The facade of normality

 

I've never suffered from imposter syndrome because I have thought, felt or known that we are all imposters. We are all great pretenders at this game called reality. We are back in the state sanctioned reality of normality now because pandemic restrictions are being lifted. We can come and go as we please again. We can sit in beer gardens looking at other people behind sunglasses with resentment slowly getting pissed on bottles of Grolsch and marinating our own internal self hate and poison. Please don't pretend that this doesn't happen to you. We must stop pretending to be normal. Normal is a social construct that has condemned many to long spells in prisons and mental institutions over the years. Normality prescribed in Scripture. If you want to know what normality is go and ask a priest or a vicar.  Royalty, we could go and ask them what normality is. They seem pretty regular Joes don't they? Divorce, Sexual Misdemeanors, Separation, Gold Crowns & oodles of disposable income. 

We don't really need police because we police ourselves. Would there be more murders, violent and sexual crimes if there were no police? They only come in to mop up after the event. They don't prevent crime. The biggest police person is the one in our own minds. We are so rigid that we can only relax and 'misbehave' in state sanctioned formats. Festivals & Gigs that we have been deprived of because of Covid. We may return to Glastonbury Fields Forever but the residue of this past year will remain. People will be thinking about social distancing, hand cleansing and masking up rather than relaxing. The little authoritarian gremlin will be there to beat our subconscious into submission. Perhaps this is what they call repression.   

Where do we get our first impression of normality? From our peer group in an educational setting perhaps? Things might be crazy at home but we have the disciplined normality of school to keep us in check during daylight hours or we did before the lockdown and then it became false normal behaviour by zoom. All those faces  looking at eachother behind deadpan eyes, hiding all emotion, communicating like state sanctioned robots apart from the Handforth Parish Council meeting where the adults let it all hang out.

What saddens me as I get older is my loss of spontaneity. I police myself to a cautionary standstill because past behaviour has led me to the conclusion that spontaneity and impulsivity can land you in hot water and this is what I mean about the internal policeman. It's probably an age thing. From thinking that you were invincible in your early twenties to realising that you are twenty years away from death in your fifties if you are lucky.

Life is a great pretence. Normality prescribes and proscribes our behaviour with a seven day week. Substances on a Friday and Saturday night to get out of it and then the giant come down on Sunday before getting up to scrape a living from Monday to Thursday. You are not really thinking about your work on a Friday are you?

I write this as a man who has been unemployed for 16 years.  I have been an unpaid carer for perhaps six of those years and normal society does not recognise caring as a regular or conventional way of living. You are passive and reactive, not productive. Before I began my six year caring adventure I wrote an ebook which I should really update now but you can read it here for free. It was an attempt to convince myself that normality was insanity and the way that we had been herded into this way of living was causing mental and emotional distress on an industrial scale. It is survival of the fittest in our normal society and the fittest are the ones with the most inherited money and the most contacts and with the ruthless eye on the prize of power and wealth.  Carers don't count but you already knew that before reading this blog post. 

 

Till No 13 please!

Right, I'm using this particular blog post to let off a bit of steam. I was cursing and swearing this morning at the Post Office and the Royal Mail. The story about the sub post masters, some who went to prison, some who went bankrupt, some now deceased because their Horizon computer system had a glitch that pointed the cursor to fraudulent activity.  All those years we were led to believe that you could do everything at the post office from Tax your Car to Banking, to Travellers' Cheques and stamps that shot up in price. Last time I remember them pre privatisation they were 28 pence.  We, the customer thought that we were being looked after by Post Office Counters while they were treating their own staff like shit off a shoe. What really got me was the Gestapo tactic of telling them that they were the only ones being investigated.  

I hate these big bastard organisations like HMRC, DWP, Post Office, Royal Mail, The Police, the Banks that at a moment's notice can change your life forever. They can accuse you of fraud and wrong doing. They can stamp your forehead like they used to frank parcels and letters with the word 'Guilty' and then the onus is on you to prove your innocence.

I am awaiting a decision from a HM Government Tribunal regarding the decision of the Department of Work and Pensions for Universal Credit over payment of £4646.82.  It's gone to appeal but I am not very optimistic that the custodians of tax payers money, your money by the way, will be lenient with me. The only income I receive in this world is £67.25 a week Carers Allowance and they expect me to pay back the above amount from that. The Secretary of State wants his pound of flesh. If the appeal does not go in my favour, I might point out that their computer system must have had a glitch in it and that the DWP staff who awarded me the Universal Credit should go to prison.

Hats off to all the sub postmasters for fighting the Post Office but why does justice take so long in this country? It wasn't even justice today. It was only having their criminal convictions quashed. CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS? Let's see your employer treating you like that. Let me know how you get on.

These Leviathan organisations are immovable objects. One size fits all, sledge hammer to crack a nut. Peoples' lives and reputations have been destroyed and they are being destroyed everyday by Capitalism. They are being destroyed by people and machines who only see their worth in terms of profit and loss. If we deem that you are not profitable then we will dispense with you.  

I for one are glad that the banks are getting their glass windows put in by Extinction Rebellion and I curse every letter and word of the replies that say "Do you know how much energy it takes to create a replacement pane of glass?" That's not the frigging point you Capitalist enablers. It is symbolic action.

The Post Office took symbolic action with the sub post masters to teach them a lesson, to show them whose boss.  Every time I have ever had to visit a Post Office I have always left feeling diminished as a human being. Whether it was queuing for ages, waiting for your number to come up. Whether it was the long winded explanation of what you wanted. Whether it was the fact that you knew that you were not getting value for money. Whatever it was, I realise now that the poor bastard the other side of the perspex glass was under as much scrutiny as the customer.

The Classic Kick in the Balls of Capitalism and its Justice System is that they think that the matter is sorted by paying compensation. Paying money, that is printed in Llantrisant with the Queen's head on it to buy your silence, to settle out of court. Damages? These organisations have no comprehension of the damage that they are doing to people and they really don't care because they will be operating again tomorrow.

"Till No 13 please"      

Lockdown Loner

I WON'T BE GOING BACK TO NORMAL

anchoress

 recluse

                                                                        solitary

                                                                         loner

                                                                         hikikomori

Hermit

Northern Independence

 

 

I was sat in my local Wetherspoons. I couldn’t wait to get back in after lockdown. Despite the social media propaganda my need for a cheap breakfast and lager at dawn outweighed any employment rights the staff may have had. As I was downing the Cornflakes and Bourbon, I looked up for a moment and a scruffy man shuffled towards the table. “Aye, Aye I thought, it’s Tim Martin with the personal touch, welcoming me back” but no, few words did this gentleman have but he reached out to give me a piece of paper, an old parchment. I put it down on the table and nodded. He turned and made for the door.

I burped and opened the paper and on the old burnished parchment was a Map.

It was a map that showed quite clearly that Wales was in the North. Cardiff was in the North. I thought it was, because I had always said “I’m going down to London” rather than up. This map confirmed to me what I had always felt that Wales was in the North spiritually. Geographically it was to the West but spiritually, ‘yn eneidiol’ it was in the North. Now there’s true North and Spiritual North. Despite spending 6 years in the South of England and despite meeting ‘nice’ people I always had the feeling that money was King down there.  Your worth was measured in the value of your last Porsche. A stereotype maybe but we are an island of stereotypes and where do they come from anyway? Are they magicked up by Merlin or is there a grain of truth to them?

You’re approaching London, you see the signs for Windsor, Slough, Harrow. Heathrow Airport to your right.  You haven’t quite reached the Billboard pictures of Prince Phillip on the Westway. J.G Ballard would be very impressed. You cannot deny that the cars that join the M4 here are bigger and more expensive. There is an invisible ring of fire around the Capital inside which land, real estate, property and London Weighting Allowance are King.

Just because you can afford to live somewhere does it mean that you should? Second Home Owners in Wales would shout “Yes, because I have the money, I should be allowed to live where I like”. Property Developers from the South buying up houses in the North is not a good look because you are doing it for money not for the altruistic reason of offering cheaper housing to locals who are in desperate need of it. The market dictates. The cattle market is Westminster, right in the heart of the invisible ring of fire. Not far away is Buckingham Palace and the seat of Monarchy. Despite the Military might on display this coming Saturday, they’ll downplay the funeral proceedings to be at one with the people. They have learnt that despite their vast wealth and non accountability, that their ostentatious lifestyle is no longer acceptable to people who do not live in the wealthy boroughs of London.

East Ham might as well be in the North, the visual disparity in wealth between the Kensington High Rd the other side of this vast City as you come out of the Underground. Geographically the further you are away from the centre of power and wealth in the United Kingdom, the more you will suffer. Its power base has satellites in the wealthier parts, Bristol, Bath and the South West. Why are well to do Londoners moving en-mass to Cornwall? Because it fits with their cultural aesthetic? Why don’t they all move to Hartlepool instead? Perhaps we shall see why on May 6^th.     

Freaks and Fruitcakes

 

Freaks and Fruitcakes

 

Don’t other me brother!

I’m standing for the Freaks and Fruitcakes Party

And I expect to get voted in.

I’ve been rolling in sleaze since the day I were born

Excuse me while I sneeze and you pour me with scorn.

I’ll take my oath to the Klingons while wearing strap ons.

I’ll teach you about corruption so every time there’s a case

there won’t be an eruption.

Humanity has fallen but you pretend not to be

You should not have taken the Adam & Eve story literally.

Women shall be the bosses and the men dressed like gimps

They’ll be pouring the tea like politically correct chimps.

Vote for the Freaks & Fruitcakes Party

No Monster Raving Loony are we

We’re crazier than them, vote for us, you’ll see.

We’ll prioritise the environment and we’ll all adopt a tree

And on our rosettes we’ll have a big fuck off Bumble Bee.

You’ve belittled us and called us strange

While you go shopping like Robots 🤖 to the Range.

In Victorian times you’d put us in the Asylums

but now we’re in the Political Forums

because we can pretend to be normal

We can dress nice and formal

You Wait

till you get stung by the bee from the tree.

Further Reading

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2019/06/clwb-cachgi-bum-club.html

20 Lessons from Lockdown

 

20 Lessons from Lockdown

 

1. I quite enjoyed banging a spoon on the back of a saucepan to support the NHS for about 3 weeks and then the novelty wore off.
2. I didn’t mind wearing masks to go grocery shopping. It felt like the responsible thing to do.
3. I didn’t watch a single government briefing because Matt Hancock makes me squirm and Boris Johnson struck me as singularly incompetent.
4. The lockdown didn’t feel like a huge infringement of my civil rights.
5. There was what appeared to be quite a bit of scaremongering at points throughout the lockdown but perhaps there needed to be to get the herd to behave themselves.
6. If it was all a big con trick and a huge psychological experiment then congratulations to those who thought it up.
7. It’s quite obvious that we (the herd) can be controlled.
8. People will put up with so much and then they get bored and pissed off.
9. It was unfortunate for the Duke of Edinburgh that he died just as we were all leaving lockdown. It was comic timing plus raspberry from many to the collective scolding from the older Brexiteers.
10. People are generally seriously pissed off and seething and want to get back to the serious wastes of time and money like foreign holidays, non essential shopping and beer gardens.
11. Schools and Education could have had a complete overhaul during the lockdown but the powers that be decided that the head factories served a useful purpose and let them be.
12. We don’t really know what we want to do with our lives but we do know what we don’t want ie being cooped up in the same house with the same people for an extended period of time even though we may pretend or actually do love them.
13. Freedom to come and go as we please is something that we have taken for granted.
14. There will be now a cave mentality among a percentage of the population where lockdown suited their temperament and they will not come out and partake in the ‘real world’ again. They will remain in lockdown.
15. It has taken me to Number 15 to refer to the number who have died from Covid 19. For a long time the victims of a disease that should have been stopped in its tracks by closing the airports immediately and cancelling all air travel, were just numbers, statistics.  
16. Until somebody upstairs at broadcasting house said “We better start personalising this and turning these figures into real people or the viewers will think that we are cold and heartless like our employers, the Conservative Government.  
17. We then started to see the faces of the NHS workers who had sacrificed their lives for us and the Thursday clapping took on more of a relevance.
18. Care Homes were sitting ducks and it appeared from news footage that many were just left to their own devices to manage as best they could.
19. People have profited from this pandemic. Unfortunately in a society dominated by the profit motive somebody is always going to make a buck at the expense of the less fortunate, we just don’t expect them to be Cabinet ministers.
20. The whole experience has made me even more thoughtful about the fragility of the life/death conundrum and to try not to take things and people for granted in the future.       

 

Back to Normal

Today you can get your hair crimped

Your non essential goods pimped

They think its all over

It is for now

Look I’m not judging

It’s just that normal never did it for me

I always saw it as shallow and vacuous

but hey I’m not a tree.

Maybe I should just get with it and strut my stuff

down the High Street that’s already seen enough guff.

Like a pinball machine I ricochet down Great Darkgate Street

From the Pound shop to the Bakers

 to the Coffee Shop then Undertakers.

They were sucking our souls before lockdown came in

but looking in the mirror and then to the bin.

Working to keep busy, to buy food and pay bills

never answered my existential chills.

If Covid didn’t take you then Commercialism would

I’d escape if I knew that I could.

Even if it stopped and I was no longer here,

I’d end up somewhere where a twat was shouting "more beer"

No it’s back to normal for you and for me.

The insanity is on show for all to see.

Further Reading

https://expressiveegg.org/2020/10/27/the-normal-that-never-was/

 The Ballad of Whalebone Williams

It was the year twenty twenty three

And Captain Whalebone Williams was heading out to sea

He left Felinheli with a boat full of jam

Guinness, Marmite, All-bran and a pig full of ham

 

He’d been ordered by the First Minister to discover more land

Whalebone Williams was very experienced, in fact an old hand

He’d discovered Patagonia before that was even a thing

He named it y ‘Wladfa’ because it had a ring.

 

He’d met pirates and British Royalty and dealt with them the same

A cutlass and gun shot through them until both were lame

He sent them back to their respective homes

In Union Jack and Skull & Crossbones.

 

Whalebone Williams had seen where Davey Jones did sleep.

but not the most awesome mammal of the deep

He’d sailed from Youghal and Porthcawl

He wanted to spot the Antarctic Big Blue Whale.

 

He had to claim more land for Wales but a detour was on the cards

His men were not happy as they flew past in shards

Tierra Del Fuego

Whalebone shouting ‘Hasta Luego’

 

They’d drunk all the Guinness and eaten all the Marmite and All-Bran

All that they had left on board was a leg full of ham.

Williams wouldn’t be happy unless he’d spotted the old man

The Big Fish that had given its name to his homeland. 

 

He didn’t want to kill it, he wanted to hear its song

Legend had it that it was a cross between a Male Voice Choir and a Gong.

They had just passed South Georgia and were giving up the ghost

When the Ship’s cook called them to the galley for the Sunday Roast.

 

Oven Ready leg of ham, a sliver each did have

Then turned on Whalebone Williams and push then became shove

Just as the Captain was to give in and agree to return to land

A big eye appeared at the porthole to lend a helping hand.

 

The Antarctic Big Blue Whale winked at Williams and Whalebone sent one back

All the crew were dazed and amazed, they were all thunderstruck.

They’d traveled all this way for a spiritual encounter

The First Minister would have to accept there were no further lands to conquer.

 

Captain Whalebone Williams retired to Penrhyn Llŷn

And on certain nights when the stars were bright he’d recount what he had seen.

He’d hand a huge Conch shell to his guest and ring the Captain’s bell,

for the sound of gongs and choirs, the Antarctic Blue Whale knell.

 

ETON ELITE

 

Eton Elite, Eton Elite

Bottles of Bollinger at our feet.

We’ve a God given right to rule our land.

Arrogance and Confidence go hand in hand.

We mix it in the Chem lab when teacher isn’t looking.

A glug full of that, the nearest prole gets a fooking.

There’s a couple of weak ones and sigma males,

but we ship them out to Harrow and Wales.

We’ve been here a long time and the Trots aren’t unseating us,

Remember what Margaret Thatcher said about sitting on a bus?

Private Ownership and Shareholders are Boss.

Don’t mention second homes in Greece, you’ll make Stanley cross.

Daddy has got a fleet of combine harvesters and he’s keeping the key

because that is the secret to Capitalism, greed and avarice you see.

 

Eton Elite, Eton Elite

Flunkies and fags showing us to our seats.

Feet up on our inferiors, never mind our seniors.

Sowing the seeds of us and them, the victims of our world view lined up at the Crem.

“Crikey, you’d think that being rich was a crime.

You need to get up off your arse little man and work. Is that the line?”

On a clear day, you can see Windsor from here,

our patrons, our royalty are really quite dear.

We try not to look at the high-rise flats as we enter London town.

Who would want to live in one of those unless you were down?

Wilfred got caught in the crossfire of a 41-gun salute.

He’d gone in as an old cockney in mufti in a new whistle and flute.

The used shell went bang and blew off his head.

And now like the Duke of Edinburgh he was officially dead.    

 

Expats & Old Colonials
 

Expats and Old Colonials expect Britain to be the same as it was when they were a lad.

Before they pulled themselves up by the bootstraps to escape the wind and the rain.

It was the land of Bunty & Beezer, of Tram lines & Tizer

There’s nowt wrong with a bit of nostalgia 

but don’t be telling us to keep doffing our caps to those who kept your ancestors in their place.

There is respect and then there is subservient obsequiousness.

By working in finance or for the Hong Kong Dollar there’s a chance to forget your blue collar.

Why should people in poverty show respect at a time of austerity?

The man is dead, he was 99. People of that age are dying all the time.

Your rose-tinted spectacles are smeared in clotted cream and jam.

You’re wearing your Union Jack pin badge while tucking into spam.

There’ll always be an England and the toffs shall rule the roost,

They’ll give you £20.00 in your Universal Credit as a bit of a boost.

And if you’re Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish you really are in trouble.

Because despite your devolved parliaments

You're ruled by the Westminster Bubble.  

Strewth

I’m feeling defeated.

Anybody else?

Defeated by the idea of going ‘back to normal.’

I had been beaten into submission by society and life way before the pandemic began.

The lockdown has been a breather for me, a lifeline, whilst others die.

There’s a meme that says, died at 25 buried at 70.

I however, was ahead of the curve

A child prodigy

I’m not sure the exact age that I died but it was somewhere between 17 and 21.

All hope left my body and I was left this carcass.

I sneered at opportunities, I turned my back on optimism.

I knew that whatever was left for me was not to be trusted.

Depression

Depression turns to addiction

Addiction is depression

It is just that you have attached your melancholia to an outside source.

To the horse that will never win the race.

The jockeys of psychiatry and psychology and the wonder drug of CBT can help

Of course they can but if you are stubbornly refusing to get better

because you know that you are right and that life is shite,

well do you not deserve everything that comes your way?

So many of us know ‘intuitively’ that life is wrong

and Thanatos is buffing his nails.

He doesn’t care whether you live or die.

Living a lie is death

But what is truth but another death

God’s truth equals ‘Strewth’

Abolish the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party

Henffych Gwladgarwyr! Shwmae butties? Welcome to my 1000 Blog Post. I've been at it (if you'll excuse the expression) since January 2012 and today I have reached the Gold plated milestone. It occurred to me to offer this one out to tender, a Guest Blog Post, which bring the numbers in, but I thought, "No, it's my blog"

I am going to use my limited platform and reach to appeal to you NOT to vote for the 'Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party' at the upcoming Senedd elections on May 6th. They are the ugly face of colonialism. They are Stockholm Syndrome writ large. They are hoping to make gains in areas where ostensibly people have given up caring about anything.

Yes, we've been through a year long lockdown and yes I can understand your frustration with our Senedd but it's ours and it's the only one we've got. Let's make it better instead of abolishing it?

"HYPOCRITE" I see you cry with outstretched trembling finger. You want to  get rid of the Queen and the British Monarchy. YES I DO! because they are un-elected, they have been foisted upon us. "YES VERY MUCH LIKE THE WELSH ASSEMBLY" I hear you snort in retort. You had a chance to vote for or against it in 1997. If you didn't exercise your democratic privilege you can't sit there now and say it's not working. 

The only two things the citizens of Wales have had out of it are free bus passes for the over 60s and free prescriptions. These perhaps reflecting the target demographic. It may very well be the Land of My Fathers but it is also the sick old man of Europe and that's got nothing to do with the Senedd because if it wasn't for the Welsh Assembly, people in the poorer parts of Wales would be paying for their prescriptions. Perhaps the electorate of Blaenau Gwent need to be reminded of this when they decide to cast their vote. They will have to use the lowest old age pension in Europe if not the Western World to subsidise their ill health caused by two centuries of under investment by Westminster and the nihilists of abolish want to take you back there.

The fact that the Tories in Wales have not ruled out working with them as a Party should any of them 'God Forbid' get elected tells you all you want to know about them. Wales has never voted Tory in any significant numbers yet they rule over us at Westminster and they have a loud voice to represent a minority of the wealthy and landed gentry herein Wales. 

Despite his dislike of Nationalism Mark Drakeford operated on a one Wales model during the pandemic lockdown treating Wales and its citizens as one entity. Something I have never seen before. It was a tough year for the people that abolish and the tories claim to represent namely business owners but Christ, life isn't all about profit and making a living at the expense of others. We are alive, the ones who survived Covid 19. Let's breath the fresh air and smell the meadow wildflowers and forget about beer gardens and Covid passports.

Let's think about nature and the fact that it abhors a vacuum. Instead of filling the vacant seats left by UKIP by a similar bunch of unruly, back seat nose pickers and flickers, why note vote Green for a change. If everybody who thought they didn't stand a chance voted for them, then they would stand a chance. You must realise by now that climate change and the welfare of the Planet is the most pressing matter for us all now surely?

Vote Hope! Don't vote death, we've had quite enough of that.          

Further Reading

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2016/05/prescriptions-for-free.html

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2018/07/greencurious.html

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2018/08/its-not-rocket-science.html

Broadsword calling Danny Boy