tartan bunker

It’s been a wee while since I took pen to blog. Apologies. Ma friend I tell you about occasionally has had what the Chinese describe as an interesting year. I prefer to say it was difficult. Two operations, a heavy workload, and the death of three family members and of a young friend. Sometimes such enormities hit you long after the event and take time to be absorbed. And ma friend’s troubles unsettled me, too.

Meanwhile, the world moves on. Or rather stays the same. Political shenanigans; global warming - man-made or natural; religious and cultural differences; the abuse of women, youngsters, the elderly, and animals going on in this country and around the world. All reflected in the new book, Green Fire, the second in the Chronicles of Dekaydence. The darkness of the first book, Black Light, gets darker. There is violence and murder but always, even in the bleakest hour, there can be humour. And technology. Like in life. Like in death.

Albert Schweitzer said there are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. I’d agree (adding humour and chocolate) and am happy to report that MacMog is in fine fettle and has taken to singing, albeit around one favoured note. I’ve heard worse on the radio.

So, belatedly, Happy New Year to you. And from Sunday, Happy Chinese New Year. The Year of the Tiger. My year and of course, MacMog’s.

So, more than one in six homes in the UK now have at least one person of working age unemployed. The highest rate since 1999. And there are now 3.3m households where no one aged 16 or over is in employment. So, here’s an idea, not a total answer but . . . let’s tax heavily those companies in the UK which outsource jobs abroad. What is the point of giving away the jobs of millions of people in the UK and forcing them on to the dole, which results in those in work having to pay more in taxes?

I’ve been there. And the ignominy of standing in a dole queue, being treated like a criminal or worse, and taken to be a liar. Harried and hassled, attending a government training scheme which was anything but, is an experience I shall not forget in a hurry. Or forgive. When people are willing to work, have skills to offer, are feeding their families as well as an economy . . . it seems to me the height of wickedness, and insanity, to deprive them of the right to work.

If I hadna been sitting down I woulda fallen over. It was the shock, you see. To read that we might once more be growing our own food in this UK country of ours. You young ’uns might not know this but this country gave up growing much of its food some time back because those eejuts at the top thought we could import the stuff much cheaper than we could grow it. And that we were far too busy and important covering the land with concrete, rape, and shopping malls to worry about running out of food.

I wonder if those same eejuts could rearrange the words roost, coming, pigeons, home. . .

Och, this leads me to tell you of ma new campaign -to make it illegal for anyone to become an MP unless they’ve done 10 years in the real world. Nurse, teacher, student, single mother, whatever  . . .  Then they can volunteer and are trained and funded to serve two years in the job to which they can never return. Nor can they get a pension. Or a duck moat.

Yes, I’m back. Bigger and uglier and with higher prescription red sunglasses than ever before.

It’s Mothering Sunday and my friend went to call on her mother. And her dad. No longer round the corner but several hours’ journey away, her mother has recently joined her dad in a plot of earth in a quiet country cemetery. No flowers. Mother was allergic for years. Most likely to the chemicals sprayed on many blooms grown abroad (which, if you’ve forgotten, can be deeply injurious to the foreign growers and their unborn children).

Mother was always ahead of the game, with a good nose, eyes and head: Foreseeing years ago a credit crunch, a recession worse than the 1930s, tanks on the streets (ok, but you wait) and no one to man them (ok, ok, hang around some more). If she could foresee our current mess - on a diet of the Daily Express, LBC (especially Nick Ferrari), oh, and that crazy little thing called life - why couldn’t those in charge? At the least, these myopics should change opticians. As should myopic voters.   

A friend spent three days trying to get a sign of life from Thames Water, using two phones and email. Like to imagine TW were out mending leaks. Who’s kidding who? Perhaps someone got the spelling wrong and they’d decamped to allotments in Wales. On the third day, a call came from someone promoting himself as Tim’s Water. Oh hum, my friend hadn’t heard of this takeover but lives in hope Tim can do a better job.

Don’t get me started on BT - on their call centres, bucketloads of meaningless or misleading paperwork, their lengthy answering process which require you give a large proportion of your time, patience and life blood. There are remarkably nice people when you get through but alas, they’re restricted in their ability to effect change in what’s been established by those out-of-touch managers on the 98^th floor who should be forced to spend reality time ringing in to BT, TW and just about most any other ‘service’ to experience how the rest of us suffer at their hands.

I know a great hairdresser. Trouble is, he keeps getting bookings for big, long jobs on a Saturday - cut, full head of colour, blow dry, tea etc – and then the blighter doesn’t turn up, which, over time, loses ma friend, the hairdresser, a lot of money. Who are these dirty-headed scruffy amnesiacs, I ask? Other salons, is the reply. I’m aghast. That people can stoop so low. 

Let’s forget Sir Fred for a moment, ok a lifetime. Let’s focus instead on Myners man and Harman woman. Why wasn’t Myners on the case, or at least getting a minion to check out young Fred’s pension contract? And is Harman intent on running Gulag UK? To paraphrase her words: (Fred’s) ‘contract might be enforceable in a court of law . . . but not in the court of public opinion . . .’ You remember public opinion, don’t you? That irksome beast governments prefer to ignore? The beast opposed to the invasion of Iraq. The beast which continues to believe that Dr Kelly was murdered. Which wants post offices to remain open. Which is appalled at the idea of a retrospective law. Yet now the beast is being courted. Or its body used in vain. Things must be desperate. 

Why should someone cut a drawing from the spine of an old book in my study, mostly occupied over long periods, put the drawing back inside the book, and put the book back on another shelf?  Any Inspector MacPoirots out there with theories? 

Here’s a non-government health warning: don’t use Spelt flour to make pancakes. MacGluten, the Dekaydence chef, tells me that everyone knows that Spelt flour is the flour for the bbc (bread, biscuits and cakes). I should’ve guessed. Despite the addition of honey and brandy, the mixture had no will to rise; the spelt pancake clung to the base of the hot crepe pan – moribund, with no vitality, no purpose. Not like last year’s ’strong’ flour pancakes which soared like a prima ballerina. Oh hum, the Spelties seem happy lying around in my tum. Nevertheless, should want a recipe for Spelt bread . . .