The husband people dream of

There’s never a tape recorder around when you need it most. This morning would have been a good time to have one, or at least some witnesses.

I was on baby duty this morning from 7am, leaving the mrs to lie in (she had done likewise for me yesteday morning). At about 9am i went out for a walk with him in the pram, got the Observer, then decided to walk a further 5 minutes to the local Zest cafe/bar. The wee man was being good, playing with his rattle and intermittnetly sleeping, so i ordered the Full English/Ulster Fry! The French (or possibly Polish) lady asked me where my wife was (we’re regulars), i said she was in bed, and i was letting her lie in. She replied, “aww, you must be ze husband people dream of”. Yes, yes i am.

I decided to leave it at that, and bask in the warm glow, rather than telling her that the Mrs had been up about 3 times in the night feeding and calming him down, while i rolled over and pretended to be asleep. I felt that would rob me of the moment a little.

NB: Picture is indicative, and may not represent actuality

Jonah had a whale

In his spare time Question Monkey reviews music gigs for the South West’s premier music and entertainment magazine (dunno why people say things like that, but anyway). Last night I reviewed a guy called Jonah Matranga and I thought it worth a mention.I have to admit I’d never heard of him, I arrived in the room, with my pint of Guinness and a notebook, joining about 100 other people crammed into a small room. I assumed that none of them had heard of him either. Hmm.

First of all, you have to have some balls, to have the PA play The Who’s Baba O’Reilly at full pelt as you walk up on stage to play a completely lo-fi acoustic gig. But he rose to it. And it turns out, pretty much everyone there, has not only heard of him, but know the words to ALL his songs, and sing along to them at the top of their voices. There was something quasi religious about it.

He would start a song…. Then pause and say. ‘You know what , this feels good, there’s a lot of love in the room’ I was standing there with a big smile on my face, thinking this is great… he’s taking the piss in Alan partridge / Ricky Gervais style… but no he’s 100% full on. I think I saw actual tears at one point… my favourite moment which I’ll have to try and work into the review was… as a song faded, someone at the front quietly said ‘thank you’ and he whispered back into the mic ‘no, thank you’. Tongue nowhere near cheek.

I was pleasantly surprised by the bill though, Jacob Golden was great, he randomly name checked his ‘best mate Iain Archer’, which certainly woke me up… in a    hang on, i know Iain, can’t be the same one, can it?    way.

The details of my life are quite inconsequential…

OK, so i’ve learned how to embed YouTube clips. I love this Dr Evil speech, from Austin Powers. Unquestionably funny.

I got me a Tiffin!

One of my best friends left Bristol this weekend, which is sad in some ways but great in an other. She donated me her Tiffin!

A ‘tiffin’ is, in this case a metal container with 4 layers, which i can take to my favourite Bristol eatery, The One Stop Thali, they fill it up with what ever goodness they’re serving that day, all for about £6. And there you go, a nice healthily tasty evening meal for two, with zero effort.

You might ask why i haven’t got one before, well, they cost £20, and I’m a bit lazy, and it seemed an effort to actualy go and buy one.

boring post? nope, interesting and informative i think you’ll find!

The Belfast child blogs again ;)

When i was 9 years old, my dad, who didn’t earn very much decided he needed to provide some more for his young family, so applied to become a policeman, quite a career move from warehouse man, but not unheard off. The thing was, this was Northern Ireland, in the early 1980s, joining the police was a decision to join the front-line in a paramilitary conflict. Every evening the news was filled with stories of police and soldiers being killed, bombs being placed under their cars outside their houses, emotional funerals with wives and children following a coffin, draped in the flag.

For me, childhood memories exist, as very clear, but seemingly quite random moments of absolute clarity. One of these was the day mum and dad gathered us in the sitting room to tell us what was happening, and asked how we felt about it.  In truth, mum was someone who liked to hype up the drama, my sister and i weren’t really of an age to have any meaningful input, but she liked the idea of the ‘family meeting’.

When he eventually passed training and started going to work, i found myself becoming a lot more aware of the news. He had been posted to West Belfast, one of the most violent areas, in fact one of the most dangerous areas in Western Europe. Sometimes when dad was on night duty we’d watch the news and hear “…a policeman has been shot in West Belfast, more news to follow…” the house would fall silent and mum would sometimes phone the station to see if dad was OK, he always was of course, and over a few years we stopped worrying. He was briefly seen on TV and had to appear in court as the arresting officer of one of the top guys in Sein Fein. It was very exciting, and the way he told the story the arrest him was very funny.  I remember really wanting to be able to show off to my mates about it.

Things which in retrospect were bizarrely scary became the routine. Checking under the car every morning, just in case the friendly neighbourhood freedom fighter had decided to blow us to bits by planting a bomb under the family Vauxhall Caviler; the fact that i couldn’t really tell people what my dad did for a job, ‘civil servant’ i was told to say; and of course that there was always a gun in the house. I knew were dad kept it, and from the age of about 15 I’d started to think a bit more about what i would do, if as it were, it all kicked off. Maybe I’d watched a few too many A-Team episodes but i fancied that if someone entered the house, and if dad couldn’t get to the gun, then it was up to me, the other man of the house. Dunno what the heck i was thinking.

Through the years there were ebs and flows in the conflict, and moments which brought the whole thing home to us, and upped the ante. Mum got a phone call on a random Tuesday, and then every other day for a week, from a man saying, ‘we know where you live and we’re going to kill your husband’. As you’d imagine, this was very upsetting - i think mum took to reading parts of the bible to him when he called (i bet that freaked him out). It was a big deal for a while but we changed our phone number and the phone calls stopped, and life got back to normal. Then there was a period when the trend was to throw petrol bombs through the windows of policemen’s houses. It was happening a lot and people we knew had been effected, people who lived near us. I remember going to bed and hearing noises outside on the street, deciding to myself that ‘this was it’, so i ran in to my sisters room and got her up, ran downstairs to wake my mum and tell her there were people outside. In retrospect, its a bit embarrassing, because there was no one there at all - i was probably dreaming. By the time i was ready to go off to university, dad’s job was just part of life. I had enrolled in Dundee Uni, and was planing a trip there to look for student digs. It was a time of great change, little did i know.

I was in bed sleeping, at about 3am, i think it was a Thursday evening, and I’d been round at a friends house the night before watching a video with some other mates. I can remember it photographically, the light went on in the bed room, my sister walked in in her pyjamas, followed by a tall man i didn’t know. I had no idea what was going on, but for some reason my reaction was to be completely nonchalant. ‘yeah, OK I’m up, I’ll be down in a moment’ even before I’d been told what had happened. I could hear another man downstairs with mum, and i knew right away that they were friendly, but there was something wrong. The man in my room was trying to tell me something, but i bizarrely acted like i already knew - it was like i didn’t want to admit that, mum and my wee sister knew what had happened and i didn’t. Then i heard it. “He’s gonna be OK, but he’s been shot”.

What i actually heard was. He’s been killed. I had no doubt in my mind that he’d been killed, i thought that “He’s gonna be ok” is just what they told you, to keep you calm. I started to try and take some sort of control of the situation, ask questions about what we should do. Where do we go now? should i get a shower, or is there no time? mum, why don’t you put the kettle on. Sis, go and put some clothes on. I felt completely fine, but the policeman took one look at me, and went to get me a glass of water, and got me a seat. Mum switched on BBC NI news, and they were talking about it. “There has been a gun attack on a police checkpoint in West Belfast”. Now i was awake.

The next thing i remember was being in the back of the police car on route to dad’s station, we arrived just as it was getting light, and we could see that the road was still cordoned off. The police station was like a fort, with gun turrets and 20ft high walls to stop mortar attacks. It was a very military environment and it felt strange to think that this was where dad worked. He was such a big softy at home, i was a grumpy teenager who thought that parents were naff and didnt know what it was like at school, and how rough it was when in fact he worked everyday in a place like this. Being in the police station, behind the security cordon made me feel like a little kid in a man’s world.

By this time we’d heard the full story. Dad was manning a check point out side the station to warn off car bombers and murder gangs. A car had driven past, a man was hanging out the sunroof with a machine gun and strafed the checkpoint with bullets, dad ran for cover but was hit twice in the leg from an AK47 (On the wall behind where he fell were bullet holes at head height - so in retrospect he was lucky he fell). The car then turned round for an other pass, but when they saw dad on the ground they got out and walked over to him to finish him off. He got out his hand gun, to protect himself, but he must have known he was going to die. At that moment one of the men in the station lookout tower realised what was happening and opened fire on the car. The IRA men fled. Dad doesn’t remember much about getting to the hospital, but he was haunted for a long while by those last moments.

For us, getting to the hospital wasn’t as easy as you’d think. Let me get this right. Dad was being kept in a secure wing, so when we visited him there, we could be identified as his family by unfriendlies, so we couldn’t go in our own car, because we could be followed home. So we had to be driven there in a police car. Because we’d arrive in a police car, we could be identified right away as police family and might be a target on route to the hospital, therefore we travelled in convoy of one army landrover, followed by a police landrover, followed by us in the car (or sometimes in a landrover, if mum wasn’t with us), followed by another army landrover. When we got to the hospital, because we’d arrived in a massive military convoy we could easily be identified, so we had to be escorted up to the ward by half a battalion of Gurkhas, or so it seemed. It was as terrifying as it was comforting. This was the palaver every day we went to visit him, which was every day for about a month. Bizarrely, even this started to seem normal.

When we first arrived at the hospital on that Friday morning, dad was just about to go into surgery, to save his leg. Mum, sis and me went into the room where he was and gathered round the bed. I held his hand, something i hadn’t done since i was a little boy and he burst out crying, something I’d never seen him do before but would see a lot more of. He looked terrified, but i was overjoyed. It sounds melodramatic, but i think up until i saw him, i still thought that “He’s gonna be OK” is just what they told you, to keep you calm.

The pool playing fools

Something I feel a little guilty about, is recanted in the following chronicle, please feel free to assess my guilt in this mater.

I took the attitude to university life, that it was something with which to alleviate my parents concerns, while I spent my life socialising, trying to ‘pull’ and most importantly trying to ‘make it’ as a rock god. To that end, the mater of actually attending lectures and passing exams was very much secondary.

I had a mate called Jeff (name changed to protect the not quite so guilty), he, like me studied Computer Science, and he, like me had more important things to do with his time than passing exams and the like. So, most days, when we both deemed it appropriate to attend at all, we would bugger off and play pool in the Students Union and drink a couple of pints as soon as the bar opened.

When it came to our final year, we both, of course failed like billyo! The thing being, I failed by marginally less that he did, thus allowing me the dream ticket of having to re-sit the year (perfect for that one more chance to tour Europe with the band and keep living the dream). Jeff, who passed and failed as many exams as I did, was booted out on his ear.

I now work in a pretty good job in the computer industry, he works in a warehouse.

Wherein lies my responsibility?

Prince - Brit Awards 2006

Driving to work this morning, the DJ elected to bless his listeners with a snippet of Purple Rain by Prince.  It reminded me of how surprisingly stunning he his!

A couple of years ago he played at the Brit Awards, showing the younguns how its done :)  Apart from anything else, he plays the guitar like Hendrix, sings like Brown, is as funky as Bootsy and for a 5 foot elf, he OWNS the stage.

check it out: Click here to view Prince @ The Brits 2006 (the first song is slightly borning.. skip through it)

The moment after the second track…  when the spotlight is on the guitarist, then it moves to Prince and he whispers ‘nevamenacauseeeeyou any sorrow’ is pure soul. And the  Whoo  oooos  on Purple Rain!

I loved it at the time, the brit awards were being lavished on people like KT Tunstal and Corrine Bailey Rea…. then Prince broke out his guitar and blew them all way.

i know this is a stunningly dangerous statement, but     if i was a girl  :)   i’d be one of Prince’s dancers.

In the geekworld, but not of the geekworld

These last few days I’ve been at a conference in London. I’d love to say it was something cool like Amnesty international or a foreign policy think tank or some other worthy cause. I have to admit though, it was a software development seminar. Never in my life have a seen such a concentrated mass of geeks, it was truly scary. Mr Average was in his mid 30s, overweight, wearing a Microsoft t-shirt (some even had their names on the back in a ‘boys on tour’ style), A worrying percentage constantly wore bluetooth earpieces, lest they would get that oh so important call, and couldn’t aford the 5 seconds to set down their laptop to answer it. I spent the first few hours shaking my head and scoffing at people until I realised, hang on, I’m here too!

First up was the keynote speeches, which at 8.30 in the morning was a bit keen I felt, anyhoo I was actually looking forward to it, as one of the guys is a brilliant developer (oh no, I AM one of them). About 300 of us were in the main hall, and as each speaker was introduced the PA played some loud inappropriate rock music, to try and hype it up bit. Highly comical to see a 38 year old nerd in a suit shuffling to the podium to the sound of the ‘uupah oohah’ from Living on a prayer.

My favourite part though was a conversation I overheard at lunch time. One of the organisers came up to a guy near me and asked him if he was interested in entering ‘speaker idol’, the premise being that knowledgeable geeks would give ten minute talks about things like Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight (yes) and the judges would rate them. The guy said, in effect, piss off, that sounds awful. The organiser then came back with… ‘you should see the girls who are organising it, they’re stunning!’ the man retorted with ‘yes, and I’ll be there looking like a twat in front of them’

With than undeniable truth ringing in his ears, the man left

The Gardener of Good and Evil II

In a recent post, i gave myself the lofty task of deciding on the nature and causes of good and evil. Then realised that i know nought, so left it.

But i think I’ve found out that someone has already done the job for me. Alfred Nobel. His prizes set out to reward those who advance knowledge in areas of certain human progress - maybe these are the definitive areas of goodness - and the cause of this advancement, is ‘Good’.

So… Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Medicine and in recent times Economics.

Now, all i need is someone to start giving out prizes for evil … oh yeah, thats the Big Brother final.

(will really have to think of a better ‘pay off’ gag than that!)

John Humphrys on Billy Graham

Browsing in Waterstone’s yesterday, I read an excerpt from the new John Humphrys’ book. It made me laugh as it’s a situation I recognise all too well. (honestly, its not just because having links to such things, ups a blog’s hit count!)

(on attempted conversions)
A friend took me to “HTB” otherwise known as Holy Trinity Brompton, a rich church in the most fashionable area of London. This is were the phenomenally successful ‘Alpha Courses’ were born. It’s the sort of church you may be invited to ‘give God a clap’. I hated it.

Another friend asked me to attend a Billy Graham meeting in Earl’s court with her. Before we left she told me God helped her in everything she does. Only the other day he had helped her find a screwdriver just when she needed one. I told her the joke about the Irish catholic, desperate to find a parking place before a vitally important meeting , who promised God that if he helped out he’d give up smoking, drinking and fornication. Miraculously a place appeared. The Irish man looked up to head and said, ‘Never mind, I’ve found one.’ My friend was not amused.

On the way to Earl’s Court her car broke down. I suggested lightly it must mean God didn’t want me to go. No, she said darkly, it’s the Devil. She meant too.

At the meeting there were endless quotations from the Bible to prove whatever point he was making. This always puzzles me: if a preacher is using the Bible to convert someone, to prove that God exists, then surely he must first prove the Bible is the truth and not just a collection of writings that contradict each other and were written long after the events they purports to describe. If, on the other hand, he assumed we accept the truth of the Bible, why is he trying to convert us?

John Humphrys, In God we doubt

Update: My mrs must have read the post, and bought me the hardback! To be fair to JH, its a decent read - a lot less polemic than others in the genre… in fact its not even in the religion bashing genre… he has as much ire for the Dawkins of this world as the religious whack-jobs.  He’s the master interviewer, and he brings it to bear on the leaders of the three main churches… and they don’t back away. 

I can’t go out, I’ve nothing to wear

I think this is one phrase, that sums up succinctly, as the French say, La Diffèrence (why say the difference when you can get away with using some French).

I was standing in line waiting for the lift this lunch time and I managed to catch 5 minutes of a conversation between two very normal pretty young girls about their weekend plans. It seemed to be a reasonably normal excursion for some food then a bar for some drinks, but one of the girls seemed genuinely upset, and was thinking about giving it a miss because she had nothing to wear.

I don’t for a minute think that she meant that all her clothes had been stolen or had shrunk in the wash. She probably has 43 tops, 29 skirts, 104 pairs of shoes if i know women (which I don’t).

I think they eventually agreed to wear ¾ length skirts with vest tops and strappy shoes or something.

In any case, it’s a conversation which is just inconceivable in a male context.

Re-discovering OK Computer

I remember that about 10 years ago, polls of The Best Album of All Time had Radiohead’s OK Computer up there with the likes the Revolver and St Peppers. It felt too soon to assign it classic status - and I presume now that Amy Winehouse or Klaxons are probably in the top 10 in these polls.

I listened to OK Computer again today for the first time in possibly years and remember why it is what it is.

Restrained but occasionally euphoric
Beauty
Bleak
Screechingly emotional
Tense
Technical yet organic
Free form yet meticulous
Other worldly
Abstract

Great Moments:
0:15 into Airbag
1:40 into Paranoid Android
2:45 into Paranoid Android
5:05 into Paranoid Android
3:00 into Exit Music
1:35 Into Sub homesick alien
0:15 Let Down
2:35 Karma Police
0:15 Electioneering
0:01 No Surprises
1:10 Lucky
3:40 Lucky

Pacifist Immorality?

you’ll have noticed I’m going for less ‘banter’ posts lately, its tough segueing between Sushi Akabusi and the nature of morality 

Pacifism always sounds like a noble thing, like environmentalism or altruism, but does it really stand up to moral scrutiny?

I have a friend (who will probably read this - and argue very well in the opposite direction) who said once that he wouldn’t accept a job at the Ministry of Defence, because he was a pacifist and couldn’t justify being part of an organisation which makes plans and tools to kill people.

The question here isn’t, is it ok to be violently aggressive to get your own way - while there’s probably a decent discussion to he had there, I’m more interested in the idea of pacifism in terms of - never using violence in any form (ala Ghandi/Buddha), no mater what the circumstance.

How moral is it, to stand by non-violently when someone is assaulting and robbing your next door neighbour, or to refuse to pull the gun trigger when someone is about to explode a bomb in the preverbal school bus. If I think I am a pacifist but would pull that trigger, then surely if im part of a community and a country then I need to be willing to, if not join the army if required, but at least support the idea of having a well trained standing army, ready to kill others, in order to protect the weak from tyranny. In a sense, step in to help a neighbour or defend my family - on a global scale.

OK, you might say that excursions like the invasion of Iraq were immoral, therefore if you were involved in or supported our military, you make yourself morally responsible. But maybe that’s the just the way it is in a democracy, each of us get a vote, and we ask the elected government to do certain things, one of which is to protect the country from outside aggression and in some cases intervene around the world, in the interest of our country. You don’t get to choose exactly where the government spends your taxes (apart from at the ballot box), and you don’t get to opt out of moral responsibility for what the elected government does. Or maybe you do. Anyway, I digress.

Im not sure pacifism can automatically claim the moral high ground.

The Cult of Princess Diana

What would it take for Diana to be regarded as a prophet from god?

My answer is, as you’d expect is not very much (otherwise it would be a more rubbish post).

I saw a picture on the front of a newspaper recently of a man on his knees at the gates of Buckingham palace praying  in front of a picture of Diana, surrounded by flowers. The notion occurred to me, was Diana a goddess of sorts, or at least in less enlightened times, could in 50-100 years have a reasonable religious following.

How far would things need to be exaggerated for it to be said that she healed people with AIDS, and preached love and understanding? How hard would it be to find apostles who said that she changed their lives for the better? And that she was persecuted for her beliefs and cast out of the royal family etc

A guy called Joseph Smith claimed to have dug up some gold plates in America in the early 1800s, and said that it was a message from god, and revelation about the way forward. A man, who believes this, is now in with a reasonable chance of becoming President.

Maybe in these days of 24 hour news and intimate inquiry into every part of celebrity the Diana Cult wouldn’t last long - but who knows  (see scientology)- I wouldn’t be surprised if King William IV’s son is head of the English Church of Diana

food for thought, or at least a curly wurly for thought.

The gardener of good and evil

What is evil? Don’t worry im not going to pretend that I have any sort of philosophical insight, I know that many have addressed this question and come up with smart and involved answers. But someone said to me recently that we shouldn’t defer our debates to others clever than us, it’s up to everyone to discuss the big ideas, no mater how inadequate we feel.

[jeepers! you know what I've just realised? I sometimes write this blog, with the voice of her offa sex in the city in my head. Very worrying]

People talk about things being evil, even non-religious people. It’s a given. But is it helpful to our common progress and that of our planet and our children. For such an important and basic element I think it is ill defined.

Maybe it helps to think about good things and bad things that happen and analyse what the causes are, and maybe the cause of that good thing, is ‘good’ and the cause of that bad things is ‘evil’. Is that too simplistic? Yes. But I like simple things, there lies beauty.

Here’s some good stuff. I think people could agree that things which help people live a healthy, happy, more comfortable and longer life are generally good. Also, I don’t think it’s promoting a hippy agenda to say that things which achieve harmony and common human agreement and respect are, in general, regarded as good.

So specifically, some examples; the ability to make fire; forging of basic tools; The Enlightenment; establishment of laws and social discipline; identification of germs (germ theory), invention of antibiotics; mass communications; industrialisation and efficiency of labour; economic theory and progress (the likes of Adam Smith); eradication of diseases; construction of housing; shelter and roads; generation and harnessing of electricity,

You know what… I’ve gone and got bored of this post already… so I’ll leave it at that, if anyone wants to add any comments and add to the list of good things/bad things then maybe I’ll come back with a post script to analyse the causes. And we can put the world to rights.