Rock of Aged

Freaky Trigger, a music website, has been doing a running blog of reviewing UK #1 singles for some years now, and on the most recent entry (Discotheque by U2, which I hated then and still do), one commentator noted that 1997 was the year that rock died. For him, at least. 

In a way, I get where he was coming from. Emphasis on the individual, as I'm more than aware there's plenty of folk younger than me who got a whole lot out of bands like, for example, Muse. Personally, the first decade of this millennium - in which I was mostly in my 20s and should, in theory, have been most hip to what was going on - I think I only really engaged with British Sea Power and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (first two albums only) in terms of acts whose albums I deeply loved. There were people like Idlewild and Doves who I dipped in and out of, but very little I got obsessed about the way I did about the XTC, the Cure or the Psychedelic Furs, whose extensive back catalogues I was gobbling up around the same period.

It's part of getting older for a lot of people, the losing of interest in what's going on today in music. I've wondered if, for me, it's a resentment of seeing people coming up to be young enough to be my children (in theory) jumping around. 

Then again, I was avoiding the contemporary from a young age. As a stroppy teenager in my bedroom, I pretty much ignored grunge (too loud for me, at the time), Britpop (bunch of Southern ponces pretending to be working class, I thought) and anything like rave/house/techno (didn't take the drugs). From the three Danny Baker BBC4 music shows this week covering the 70s/80s/90s, it was the last that struggled to hold my attention. A passing mention to Chapterhouse aside, only the KLF brought a feeling of "yeah, that was pretty good".

In my own life, it was only a decade later, with access to the internet, that I was able to dig out the pearls from the age. Catherine Wheel, Slowdive, Giant Steps by the Boo Radleys, World Party... I remembered I owned Mansun's first album and a relisten prompted me to pick up a cheap copy of their follow up Six, leading to having my mind blown by one of the most adventurous "rock" albums to make the UK top 10 in the decade. 

As I said, last year I bought no "new" albums, which strikes me as a sad state of affairs for someone who claims to have an interest in music. Last summer, I watched footage of the UK festivals where the bright young things did their thing, and mainly thought "shite". They say we all turn into our parents eventually - but then even my then 45-year-old father found value in Rage Against the Machine back in the mid 90s. 

To signpost my decline into old age, the two best bits of music news I've had in recent weeks have been that Tears for Fears are planning to release new material this year, and that Slowdive have reformed. I'm really quite excited about both.

Pole Axed

When people find out I had a short-lived Journalism career, they tend to ask "so why did you pack it in?" to which I reply "because I wasn't a big enough arsehole", and we all have a jolly good laugh.

Actually, the truth is that I was sick of the crap money and long hours. By the time I was about to hand my cards in, I was a Sub-Editor and was offered a promotion to Production Manager. Granted, this was for a small publishing company, but even then I knew it would provide contacts and experience to move up in the world: the guy who had vacated that role had done so to essentially take a dream job with a famous English sports team. But I'd decided at that point that I preferred being home for five in the evening every day, rather than seven some days and past midnight on others.

That said, the "arsehole" point stands when you check out a number of the prominent "columnists" that work for the leading UK tabloids. This is a position a journalist tends to rise to when it is proven their willingness to spout any old objectionable bollocks is matched only by how much of a fuckwit they are. Yet the rewards can be significant - take Richard Littlejohn, for example. A man who made a habit of spouting "you couldn't make it up!", only for it to be found out that he usually does. A man who shrugged off the murder of prostitutes by the serial killer Steven Wright because "none of them were going to cure cancer". He still calls women "birds" in the style of his beloved 70s TV shows, derides Health and Safety as meddling and is generally a total bellend.

Currently, he lives in gated community in Florida, paid for the huge sums of money he's paid by the Daily Mail. Thus, many look to follow in his steps. One such chancer is James Delingpole, who comes out with total arse discharge like this. I wouldn't recommend clicking that link if you get wound up too easily, and also because it probably helps him get paid. Needless to say, his views can perhaps be best summed up with this picture:

Men shouldn't play with dolls, it seems. And girls like pink. Let men be men, and let women get on with the important work of having babies and looking pretty. Evidence? Pah! He has anecdotal proof to back up his watertight assertions. The same way I can say my kid brother loved his My Little Pony dolls as a young lad. And he's not even gay, James! All the same, curse my parents for not smashing those dolls and insisting he play with a toy gun instead. It certainly explains why he's fucked up in life, being a respected teacher with a PhD and a stable relationship that's lasted over 10 years. But the bad news is, he's a teacher, so he can pass on his VILE POLITICALLY CORRECT views onto another generation. Oh, the horror.

See, I can do the whole "anecdotal evidence" thing too. Where's my column in a national newspaper?

Another reason Journalism wasn't the bag for me is my lack of patience with idiots - people like Sunny Jim, essentially. And my horrific spelling. Luckily, there are many other folk better than me for this. One such is this blogger here, who does a wonderful job of dismantling the article and the man himself. Even when he tries to be a smartarse on Twitter, she keeps her cool when I would have been banging on his door asking if he'd like to repeat himself to my face. Then to the pavement.

2013, We Hardly Knew Ye

A much delayed piece, this, as I struggle to get my writing mojo together in the face of all manner of issues, none that important, but all combining into a huge ball of apathy. Which is a bit like life, when you think about it, isn't it? No?

English viewers will suggest Charlie Brooker does this kind of thing x100 better with his TV show that I help pay for, but let's face it, he's not as pissed off as he used to be since he hooked with with Konnie Huq and started a family. You used to be one of us, Charlie: bitter, alienated and raging at a world that simply wouldn't listen to any inarticulate rants. I bet you're gunning for a Knighthood. Yeah. You and your chum David Mitchell, with your glamorous wives and personal happiness. How dare you!

I digress.

Footballer of the Year
Once again, my choice of 2012 proved to be something of a jinx, as van Persie suffered a short spell of bad form and more recently, has been a total crock with numerous rumours stating he's spat the dummy about Alex Ferguson retiring.

With that in mind, perhaps I should pick Ashley Young, in the hope that the under-performing clogger is quickly sold back to Aston Villa. But no: honesty demands I say David de Gea, who over the course of 2013 went from derided by the media to earning plaudits galore. His form across 2013 was superb, and in a season where we've been frequently laughable, he's saved the bacon on numerous occasions. One particular save up at Sunderland was straight from the Peter Schmeichel playbook.

Watch now as either his performance level crumbles and/or he's sold to Barcelona.

Album of the Year
Actually, I've not bought a single "new" album for ages. Getting old, perhaps, but nothing is really grabbing me. Instead, I've continued to raid the past, buying classics by Catherine Wheel and Graham Parker.

However, I did go to three storming gigs this year: World Party, Bob Mould and Bruce Springsteen all put on amazing shows. World Party was the most intimate, it just being Karl Wallinger with two other musicians in a small venue, on which I was at the front. Mould wins the prize for loudest - again, being at the very front helped, but my ears were still ringing four days later, amazing the volume created by a three piece band. He played a great mix of Husker Du, Sugar and from his great last album (2012) Silver Age.

The Boss, though, was the most epic. Despite being in a stadium, a fair distance from the front, you managed to feel the guy's energy. Something like three hours on stage, with no pauses and no let up, Springsteen proved to me why he's always up on those "Must See" lists for concerts. Into his 60s, with more energy than any of the pretenders could dream of.

Game of the Year
Obvious choice, but Grand Theft Auto V wins the title through the amount of enjoyment I got out of it. There was plenty of enjoyment to be had from The Last Of Us and Remember Me, but GTA takes the cake. Best part of 50 hours spent to get through the story, and I'm pissed off I lent it to a mate now, as I want to take a spin round the city with Kenny Loggins DJing some classic rock. I never was one for the Steve Miller Band, but hearing Rock'n Me while cruising down the coast was a pretty cool moment.

What do you mean, it's not real?

Absolute Aching Arsehole of the Year
My kid brother is a teacher, and so is his wife of six months. With that in mind, this year's winner is again Michael Gove, whose single-minded road to fucking up generations of the country's youth through his own refusal to budge from his own dogma continues unabated.

So, in the unlikely even googling your own name has lead you here: Michael Gove, I hope your ballbag goes septic.

"I found this photograph... tender face of black and white"

I don't head back to my hometown very often these days, but when I do, and I'm in the bedroom where I spent far too much of my childhood, I have had the same ritual over the last six years.

When my paternal grandfather died, we found a cache of old photos in his flat, maybe 100 or so black and white pics. I go through all of these when I'm back. There a lot of him when he was a kid, and it's strange to see the stern old man, made so by experiences of war and personal loss, as a smiling young boy alongside his kid sisters.

There's also a few documents, one of which is my great-great-grandparents' wedding certificate, from 1907. Perhaps appropriately for this time of year (just about!), they were called Joseph and Mary and it feels strange to hold something that symbolises the beginning of their lives together. As I recall, he lived just about long enough to see Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

There's also their youngest daughter's wedding certificate. Her name was Jane, born in 1911, and her death in 1989 was my first experience with loss. From the photos, there are plenty of her, as she was close to just about everyone in my family. When my dad lost his mother, she kept him and grandpop from totally falling apart by making sure they actually ate - men of the time being totally unable to cook.

Again, it's a surprise to see the sweet old lady I knew in her younger days, wearing shades and smoking cigarillos. There's a pic of her wedding day too, in 1937.

Cool lady

Getting married in a black dress - fantastic. Maybe it was common back then for all I know, but it seems pretty damn hip to me. She still lived in the house in that pic by the time I came around, and I spent many a happy weekend there and playing in the ruins of nearby Penrith castle with her watching and warning me and my brother not to climb too high up the medieval walls.

What always frustrates me is all the pictures is those with people in whom my father and I have no idea about. Are they relations? Friends? What's the story? I can only wish my granddad had shared when he was alive and filled in the gaps.

I am directly related to somebody in this picture. 

Take this one, for example. Where is it? What's the occasion? Loath as I am to reduce to cliché, but it is tremendously evocative of a world that no longer exists, especially when I consider the people inside are somehow connected to me. Though I go back maybe twice a year tops, Cumbria remains a huge part of me and I think always will. Grandpop's pics remain a reminder of why this is so.

Wintertime Blues

There’s several reasons I haven’t written anything on here, none of them actually any good.

Or maybe one is, in that I've just been too tired. This seems to happen every year, that I get to December and simply gas out and then head off home for Christmas week, where a few days of being fed by my mother replenishes my energy levels for another ten months or so. It’s pathetic, really, that I still need this at the age of 32.

There was also a fun few hours in hospital a bit ago, where I had a lump of plastic and metal shoved into my chest with no little force. The loop recorder (as they call it), is supposed to take a snap shot of my heart activity next time I have a black out, on the assumption someone I know is around to activate the thing with this little box thing I carry around with me. All I can say is that the process of putting it in may be the most painful experience of my life – but, hey, the girls love a scar. More importantly, a good friend of mine (who I hope reads this) is going through a hell of a lot worse at the moment, which puts my petty moaning into sharp relief.

What I have managed to do is a little bit of gaming, reading and listening to music.

The Last of Us
‘Citizen Kane of Gaming’, according to one review, which is a gross an overstatement as you’ll hear all year, for an experience that is essentially Resident Evil with a higher budget.

To it’s credit, the acting is excellent, especially Troy Baker as Joel, the male lead, and the storyline, although not exactly as amazing as Charlie Brooker makes out, is engaging to the degree that you keep playing through some somewhat atypical survival horror sections to see what happens next. That you spend the game playing as a man driven to amorality by virtue of just trying to survive in a world gone to shit is an interesting slant – especially as he makes no attempt to apologise or feel bad about his actions.

The Last of Us is about a linear a game I’ve played since Final Fantasy XIII (which also starred Troy Baker, funnily enough), which isn’t my cup o’tea most of the time, but it managed to look pretty enough to keep me interested and to it’s credit, the combat sections can provide some cool moments: blowing up a group of four armed-to-the-teeth soldiers with a well-placed nail bomb was a satisfying a game a moment as I’ve had all year.

Solid 8/10 experience for the whole package, but nowhere close to what the hype what have you believe – the game dynamics would get 6/10 from me on a good day.

Grand Theft Auto V
Call me shallow (because I am), but I bought right into the hype for this at the last moment. I had resolved to wait till the price come down a few months after release… but no, I ended up picking up on release and booking the following day off work to put in some serious time.

GTAV doesn’t give you much more leeway in the actual storyline than The Last of Us (bar one choice at the end which gives three different conclusions) but has a stronger perception of choice. Between missions, you’re free to explore a huge city, play games or just get up to the usual chaos you can in these games.

There’s issues with the storyline, in that Rockstar don’t seem to have got a handle on how to write good female characters. Like The Last of Us, there is a torture scene – but here, you have to take an active part rather than just watch. It made for an uncomfortable moment, but that’s the nature of the character you are playing at that time – he’s a complete psychopath with very little in the way of morals or grip on reality.

It hasn’t quite topped Vice City as my favourite GTA title, but it was a rewarding playthrough in any case, with plenty of laughs and moments of total awesomeness. More so than TLoU, it pushes games as a serious form of entertainment by sheer dint of how much it sold in the days after release – can only other medium compare with those figures?

Autobiography by Morrissey
Despite the likes of Private Eye getting all uptight about the sums being thrown around for the rights to this, Stretford Moz’s tome was among the most anticipated books of the year, surely?

As it was, we learn the guy sure can moan. It seems everyone in the world has at some point fucked him over, his mother excepted, or died young, though Elton John, of all people, leaves a positive impression in their single meeting. The details of his childhood are interesting, but there’s relatively little about the Smiths period – the man himself could justify this with the fact it made up only a small period of his life (five years), but it’s the part I would wager the majority of us are interested in. Apparently, he also remains in the dark as to why Johnny Marr quit.

What we do get is almost the same amount of space dedicated to the court case that pretty much put the mockers on the chance of there ever being a full Smiths reunion. Fair enough, it does appear Moz was done over by a vindictive judge, but he goes on, and on, and on. It sets a tone for a downhill slope, as his comeback ten years ago is described in a series of numbers of chart placings and attendance figures at gigs. The revelations of his romantic forays with men and women seem scant consolation for wading through the rest.

Catherine Wheel
I’ve actually made some inroads into writing a piece of this band, who are my favourite musical discovery of the year despite them not having released a note in over ten years. If I can sort my shit out, I'll try to finish my overview of their work.

City and Country

I recently watched, for what I think was the fourth time, BBC's excellent documentary Synth Britannia, part of which explored the feelings of alienation post-war British town planning could bring -underpasses, tower blocks and endless grey concrete - and how it influenced the music of people like Gary Numan, John Foxx and Cabaret Voltaire.

This brought to mind my recent trip to Preston - I met my bessie mate at their (in)famous bus station, to reach which requires you to walk through this underground walkway that was like stepping back into another world. I have expected we would get assaulted by a gang of droogs. 

Being brought up in a small town in the back end of nowhere, I wasn't aware of these strange pieces of architecture. It wasn't so much grey in Whitehaven - the colour that springs to mind when I think of my hometown in the 1980s would be brown. The largest building in town was the multi-story car park, and the brown bricks used in that were also used for all sorts of things in town.

The car park was a strange building. In my dad's car, we would go from broad daylight to almost total darkness in seconds as you climbed the ramp. To get out, you crossed the bridge and went down this odd narrow circular passageway which always stunk of piss. Thinking now, I've no idea if this part of the structure is still there.

In 2013, the place has changed, for the better. There has been huge amounts of money put into making the harbour look pleasant. 25 years ago, it was a dump, with derelict cranes and two huge silos dominating the area. Tram lines that ran from North to South sides were a sad reminder of the then-recent demise of the last coal mine in town. When the tide was out, you would see shabby little boats sat on the mud and it looked tragic, so to go back today and see a shiny marina that holds a festival every summer... well, it makes going home that little bit nicer.

I live in a city now, but Manchester has also changed a lot in the last 30 years. The horrid Hulme Crescents are long gone and the city centre always seems to have some glass tower being thrown up to replace some old piece of crap from the 1960s - the city that inspired Ian Curtis to write lyrics such as Shadowplay is pretty much gone, bar the odd signifier like the the Mancunian Way.

Despite my love of electro music dealing with the horror of living in the concrete jungle (my current favourite is Underpass by John Foxx), I'm fairly sure having a childhood where 40 odd miles of mountains and lakes just at the end of the road means I couldn't hack the real thing. In the last couple of years, I came to realise that despite nine years living here, I'll never be a city lad: my heart belongs to Cumbria, though I do hope they knock down that bloody car park sometime soon.

Listless Age

No Ripcord has recently published their writers poll of the top 100 albums of the 1990s.I took part and was surprised that a fair number of my picks got in. I won't bore you all with the top 40 I was asked to send away, but the ten highest choices here:

10. The House of Love - Babe Rainbow
9. XTC - Nonsuch
8. Sugar - Copper Blue
7. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
6. Ride - Nowhere
5. Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque
4. World Party - Goodbye Jumbo
3. Talk Talk - Laughing Stock
2. Mansun - Six
1. Slowdive - Soulvaki

A totally unsurprising list, I'm sure the people who know me will agree. The truth is, I found it tough to think of 40 albums. There was no Radiohead, because they ceased to be relevant to me when I hit my 19th birthday, I found.

Oasis appear, naturally, though they didn't crop up in my list, because I blame them for my complete ambivalence at the time to Britpop. A lot of people here will respond here "Ah, but Definitely Maybe..." to which I can say that I listened back to the whole album recently and bar Live Forever and Slide Away remained fairly unmoved throughout.

The issue, now if probably not back then, is the total lack of groove in the band. Frankly, the rhythm section must be amongst the worst to ever grace the top of the charts. A rhythm guitarist who studied well at Johnny Ramone school of technique, a bassist who rarely strayed beyond the safety of root notes and a drummer... well, this says it best.

Yet all the same, I guess Noel Gallagher and Alan McGee deserve a wedge of credit for taking a bunch of pub players from Burnage and getting the music press to piss themselves bigging them up as the future of rock and roll. Image is everything, of course, and it is amusing in hindsight to think that they were bigged up as a bunch of lads from the hard streets of Manchester. Presumably, any journalist who bought that line had never took a walk around the pleasant (no sarcasm) streets of Burnage. Still, to a lot of London types, the second you head North of Watford, you may as well be in Bandit Country.

Manchester, I fear, has yet to recover from the shadow of Oasis. It's become a city too keen to attach labels of the past to new bands. Everyone has to be the "next Smiths" or next New Order, Joy Division, Stone Roses or Oasis. Like Liverpool, the shackles of history seem to grip tighter as we go along.

In conclusion: musically, I found the 1990s a crappy time to grow up. Thank fuck for Eric Cantona, who has more rock and roll in his small finger than Liam Gallagher every could.

Attack of the Killer Celebrity Cult Clan

You know, I can dig me a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone. Get talking to me about how John F and Bobby Kennedy were shot by the Illumianti under orders from the Grand Lizard Overlords and I'll sat in rapt attention. I mean, I'll think you're completely hatstand, but I'll listen all the same.

On a similar tint, I was more than amused to read some handwritten notes dotted on Didsbury bus stops stating that Scientology was some kind of genocidal cult. Now, I don't have much time for Travolta and Cruise's personal club anyways, but it did seem a tad extreme. It slipped my mind until yesterday, while waiting for the 84 to Heaton Chapel (obscure reference, non-Manchester readers!) I noticed a new batch of bills have been stuck to the shelter - this time typed up!

I honestly didn't type this up.

I don't know if you can read the text, but it's brilliant in it's total insanity. Giving psychic powers 37,000 people is pretty impressive in itself - but then going and committing genocide against SEVEN BILLION people??! I mean - Pol Pot? Lightweight! Hitler? Amateur! Stalin? Get the fuck out of here! L. Ron Hubbard created a cult that managed to slaughter the equivalent of the ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE WORLD! Brilliant! I guess none of us noticed while that happened.

Mind you, if you want to sign up alongside Beck, you best be prepared for the long game - as our correspondent reckons once you're in, you're committed to a ten billion year contract. Personally, I'm not sure terms of such length would stand up to much scrutiny in court.

On a (slightly) more serious note, you have to be concerned by the standard of grammar in this note, and the others that have sprung up around the area. If this is the work of someone with English as a first language, then you have to wonder about standards in education.

I don't even have a printer

That said, I'm glad I'm not a religious man, if apparently Heaven is supposed to be "tardy". What is that supposed to mean? You die and get held in a queue for a millennium of two while they process your request?

There's a certain line in the sand where a conspiracy theory goes from having a certain amount of plausibility (such as, Hitler escaped from Germany and lived it up in South America... well, no body, no proof of death, right?) to being the work of someone who perhaps shouldn't be allowed to walk the streets without correct supervision. I'm assuming you can guess which category this whole gig falls into. I mean, ten out of ten for effort in actually putting this things up around the place, but it never hurts to have an extra sets of eyes to act as a proof reader.

All that said, a tiny part of me (probably the part that thinks I'll still get a game for Manchester United if I finally get into shape) thinks I should take these words to heart, and to keep an eye out for Jason Lee (the actor, not the footballer) to go on some rampage down the high street against all us on non-Hubbard believer  heathen scum. Stranger things have happened. Apparently.

Man's Crisis of Identity in the First Half of the 21st Century

And with that, another year passes, 2012 becoming another set of digits confined to the past as we continue our march through time, that ends only when we feel the icy finger of the Reaper on our shoulders as he prepares to guide us into the cold comfort of the endless void.

Yes, Manchester City winning the league really hurt.

On the plus side, we had the following...

Footballer of the Year
Bit worried on who I pick, as last year I chose Phil Jones - who subsequently spent 2012 either injured or struggling for form.

But I can't help but say Robin van Persie. If you'd asked me before last summer about him playing for United, I might have scoffed. Yet here he is, and scoring goals for fun and pulling the team out of the shite on a regular basis. He's got everything you want in a striker, and if we're to have any chance of winning anything this season, it rests in large part on him staying fit.

Album of the Year
I haven't bought any "new" album from 2012. Hearing the new big thing, the XX, on TV left me feeling baffled, unmoved and very old. So, this has to go to World Party's Arkology five CD set. Karl Wallinger has long been a master of the pop hook and after some years out due to illness, it's great to see him putting something out there. A mix of live numbers, unused songs and newbies, there was more than enough to keep you going for ages, and the presentation was ace too!

Game of the Year
Tough call, this. Both Max Payne 3 and Mass Effect 3 featured great storylines, superb graphics and acting to match, making for top experiences. The original Mass Effect finally coming out on Playstation 3 was also very welcome. Re-establishing my love affair with the Football Manager franchise has brought about many late nights looking at a glorified spreadsheet.

Though a fair few people have excused ME3 for its ending, I'm not one of them. This wasn't helped by when I finally got the "Extended Cut" ending download, it bloody crashed right before the end scenes. Bah!

With that in mind, my choice instead goes to X-COM: Enemy Unknown. Basic in idea, but superbly executed and creating enough tension to keep me nervous for hours on end. Not a game for everyone, but those of us around for the original UFO game in the 1990s will have lots to love.

Raging Knobrash of the Year
So many to choose from! Pretty much the entire government has shown themselves to be a bunch of uncaring, quasi-sociopathic tossers in recent history. It's a tragic state of affairs when that fuckwit Boris Johnson is seen gurning on the cover of GQ magazine.

Indeed, it was a narrow call between him and the winner. However, Michael Gove gets my nod on the basis that he's screwing over a generation of children for his own political gains. Appealing as a return to "traditional" Conservative values to the likes of the Daily Mail, about the only vaguely amusing thing about this complete penile sore is that there's a chance him and Johnson will squabble with each other about who gets to put the knife into David Cameron's back first in their own personal lust for glory. Here's hoping for a total meltdown of all related parties in 2013!

The Space Race Is Over

Not long after a wee robot has a good nose around Mars, the world sees the exit of the first human to walk on a piece of rock that wasn't this planet. Neil Armstrong may have came across a private, humble individual, but no-one can doubt his place in history.

It seems strange that his moment of immortality happened 12 years before I was even born, as nobody else has been up there in many years. My dad told me about watching it with his great-grandfather, who was in his late 80s and would die not long after. Growing up just before the start of the 20th century, I doubt he saw a motor car till he was in his 30s, which gives you an idea of the huge steps made by humanity across such a short space of time.

As a child, anything to do with space and the galaxy out there fascinated me. Living away from the big cities, there was little light pollution and the stars would be visible on any clear night. I'd watch episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and feel jealous I had to get born in 1981 and not 2381.

Neil Armstrong, from what I gather, was always keen to emphasise all the hard working members of the team that put him up and the rest of the select few up there on the moon. Mission Control, engineers who designed the spaceships and the like - but, he was the one who had to have the testicular fortitude to actually do what nobody else had done before. Like Columbus sailing over the horizon when a lot of people thought there was an edge to fall off or a man-eating dragon, Armstrong personified that curiosity humanity has to do things for no better reason than to see what happens.

After all, by walking on the moon, it wasn't like the world was overcome by peace and love at the sight of this incredible feat. Indeed, you could suggest the whole thing was a PR coup for the US Government to stick two fingers up to their friends in Moscow and say "stick that, Ivan". But if nothing else, it satisfied the answer people have been asking since we first developed some kind of intelligence: "I wonder what's up there?"

Staying Out For The Summer

With the school holidays set to start soon, I can look forward to six weeks of relative quiet on the bus in the morning. It's the small things that make the work slog a bit more bearable and the relative peace is pleasant before I arrive at the office where I have to bite my tongue when Fifty Shades of poxy Grey is getting raved about.

Perhaps I should read it too, only the extracts I have seen suggest it was written by a 16 year old virgin whose knowledge of sex comes entirely from the letters sections of gentlemen's "rhythm" magazines. Although that's perhaps an insult to many young lads partaking in regular onanism, as I'm sure even that version of me could have made a better go of it. And seriously, you should see the stuff I wrote at 16 - I'd have beaten the Volgons in a bad poetry match anyday, and probably in a bad skin contest too.

Anyways. The prospect of an empty bus led me to think about the worst part of childhood. And it's not having to go to school, which obviously is pretty crap when you're going through it. It's also not having to grow up to see your skin go completely to cock and your voice having to be like Scooby Doo's for a little while.

No. The worst part isn't living through it, it's the hindsight. It's being on that bus at 7.30am on a workday, being thankful it's not full of screaming kids pissing about and then realising that they're probably all still in bed and will have the whole day to themselves. Which is followed by the thought "that was me once".

It's horrific. Whereas we used to have six weeks of summer to enjoy, now we didn't get that in a year. It's a depressing thought to think we won't get that kind of freedom unless we either come into some serious money or make it to retirement. It's easy in such moments to get misty-eyed of such times, out playing football for hours on end on the municipal pitch despite the council have removed the goalposts (why did they do that?) - I think that up to a certain age, maybe around nine or ten, you don't give much if any thought to the future. Perhaps two decades on, I'm idealising that time.

And it's that which brings the sucker punch, the knowledge that there's no going back. Real life, whether it comes aged 16, 18, 21, whatever, hits hard. I remember the first summer after I'd started doing "proper" jobs, looking out of the window into sunny climes, feeling wistful even if it did look out over Oldham.

What can you do? Well, you can be like me and think of those kids running around with their freedom with the thought "yeah, make the most of it, because one day soon you might end up like those poor sods I saw today, dressed like a pizza box standing on the pavement advertising special deals for a certain well-known takeaway franchise". Reality bites, kids.

The World Is Your Oyster, The Future Your Clam

You'd think as the sickening passing of time goes on, I'd become more and more resentful towards young people. What with their youth, energy and ability to go on 12 hour benders without needing a whole week afterwards to recover.

But not so much these days. In fact, I'm pretty glad I'm not 21 in 2012, just leaving university and looking for a job. It was hard enough when I did that back in 2002. Now, it must be a nightmare trying to find a half-decent job that pays more than minimum wage. It's not getting any easier, either - not when the government has decided to stack the deck more against you.

Even children are taking it in the neck. Your exams are too easy! With this in mind, Education bod Michael Gove made plans to revolutionise the system by, err, reverting it all back to how it was over 20 years ago. Whether he gets his way is another matter, but that such a stupid idea should gain the approval of certain media figures shows the trouble we might be getting into.

Nye Bevan once noted that the Tories always need a bogey and it seems as if young people could be the new one. Obviously, as the line seems to be, they're all scrounging bastards - how dare working class children aspire to go into further education! Best to get rid of the cap on tuition fees. How dare they need help paying the rent! I'll scrap housing benefits for them so they'll have to return to their parents, says our Prime Minister, if we vote for him in the next election.

Of course, the last one there is a complete nothing of a policy designed purely to grab media interest. After all, most people on housing benefits aren't unemployed (though you'd think differently from the newspapers), nor is everyone aged 18-25 capable of moving back home. They might live on the other side of the country, might not be on good terms with them or, sadly, not have living parents. What happens in the latter case? "Well, Billy, you have a elderly Aunt living in Bangor. She'll put you up."

Perhaps the Tories have done some kind of cost/benefit analysis on this. Young people are less likely to vote, ergo it's fine to disregard them. Edwina Currie obviously thinks so: challenged on Twitter that "under 25s and futureless youth" will make her old party pay, she responded that "no they won't. They have the vote, don't use it and have no economic power. Not till they start working, pay taxes, learn sense".

Of course, this is a woman who chose to have sex with John Major, so her judgement may well be off the scale here as well. All the same, it gives an insight into the mindset of the kind of people running the country: "economic power" is key. Put everything into the system, only to find out it's one that is so fucked that you get nothing out of it in return. "Call me Dave" may well be turning "Call me 'Sir', you peasant scum".

Quick Talking

As any linguist, cunning or otherwise (fnarr), will tell you, language is never inert. It develops to suit the times and the needs of those who speak it. Tutting Daily Mail readers who today bemoan youngsters speaking like they're extras from The Wire are the same as their grandparents grumbling about kids in the 1950s using words like "cool" and "hip".

All this is why we thankfully don't speak like we're in some boring Shakespeare play, but it occasionally bites you on the arse and makes you look a bit of a right old duffer before your time.

The scene: work, lunchtime. I'm off out to the shop to get something to drink.

"Anyone need anything from the shop?" I ask. "I'm just off to get a can of pop."

Everyone laughs at my use of the word "pop". What? Has that word really fallen out of use so quickly? OK, as said in my previous post, I admit I come from a town where you could film an episode of Doctor Who set in 1970 and not need to spend much money on clothes for extras, but surely calling some soft drink "pop" hasn't fallen out of common use so quickly?

It would seem so, and I was left thinking I should have completed the picture by putting on me flat cap and saying I needed the drink to help wash down the bread and dripping I would be having.

Which reminds me of something else that may make it look like I grew up in the 1950s, rather than 80s: on a summer's day, a guy in a van would come round flogging bottles of cola, lemonade and dandelion and burdock made by a company called Dent, in nearby Cleator Moor. I was never that comfortable drinking the lemonade, as it was the same colour as piss, but the cola was fine. Just as well, as in true clichéd Northern mother style, the only time she'd stump up for "proper" cola was when it was on offer in Presto.

All this being said, it doesn't stop me rolling my eyes and thinking "bloody kids" when I'm on the bus next to some baggy jeaned gobshite. But at least it's not because of what they're speaking - no, it's because of the complete tinny crap passing for music coming out of their phones.

Four Days to Play

A long weekend for all us British types, then. Except those working on shifts, of course. But for the rest of us, four days off due to Her Maj's jubilee.

As someone with no respect for the royal family, it'd be easy for me to dismiss it all with a "I don't give a toss". But... I do give a toss as the idea of there being a group of people perceived to be my betters by chance of birth. It makes me very, very fucking angry.

Angry in that why in the year 2012 there is still a monarchy in this country baffles me. The arguments for them never cut any ice. Tourists would come regardless of whether anyone was living in the big houses - maybe more so if they were open throughout the year so our friends from Japan, America and the rest of the world can gawp at the place whenever they like.

As for the whole "who would you rather have? President Blair???" (and why is he always used as the example?) approach - well, yeah, not good, but at least we could vote any gobshite President out. Although I'm yet to have it explained to me why we'd need a Prez. What's wrong with having an elected Parliament and perhaps an elected House of Lords? The point is, having a bunch of idiots you can get rid of without waiting for Big Grim to get on the job.

Instead, we have some old lady who goes around the world waving and whose role in the running of the country seems to be signing any old shite laws put in front of her. As a person, she seems harmless enough, I grant you. When I think of her, I think of my paternal grandpop, as they were born in the same year. Her witless offspring, on the other hand... I guess we can blame that on the father.

Not to say that I suggest we follow the French or Russian solution to dissolving a monarchy. No. Instead, I think the Sue Townsend solution is the best: move them all into some council houses on an estate in Liverpool and let them make their own way in the world. Then we can finally get rid of the world's worst national anthem, the title alone  - I'd rather we had a tune called Spaghetti Monster, Look Over Old Mrs Johnson From Across the Road.

Extra day off work is good, though.

Occupy My Mind

Using a quote from a Buzzcocks song for my last post reminded me just how I view my life at times as a fight against the lurking menace of boredom. The title of this blog was supposed to be a jokey reference to how I view the world, but also to write about the things that help in the war.

Of course, it's an inescapable presence in my life at times: I have to go to work most days and like most of us, that's an experience that goes beyond tedium. Therefore, in my free time I find it important to avoid going anywhere close to boredom so as to make the most of it. It's an interesting arena though - after all, standing at a bus stop doing nothing is very dull, but lying on the sofa doing nothing can be the exact opposite. If I was smarter, I'd possibly be able to work out some correlation of waiting into this, because having to wait is never fun. Staring into space in your own time, on the other hand, can bring you all manner of brain entertainment.

Thinking on it, waiting may well be the most dreary thing I could do. It's time wasted before something you want to occur happens. It's like when you're at the bus stop in the morning, and it's late, and you can't help but think "I could have had another five minutes in bed, damn it". It's the one huge downside of air travel - you have to piss about waiting for two hours before you finally get on the sodding plane. In an airport, time ceases to have meaning except for the feeling you can sense your body wasting away at three times the normal speed. I think Will Self was correct in his assertion that it's all to numb the senses before you engage on what will be the most weird experience of your life: I mean, do you know how a huge tube of metal somehow wretches itself free of gravity and hurtles itself through the air? I can tilt my head at this moment and see some of them descending at hundreds of miles an hour to Manchester Airport, and the thought of it still makes my head hurt.

Anyways. Boredom. On one of my random Google related searches, I came across a scan of the Glasgow Herald from around 1974. A quick look of the TV listings page made me glad I was born when I was: to say there were sod all on is putting it lightly. Bar an episode of Mission: Impossible it made for grim reading and I came to the conclusion that a big reason people have always had children is just to break the sheer tedium of existing.

And yet, it wasn't always so that I looked to the computer or TV for distraction. When I was a wee laddie, I could spend an hour sat by the roadside watching cars pass by, creating lists of which models were the most popular - Ford Escort, probably. I never did see the Porsche 911 that I was always looking for, but it turns out my dad did a similar thing growing up. I also followed in his tradition of getting cheap kicks by rolling on my side down the dry moat at Penrith Castle. There'd be loads of us doing it, and pop told me that his dad had the same thing. It makes me wonder if I just need more stimulation nowadays or if those truly were more innocent times.

The Name Game

As you may or may not know, Bert Weedon shuffled off his mortal coil the other week at the grand old age of 91. Bert was a top man who can hold claim to being the first British guitar hero, being as he was a major influence Hank Marvin and then anybody who was anybody who emerged in the British music boom of the 60s, despite wearing specs and being forced to stand behind that talentless git Cliff Richard half the time.

Rockin' Bert also staked his claim at legend status by writing the "Play In a Day" guitar tutoring books, which are still snapped up by aspiring fret-Gods to this day. He even managed a UK #1 album in 1976, so he gets the all-round "Top Man" status for me and I hope he felt he'd lived the good, productive life that he had.

But this post is not about him per se. It's about his name and others like it. Bert. You don't hear it much anymore, do you? Unless you watch Sesame Street, of course. My great-grandfather was also a Bert. But he didn't play guitar - I gather (given he died in 1977) that he was a big guy who drank lakes of whiskey despite having a congenital heart defect. In any case - you don't hear of kids called that name anymore do you? Same as two of my grandparents - Frank and Esther. I've not heard annoyed mothers screaming those names on the bus.

Bert - grumpy git and Eric Cantona lookalike.

Names, like anything, can fall in and out of fashion. Some are like Levi 501s - never at the cutting edge, but always there. Peter, Paul, Elizabeth or Sarah. You always have them names in any school over the last 100 years.

It's like my own family. My other grandpop was called Joseph, his name taken from an uncle. He named his three sons Joseph, James and Thomas. The last two were named after his Uncles, and so it goes as far back as we know, like they had a pool of five or six names for each gender they had to use every generation. It stopped when it came to us, thankfully. Equally so, a close friend of mine has the name surname and middle name as his dad and grandfather. In the name of sanity, when his good lady wife give birth to a son, he changed the pattern.

It's weird how new names suddenly become in vogue, though. When I was a lad, I never knew a single Chantelle. Nowadays, there seem to be loads of them. How? The same way I hear mothers down Didsbury way calling their little daughters "India". How did anyone think that was a good name? Perhaps they called their other kid Pakistan and they're always rowing.

Mind you, it reminds me of one of my pet hates: people who name their children on the basis that they "look like an "". All babies look the sodding same, skin tone excepted. Horrible little screaming things. 

In this matter, as with so many others, we can turn to the man who should be Poet Laureate, Mr Nigel Blackwell.

"A woman who described herself as “A little bit Bridget, a little bit Ally, a little bit Sex And The City” and chose to call her baby boy Fred as a childishly rebellious attempt at a clever reaction to those who might have expected her to call him Julian or Rupert. Bit of advice: call him Rupert, it fits, and besides it’s a good name. Don’t be calling him Fred or Archie, with all its cheeky but lovable working class scamp connotations, unless you really do have plans for him to spend his life in William Hill’s waiting for them to weigh in at Newton Abbot."

Time Bomb

It's strange how a bad start to the day just puts a crimp on the whole thing. I woke up this morn feeling tired, it was raining as I waited for the bus, which then ran late so I missed a connection to another. By all of ten seconds or so.

In my mentally not-quite-awake state, I found a target to blame. Somebody who got on the bus and got off again two stops later - a mere five minute walk, I reckoned. The lazy get! If I were now ruler of the world, I'd order the DCAF to get a guided missile landing on their house right about now. Searching through the rubble for their stuff should prove to be good exercise. Nobody causes me to be late and escapes my wrath. At least not in my head.  

I'd also like to sick a small nuclear device on everyone involved in those wretched BT adverts infecting the television and billboards. The annoying main guy in it drives me to indescribable levels of rage, though that should be reserved for the absolute bellends who created him and write his obnoxious dialogue. Scum!

It's not all bad, though. At the weekend, I found a vinyl copy (from 1981) of Dare by the Human League for only £2.50 in a charity shop. It's always great when you find treats like that. As an aside, it got me thinking about Philip Adrian Wright, the guy who did the slides for the band. Apparently, he works with his partner, a designer, and I wondered whether he did it for something to do, or because he has to work still. You'd like to think it wasn't the latter - I mean, he co-wrote Don't You Want Me?, which sold shedloads! Not bad for a guy who couldn't play any musical instrument three years before. Kudos, dude.

After all, most of us only work for the wedge. It's a rare bod indeed who can work purely for the love of it. Artists who have an established enough name not to need to bow to commercial pressures, perhaps. Professional athletes, too and being one of them is one of the few things in which your place in the global pecking order can be absolutely decided. This means you have real targets to focus on when you have to get out of bed at 4am to hit the gym.

Usian Bolt, for example, is the fastest man in the planet over 100 metres. It's an indisputable fact - and the only way you change it is by beating his time without the use of drugs and/or rocket boots. It's not like if you're in a band and another sells more records than you - when that happens, you can just blame society's failings for not seeing your genius. If Bolt beats you on the track, it's because he's faster than you.

The rest of us don't have this luxury of knowing our place in the pecking order of things. We sit at our desks and mess about on computers and, in my case, never really see the results of what I'm doing. In fact, some days I reckon all the reports I put together are shot into space to ensure they don't have to be read by anybody. So if an alien race invades because they heard about poor performance in my office, I'll take the blame as we're led away to toil in their salt mines.

Mayors of Simpleton

Change: I'm generally all for it. The reason we got our sorry arses out of the trees and making things like digital watches is because homo sapiens strived to create change for the better and it's not just yer actual inventions that come under this. Concepts such as equality and tolerance come about because some brave soul decided that something wasn't quite right with the world around them.

Sometimes, though, there's change for the sake of it, which is never a good thing. Blogger has recently introduced a new system for writing and publishing drivel like this, and to be frank it's a load of old crap. What was wrong with the old one? Nowt. It's better to just tweak things than bring in huge changes some of the time.

Which brings me, kind of, to this whole concept of elected Mayors that's doing the rounds at the moment. I'm not entirely sure if it's not just a lot of fuss over something that will make little or no difference to our lives. Though I think I might be being put off the idea by the palaver going on down in That London. The fact that a lot of people can be convinced to vote for someone like Boris Johnson is enough to put you off democracy, let alone anything else. Comedian Jeremy Hardy is one of the few people in the media to get it bang on when he said "He may seem like a lovable buffoon, but you know he wouldn't hesitate to line you all up against a wall and have you shot".

Which is bang on, really. If he'd been born 100 years earlier, he'd have been a real life General Melchett from Blackadder Goes Forth, sending thousands upon thousands of men to be slaughtered while enjoying a nice cup of tea. 

Everyone else, it seems, are happy to give Johnson plenty of publicity to portray his public image as a harmless idiot. He seems to bring out the worst aspects in the English psych of tipping our hat and deferring to the posh guy, because, y'know, they're the ones born to rule and all that.

Not that I'd unequivocally give my support to Ken Livingstone either - he's kind of a George Galloway lite, a huge ego overwhelming any good intentions he may have. Which is a shame, as he was one of the few politicians in the 1980s who supported gay rights and knew that if you wanted peace in Northern Ireland, you were going to have to talk to the IRA eventually.

Mind, he could probably do with all the support he can garner. When you have members of your own party putting the boot in it's not looking too good. And that's before you get into Lord Alan Sugar telling everyone that Kenny isn't the man for him. Nothing wrong with that, of course, free speech and all. But then  

Of course, that Alan Sugar should have been given a Peerage by a Labour government says a lot. That a man whose principal goal in life, it seems, is the accumulation of capital, whose catchphrase is "you're fired" should be rewarded in such a way tells you everything about how the Labour party has moved from their apparent core values.

Mind, I wonder how many people could actually say how Sugar has made his wedge? All I know is that he made some crap computers back in the 1980s and was Chairman of Spurs through a period best known for his falling out with manager Terry Venables. Does he actually do much bar shout at idiots on TV these days?  At least with Branson the Beard you know you're looking at a top class businessman - and if nothing else his record label put out both Metal Box and Dare. Shame they screwed over XTC, mind. With Sugar, I just think of the twat who killed off the ZX Spectrum. Wanker!

Don't Look Back. Or do...

For the last couple of years, for want of anything else to get me at Christmas, my mother has given me the most recent editions of Bygone Whitehaven, a series by a guy called Michael Moon (the first six alongside his then wife Sylvia). Since I was a young kid, I always had an interest in local history, inherited from my dad, so I find a lot of interest in these. Top bookshop he runs too, if you happen round that way.

Being up to double figures in this series, the author has begun using pictures of the town that are vaguely recognisible to me, born in 1981. My memories of my town in the 1980s seem, in the main, fairly grim. The main street was covered with these horrid brown brick things that would hold dying plantlife. The bricks were the same as those used to make the brutalism-inspired multi-storey car park that loomed over one end of the town. At the other end, in the harbour, were two huge silos used to store chemicals used for the detergent factory up on one side of the valley the town centre sat in. All of these are gone now, bar the car park.

As we were constantly told by teachers in our history lessons, Whitehaven used to be the third biggest port in the country, behind London and Bristol. We were also told that New York nicked their idea of having streets on a grid pattern from us as well, which strikes me as a bit implausible, but you take whatever you can when it comes to boasts when you were a kid in the 80s/90s where you were told at school that unless you had enough brains to get out of town, your options were either the army or the dole.

Coal was a major reason of why the town was such a player on the national stage, once upon a time. When you read about the 1980s in England, and of all the defining moments of that time, the Miners’ Strike would be a big one. I was too young to remember the events, but what I do recall is both my mother refusing to say the name Thatcher (it was always “that woman”) due to her staunch support of an industry that was a huge part of her family – two of her brothers were working in Whitehaven's last pit during the strike and would end up laid off when the axe fell in 1986. I can also remember the times I visited one of those uncles, whose house overlooked the pit - handy for the commute. Looking from the living room window down to the site, even then I could feel some sadness of its slow descent into dereliction. Years later, it was saved from demolition and began a worthwhile new use as a museum of the town’s mining history.

I get a similar kind of sadness whenever I take the train between Whitehaven and Carlisle and pass through where Workington's old steel works stood. The story I was always told was that railway lines made from Workington steel were the best in the world, exported as far as India. Naturally, some genius had the idea to shut the whole site down.

My town has changed almost beyond recognition in my lifetime. A lot of it is for the better: the harbour especially was a complete dump back then and it looks modern and relatively looked after these days. But when I do think back to the limited amount of past that I can, there’s sorrow and anger of a world that was allowed to pass by successive governments: West Cumbria used to have a sense of purpose and even if the work was dirty, hard and very dangerous, it created a sense of pride. Which leads to the central problem: it wasn't the removal of the industry itself (arguments about coal mining being uneconomical and creating an un-environmentally friendly fuel are valid) but the lack of anything to replace it that may leave places like Whitehaven and Workington as ghost towns in the decades to come.

Rant over, but Don Draper was right, as he so often is (the handsome swine), when he used a definition of nostalgia as ‘pain from an old wound’.

Sensory Depravation

I've been a right slack sod on the blogging front the past few days. This has, in main, been due to the somewhat tropical conditions in merry England the past few days.

Noel Coward famously noted that only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. Well, Noel, only if I have to, as it has a tendency to drain me of any energy whatsoever. Such weather is all very nice if you can lay in your shorts on the sofa, listening to the Beatles with a large supply of cold beers at hand, but not so when you have to turn up to work in a badly-air conditioned office. Especially when going around in your bare feet, shirt buttons all undone is not approved of by management. Nazis!

All the same, it's given me the opportunity to sort out the contents of my MP3 player to get some more appropriate soundtracks on. A song like Bye Bye Pride by legendary Aussie outfit the Go-Betweens (of whom I need to write more about) is perfect, as is the likes of the Beach Boys or the late 80s XTC.

All of which reminds me that despite my disdain of faceless global companies that have no concern for the fate of humanity beyond their role as consumers of their goods, I do show a weird level of brand loyalty at times.

Principally, this is towards Sony. Since picking up one of the original Playstations back in 1999, I've stood by them since, resolutely refusing to even consider picking up a Xbox, even if they’re going for peanuts. I've also given my Japanese friends plenty of wedge for their music products – carrying a Walkman rather than an Ipod. I even sided with Sony Records in that case against George Michael*.

It’s the Walkman that’s got me writing this. It’s a fine piece of kit: I can get about 1000 songs on it, pick up FM radio and it’s even got a little microphone on it, which makes it very handy for quickly recording any musical ideas my band gets before their lost to the ether. Pretty sweet for £80 new.

It also has this weird little function called SenseMe™ Channels. What it does is read all the songs you've got saved on them and put them in the categories Extreme, Energetic, Relax, Upbeat, Mellow, Lounge, Emotional and Dance. How does it work, you ask? To quote two great men, I don’t know, but it does!

Or does it? Well, it can do: Depeche Mode and the Pet Shop Boys both seem to fall under Dance, which makes some kind of sense. But then it also puts Snowman by XTC in there: a sad little acoustic number. Naturally, it’s all relative – you can dance to anything, I suppose, if you've got the right sense of timing.

That said, I struggle to see how Part Company by the Go-Betweens is Upbeat and Tonight The Streets Are Ours by Richard Hawley is Extreme. I also loved how Depressed Beyond Tablets by Half Man Half Biscuit came under Energetic, given it’s a song about being in such a bad mental state, you can pretty much do sod all (“the results of my life are a stream of nil-nils”).

Technology fail all round then, and proof needed that we still need obnoxious DJs yet. After all, you don't want to be tuned into Radio 4 at three in the morning, hoping for some relaxing tones only to have Bingo Master's Breakout by the Fall come screaming out.

*Only joshing, Georgie. And Father Figure is an ace song.