Month: May 2013

Death Comes To Us All

/ Dominic / 1 Comment

No, this is not about murdering bullies. I was going to try and up the mood a notch after the last few posts with the woe is me theme. Unlucky as when I was tootling home from a very satisfactory swimming session (trying to stay fit and be a coffin dodger myself) when I hear this amazing young woman talking on Radio 4 – if you are in any doubt it is the most amazing radio station in the world – about death. She is a palliative care doctor in her early thirties and was diagnosed with some filthy cancer a few years ago and is now confounding the statisticians by living well past her sell by date.

Although she knows that she is now, in old doctor chart speak, CTD. CTD is shorthand for Circling The Drain and is not written with any mocking, just a factual observation that death is very near for the patient concerned. In the mollycoddling PC world that we live in today I am told that this is discouraged to the point that doing this could lose you your job. Pity, because it is quite a clever and amusing TLA in the world of death that doctors mostly exist in. My personal favourite though is DTS, as in Danger To Shipping, to describe someone who has become, how do you say this delicately, I can’t so extremely obese will just have to do. Pejorative to fat folks apparently. The fact is that there are few things within ones gift to control. Being fat, or not, is one of them. Same as smoking. But I digress. Back to the imminent arrival of the Grim Reaper.

I think this woman – Dr Kate Grainger – is doing a great service. She tweets, has written a few books and is generally interested in ensuring that an inevitable process is made comfortable and the mystery that some people are determined to cloak the process in is stripped away . Death is an inexplicably taboo subject and I can’t see why we need to avoid it. The terms deployed to camouflage death are numerous and baffling. Passed, passed on, gone to a better place (really, a crematorium or hole in the ground is always better?), no longer with us (no shit, I thought they had popped out for milk?) and so on. If I have to use a silly euphemism for death then it has got to be “shuffled off this mortal coil”. Brilliantly English way of getting the point over whilst dressing it in a bit of wit.

Dr Grainger has plans to Tweet her own death as a way of making death more socially acceptable. Bravo. It’s a free world and she is getting the PR and bringing the issue to forefront. Follow Kate at @GrangerKate . Wish her luck, give her strength, say goodbye. It’s natural and you have the opportunity to improve the lot of a fellow human. Good eh?

I may be being a little flippant, but I do realise and have experienced the emotional trauma and loss that a death of someone close, that death comes freighted with all manner of pain and suffering. That too is natural. I still don’t think we need to pussyfoot around the topic.

Although there is no need to bash on and on about it as your friends end up marking you for a morbid bore. Oh wait…, never mind. Oh yes, that’s it, one of life’s few certainties is death. And taxes.

How To Beat Bullies

/ Dominic

The previous post, Phlegm, attracted a reasonable amount of attention from interested anti-bullying parties. That got me digging about a bit in the old grey matter and fanned my occasionally Neanderthal problem solving instincts.

I get the fact we are civilised people and have evolved the capabilities to go beyond curing problems with a well-aimed thump.   However, I think that we want to put our pasts behind us and embrace ever higher levels of civility to the detriment of recognising our basic flight’or’flight genetic roots . When we eschew the old ways of violence we are very pleased with ourselves as we have risen above base behaviour. There is also a Third Way. Read on Grasshopper…

The fact is that when one is being bullied it is pretty Neanderthal. It is a power game where one party abuses their power and derives an inner satisfaction from doing so. Let’s not get airy-fairy about this. It ain’t pretty now, it was never pretty and it never will be pretty. Get over it. And when one is the recipient of abuses of power the balance of power needs to be redressed and sometimes ,unfortunately for the squeamish higher order people, this requires a bit of disciplined violence.

You can intellectualise the bejesus out of it and wrap it up in various layers of well-intentioned fluff but the balance of power needs an immediate and sharp readjustment, with a bit of full on but careful agression. We all know bullies are deep-down cowards so I advocate the short sharp shock treatment when one is being repeatedly physically intimidated or actually smacked about. I talk from actual experience and am not standing back and theorising here. Additionally, this is not about triumphing it is about seeming to be quite unhinged and dangerous. The aim of your efforts is purely to escape relatively unscathed, run away like a coward – for that is what I am – and most importantly to be left alone in future.

When I grew up the male chit-chat often turned to fighting and the importance of “fighting fair”. Often referred to in the context of fist fights because I guess one is just supposed to punch the other person in a gentlemanly manner between midriff and jaw. Bizarre, as I was never trained to box.

As far as I could ascertain this meant no shin kicking, kicking someone who is down, bollock stomping, eye-gouging, nostril ripping, hair pulling etc etc. Essentially, all the good stuff that puny wimps need to use to win. We were conditioned that should one ever find oneself in the unfortunate position of having to fight then it should be a fair process. Eh? If you are fighting then you are fighting to win. Rules, don’t be soft. I believe the aficionados of scrapping refer to this as Cage Fighting these days.

May I humbly suggest that in my experience over several such encounters whilst growing up – I went to 11 schools so you figure out who got picked on – that when backed into a corner you go completely bat-shit crazy. If you are going to go down this route then don’t forget that famous intellectual Donald Rumsfeldt and his Shock and Awe speech. You are going for shock, awe but in addition a hasty retreat.

I suggest that you may like to commence the loving with a bit of bollock crunching. Get your head down and charge in and start by going straight for the crutch with your dominant hand, let the balls nestle in your cupped hand and then give them a good friendly squeeze just as hard as you can. This approach generally takes their mind right off the hitting/shoving/spitting that they had in mind and also introduces quite the element of surprise. Use this to your advantage and do remember keep your head down.

Young men are generally pretty homophobic in the early-mid teens (I know I was) so the friendly if unexpected straight in for the genitals approach also unsettles them mentally as it somehow “isn’t right”. Once you have shown intent and they have fought you off their battered sac it is time for a bit of head action. They ought to be reeling in surprise at this stage. On a good day, if you really get the pair nestled in your hand so you can bump them off one-another it may be all you need. You’ll know because they will recoil with shock and horror and scream unpleasant things. Make your peaceful intentions clear by retreating smartly and certainly out of range. If grabbed you’ll get a proper beating and having a fight isn’t the point as you’ll lose.

However, if you didn’t make a great fist of it then feel free to take advantage of the element of surprise. I encourage you to up the lunatic quotient a bit and grab the head. Start the getting to know you process by trying to scratch their eyes out. Additionally, if you can hook one or two fingers in a nostril/s and give the nose a firm and friendly tug upwards it gives them something to concentrate on other than their testicles, which is a kindness really if you think about it. A bit of banshee wailing never goes amiss. 

Your next step is getting the hell away. But…they now think you are a properly dangerous loon and some even lapse straight into victim mode as if you were the aggressor. Screw ’em. You both know. The aim is merely to reset the tone of the relationship where they no longer think it is ok to beat on you and humiliate you in front of others. You know that awful feeling of dread come lunch hour when you knew it would start? Yeah, that’ll be gone too. Trust me. It is such a wonderfully liberating feeling. If they start on the victim thing then do remind everyone how it was they that picked on you for some time first.

Hey, this really was about beating bullies. Good luck.

PS: I can’t believe I actually need to say this but I am assuming that you have tried the sensible approaches first like changing your routes etc. This is last resort stuff. It is definitely not cool to actually pop an eyeball out or Mike Tyson their ear. What is cool is if they think you might.

Phlegm

/ Dominic / 1 Comment

I had come to Canada from England – apparently kidnapped by my mum but that’s for another time – and because I could read without using my finger and dribbling on the page I was considered, incorrectly, gifted, so was bumped up a grade.

I was bullied all through school for the simple reason that I had skipped a grade. You’d have thought I had actually appealed to my mother and the grade school teachers to go and inflict intellectual torture on bigger kids instead of hanging out and being a kid with kids my own age. Being able to read sooner meant that I was bullied. A lot. For one year I was even bullied by two girls. One of them had been required to retake a grade and was a proper scary piece of work. I like to fondly imagine that she is in the clink now – murdered a junkie in a deal gone wrong? Although, I am sure she will be the scary scary bull-dyke that runs the entire place. I suppose everyone needs to find their niche.

That particular round stopped when I was sat behind one of the two in class and as I looked down one day I was greeted by a rapidly spreading puddle of pee and that the head of this particular river of piss was the chair occupied by one of my torturers. With a heavy heart and a sombre expression I did the only thing a decent well brung up young boy could do and started squealing with delight as I excitedly drew the attention of everyone in the class to this rapidly expanding yellow puddle. Her credibility took a knock and she rather lacked the presence to bully me when we both knew that, though younger, I had a far more developed let-down reflex. With the accomplice wetting herself out of contention then the first one gave up as well. After all, it’s only fun if you have a crowd to play to.

The guy who delighted on picking on me and was a very accurate gobber, was in my year and was a proper dunce. He was so incredibly stupid that he’d been held back a year in Sixth grade. Who the hell is that dumb? Kelly took exception to my accent, the long words, which meant anything with two or more syllables, and the fact that he was a giant and I was puny person two years his junior. It is usual for everyone to just be shuffled along the conveyor belt that is primary education as it takes a lot longer for the real thickos to come to light. Either that or they already ride the small school bus to somewhere different and are never seen of again. It was a small village school and everyone knew everybody else and yet Kelly failed Sixth grade. Still, he was a crack shot at gobbing and hit me in the face from a good three metres away. Take the grossness out and you have to admire accuracy like that. I somehow doubt this skill was extrapolated into something useful later in life and if you had met him it would become much harder to argue against state decreed sterilisation.

I had never been spat on before. I’d been spat at but it had always been a poor attempt. This time, however, was unfortunately well aimed. The main glob of spit caused a direct hit on my left cheekbone and all the spray forced me to screw my eyes shut. Still, I was immediately conscious of the fact that this was a proper solid chunk of phlegm as it hit with some force. Wet but with a surprising amount of substance. And it stank. It really reeked of someone who hadn’t been taught any oral hygiene, ever.

As small boys we used to refer to these delights that had to be hawked up, from somewhere deep within one’s respiratory tract, with a great deal of effort prior to spitting at little brothers, in a distance or accuracy contest or at bullying victims, as Prairie Oysters. Did you know that the best way to get at least another metre of distance when hocking a loogie was to take a step towards the agreed line and then sort of flick your body sideways with the head turned through 90 degrees and loose it off when the head was being cracked like a whip? Get your timing and aim right and it really works wonders to the departure velocity. A bit like a magnum round really. Additionally, a good Prairie Oyster flies nicely due to the enhanced aerodynamic properties imparted by the solid core and is always preferable to just plain ‘ole saliva. Why do boys get favoured for the sciences you ask? Because we were learning about physics long before it even became a discrete subject.

For what it’s worth there was a monumental lack of parental involvement with young Kelly and though living down the road from us in a nice suburban neighbourhood Kelly’s house looked like it had been dropped on the plot from a great height. Caught up in it were various rusting home appliances that seemed to live outside yet have no function other than ornamental, large swathes of plastic sheeting nailed to unfinished parts of the building that were coated in mildew and a pick-up truck that appeared to be held together with string and primer. My mum used to refer to it when giving directions and would tell people that they knew they were nearly at our house when they passed the plot that looked like a trailer park after the tornado had hit it.

I owe an eternal debt of gratitude to my step-father as he finally taught me to deal with physical bullying. It was the sort of talk that is deeply frowned upon these days, which is probably why it was so effective. When I finally confessed to him that in Grade nine I was being regularly terrorised by this group of lads he gave me some stunningly effective advice. “Dominic, take your belt off and wrap the soft end around your hand but keep it hidden. When they corner you make sure it is outdoors and you have some room to move then start whirling the belt buckle around and around. Look right at them and look crazy. Pick one and crack him with the buckle and see what happens.” It worked. I was never intimidated again. There were plenty of words from a distance but they all thought I was completely unhinged and was best avoided. It was incredibly liberating and I smiled inside as I suddenly sensed the balance of power shift.

This now meant that I could get on fantasising about Jenny the French horn player that sat beside me in band and the heavenly Patricia in one of my classes. Frankly, I didn’t think it was possible to have an erection for so long. Very careful consideration had to be given to getting out of one’s seat as the priapic state seemed to have no end and even verged on the painfully uncomfortable at times.

Growing up was just a barrel of laughs.

Eh? What Did You Say The Time Was?

/ Dominic / 2 Comments

Simple stuff to start the day on. After all, there is no point getting too heavy too soon. Plenty of time to get sad and introspective later.

Do you know what I mean when you look at your watch through semi-scrunched up eyes in a darkish room and think, “oh, half six, time to get up”? Obviously a totally alien thought to many but in my world it’s the correct time to rise to get things done (enough of me moralising, you know who you lazy bastards are) and you drag yourself out of bed to think, “Christ on a bike, I’m knackered. Must get to bed before 2300 etc etc” and start going through the motions of making cawfee when you make a quick glance at the clock on the stove, see it says it is three minutes past six and with a deft wrist motion flick open the computer to disprove this damnable lie. Four minutes past six. Confirmed. Watch obviously said half five and not half six. Damn and double damn. If I was down wiv da kidz this would be the time for a WTF????

I have used the twenty four hour clock for time for as long as I can remember so all the AM times are prefaced with a zero pronounced “oh” like the letter. This puts me in mind of Robin Williams playing Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning Vietnam – get this, in 1987! He announces the time as 0600, and, “what does the 0 stand for? Oh my god it’s early.”

Apparently Wiliams improvised a whole ton of the script when shooting the film. They just rolled the cameras and let him go. It is a cruel rumour but apparently the Bolivian Marching Powder may had a teensy bit to do with it. Regardless, This is well worth a few minutes of your time as this is indeed comedy gold from 1987. 

Oh god, the Bialetti didn’t get all the water through so I have had syrupy black coffee that you was thick enough to apply via strong rubbing to the forehead and chest. Sod coke (the powdered variety), this is hardcore buzzing. If I don’t rot a hole in my guts I think I am going to buzz out of control. Having done the obligatory experimentation with drugs in my youth I can safely say that this is up there. I am even short of breath. And all during my morning constitutional w the Mad Septic I have kept nipping into the bushes for immediate relief. Look on the bright side though, the Bialetti didn’t explode peppering my naked torso with semi-molten chunks of cheap shrapnel. You know it would just maim and probably blind you. If that kind of thing happens to me I want to be killed outright, minimum pain and for the device to work right first time. Just saying.

To keep the blowing up thread going I was walking in Oxford with the Mad Septic and as a small car, obviously a rental car with a young Muslim male at the wheel pulled out I remarked that seeing the three things combined I couldn’t stop myself looking to see if the rear springs were badly compressed and whether he had the look of someone who had not used their own card to rent it. It’s a hire car and was being treated so nicely. Obviously been PV’d by Enterprise so what do I know? Much laughing – at me – and the Mad Septic announced that you never hear of old Swedish grannie’s blowing themselves up, which is true, you don’t. In fact, I have never heard of a pensioner perpetrating a suicide attack. Old people realise they are getting to the end of a time-limited contract and have way too much dignity to go blowing themselves up. However, it must be a slight sense of accomplishment and social righteousness when you can talk an impressionable young fool into doing so. Natural selection and all that. Additionally, females in general seem too clever to fall for the seventy-two virgins line and as a slight aside, I don’t want virgins but rather well seasoned porn stars that know exactly what they are doing with my bits and if I am really lucky a finger might sneak into areas God never intended. I have died in a courageous and righteous manner and want to have some fun. I deserve it. I guess young guys haven’t had the time to develop into old pervs who have thought this through. Oh Lord, I am going straight to hell – as if that wasn’t a known knowns. Must concentrate. Why are young men so easy to radicalise with religion, politics or a mixture of the two?

If you are now wondering if I am just a simple racist bastard using long words then you are only partially correct. I am not racist and was just indulging in profiling and not personal value judgements.

A semi-literate bastard? Correct.  I don’t know if my parents were actually married when I was conceived (on a yacht in Sydney Harbour if my mother is to be believed) so in theory I could be an actual bastard as well. Who’d a thunk it?

PS: I promised to do a post around some cool pics I was sent. Later. I shall then submit it all to the magnificent Lisa for excoriating comments and a bit of editing.

A Little Bit Of Routine

/ Dominic / 3 Comments

Today I am bereft of ideas so suddenly thought, “why not try and write about having nothing to write about?”.  Make yourself comfy as this may be excruciating. You tell me.

My day so far in a series of observations with vignettes:

  • One of the neurotic cats, Claude, decides – after last nights inexplicable love in he now likes me and, no you sick bastards, it was nothing more than coochy coo noises and lots of behind ear tickling – that 0530 is the appropriate time to stroll back and forth at the side of the bed making pretty insistent mewing noises to reinforce our new bond. Pity he is an indoor only cat or I would have upped his flying hours for him right over the balcony. My foot being his newfound means of propulsion.
  • Claude, not realising that I have mentally ejected him at speed, then jumps up and backs towards me, because who doesn’t enjoy cracking their eye open to be greeted by puckered cat’s rusty bullet wound with attendant litter tray aromas at 0530? That’s the last fucking tickle he gets. Reminds me of this: 
  • My daughter was staying with me and was v keen that I drive her to school in the most environmentally unfriendly manner. Mostly it is my fault because I failed to check the buses. Remember, I am flat sitting inside the Oxford ring-road and she goes to school in Oxford. Becoming another car and emitting, I suspect, more than my share of CO2 was not my plan. It is a nice car and I suddenly realised that she was after dropping-off kudos. This was confirmed as we pulled up and she checked and waited a moment to casually emerge in front of a classmate. The parting remark was not, “goodbye Daddy, I love you.” but rather, “you will be picking me up in this car, won’t you?” She is ten years old for crying out loud. That’s girls for you.
  • The fact that the flat has a Nintendo Wii seems to have influenced unsolicited and quite transparent remarks such as, “if I were to get all my homework done at lunchtime can we play Wii Bowling tonight?”. The problem for her is I now know that homework can be done at lunch. A small fact I shall be sharing with her mother.
  • I then went swimming, and due to receiving some pretty shabby news about a friend last night, just got my head down and swam up and down until I suddenly realised that I was the last one there and the staff were waiting politely for me to hop-it as the pool shuts for three hours from nine until twelve. It is a good way to block out shitty thoughts, even for a time.
  • All my shower behavioural theories were then torpedoed by an Asian lad going into the private cubicle and then prancing out butt-naked into the main changing area. At least he seemed aware of the no eye-contact rule when getting changed. I think he may have grown up in the middle-East and then lived in the UK for a while. There is simply no other logical explanation for such obviously aberrant behaviour.
  • Usual quick trip to Rick’s for a double-espresso and fresh croissant. the Spanish girl with long dark hair is v sexy. No chemistry however as she had discovered that I had got up – Claude’s puckered and quite possibly faecal encrusted cyclops eye notwithstanding – at 0630. This seems to be only a few hours after she goes to bed. It’s those workshy Spanish again. No wonder their economy is going (gone?) down the pan. They stay up too late having too much fun. What is life without a bit of self-inflicted (or moggy inflicted) early mornings? No room for fun, we’re British.
  • Not wishing to disappoint my little girl I did my bit for the illegal immigrant (Albanian) population of Oxford and went and got my car cleaned for a fiver. I cunningly let one lad drive it the ten feet from the cleaning bay to the drying bay – totally unnecessary as I was the only car there at 0930h – which ensured it received gold star treatment. I stood beside the chap that runs it and he bitched and moaned about the fact that he can’t employ any English as they don’t know what hard work is. I suspect the entire operation is actually a money laundering front for the proceeds of prostitution and that the young Albanian lads are working so hard to free their sisters from enslavement. I then snapped back to reality.
  • Back to flat and domestic procedures took over. The kitchen is smaller than a yacht’s galley so more than a glass and fork clutter it up to the point where entry is an issue. So I washed up, emptied the bins and then had a delightful ten minutes emptying the cat trays. They pee a lot and poop a little. Small mercies I suppose.
  • Still bummed about my mate – who is now in major surgery as I write- so I did what any slacker would do and watched an episode of Mock The Week on iPlayer to cheer up. There is something about turning the telly on in the middle of the day. I feel that if I do that there will be a crash as the door is blown from its hinges, and Jeremy Kyle, Oprah and Judge Judy will effect a tactical entry and then demand to include me in some schizo version of a bare your pikey soul episode on a daytime telly threesome. The behemoth TV stays off an I use the Mac. Safer that way.
  • Troughed on the remains of last nights Kraft Mac Cheese. It was disgusting then – daughter refused most of it, wisely – and cold today. Didn’t stop me eating it all in a one-er with a bit of Mango Chutney spooned from the jar. Mango Chutney improves almost anything apart from biscuits. Now I wanna hurl.

And here I am now…

I Reckon…

/ Dominic / 2 Comments

…that with a good solid idea then I could make a reasonable fist of writing a story around it. If Stories Aloud has taught me anything it’s that writers are just ordinary folk who’ve had the courage to plug on and take their dream further. What makes them different is courage.

Whilst I am not going for the next JK Rowling it would be nice if I could engage and please a wider audience than just friends being polite.

There is no point soliciting ideas for a longer piece of writing because as any fule kno’s it has to come from within so you can nurture it, develop it and take it in different and sometimes unexpected directions. You can’t do that if it ain’t your idea.

Regarding my inherent inability to get a comma in the correct place I know I can rely on the others in my life to meddle (I mean edit) appropriately.

No one said it would be easy. However, I think it is time to wheel out my favourite phrase: Illegitimi non carborundum

PS: the above post came to me whilst hoovering up some of the permanent miasma of moggy hair in this flat. I still maintain that you could shave them, sell the hair on ebay and it’s a renewable resource.

A Younger Woman’s Bed

/ Dominic

I went to Stories Aloud last night for their first birthday. Yay Sarah. Good work. There were two authors there who both agreed that – newsflash – writing needs to be worked at. It is probably arrogance ( I am reminded of the famous Thatcher reply when asked if she was pretentious – who, moi?) but as writing is one of the few things I seem to be happy plugging away at and quite enjoy I have decided to give a slightly longer piece a go. I have a thing about slightly edgy titles as I believe it accomplishes the internet version of a flashy cover in Blackwell’s et al. The bed bit is coming. I promise.

Her name is, well, that’s not important and I met her through a friend. She has two neurotic cats that I think I am allergic to, in a nice little flat in Oxford. Being the all round super guy that I am I stepped in to cat-sit when she had been let down at the last moment and they had already paid for their tickets.

On the surface it is just fine. A seven-day sideways step can’t be that tricky. Can it?

I have turned on the slightly baffling monster telly two or three times now. Turns out that it is possible to watch all-day police pornography shows with satellite TV. Who’d a thunk it? 20/20 cricket is ok, though not as soothing as Test Match stuff but the gem in all of this is a channel called Sky Arts HD. I didn’t know the Dirty Digger thought culture was anything other than something that grew on old yoghurt.

Opera’s, organ recitals and the like. organI was fascinated as they tried to sex-up an organ recital by placing cameras inside the organ and then doing tight-in shots of  hands and feet playing the beast then immediately cutting away to the corresponding action shots from within. I am now much better informed as to what happens inside all the guts of the organ. Strangely though, I was just enjoying the impressive panning shots of this behemoth of an instrument and the up-skirt internal organ shots added nothing. Still, I guess they are trying. However, I can take about 20 min then it’s telly off and back to my book, or more usually my keyboard.

I have shopped for what I eat and drink in Waitrose so am more comfortable that I don’t need to survive on Kraft Dinners kraft dinnerand an odd little coffe machine. Proper espresso, industrial strength from a Bialetti stove top type thing. There is always that slight frisson of “will it explode and kill me with some cheap cast aluminium shrapnel?”. I find the post-brew survival adds to the caffeine buzz. Cheese, red wine and bananas were also lacking. No fear Waitrose is here so all is good on the comestibles front now.

In my bedroom I have an old mattress that needs changing, an orthopaedic pillow – that also needs changing – but most importantly of all I have a lovely down duvet with nice John Lewis Egyptian cotton bed linen. In her room it is a nice but slightly too firm mattress, bed linen with a bit of synthetic fibres making me sweat like a man on death-row capped off with a synthetic duvet. It doesn’t drape very well but rather it just uses your body as the apex point to form a mini circus tent. Due to my increasing years and general softness – I talk about Rule #5 but don’t always follow it – I want the duvet to settle over me and form a nice and gentle hermetic seal all around my body.

I am not used to waking up in a young woman’s bed slightly cold and sweating on such a regular basis.