Stalin ate my Homework

I think that this is my first book review on 'Shark Fishing in Wales' but I know that this is my 200th Blog Post since the kitschy little boutique blog was started by 'moi' back in January 2012.

200 Blog Posts in coming up for two years. That ain't a bad average! That's 8.3333 Blog Posts a month recurring. Not bad at all especially as I'm still trying to work out what the Blog is about. It's Autobiography I suppose and I am going to attempt to review Alexei Sayle's Autobiography here.

I bought the book from the News from Nowhere bookshop in Bold Street in Liverpool whilst I was there at the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse as part of my M.A in Playwriting at the University of Salford.. The friendly lady behind the counter told me that she remembered Alexei's Mother Molly very well and the book is a homage to her, He has dedicated it to his Mother. 

I wouldn't go so far as to say that I love Alexei Sayle but I do admire him greatly because he was the 'first alternative' comedian if you like. He woke a nation up on OTT and the Young Ones as Mr Balowski. His absurdity appealed very much to my adolescent self  as everything was so grey and uniform way back then. I remember walking through the streets of Liverpool having been to see a Ken Dodd concert and lying on the floor were flyers for Alexei Sayle's Stand Up. So the new kid on the block was replacing the old kid on the block.

On the Front Cover of the Book the Guardian says " It's not like other comedians' memoirs! It's funny". Now I would call it a slow burn because I didn't have my first belly laugh until Chapter 32 'Sticks and Stones and Sticks'. It was in this chapter that Alexei tickled my funny bone as he had done many years before and that belly laugh turned into tears running down my cheeks and its on page 169 that he finally got me to laugh the way I laughed when I saw him first. Why I didn't laugh earlier in the book I don't know but perhaps I felt misled by the Guardian's line. Too much anticipation. It must be a huge burden to be a 'funny man' because people expect you to be funny all the time and I expected Alexei to be funny out of the blocks.   No Matter. It was well worth the £9.99. I could have got it from a library but I felt it was right and proper to purchase the book in his home town from a Shop who knows him and his family. I have added 'The News from Nowhere' Logo as a link to the shop's website on my blog because I really admire what they are doing there and recommend anybody on a pilgrimage to the 'Pool of Life' to go and pay a visit and make yourself a cup of tea or coffee for a 50p donation.

On Page 199 of Chapter 36 'Do you want a kiss?' Alexei Sayle sums up in the following line how I felt as an adolescent and something which has followed me all the way through my life.

"the urge to reproduce is meant to be irresistible, but the urge not to be rejected was even stronger"

I smiled wryly when I read this. Any comedian's memoirs are going to be bittersweet. The tears of a clown. He's been very clever because I expect to return to the News from Nowhere bookshop because like the beloved  Karl Marx there will be more tomes to come. Alexei Sayle finishes this Autobiography at the age of 16/17 so perhaps it would be better described as a childhood memoir but I am pulling hairs from the great man's nostrils.

It is a  hugely entertaining and interesting travelogue of holidays abroad to Eastern Europe sharply delivered with hindsight and a cynical and wry humour. So if Ken Dodd's Statue is on display at Lime Street station I suppose it's only right that a statue of Alexei Sayle in his ill fitting suit is to follow.

Well that's my first and probably last book review but that folks was my 200th Blog Post!  

Money

Yes, it's what I want but in holy communion with many people I haven't worked out how to accumulate the green stuff, the moula, the sponduliks! Money, Cash, Dosh! I spend it but I don't earn it. I don't earn it because I am not over keen on selling my time, my short life in return for something which will allow me to buy food and shelter to extend this short existence. 'Financially Impotent' would be a good description of my abilities and attitude. The life of a three bar pensioner beckons if I get that far. I have learnt over the last few years to live on little and that has been liberating. The huge psychologist's brain in a jar in Whitehall works out that a critical mass of people can be controlled by paying them £71.00 by encouraging them to jump through hoops to get, usually, a poor paying job with long hours and unpleasant working conditions. Work to live? or Live to Work? Well neither actually. I have been known to put Occupational Therapists and Job Advisors out of work. I mean what are you going to do with a 47 year old man with no references.
If I respected money then I would go and work in Subway but I just don't think that I would look aesthetically pleasing enough when I ask if the customer would like the cheese melted. Also at my advanced age, my bullshit monitor/meter just goes off the scale at any perceived injustice or human nonsense. I just walk! I do a Renee. So what's to be done? Self employed? I just don't feel that I could ask anybody for money. Money for me is a bigger taboo, than sex and death. From being an effusive 'hail fellow well met' years ago where drinks were bought for tight arse friends to buy their friendship perhaps. There's no sentiment in business, look after the pennies and the pounds will look after myself. Can you believe that such a sensible? man as myself actually bought Paul McKenna's 'I can make you rich' in Waterstones in Derby 3 years ago. Well I want my money back. The Television Hypnotist has a plethora of books that work on silly people's psychology. 'I can make you thin', 'I can make you fat', 'live your life like a boss' etc etc. We are constantly bombarded by Wonga and Cash Lenders offering loans at incredible interest. I can't be the only one who is financially illiterate. I think I want money but perhaps I don't, just to spite the system. I won't spite the system. I will just end up poor. Well I've certainly chosen the slow route to riches! Have you ever heard of a wealthy Playwright?

 

Streets of London by Ralph McTell

Cymdogion/Neighbours

Dwi newydd gael dadl gyda fy nghymydog! Mi roedd yn ddadl a aeth yn weddol emosiynol. Yn ddadl rydym yn cael weddol aml ynglŷn ar Iaith. Er fy mod yn ddiffygiol yn ei ddefnydd mi wnâi wastad ei amddiffyn. Dwi ddim eisiau cael fy adnabod fel Dic Siôn Dafydd neu Sioni Bob ochor! Mae o yn flin oherwydd yn ei dyb o mae rhaid i chi siarad Cymraeg os i chi eisiau gweithio yn y Cynulliad. Fel dwi'n deall mae rhaid i chi siarad Cymraeg i weithio yn Amgueddfa Sain Ffagan hefyd. Roedd o'n yn hoff iawn o ddefnyddio'r gair minority neu leiafrif. "But we are the majority and you are the minority, why should you from up there come down here and take all the good jobs, jobs that preclude non-Welsh Speakers?"

Er fy mod yn ddiffygiol yn ei ddefnydd mi wnâi wastad amddiffyn yr Iaith Gymraeg. Weithiau dwi'n ffeindio fo yn anodd amddiffyn y diwylliant Cymraeg gyda'i bwyslais ar Eisteddfodau, Cystadlu a Chapeli a Chwaraeon. Dwi ddim yn hoffi'r dywediad 'iaith y nefoedd'. Mae 'na rywbeth elitaidd am y dywediad yma. Well gyda fi 'Iaith Sanctaidd'. Mi aeth y ddadl mor gynnes mi ddechreuais i gymharu'r Cymry Cymraeg a Chymru cyn y chwyldroad diwydiannol fel Palestina a'r mewnfudwyr uniaith Saesneg fel yr Iddewon. Doedd o ddim am dderbyn hyn o gwbl a synnais fy hun am wneud y gymhariaeth. Efallai dwi wedi bod yn gwario gormod o amser ar y weplyfr. Dim os am hynny!. Dwi'n teimlo yn bersonol fod o'n bwysig i ddefnyddio'r Gymraeg i drafod pynciau dwys difrifol. Dwi'n ffeindio yn anodd fod yn arwynebol yn Gymraeg. Mae o gymaint yn haws yn Saesneg! Dwi wedi osgoi cymunedau Cymraeg Caerdydd ers talwm, dwi ddim eisiau mynd i yfed yn Y Mochyn Du, neu'r Dwc of Clarence neu ganu mewn côr. Dwi ddim eisiau dysgu gwneud cacennau, na gweu, na newyd clytiau yn y Gymraeg. Dwi eisiau trafod anarchaidd a Punk. Mae'r Iaith Sanctaidd yn Wleidyddol. Mae popeth i mi yn wleidyddol. Dwi'n parchu fy nghymydog yn fawr a'i barn ar bob pwnc dan haul. Mae o i bob cyfryw yn hunan dysgedig. Dwi'n aros fy amser cyn gallai fod o ddefnydd i'r ymgyrch ieithyddol! Dyw mynd i gyfarfodydd yn Nhafarn y Kernyw neu unrhyw gyfarfod neu unrhyw dafarn ddim yn mynd i ysgogi fi. Mae rhaid i'r diwylliant newyd oherwydd yn debyg i fy nghymydog mae tensiwn mawr yn cael i greu yn fy nghorff ag fy enaid. Dwi'n meddwl fod o wedi synnu at fy safbwynt ac at fy nadl. Yn y gorffennol dwi wedi galw'r Iaith Saesneg yn Iaith 'Bestial'. Mi wnaeth hwnna syfrdanu fo! Dwi'n teimlo wedi caethiwo gan y ddwy iaith ac yn gallu deall safbwynt Buddaidd o ddistawrwydd.

I've just had an argument with my neighbour, an argument that became quite emotional. An argument that we tend to have on a regular basis regarding the Welsh Language. Even though I am deficient in its use I will always come to its defence. He is angry and resentful because in his opinion you have to speak Welsh to secure a top job at the National Assembly of Wales. I told him that you can get a job there as a security guard without the language but he didn't appreciate my smart-arse comment. I told him that you had to speak Welsh if you wanted to work at the Welsh Folk Museum in St Fagan as well. He likes to use the words majority and minority! "Why do the majority have to bend to the will of you the minority"?   My reply because he wanted to play the emotional game was " we wouldn't be the minority if it wasn't for your ancestors and the Industrial Revolution". He gave me a withering look.
I do have difficulty defending the Welsh Language Culture for example the Eisteddfod, the Media and the Chapels because there seems to be an emphasis on market forces. I don't like the term they use 'the language of heaven' because I see that as elitist and arrogant but I do refer to it as the holy language. I could see him beginning to shake when I compared the indigenous Welsh with Palestine and the Immigrants of the Industrial Revolution as the Israeli settlers. He wanted to conduct a logical argument about the language but we both retreated to our default settings. I have consciously avoided the Welsh Speaking communities of Cardiff for a while now. I don't want to go drinking in the Black Pig or the Duke of Clarence, I don't want to sing in a choir, I don't want to learn how to ice cakes, knit or change nappies with Menter Caerdydd. I want to talk about anarchism and punk rock. The irony is that we have something in common. I was force fed English in a Welsh Speaking area of North Wales and he was force fed Welsh in a 1950's Cardiff school. When I referred to English as a 'Bestial' language he picked up his cap and left. Even though we are poles apart in our attitudes to the Welsh Language, we are both Welsh, we both live in the same street and we both live in the reluctant Capital of Wales. I admire him and to all intents and purposes he is self educated having been forced to leave school at 14. In our own distinct ways we have both been denied access to the 'Holy Language'.  I feel incarcerated by 'language' and would prefer the Buddhist mantra of global silence.

Hilda Ogden

Repressed

A thoughtful week of guilt and regret for losing my temper with loved ones in Aberystwyth by Sea so I blamed Aberystwyth (See last Blog Post) I also feel guilty because this post is not in Welsh. I don't have the confidence and written expertise to write yn y 'Gymraeg'. There is a little tokensism at the the top of the Blog but that is it. I don't want to make mistakes you see. I am weary of extremes and polarities. I was told by a former creative partner that I was an 'Extremist'. Extreme in opinions, behaviours, actions. When drinking, one pint was too many and eight was not enough."The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little."  It was Mark Twain's quote about being a pessimist and optimist before the age of 48 which got me going. I identify as a Pessimistic Introvert but somewhere not far behind is the Optimistic Extrovert and this strange fellow usually shows himself after a few shots of tequila or a few puffs of Marijuana. It doesn't take a lot to get me whooping and hollering and dancing on the tables but then the come down the following day (usually a Sunday) can only be described as akin to the withdrawal from heroin. I have a delicate body and mind chemistry as anybody who has been on the end of one of my tongue lashes will affirm. I am a grandiose bastard and think I am important. Well you've got to big yourself up cos nobody else will unless they want to have sex with your body so look out ladies, if a man is full of compliments he's only after one thing. 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves' might sum men's psychology up accurately perhaps up until the age of 35 and then we take on the female characteristics of sensitivity, nurturing, shopping and gossiping.
There's something going round Facebook like a virus, up to ten things you didn't know about me. Now some people have gone to town! I'm tempted but I think I have revealed enough as the Shark Fisherman. I have shown enough stocking as it were. Well here we are on a Saturday Morning, I am listening to 6 Music and waiting for Johnny Vaughan to come on Talksport at 11.00 o clock. There is a lady whose voice goes through me a one 'Georgie Bingham'. Posh and Vacuous! I had to leave one of Cardiff's libraries this morning because the Lady there. Lady L I shall call her had a voice like the proverbial fog horn. I just don't know what Libraries have become. When librarians can't shut up then we are in trouble.  People seem so less self aware these days maybe because I am so repressed as one of my neighbours said to me. "See the problem is, you are repressed", he said.
I had to google it because even though I have studied 'Abnormal Psychology' at the Cardiff Centre for Lifelong Learning I was not over familiar with the meaning to it.
We have neighbours like this in Cardiff you see, honest to the point of bluntness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_repression
I have locked down and buttoned down and very aware of myself when out and about so perhaps once in a while, maybe every six months, I blow like Vesuvius. I have a long fuse but when I go, I go. So what am I trying to say with this Blog Ramble? "That some women's voices go through me like nails on a blackboard, that I am repressed, that I am an extremist" Doesn't sound too promising does it? I have my writing to sublimate my frustrations. Writing is very cathartic but its no substitute for sex.

Aberystwyth by Sea

This is a blog about Wales and about my reaction to it. I have strayed into the North West of England recently but I am back to write a blog post about a town called Aberystwyth. Like Liverpool, I know people who eulogise the town. They have been there as students, they live a cosy bi-lingual middle class life there perhaps. They are movers and shakers around Morrisons who currently have the supermarket monopoly in the quaint seaside town. Aberystwyth is the end of the line from Birmingham New Street. I liken the train station to an anal sphincter so that when the escapees from the Midlands climb out into daylight they are then squeezed up the coast to Borth, down to funky Newquay or into one of the drug dens along the sea front. Seaside resort=Drugs. You only have to read the super soar away Cambrian News to find that out. Let me sell Aberystwyth to you! Bronglais Hospital, affectionately known as the Hospital on the Hill. It's quite a riot in frosty weather watching people walking up or walking down the steep gradient to and from A&E to the main reception. There is nowhere to park in Aberystwyth. The town elders want tourists to bring their spondulicks but they don't want them to stay too long. Aberystwyth is a testament to appalling town planning. Instead of sighting a new hospital on a flat piece of land adjacent to the Rugby Club they have built two new layers of bureaucracy to control Ceredigions' Council Tax. A National Assembly building and a brand spanking new Council Headquarters as Bronglais Hospital is added to and built on willy nilly. (I believe there is an operation you can get for that but you will have to go private) If you have elderly family who can't walk very far or very fast then whoa betide you if they should need the services of a public inconvenience. Spend a penny my'n uffarn i! Why don't you spend a pound  Ceredigion County Council. I have obviously been spending too much time in the Metropolis where it appears at least on the outside that you can get things done. As I left Aberystwyth yesterday my parting comment as I shouted out of the window was a "Third World Town in a Third World Country". I feel that I need to apologise to third world towns and third world countries for comparing them to Aberystwyth by Sea. What does Third World Mean anyway? Is it something out of a Terry Pratchett Novel? There is a Welsh Speaking Cognoscenti in Aber who haunt the National Library and other institutions. Quite harmless but they mix with the outpourings from Aber Train station like Oil and Water. Dominoes Pizza, Wetherspoons, New World meets Old and they don't fit. 

Picture this:

Couples on Aberystwyth Seafront

Flags battered by politics

People who cannot reverse

A Monument to the dead and dying

Heaving breasts under ill fitting T shirts

As the life/death guard uses a traffic cone to plant a flag

To say that you can’t swim here.

A distress flare breaks over Pen Dinas fired by a woman in

The top floor window of a Bed and Breakfast who has just

Spotted another little Midlands person being swept out to sea in Khaki shorts and flip flops.

The No Vacancies sign is continuously turned by an Obsessive Compulsive

called Lyn

Who shakes his head and dribbles and wishes that he was John Travolta

Flying that plane over there, see it, to Boston.

Mrs Myfanwy Pierce is having a Tea Party and all the little brains have been invited.

She has placed jars around the room in case of an accident

Huge stained panes of glass force gales back and keeps Gail locked under the stairs.

She hadn’t been seen for months.

Victorian Lamps and College Lecturers

Seagulls and Lobster Pots.

“You could have parked in there Ron.

I don’t know why I married you, you’re an arsehole”.

The great architect of the town who prefers to be called God

carries his animal skin briefcase around from consultation to consultation.

“I built this town”

Terry Waine farts loudly as dad splutters on the ice cream, one slip and the seagulls

will have it.

Terry announces “Kicking human heads is far superior to kicking a beach ball”

Another little cosseted psychotic is growing up on an edge of town housing estate.

Rosa Jane, the Gypsy from Devil’s Bridge has a second home in Islington.

When she’s not raking it in from peoples' neuroses

She likes to tan crisply and uses a brand name oil to slide across. 

The local minister head bowed by the wind and by an indiscretion that he

committed with a wailing widow from Waunfawr sprints passsed her tent

On his way to the sad building syndrome library to have a go on that Internet thing.

Buena Vista, Dunroamin, Belle Vue have a choice of two on the menu.

‘Take it or leave it.’

“Just gives us your money will you”

“Oh and yes we hope you have a good time.”

A dead donkey is washed up on the shore and photographs taken

by the great white hunters. 

Eccles

I spent yesterday afternoon in Eccles. I had gone out there on a Tram. I had held the door open for two middle aged men as I entered the Manchester Art Gallery. They didn't say thank you! This grated. As I left the Gallery I exited behind the very same men: what are the chances of that happening? and they didn't hold the door open for me. As the Americans say 'I was pissed'. In the past when I have been angry I have actually shouted, cursed and swore in public whether there are people around or not. When you are pissed off, you are pissed off. Well better that than going home to beat your Mrs! Not that I am married of course. I use that as an example of course. We tend to take out our anger on others rather than the ones that pissed us off. So I fled from the scene of high art, the middle class, pomposity and bad manners to Eccles. I had heard a couple say previously as they looked at the Metro Link Map "Oh no, we'll give Eccles a miss!" This doubly intrigued me.  The place where cakes with currants are made and the character from the Goon Show on the radio. A Playwright must be a good people watcher so I went to Eccles to observe people and hoped that they would have better manners than the middle aged men that I held the doors open for. The first thing I saw when I got off the tram having travelled through Longworthy, Ladywell and Weaste was a Shetland Pony. It was being used to encourage people to give to a Disabled Charity. I ignored the Shetland Pony but heard a man say "Eee she's a bonny lass"! Going to Eccles felt as if I'd gone back in time. There were shell suits and closed down shops. So here was the recession that they keep telling us about! Pit ponies in the streets for God's Sake. Outside Morrisons! Eccles shopping centre! Greggs and the usual nonsense, tumbleweed and a cactus and another Shetland Pony. Save me! The Library! Thank Goodness! Solace from High Art and Poverty in one afternoon. So I hid myself in a book "Teach yourself Playwriting" Well somebody's got to but I couldn't concentrate on the Rubik's cube that is writing a play. I listened to the voices and echoes all around me and thought. This is wrong! How can you have places like this when the centre of the city is all hustle and bustle! Why is there money in Manchester and none in Eccles or Rochdale? I've been to most end points on the tram now and am amazed in the polarity. Destination Piccadilly! It might as well be another planet. I thought about Cardiff, the Capital and how Barry and Newport either side of the great metropolis suffer in comparison financially. There is something not right about it. I left to go back to 'Media City' which in essence is a few poncy buildings and a video screen. There were two brothers on the platform at Eccles and they had just been shopping for essentials at Morrisons. No Flagons of Beer here! They looked scared. They were late teens and early twenties. The younger one looked to the older one as if for affirmation. "Should I laugh here?" "Should I smile here"?  They sat down and seemed very self conscious amongst two gangs of 'chavs'. I don't wish to go all Manchester Art Gallery here and demonise the working class but what is the Manchester version of Scallies? There were two gangs of three and they held the tram carriages spellbound with their narratives of this bird and that bird and that was shit and she shit herself. "Hey look at this on my phone". I was glanced at and given an appraisal but didn't feel threatened but I could see that the Morrison's boys were in fear for their lives. They got off  at Ladywell  and their sigh of relief was tangible. The street they walked down from the tram looked just as dangerous as the environment they had just left. One gang of three got off at Langworthy and were then loudly ridiculed by the other gang of three as the tram left "Did you hear what he said then?" 'Dick".
I had forgotten how intensely young people size each other up. Older folk were gassing to strangers of the same age but it didn't happen with this age group. Eccles has a nicer library than Altringham.
One person's reality is another person's hell! I heard a belly laugh on the street in Eccles. People and places eh? You should go home to Wales and stop being so judgemental Shark Fisherman.

As I like to see myself on the Metrolink Tram



Boots on the Cenotaph

 

Boots on the Cenotaph

by

David Williams

 

They weren't there when I went passed before,

but here, now, on the steps of the cenotaph

were the boots of the unknown soldier.

They could have belonged to the Big Issue Seller

or a member of the Army of the Homeless but there was nobody else around.

So I could only surmise that these were the boots

worn by lions led by donkeys

at Mons, Ypres, Gallipoli and Passchendaele where 13,000 men were lost in 3 hours.

Haig's comment was 'Mostly gamekeepers and servants' 

These were the boots taken off at Talbot House

and placed on the table to bring bad luck to all that wore them.

Each one of the Accrington Pals wore these boots.

These boots were worn whilst digging trenches, whilst kicking rats and knocking in fences.

These were the boots that scrambled over the top at the blast of the shrill whistle.

These were the boots that they were buried in but somehow they have found their way back across the channel and worked their way through the concrete for Us to realise

that they were real men

that wore them.