Jeremy Kyle on his plasma screen.

The truth is that the vast majority of those on incapacity benefit are on it for a reason! Its not like doctors sign people off work for life if they collect enough fucking Benadryl coupons!

And where are these people going to work? I don't want some poor sod with cerebral palsy to endure agonising discomfort and humiliation just so he can make me a McFlurry!

Even is you completely overlook the human rights side of things and look at it from a purely practical point of view, these people are not going to be able to do these jobs as well as someone who isn't in crippling pain or enduring repetitive stress injuries the whole time.

Besides which, where are these thousands of jobs going to come from? Isn't unemployment at its highest in nearly two decades?

Are Eastern European immigrant workers now going to be struck off, to find themselves sipping beer and slurring over This Morning about the monopends who took their jobs?

The Long, Hard Road

Due to nearly all films being shit these days, I'm not as up to date with up-coming movie buzz as I once was. I have, however been aware for quite a while that a big screen adaptation of Cormack McCarthy's melancholy post-apocalyptic masterpiece "The Road" is in the works.

"The Road", for all you illiterate ignoramuses (or is it ignorami?) out there is the story of a father and son's increasingly desperate attempts to survive in the aftermath of an apocalypse (the nature and cause of which are hinted at but never explicitly mentioned)

I must say, without hesitation that I love that book. I cried like a prepubescent girl at the ending (not just a little bit either but loads and loads, like a prepubescent girl who's just been forced to watch her Dad raping her entire collection of teddybears!). Despite my love for those bittersweet 307 pages of abject misery I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would want to make a film out of it.

For one thing, nothing happens! Seriously!

The relentless, even oppressive monotony of the characters' day to day lives is part of what makes it work so well. While this makes for compelling reading, where we're privy to the character's inner turmoil it makes for a pretty fucking dull celluloid experience.

In fact, how long's the screenplay? I can't imagine how it's more than 2 pages at the most!

In fact, here you go 'Hollywood', have this screenplay I've just written myself in 3 minutes!

FADE IN:

EXT. CHARRED REMAINS OF SOME NON SPECIFIC AMERICAN TOWN

FATHER AND SON ARE WALKING DOWN 'THE ROAD'

FATHER

Let's get something to eat.

SON

There isn't anything.

FATHER

Okay.

THEY WALK SOME MORE

FATHER

Let's eat our shoes!

SON

Okay

THEY EAT THEIR SHOES AND WALK SOME MORE

SON

My feet hurt!

THEY WALK SOME MORE

FATHER

Uh oh, bandits!

A HORRIBLY ANTICLIMACTIC ENCOUNTER HAPPENS.

THEY WALK SOME MORE

SON

We're going to die, aren't we

FATHER

Probably!

SON

Okay.

THEY WALK SOME MORE

FADE OUT.

On the plus side, the always excellent Viggo Mortensen is in it. When i was reading it I thought to myself;

"If this were to be made into a film, Viggo Mortensen would have to play the father. But nobody would ever make this book into a film because that would be mental!"

Anyway, I'll probably give it a look, but I simply can't see how it would work!

In the meantime, everyone watch No Country For Old Men, then read the book, then watch the film again! That's definitely the best way to experience it!

Potterphillia

Taste. It's a funny old thing (not to mention completely transient).

For years I was perfectly happy to allow the cultural phenomenon that was / is Harry Potter completely pass me by. The books first emerged when I was in my teens and I was peripherally aware of them, but of course the real 'Potter boom came in 2001 with the release of the first film.

By then I was a newly anointed undergraduate and (despite my growing collection of comics and graphic novels) undergoing a massive literature-snob phase. At the time my impressions of the franchise were fairly derisive. The premise seemed a little outdated, effectively Jennings or Just William with superpowers. I imagined the series to be some drawling 'growing pains' allegory and I couldn't have given a ha'penny jizz for the adolescent yearnings of yet another scruffy haired pubescent angst valve!

Of course there was an inherent hypocrisy in this. My love of all things superheroic clearly demonstrates my taste for adolescent power fantasies. I suppose the beginnings of the grumpy twat I was about to become were first stirring and I didn't want to jump on the band wagon of a younger (and obviously inferior) generation's cultural iconography.

I attempte to watch the original film once or twice. I saw very little that wasn't being done better in The Lord of the Rings. And so it was that I left Harry Potter, Hogwarts and the various other registered trademarks well alone and was none the poorer for having had nothing to do with them.

But then, people change and my newly emerged enthusiasm for Harry Potter came with my newly emerged enthusiasm for another figure whom I had previously reviled.

I used to think of Mark Kermode as a self important, pseudo-intellectual cad, who disparaged popular cinema purely because it was popular cinema. but as my cinematic tastes (and bloated sense of self righteousness) evolved I found myself becoming more and more wont to concur with 'the good doctor' to the point where I am now a regular listener to the podcast he shares with the amiable but dull Simon Mayo.

Anyway it was through Kermode's review of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince that my interest in the franchise was peaked. Hints at certain plot points and references to some of the set pieces made me realise that there was perhaps meatier, more mature fare contained within the books than I had given J.K. Rowling credit for. I had been vaguely aware that the series became progressively darker and more mature with each instalment (presumably to service it's maturing audience) and resolved to rediscover the books and films, even if I had to wade through the more juvenile opening instalments to get to the good stuff.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I fell in love with the first book within 20 pages.

Despite my way to push my way past the kiddie's table to get to the bar (how's that metaphor working for you?) I found that the very innocence and wholesomeness I thought I'd rail against made the book infinitely charming and wonderful. Fond childhood remembrances of hunching over the Narnia books, The Hobbit and Just William with a duvet cover over my head came flooding back and the pleasant sense of nostalgia and wholesome fun remained with me throughout the book.

I'm now just finishing The Prisoner of Azkaban (book 3 for the uninitiated) and am awaiting the second and third films in the series in my Lovefilm queue.

Rather than railing against a power fantasy out of the reach of my age demographic I found myself caring about the characters, not because I identified with them (or aspired to be them, as I would have as a younger reader) but I had come to see them as almost surrogate nieces and nephews, not unlike my reaction to some of the very young kids I teach.

The 'growing pains' sections of the books I enjoyed not with aspiration or identification but a sort of knowing, fond remembrance and for that reason, I'm quite glad I came across the series approaching my 30s and not approaching my teens.

Of course, the books present very little in the way of new ideas and pretty much everything is re-appropriated from some other branch of popular mythology, with references to gryphons, the philosopher's stone and even cerberus abound in the books. Then again, this is nothing new and nto a criticism that the likes of Tolkein or CS Lewis are above!

The Potter books have an inherent wholesome charm like the works of CS Lewis and the Superman films starring Christopher Reeve and are a welcome addition to the pop culture canon to which I'll be forcefully exposing my unborn children.