Welding Burns

The king is dead,long live the king. Jamie has gone, to be replaced by Tom. I saw Tom Kerridge on the telly last week in a new lifestyle porn  cookery series. He always comes across a hearty and genial sort of guy, but you don't get the acclaim  that he has won by being simple, and I doubted if any of his recipes would suit my simple skills or lack of patience. True enough, he made a veg pickle that no sane person would attempt in their own kitchen, but then he did a lamb shoulder and spuds that was simplicity itself. I made it. It was shit. Probably my fault.

Looking at this blog, you would think we were carnivores of the most rapacious kind, forever having a bloody piece of flesh within our grasp, but, as a rule, we eat hardly any meat at all. A chicken dinner every Sunday, the odd bacon sarnie, the occasional meaty stew,  a bit of chorizo or pancetta added to pasta or rice dishes and that is about it. The kids have an aversion to red meat of all kinds unless it comes out a box, bearing no resemblance to actual flesh .

After the meat feast of Jamie's recipes, and Tom's shit shoulder, without even thinking about it, I started cooking some of my old standbys, and bugger me, no meat was involved, and bugger me sideways, they cost next to nothing. And nobody died.

First off, I made a huge pot of minestrone. No one needs to be told how to make a minestrone, you just bung whatever veg you have to hand into a pot, sweat it for 15 minutes, cover it with stock and boil the bugger up for 15 minutes. On this occasion the stuff that went into the pot was onion, garlic, celery, sage, rosemary, thyme, carrot, spud, spinach, kale, tomatoes, butter beans, broken up bits of spaghetti, and a couple of pints of veg stock. Total cost: no idea, probably about 3 quid. It was delicious with a sprinkling of parmesan and a bit of walnut bread and there is loads left, enough for at least two dinners at work, or, if you strain a bit of the stock off, or add another tin of beans, it would be just the job with a pile of chillied up polenta. I have a recipe for polenta that is unbelievable. I might share it one day.

Despite my aversion to faffing about, the second thing I did was a helluva of a faff; took a couple of hours at least to prepare, even before it went in the oven, and it generated a shitload of washing up to boot, but it is one of those rare dishes that is worth the faff. It is Marcella Hazan's  vegetable lasagne. I noticed in a tweet yesterday that Marcella has departed this life, RIP Marcella.

There are 3 main ingredients, courgettes, carrots and broccoli. You have to slice the carrots and courgettes thinly and par boil the broccoli, before breaking into tiny florets. You brown 2 garlic cloves in a big pan with butter and oil, then you chuck the garlic away, wilt all the carrots down in the pan, then repeat the whole damn process with the courgettes, then the broccoli. You are supposed to keep them separate and layer them up individually, but, as a very wise man once said: "fuck that for a game of tin soldiers". Then you have to make a cheesy bechamel and layer it all up as you would any lasagne.  It seems simple, and it is, and it is delicious and it makes loads for probably not much more than about 4 quid for the lot.

Next up, a veggie shepherd pie. Nothing to it, all you do is make it as if you were making a meaty one, but use green lentils instead of mince. I like to add some very finely chopped mushrooms too; dunno why, it just seems like a reasonable thing to do. I make the topping nice by mixing up sweet and ordinary spuds with loads of very well caramelised onions, a bit of chopped and wilted spinach and shitloads of cheese and butter.

River

My affair with Jamie has come to an end. The book had to go back to the library, and there wasn’t enough good stuff in there to justify spending  the 26 quid Jamie  wants for it. Having said that, it is a decent book, and not nearly so aggravating as the telly series; it gave me some good ideas to do with leftovers, and almost converted me to brisket.

I deviated slightly from Jamie’s recipe for the brisket. I seasoned it and topped it with mustard, as I was told, but then poured half a bottle of wine into the roasting tray and cooked it for 6 hours. It came out alright, ‘twas still only brisket though. I didn’t make a meal with it, couldn’t be arsed, nor did I make any of the leftover recipes, but it made bosting sarnies, with a bit of red cabbage. Some might argue that spending 12 quid on a lump of brisket and cooking it for hours, just so you can have a nice sarnie at work is a bit of a false economy, and they might be right.

The major problem I have had with this new book is that it is really, really heavy on the meat……………..the main premis seem to be to buy a huge fuck off lump of meat and have a Sunday dinner with it, then spice and rice some of it up a bit and have a sarnie or a wrap with the rest. That’s OK, up to a point, but you do get a bit sick of scarfing down the same thing day after day. This morning I opened the fridge door and was confronted with leftover veg curry, leftover bean and chorizo stew, leftover lentil soup, leftover rice and half a bastard chicken. Couldn’t face any of it, made a load of brie and ham sarnies. On sliced white bread. To be fair to Jamie, as we must, none of that grub came out of his book.

I had a go at Jamie’s broccoli and cauliflower bake last week. It was alright, if a bit of a faff. I noticed on the box that he used frozen veg, and he reckoned it was as nice as with fresh veg, if I do it again, which is unlikely, I might try that, not for increased cheapness but for decreased faffness. Another faff was his fish pie, which I did make with frozen fish and veg. It went straight into the bin. I don’t mind a bit of faff, but I want the results to be spectacular, not just OK, and that fish pie, even using frozen ingredients, was bastard expensive. That's not why it went into the bin though; it went into the bin partly because I had been cooking like a bastard and we never got round to eating it, and partly because it looked shit

I finished “The Cook” in no time at all, having taken to my sick bed with it. It maintained its brilliance throughout, although the twist at the end, while delicious, stretched credibility a bit too far.

I’m now reading Denise Mina’s new one, “Red Road”. The jury is out. I read one of hers years ago, and thought it was brilliant, and then read another, which I thought was shit, and then didn’t read any more of hers until this one. I’m feeling quite poorly and sorry for myself, and have a very thick, fuzzy and painful head, so it has done well to keep my attention for the 60 odd pages I have read: however, a bunch of shady toffs are becoming more prominent, and I am fast losing interest.

Fat Man

This morning I made bread. Beset by a mild malady, I spent Friday evening in bed, with a cup of cocoa and a book, rather than drinking wine and posting endless nonsense on twitter. Consequently, I was up early, and feeling revived, rather than desperate, so I made bread, to go with a lentil soup that hadn't yet been made.

Bread vexes me. Most weekends I make soup at least once, and you need to have nice bread to go with it, but, have you seen the price of it? Even nasty bread costs an arm and a leg, and a decent loaf is painful to purchase. You can buy a decent loaf in  any supermarket, I'm not so daft as to deny that, but you can't argue that it is good value: in the end, it's only flour, yeast, sugar, salt and water, for fucks sake.

I used to have a bread machine, but I kept losing the little paddle thing and having to replace it, and I didn't like the bread it produced all that much either, long and thin, like the Nicola Zigic of the kitchen. Trying to cut a piece of that in a straight line required the dexterity of a surgeon. So I binned the machine and started making bread by hand, although not all that often, to be honest.

Here's the thing. Making bread is a piece of piss. No skill is required, very little time is required, and even a basic bleeder is as good as a premium supermarket store baked loaf, and, in most cases, better………and you can arse about and add flavours and textures as much you like, virtually for free. The bread I made today is very basic, half wholemeal, half white, sachet of yeast, bit of salt, bit of honey, bit of olive oil……..I dunno how much it cost, but I would be surprised if it was much more than 40p and I had the added bonus of a wonderful smelling house. A similar loaf in Sainsburys would be about £1.50, at least.

The book I took to bed was "Cook" by Wayne Macauley. Got about half way through, and so far, I love it. The thing has no punctuation, apart from full stops and is quite difficult to read until you get used to it; then it develops a strange, hypnotic rhythm all its own. So far, it is a bit of an hosanna to service, whether it remains so time will tell. I hope not, but it is still a brilliant, original and exhilarating read.

I can't watch Masterchef, it brings out the class warrior in me, all that fine dining; the kowtowing to the knobocracy: the deference. I sometimes think that if I had  my time again, I might want to cook for a living, but I doubt I could cope with the subservience. 'Cook", so far, takes a different stance, and celebrates the monied class, the heroes of the book salute them, as their willingness to spend absurd amounts of money on a plate of innards provides the bottom feeders with a route out of the shitkicking suburbs. I love it, and it is funny, not uproariously funny, but funny, and provocative. What more could you want, apart from a couple of murders?

I haven't finished with Jamie by the way, I still have all last weeks recipes to complain about, and I have made his fish pie this morning, but I've come over all delicate again, so it will have to wait.

One Meatball

I made a Jamie leftover thing and it turned out delicious, however, I became confused and started with one recipe only to finish with another, in the same dish. Moreover, I bastardised it, so I'm reluctant to give Jamie the credit. He can have a bit of the credit, but not all of it. On the telly I'd seen him do a Korean stir fry with left over brisket. It looked nice: I had leftover pork, and it was obvious that the dish would work with pork just as well as beef, probably better.

I shredded up all my left over pork, it didn't look like much, so I chopped up a few mushrooms; it still didn't look like much, so I chopped up half a cabbage, and some spinach. It looked delicious even before I cooked it. I took Jamie's advice on the spice mix and whizzed some garlic, chilli, ginger, turmeric and fresh coriander into a paste.....it required the addition of a fair bit of water to make it into an actual paste. The aroma was worth the price of admission on its own. That was more or less it. I chucked the paste into a pan, let it sizzle a bit, then threw in the 'shrooms, and the cabbage, then the spinach, let it all sizzle and pop for a bit, then chucked over the leftover pork gravy, that I was no longer going to have with mash, and some coconut milk, made from a block of creamed coconut, and let it all bubble away. I may have chucked a bit of soy sauce in, can't remember.

At this point, I decided to open the book and check the recipe. Fuck me, I wasn't doing Korean stir fry, I was doing beef rendang, except it was pork rendang, with a few minor Cwmbran interpolations. I continued as if nothing had happened and I was making Korean stir fry all along, which consisted of boiling up some rice and chucking that in with the rest. When the rice went in, it started to take on the appearance of an old fashioned Vesta biryani, so I chucked some sultanas in, just for a laugh. Turned out to be an inspired decision.

We scoffed it while watching the latest Breaking Bad, or the Mrs scoffed it, I wasn't that hungry as I had cooked the eldest some sausage and chips, but he was out, so, taking Jamie's entreaties to be frugal on board, I scoffed that, with a couple of eggs. I watched with increasing dismay as the Mrs stealthily went back to the trough, for more Cwmbran Rendang Stir Fry Bollocks, 3 times.

I was hoping to have some for the next days dinner at work. Luckily, she left enough, which is how I know it was truly delicious. I'll try and make it again, but I doubt it will turn out the same......it was probably that delicious pork gravy that was the kicker, and I won't have that to hand very often. In the end, it's as much as about the energy you put in as the ingredients you use, and the universe was smiling upon me that day.

I have also utilised the sauce I made for the Crap Chicago Pizza through the week, once for a very simple coating for some left over chicken, fried up with some mushroom and spinach for a pasta sauce, and also for a simple sauce for some slightly spiced prawns, again with pasta. I offered the daughter pasta again last night but she declined, and opted for poached eggs on toast. There's gratitude. I bet Jamie doesn't have to contend with that.

I watched the Jamie episode with the pork the other day. It showed that, while his heart might be in the right place, his brain isn't. For a start, the joint cost 28 quid. He justified it, like the berk who claimed a whole salmon was frugality itself, by saying that it would last a week. I have 3 observations on this. One, if you are skint, or poor, or yer finances have, one way or another, gone down the shitter, it is highly unlikely that you will have 28 quid to spend on a single joint of meat. Second, did you see the size of the fucker? You would need an industrial sized fridge just to keep it in... an ordinary household fridge would not be able to house a lump of pork that big. Third, no one in their right mind could cope with pork every day for a week, no matter how often you bling the fucker up with a bit of galangal.

I'm not convinced Jamie is enjoying this series; it looks like little more than a marketing exercise on behalf of his Uncle Ben. He doesn't really seem all that enthused by any of his recipes, he doesn't even provide many recipes, and the thing is padded out with idiocy. He has some inarticulate "mate" try one of his creations, looking very uncomfortable, before declaring it amazing, and also goes around to some chumps house to teach them how not to waste stuff. This weeks food waster bought half a lamb every week, despite not knowing what to do with it or what the different cuts were. Half a lamb. Ye fucking Gods. She didn't need a visit from Jamie, she needed a visit from a man in a white coat.

I'll give Jamie some credit. Using his ideas, if not his recipes, has saved me a few bob this week. I have a load of chicken and different packs of mince in the freezer that I didn't need to use, and which, most weeks, I would have used. And here we are again, back at the weekend, and I'm going to do a Jamie again. I have already got a biggish lump of brisket brining. I'm not confident though. I hate fucking brisket,

Us Brummie types, especially us Brummie types who support the Blues, have been getting all beside ourselves at the prospect of Peaky Blinders starting on the telly. My departed nan used to call me and my brother peaky blinders when we played up, which was hardly ever. It concerns a bunch of Brummie hoodlums from 1919 or thereabouts, and there is a femme fatale, a mad Irish cop, social history, revolution and fuck knows what else in the pot. Jamie would be proud…..everything gets cooked, or overcooked.

Plenty has been written about the sets and the accents, but I have been surprised by the generally good press that it has received, because it is shit, absolutely woeful. If they had put as much effort into writing a decent script as they did in practising laughable accents, it might be OK, but they didn't and it's embarrassing. It's one saving grace was getting a mention of the Blues in. The barman in The Garrison reckoned half the team were in there, sinking a few before the game……a tradition which continues to this day, going by our start to the season.

I'll Trade You Money For Wine

First things first, I only found out about Robbie Fulks a few weeks ago, and bugger me, what a man, what a talent, what a crime that he so little known. Listen to that track just up there if you don't believe me. You might want to visit his website too; it's very old fashioned in that he writes stuff on there, as opposed to filling it with PR bullshit.

I've been struggling to find a book that holds my attention for a few weeks, but I have been saved by "Black Irish" by Stephan Talty, which has had me scouring wikipedia for information on Buffalo, where it is wonderfully set. The city is as much a character as Washington is for Pelecanos, but minus the sentimentality. Talk about hard bitten.

My weekend with Jamie was not a great success:

The Dough

 

I don't usually cook on Friday night, what with working all day, then going shopping and not usually getting home much before 7, but Jamie had inspired me, and I resolved to make his Chicago pizza pie. I can  make pizza, I've made thousands of 'em, and I can make bread, I have made millions of loaves, and they are usually pretty good, so I why I decided to use this new and unfamiliar method of making the dough, Lord knows. Anyway, it didn't work. The dough didn't rise and it felt very heavy, dense, and soggy. The sauce was very easy to make though. Being Friday, and as I'd been shopping, the kitchen was well stocked and I  managed to ease the disappointment  with plenty of red wine accompanied by many corned beef cobs 

 

I couldn't be arsed throwing the dough away on Friday night, and when I got up on Saturday morning, bugger me if it wasn't showing signs of life. Having nothing to lose, I decide to give it a whirl. I stretched it out, lined a flan tin with it to make a big one, not the 4 recommended by Jamie, smeared some of the sauce on it and topped it with some crumbled sausage, some torn pancetta and a load of cheddar and Parmesan. It was alright, no better, no worse. The kids ate it, but wondered why I hadn't made a normal pizza. It was no easier to make than yer bog standard pizza, and I won't be using that method to make dough again. The sauce, though, was something else, and required absolutely no effort to make, and I still have loads left .The kids will be getting it mixed up with some pasta and leftover chicken before this week is very much older.

 

The Sauce

 

I'm not at home typing this, but, as best as I can remember, you just chuck a tin of tomatoes into a processor with some red wine vinegar, a clove of garlic and some chopped chilli and salt and pepper and whizz the bastard up. That's it.

 

Usually, when making a topping for pizza I sweat an onion, then add garlic, chilli, sugar, salt, pepper and red wine or sherry vinegar and reduce it down into almost a jam. Takes a bit of time but tastes nice. Jamie's simple effort is as good, and  there is loads left. It is virtually an arrabiata, so just cook up a bit of bacon and mushroom, mix with the sauce and some pasta, and you have an effortless tea. 

Hats off to Jamie for that

 

The Pork

 

His recipe for pork shoulder required a 4.5 kilo lump of meat. One is not going to find a lump of pig that size around here, besides which, 4.5 kilo???? No one can eat that much pig, you'd have to be a family of 14, and even then, people would be begging for mercy. Now, I may complain that we have no deli, baker, greengrocer or decent butcher in town, but we do have 3 big supermarkets and a little M & S. I am intimately acquainted with all of them, so I knew that the best place for a sizeable lump of pork was Asda, so that's where I went, and I bought the the biggest pork shoulder they had.......a measly 1.2 kilo. At times like these it is best not to think about the provenance of the meat, but, it looked like a sorrowful and sad specimen.

 

My plans for this went a bit awry. I had intended to do a huge Sunday dinner, except it would be for Saturday tea. What I hadn't factored in was that, come tea time, I would be the only fucker in the house. That was OK though, the point of buying this joint was to try some of Jamie's recipes for leftovers, rather than have him tell me what veg to cook with a slab of meat, and, clearly, there were going to be plenty of leftovers,

 

Jamie doesn't say to do it, but I brined that poor dead flesh for about 12 hours. He recommends bashing or whizzing up a load of fennel seed with salt and pepper and rolling the joint in that. This was new to me and I gave it a whirl, with some trepidation, but it turned out fucking delicious. That's it for the meat really: chuck the spice on, with some oil, sit it atop some sliced onion and apple and whack it into into the oven. I deviated from Jamie a bit, I added a glass of white wine  and about half a pint of chicken stock to the roasting tin and cooked it on 160 for about 3 hrs. The crackling was the best crackling I have ever had. I shall be doing this again, but not until I can find a lump of meat weighing at least 2 kilo.

 

The Gravy

 

The eldest got in from his McDonalds shift at about half nine and declared that he wanted me to cook him steak, mash and gravy. My initial thought and response was rather unkind; fuck me, I thought, I've been arsing about all afternoon and half the night and now he wants steak, mash and bloody gravy. Well, he had the steak, a huge ribe eye, and that wasn't going to take more than 10 minutes, the spuds would be little trouble and I had the pork just about finished, which would give me juice for the gravy. So I did him his bloody steak, mash and gravy. The gravy was so nice it made me cry. I'm crying again, just thinking about it. I've saved some and I'm going to make a huge mound of buttery mash and have the gravy with it. Nothing else. Then I shall rest.

 

The Soup

 

When it became clear that there was little point in making a huge, fuck off dinner, I made soup. I love soup, so easy, so cheap, so comforting. I had a bag of watercress on its last legs so made a pea and watercress soup. This is how: I sweated an onion with a spud for about 10 minutes, then I added the pitiful looking watercress, about 12 ounce of frozen peas and a couple of handfuls of spinach; then I added salt and pepper, a chicken stock cube and a spoon of vegetable bouillon. Cooked it for 20 minutes, gave it a whizz, and added a blob of creme freche. That was Bob, my uncle. I had it with some expensive bread, I shall come back to bread another time, as it bugs me. There you go, I had been cooking and preparing food for hours and what I had for my tea was a bowl of soup and a load of pork crackling. And very delicious it was too.

 

The Sunday Dinner

 

I have nothing to say about the Sunday dinner. It was just Sunday dinner: Chicken, with a load of veg, and stuffing. And Yorkshire pudding. That's how it is, some like stuffing, some like Yorkshire pudding. I forgot to salt the Yorkie pud, but It was only me that seemed to notice. I had bought a big enough chuck that there should be enough left on its poor, sorry carcass to utilise another of Jamie's leftover recipes.

 

The Poodles

 

I used some of the leftover pork to make the kids tea, and I didn't use a Jamie recipe. Just tore a load of pork  up, put it in a hot wok with spring onion, spinach, soy sauce, black bean sauce and chilli bean paste, sizzled it all up for a couple of minutes while some poodles were doing and then mixed it all up together. They ate it, and you can't say fairer than that.

 

While I was at it I made a couple of pork wraps for my dinner at work. So pea soup and pork wraps already made for a free dinner.

Jamie is a genius.

 

The verdict

 

So far, so so. I have also made  a pasta, prawn and pea thingy out of that book, which was simplicity itself and all cooked up in the time it takes to cook the pasta. It was OK, nothing special, but good enough to add to the old repertoire, so that's a win. When I make it again though, I'll add some chorizo or bacon to it at the start; it was nice, but a bit lacking in oomph, however, for a tea knocked up in 12 minutes flat, I'm not complaining.

The tomato sauce for the frankly mediocre pizza was really good, and so was the crackling on the pork and the gravy. I'm not sure if me or Jamie should get the credit for the last one though.....me, I think.

 

I didn't use the book that much, I got notions from it, rather than recipes. For the rest of the week I'll be using his leftover ideas, and I hope this is where the book will come into it's own. Some of his ideas are quite obvious, and there is nothing wrong with that, but some of them are new to me and I shall look forward to giving them a whirl.

Working Dream

I think I might resurrect the blog, but make it a bit more focussed than previousy. I learned the hard way that you can't use a public blog to let off steam about yer work colleagues, and the world doesn't need the likes of me to post random links to interesting stuff anymore. Everyone knows how to find stuff now.

Here's the rationale: 18 months ago I experienced a dramatic cardiac event, which necessitated a bit of a lifestyle reappraisal. Sad to report, reappraising a lifestyle is one thing; acting on the reappraisal quite another: I'm still the same fat bastard that found himself being whisked off in ambulance in such a humiliating fashion. I have tried, a bit. I am much more diligent with the medication than I was and the blood pressure and cholestrol level is way down, and I eat less through the week and I make sure a I go on walk of at least 45 minutes every day and I go on the occasional bike ride. The bikes gears are knackered and according to the local repair man, not worth repairing, so that isn't much fun in such a hilly environment, but I try, occasionally.

You may ask, why don't you get a new bike? I might reply, because I'm fucking skint! Which brings me to the point of this newish blog. When I returned to work, I was grumpy and miserable. You think to yourself, I'm not going to accept as much pressure as before, not going to eat quite as much shit, and your managers and human remains departments all tell you that you must look after yourself, before piling as much shit on your poor, decrepit bonce and down yer lily livered throat they did before.

They pile more shit than before on your head, and warn you "not to play the heart card" Then they say, "work is stressful, and it's going to get more stressful, and we are not in a position to protect you, so you better be able to man up…….you said you were fit for work, so you better had be"

Frankly, I was feeling sorry for myself. I was burned out. I was lacking in enthusiasm. I couldn't be arsed. A major crisis would hit and I would think, "here we go again same old shit" I was no fucking use to anyone.

So I changed jobs. Still a social worker, of sorts, and, in some senses I have more responsibility than before, but not as far to travel, no management or supervisory responsibilities, no huge caseload, but, a huge fucking pay cut of about 400 quid a month. Was it worth it? Who knows, time will tell. So far, it seems worth it……..the little team I joined is ace and despite spending all day every day up to our arses in other peoples pain and misery, we spend most of the day laughing our heads off. For the first time in years, I can say that I love my job. Might just be a honeymoon period though. Also, love might be overstating the case, a little. And the pay cut hurts, a lot.

So, I have to economise. This is difficult, as I was hardly flush to start with. A few years ago there was a spate of articles on high flyers downsizing. I would chuckle as I saw that they were tending to downsize to a lifestyle and income I could only dream of. I've always been mindful of the cost of good grub, and tried to buy and cook stuff I could get several meals out of. It isn't difficult, if you have the time and patience……..and there's the rub, time and patience: I have little of either.

The prompt for all this bullshit is the increase in celebrity chefs telling us how to economise. There was an Irish bloke on the telly the other week, a big, bluff, jovial bloke, forever on Saturday Kitchen. His task was to shop and cook for a family on their weekly benefit income. He couldn't do it, he blew the budget on a  whole salmon, saying they could make it last a week, the fecking eejit, Then last week there was the Jamie Oliver hullabaloo. I like Jamie, but he can be a dope.

So they have vexed me. They are full of good heart and good intentions but they have vexed me. I propose to change the tack of this blog. There will still be a bit of the usual bollocks, the odd link, the odd book and record recommendation, the odd diatribe against the bastard tories, but the focus is going to be on food, good cheap, everyday food and how to stretch it out…….food that can be bought in a supermarket in a small, nondescript Welsh town: a town that has no decent butcher, no decent bakery, no kind of delicatessen at all.

I got Jamies new book out of the library yesterday.How's that for saving money? I have already tried 2 recipes, one worked, one didn't. I'll be using it all weekend and all next week and posting my thoughts. I bet you can't wait.

The Weight

He was in the G.P’s waiting room. Waiting.

Waiting........waiting......…waiting.

He should have come weeks ago, but it was such a trial. Phone for a specific doctor, the nice doctor, the one who noticed that you were actually in the room, and you would be told to phone after 10 for an appointment the following week, then you would phone, bang on 10, and it would be engaged. You would hit redial, frantically, only to find that when you finally got through, all the appointments were gone. 

No, what you had to do was phone early for an emergency appointment and hope for the best. His wife always got to see the nice doctor, he never did, but he lived in hope. So he phoned. The reception asked if it was urgent. He hesitated. He hated this question. Clearly, it was not urgent, or he wouldn’t be phoning the GP, he would be en route to the hospital........it wasn’t as f he had sliced off a digit or was having a heart attack. Still, if he said it was non urgent he wouldn’t get in, and he would have to go through all that phoning for an appointment next week rigmarole and miss the boat, and then he would have to go through it all again tomorrow. 

“Yes”, he said, as gravely as he could, “it is urgent”.

He was told to present himself at 9, and he did, and here was, at 10, waiting......waiting.......waiting. 

He was a bit conflicted. He should have come at least 2 weeks ago. On the other hand, he didn’t feel as bad now as he had done yesterday, or a few days before. He wondered if he really needed to be there. He had consulted Dr Google and knew that the only thing that was bothering him was a bit of fatigue and a susceptibility to anxiety attacks. The truth was, he was hoping for a couple of weeks off to recharge his batteries and regain some moral heft. He felt a bit of a fraud. Roger Hynd never suffered from anxiety attacks.

Every time a patient came out of the nice doctors room he would implore the universe......me next, me next, it has to be me next, but it never was. Every time someone came out of the other doctors room he would implore the universe, no, not me, it can’t be me....that child should be seen before me. It added a little excitement to proceedings. He could never work out how the system worked, people arrived long after him and were seen, whereas he always had to wait for hours.

He didn’t much care for ancient copies of National Geographic or Golfers Monthly, or even Caravanning Today, so he was grateful for his smart phone, which enabled him to while away the hours, and, thanks to the miracle of twitter, keep abreast goings on in the world, like howpacked the tube trains were, or how many hot babes there were on the Number 50 bus in Birmingham.......all of which is crucial to the well being of a man sitting in a waiting room in South Wales.

The other doctor came out, and called his name. Oh dear.

He presented himself in the room. The doctor, as was his wont, said hello in a cheery fashion, while avoiding all eye contact.....choosing instead to stare intently at his PC screen while enjoying some mid morning tea and cake. He marveled at this mans lack of social, never mind professional graces and waited until the doc was ready to converse. He looked idly around the sparse room. The desk, the bed, the scales, the nearly bare wall, decorated only by an opticians chart. Why the hell was there an opticians chart?

Finally. he was asked what ailed him. He spoke: extreme breathlessness, tiredness, heavy chest, numbness in extremities. He explained that he had done his research and it was all to do with anxiety. He didn’t actually feel anxious, but he did have a stressful and busy job, so supposed that his symptoms were physical manifestations of an emotional malaise that his ego wouldn’t allow him to admit to.

The doctor didn’t say anything, but left the room and returned a few moments later with a huge tablet and a glass of water, then left again. He took the tablet. It took some swallowing. The doctor returned, asked if he had taken the tablet. He confirmed that he had taken it, and commented that it was a bloody big pill, only to be told that he should have dissolved it in the water.

“Well”, he thought, “you might have advised me of that in the first place........you might even have put the fucking tablet in the fucking water”.

The doc asked him to open wide, he did (did he moonlight as a dentist, as well as an optician?) the doc sprayed something horrible under his tongue, and said, that’s going to give you a severe headache in a minute, then he left the room again. By now he had guessed that the doc considered him to be poorly, but was keeping it to himself, for some reason, and, strangely, he really didn’t feel like asking. He didn’t actually want to know.

The doc took him to another room and asked him to wait there. After a few minutes a receptionist with a concerned look on her face peeked in on him and asked him how he was feeling; then, before he could answer, said 

“You must be really shocked” 

“Well”, he thought, “I am now!”

He continued to wait. He phoned work. He said he would be in later than expected, as he had no idea what time he would be out of the damn quacks, who seemed intent on playing silly buggers. In due course, a hale and hearty para medic arrived, ordered him into a wheelchair, and wheeled him out into a waiting ambulance. Fuck, he thought as he was wheeled through the waiting room, in front of everyone, this is a bit of a show up.

Ballad of Cable Hogue

That was a decent enough start for England last night, and they played as anyone who has ever watched  a Hodgson team thought they would. At the time, I was reasonably happy, but as night has turned to morning and I've listened to phone ins and read and heard reports, I am wearying of it all. The consensus, especially from ex players and the professional pundits, is that it was a superbly disciplined performance and we did brilliantly to keep France at bay. Where people have dissented, and said that it was bloody tedious to watch, they have been ridiculed……….the wise ones say, hah, how idiotic, play more openly and you will get ripped apart, As is often the case with football debates, people can only entertain extremes. It is shit, or it is bust.

The style didn't surprise me, and, given that we all knew what was coming, it didn't disappoint me. If that's the way we are going to play,we may as well do it well, and we did do it well, especially as it was Hodgson's first competitive game. As was the case when Eck managed Blues, I live in hope that as the players become more attuned to each other and the system, the relationships between defenders, midfielders and forwards will become more fluid and cohesive. I live in hope that we will play on our toes, rather than our heels. My dreams never came true with Eck, but Hodgson has much better players at his disposal; I would hope that their own sense of dignity and self worth will compel them to offer more of a threat.

I have nothing against teams playing to their strengths, whatever they are, and I have nothing against managers analysing the opposition and working out ways in which to nullify the threats they pose, but, there has to come a point when you pose a threat of your own. These are games being played at the highest level, you cannot just play for set pieces, you have to be able to offer a surprise, to work out how to unsettle the opposition. France didn't look all that good last night, perhaps because we didn't let them, but the thought nags with me that if we had attacked with just a bit more purpose, or cohesion, we may have won.

Playing defensively is no guarantee of success. Just because Chelsea pulled off a bit of a coup doesn't mean that England will. Big media is being very kind towards Hodgson this morning, but if we go out having achieved 3 dogged draws the tide will turn….. it's OK to be defensive when you are the underdog, as we were perceived to be last night,  I recall some heroic 0-0 draws under Eck, but, if that style is your default position whatever the opposition, and you fail, life becomes uncomfortable. Just ask Big Fucking Eck.

People are commenting on Alan Shearer's new found desire to gurn idiotically every time a camera is pointed at him. Someone needs to tell him to desist……..it's the scariest grin since Jack Nicholson in The Shining. It's one thing being allowed to travel the world at licence payers expense, saying not very much at all; it's quite another to induce nightmares in the children of the nation.

Reactive football can be thrilling

Circle Round A Tree

The good news is that Blues finally got their accounts done. The not so good news is that no one is any the wiser, and the auditors seem to believe that they represent a crock of shit. There are those who now fear for our future, and are worried because it looks like we will have to sell players to keep going. To these people I say, congratulations for finally taking your collective head out of your collective arse. No offence meant, obviously. Mind you it hasn't stopped fanciful speculation from people regarding who our new manager might be. Fanciful is a much nicer word than idiotic, I believe. At least we have something to debate, and fret about; it keeps our interest up in these horrible close season months, months during which life becomes meaningless.

This isn't too bad a close season though, because we have the Euros, So far, they have been all right. I don't think there has been a really putrid game yet, and Ireland caused me great amusement last night. I have nothing against Ireland, you cannot grow up as a catholic in Birmingham and be anti Irish, but the predictable nonsense being spouted by the commentators was seriously aggravating, and I was laughing at them more than I was the Irish. England play France tonight, and I think putrid might finally put in an appearance.

I like Hodgson, I really do, and despite his obvious dissembling regarding Rio, I like his honesty, and his matter of fact and realistic air, I don't like his style of football though. I remember a game between Birmingham and Fulham. Eck v Hodgson. Eck won. There were those who proclaimed it a cerebral victory for the Blues…..we out thought them….. Eck got his tactics spot on. What we did, was we matched them and so provided a feast of stultifying football. It was as though both teams were trying not to score. Defending is part of the game too, I know that, but it's not an exciting part of it. Hodgson may surprise us all, and send the team out with instructions to sparkle, I can't see it though. He is the pragmatists pragmatist.

It's probably a bit too early to pick on him, before a ball is kicked in anger, but I am naive and romantic. You see the way Barcelona and Spain play, you see the way younger managers like Martinez, Rogers, Lambert and Adkins are getting their teams to play, and you hope we are entering a new footballing era, a brighter era in which the percentage merchants like Megson, Bruce, Allardyce and Mcleish have had their day. Then you read article after article describing Hodgson's obsession with defensive organisation and solidity, and you shake your head, and you sigh, and you accept that you have been dreaming all along,

Watching the game whilst tweeting adds to the fun, especially during games in which not much is happening or you have little interest in. The poor old commentators and analysts have come in for some serious shit from the twitterati, and rightly so, because, almost to a man, they are shit…..shit to the point of embarrassment. Our embarrassment, not theirs…….some of them seem to delight in the abuse they are getting. I can't figure out why it has to be this way.

At the risk of alienating everyone again, I'm going to praise Sky. Their presentation and analysis of rugby is superb………cogent, entertaining, informative and witty. You might say, well, it's a middle class sport, so the buggers on telly have all been to good schools and university and are extremely articulate, but Sky's boxing coverage is equally as good, and the coverage of Spanish football and cricket isn't far behind. Try watching the Tour de France on Eurosport; they will talk all day long, hour after hour about a load of blokes pedalling bikes, for mile after endless mile, and it is great……..so how come the nations main broadcasters can't find a bunch of blokes who are able to talk about the best game in the world for half an hour, without everyone wanting to put their foot through the screen?

96 Tears

So, Hughton has gone and  the various rumour mills and their mongers are working overtime. The wishful thinkers are beside themselves. I think the best thing we Blues fans can do is set our sights low, I can't see that any established manager who still has a reputation to lose will find us attractive, and nor will any ambitious young bucks. Who knows what tomorrow will bring though.

Enough of Blues, for now. Read any good books lately? I have. I've read some shit ones too, I won't mention those though.

For years, I couldn't get on with Walter Mosely. I found him a bit po faced, and always felt like I was reading a black consciousness polemic rather than  a novel. I may have been doing him an injustice, I have little patience with books that start off by getting on my nerves…... maybe his books were better than I thought. Last year, I gave one of his later novels a try, one with a new hero, Leonid McGill, and set in the present time and, I was, well, blown away, man.

I first got into crime fiction because of Margaret Thatcher and the death of the engineering industry in Brum. After leaving school, without so much as a CSE in art or woodwork, I found it quite difficult to find gainful employment, once I went on to adult pay rates anyway, and I became unemployed and unemployable . I would spend all this free time in a flat in Bromford Bridge, way before day time telly, the internet and all day pubs had been invented, reading. Obviously, I was skint, so would get my reading matter from Brum central library, much loved by Prince Charles, I believe. I virtually worked my way through the whole damn catalogue.

By chance, or because I had got to the "G's" I picked up a Goodis, or it might have been a Cain, I don't know, I can't remember, but I can remember being astonished. I had never come across anything like it. Despite my lack of educational achievement, I had read like a bastard since I was first able to read, and although I had read the kitchen sink stuff of Barry Hines  and his like, mostly, when I escaped into a book, I escaped into a cosy, middle class, English world. At the time I picked up that Goodis, or whoever it was, I had mostly been reading books by the likes of A.N Wilson, Kingsley Amis, David Lodge and Malcolm Bradbury. Oh, and Knut Hamsun. I loved Knut Hamsun…….nothing cosy about that old Nazi.

So, Goodis, and Cain and Thompson, and Woolrich and Hammett and McCoy, were a surprise and a delight. Here were blokes that had been writing decades before, in a place far, far away, that touched me in a much more profound way than all these English professors could manage. The English lot amused and diverted me, but they didn't engage me; they dealt in fripperies, whereas these hard boiled dudes got to the heart of the matter. Which reminds me, I was reading a fair bit of Graham Greene at the time as well. These Yanks didn't record their latest long dark night of the soul, or engage in middle class angst. They knew that life was too important for all that shit.

Being crime novels, what you got, was crime, then the books would go off at surprising and interesting tangents. The economic circumstances of the time would be looked at, and the psychology of the perpetrators might be examined. Notions of justice would be considered. The heroes were not necessarily heroic. These books examined the lives of people who had been handed the shitty end of the stick. I loved this stuff, and became a bit of an aficionado. I know what an aficionado is, because, at the time, I also read a bit of Hemingway.

Finding all this great stuff also presented me with a bit of a problem. Most crime writing is shit. Finding books that lived up to my new found expectations was difficult. It's difficult now, even with Amazon and twitter throwing up recommendations; it was a task and a half in pre internet days. You certainly weren't going to find this stuff in the review pages of The Guardian and TheTimes. I became hard to please, I'm still hard to please. I work hard to find these books and if they want me to like 'em, they had better be good. Even then, when you find an author who writes like a bastard, there is a tendency for them to become formulaic, you can find yourself, essentially, reading the same book over and over again.

Which brings me back to Mosely and his new McGill novels. He gives us aficionado's something different, something to get stuck into. The books are highly readable, which has to be the overriding criteria, but on top of that they are funny, in a wry, understated way; they are morally ambiguous, and they engage the emotions. Best of all……. the ripe red cherry on the top…… they are radical. The best crime fiction is radical. Mosely could well be the most radical writer currently at work. What I'm trying to say, I suppose, is that the McGill novels hit the spot.

I've also discovered Roger Smith in recent months, thanks to twitter. I needed to be convinced here. There is a surfeit of authors who write well enough, are good at ratchetting up the violence to unlikely levels but don't really have much to say to us. That's OK, I have no problem with that, but it's not my cup of tea. I feared that Smith would be amongst this lot, but I was wrong. I've read two so far, Mixed Blood and Wake Up Dead, and both have had me making regular trips to the internet to find out more about  the places and people he writes about. Not many authors inspire that. I now go to bed at night saying my prayers, and praying that some devilish demon of the night doesn't deposit me, innocent and ripe for the plucking, in Cape Flats. If you want a comparison, he would most definitely be up there with early Pelecanos for pace, wit and energy.

I'm not a slave to crime though. Browsing the shelves at the incredible Cwmbran Library I came across The Visiting Angel, by Paul Wilson. It's not the type of book I would normally read. It was about an angel, for a fucking start……….then, it featured a hero (?) who had endured a parental loss at an early age, and it was set in a hostel for people recovering from mental illness, all of which is a bit close to home for me. I don't like misery memoirs and I don't like anything that is even remotely connected with work, so I wasn't likely to enjoy, or even finish reading this book.

Initially, I struggled; he was writing about stuff I know about and I was finding it irritatingly implausible, but the thing drew me in. It is warm, has it's moments of wit and pathos and is moving and wise; you come to like and care about all the characters in it. It is highly fanciful, but who gives a fuck? It gives you pause for thought………not that it is a difficult read, any book I manage to get through has to be readable above all else. I recommend it, with a capital R.

If you feel like reading a brilliant piece on the value of crime fiction as art……here you go. Mind you, I wouldn't class the work Woodrell as crime fiction.

An excerpt from Smith's Mixed Blood and an excerpt from Wake Up Dead

An excerpt from Mosely's The Long Fall and an excerpt from All I Did Was Shoot My Man

Let's All Go To The Bar

Bugger me. It looks like yesterdays blog needs updating already. There were reports last night that Chris Hughton had gone to Norwich, whereas it seems that all that has happened is that the club has agreed that he can talk to them, which, in reality, means he will be orf.

I will have to avoid Blues message boards for the rest of the day, at least. They have gone a bit hysterical. It's like "The Second Coming".

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

I wonder what rough beast will be slouching towards us?

There are those who find Hughton's action (I'm being presumptuous here) dismal and despicable; I'm not one of those people. It is ludicrous to expect any manager to show loyalty; it doesn't happen, and one of the reasons it doesn't happen is becauses clubs, and fans, rarely show loyalty to any manager. Hughton is not in a position to strengthen Blues squad, and the likelihood is that by the time next season kicks off, the squad will be significantly weakened. There are two issues here, one is that as a matter of professional pride, why would Hughton want to stay working with such restrictions when there is no need, if he can go somewhere else and put himself to the test against better opposition with better players and without having to run for dear life to cling on to a non existent precipice, like some cartoon cat? The other issue is his reputation, which can be lost overnight in football. Look at Phil Brown, Roy Keane, Steve McLaren et al. Hughton might perceive that in our current state, his hard won reputation is at too great a risk, and that would be a perfectly rational perception.

There are those that proclaim that Hughton knew what he was getting into when he joined us, so he has no right to squeal like a girl and go scampering off now. They say that he was quoted often enough last season to the effect that he had a good relationship with Pannu and was being kept fully informed. I don't believe that he did know the full extent of the shit we were in when he joined, and I don't think Pannu did either. It is one thing to be told that because we had been relegated the squad would have to be trimmed and there would not be much money available for replacements, quite another to find the owner arrested and charged with money laundering 6,000 miles away, have a transfer embargo slapped on the club, and have to sit by and spout bullshit as the club repeatedly fails to publish the accounts. Hughton was just being a savvy media operator with his pronouncements.

Now, there are those who have already come to hate the man, and liken him to Big Eck, and say that they hope he goes on to massive failure. I don't understand this stance. As I said yesterday, last season was the most enjoyable for bloody decades. It was tremendous fun being a Blues fan again. If he goes, it will be a perfectly rational, understandable decision, and I will be watching Norwich with interest, because I like the man, and  I like his style, I am keen to see how well he does at the higher level, presumably with players that he wants, rather than who he can afford. Obviously, he still won't be shopping in Harrods, or even Marks and Sparks, but you get my point. I don't have much interest in the prem even when we are in it, so he has at least given me a reason to keep an eye on it.

It's strange the way that we football fans respond to abandonment and desertion. Some go with our blessing and remain revered forever, or until they insult us, and some are immediately despised. Eck hasn't got many well wishers amongst the faithful and nor has Robbie Savage, despite making massive contributions, in their own ways, to periods of relative success; yet TF remains loved despite leaving us for money all those years ago, then failing to get us promoted as a manager. I don't love or revere Hughton, but I respect him, and as brief as the relationship has proved to be, it was fucking fun while it lasted.

Look The Other Way

Well, that last blog post, all the way back in October turned out to be a pile of old shit. There are reasons for it, some more valid than others, but I can't be arsed going into that now, I will though, very soon, maybe. I'm sure it will be fucking fascinating when I get round to doing it...... first though, I have to get some practice in writing more than 140 characters.

Frankly, I'm disappointed in Roy Hodgson.  He's a man I'd like to like. I like his crumpled and dishevelled look, and I like his generallly bewildered but amused air. I like the fact that he comes across as urbane and well read; I like the fact that he has a hinterland. What does he know who only cricket knows, as it were. Or some such shit. I think he has a form of Tourettes though, one which compels him to bark "footballing reasons" as his response to any difficult question. This would be hilarious if it didn't also compel him to regard the football supporters of this nation as idiots.

This tendency first came to light when, at his first press conference, he was asked why he had broken the sporting boycott of South Africa. To be honest, I thought it was a bit of  a cheeky fucking question, and not entirely appropriate, not at that time: it became interesting in retrospect though. Roy's response was that he had gone to South Africa for "footballing reasons". Well, Roy, few of us thought that you had gone for gastronomic reasons. I suspect that  few people care about this, it was just some smart arse journalist trying to make mischief, but this was the first sighting, by me, anyway, of the footballing reasons response.

Regardless of the cheek of the question, Hodgson could have given a much more interesting answer. I don't know why he went, maybe he wasn't as intelligent then as he is now, and hadn't given it any serious thought, or didn't think it mattered, or was a supporter of apartheid;  it would have been interesting though, to hear if his perceptions had changed while he was there, and if he had any regrets about his decision. He chose not to be interesting, which, in the light of subsequent controversies with Micah Richards, Rio Ferdinand and John Terry, is, well,  interesting.

We all know that Rio was dropped for footballing reasons. Fair enough, but to continue to drop him for footballing reasons, as defenders drop like flies, looks a bit clumsy. He looks a bit of a butterfingers. When it comes to football, I have no idea what Hodgson's reasons are for repeatedly disregarding Ferdinand, and I have no brief for Rio at all. Frankly, I could give as much of a shit about him as I could anyone who does not play for the Blues……..not much of a shit at all, but, something seems wrong here, and it wouldn't be entirely irrational to consider that Rio is a victim of John Terry's poor behaviour and reputation. Few would now believe that Rio has been dropped for footballing reasons, and, in my opinion, as worthless as it is, if anyone should be dropped for non footballing reasons, it should be Terry, not Ferdinand.

In fact, as footballing reasons go, they are both serial failures. This pair are part of a golden generation that has succeeded only in humiliating the nation. Could the team have coped without John Terry? Well, Chelsea managed it, and it seems unlikely that he would be missed on account of his winning personailty. According to a few reports I have read, half the squad can't stand him, if not for one indiscretion, then another. Then there is his laughably egotistical behaviour at the Champions League final. The wrong man has been sacrificed here.

Does it matter? Most pundits are writing us off before we start, so this is where will see the mettle of Hodgson………in how he gets the players he has taken to perform. He has a way and style of playing that he likes and he will have picked players to suit that style, people he can trust to do the things that he wants them to.  Apparently, his preparations are meticulous and his players are extremely well drilled. He likes a solid defence and midfield, his teams are very hard to break down. We will, no doubt, make life very difficult for the opposition when they are in our half, I'm not so convinced that we will make life difficult for them when we are in their half, but, football truly is a beautiful and strange game, and anything can happen.

If you are interested in Hodgson's philosophy, there is a brilliant article in todays Guardian

So. Blues. It's really good being a Blues fan. I don't know how many times I have said it on this blog over the years, but there genuinely is never a dull moment. Once again, we are enjoying a close season of drama and intrigue. Will we get our accounts published? Will Carson manage to pay his rent? Is there a mystery buyer waiting in the wings, maybe another Ken Wheldon, waiting to flog off the few bits of silver we have left?  Will Chris Hughton leave for some mediocre bunch of nobody's? Who knows, who knows.

Last season, there was some debate around whether we would prefer to win that tin pot cup nobody but the winner cares about, or stay in the prem. My preferred option was both of the above, but, if I was only allowed to choose one, it would have been to stay in the prem, not because I have much love for the place, I don't, but because the indications were that if we went down we would be in serious shit. Many on the various message boards were blase about relegation, believing that we would quickly rise again, as we had before. I never believed that, the whole of last season reminded me throughout (and I said so across various social media) of the year Saunders took us so disastrously down. People were saying then that it wouldn't hurt to go down for a season, regroup and come back stronger. It took 18 years. I was worried last season that history might be repeating itself, and I am more worried now.

Not overly worried, you understand. I am a Blues fan, after all. Most of us are stoics, we don't expect much. We are made of tough stuff. If nothing else, we should be able to shed a few of the cry babies that have decided to support us since our brief elevation to yo yo club. There is a disappointment though, or a potential disappointment, as no one knows what the next few weeks and months will bring. Chris Hughton has been a breath of fresh air. Last season was the most enjoyable since the 70's. Not all of our performance were delightful, but enough of them were. Hughton brightened up a place that had become rather grey. He did it with cast offs from other clubs, bargains from obscure Scottish clubs, our own flotsam and jetsam that weren't good enough to be pilfered by others, and some young talent of our own.

It looks likely that Hughton will go, and I would also be surprised if we can hang on to Butland. It would be ace to have one of ours play for England, but never to have seen him play a first team game for us. Redmond, Mutch and Burke will probably be wanted as well, and maybe King, and with our finances the way they are, I can't see us refusing any money, for any player. For the first time in years, we have a manager and players with the potential to keep us smiling, and there is every chance that we will piss all that potential and talent up the wall.

Hold On

I arsed about with the layout and that, one night while I was somewhat worse for wear. Christ knows what I've done.

I'm going to talk a bit about Blues and a bit about me. I've tended not to talk about me on this blog, but I've not been very fucking well, and I'm told that, in trying to introduce a bit of change, it's good to keep a bit of a journal. So, I will use a highly public forum to shame my bastard self.

Perversely, it's a good time to be a Blues fan. No pot in which to piss, a team made up of players who have been tossed out of the bargain bin into the skip outside, and I am enjoying watching them more than at any time since the Jim Smith years, and so is every other rational Blues fan. Even those who were not born in the Jim Smith years. Our neighbours, as I said at the time, did us a massive favour taking Eck off our hands, and while I am not grateful to them for much, I am grateful to them for that. We may have lost a manager and practically a whole premiership squad, (not to mention an owner) but we have gained a soul. Football can be fun, and it can be exhilarating. Who'd have thunk it?

Right. I have an ego, but I'm not a vain man. I don't worry over much about my appearance, and never have, so, as I got older, and fatter, it didn't bother me; there was always another size of waist band to aspire to. But I get migraines, I always feel like shit, I don't tend to sleep well, I am a snoring bastard, and I keep getting fucking gout, painful, disabling gout.

My employer sent me to occ health, because, when I can't stand, walk or drive, I don't go into work, although I do turn up when I can hobble, however painfully. Last time, I got a lift in, could barely weight bear, but got there. Not good enough, I had taken 2 days off, which work found intolerable.  The occ health was a bit of a curates egg. She agreed that I couldn't help it, told my employer that they shouldn't be harsh on me and should do all they could to help, said I was covered by disability discrimination act (result!), but also gave me an almighty and lengthy bollocking about my lifestyle.

I could have been dishonest about my lifestyle, but it would have been pointless; you don't need me to tell you about it, you just have to look at me, and the story is there, in glorious technicolour. She wasn't the only one to issue a lengthy finger wagging, the GP did too, a couple of weeks ago. Went in for some gout tablets, she took my BP, it was really, really fucking high, So. I am fed up of getting bollocked by women who I don't happen to be wedded too, and I'm a bit fed up of being a physical wreck, so, I'm having a go.

Not much of a go, to be honest. I'm getting stuck into the vino as I type, but great oaks from little acorns and all that.

A go is a go though. Last Thursday I made a huge salad. A raw veg salad. Dunno what was in it altogether, but it included cauliflower, peppers, chicory, fennel and fuck knows what else (I can feel a recipe book coming on) all chopped up small and put in a box, ready for dinner at work, with a simple sumac dressing that I took along. It was delicious, but took some munching, it took about an hour to get through it, but it filled me up, and I didn't feel all bloated and lethargic. I've done a similar thing twice this week. It's not much, but it's a start. I've even bought a groovy little lunch box, with 3 compartments and  an integral little pot so you can take your dressing with you, rather than let your leaves go all soggy and revolting.

I'm not revolutionising my diet: fuck that for a game of tin soldiers, it's too hard. It's much harder to prepare a load of raw veg and make it nice than knock out a bacon and egg sarnie, and I'm a busy man, but I will make some effort, a bit more than a token effort. Today I had a bacon sarnie for breakfast, a load of raw veg followed by loads of fruit for dinner and a huge, fuck off bag of Doritos for my tea. With wine for pudding. And supper. Believe it or not, this is progress, by my standards.

I should exercise too, but at the moment that seems like a scary step too far. The truth is, when I eat all this raw shit, I feel better, and  energised, but I just love all the shit stuff too much. I can't see me ever giving it up………. but I do intend to balance it with good food, proper good food, food that feeds, and nourishes, rather than fills, and I will try a bit of exercise too. I've tried before, but it's always been my guilty secret. This time I've gone public, and I shall share and I shall be brutally honest with myself.

Should be fun.

Now, does anyone know where I put that hair shirt?

Gentle Spirit

I have recently read Scream If You Want To Faster, by Russ Litten, in one of my periodic ambles away from the crime genre. I really, really fucking dug it. It's an account of the lives of various people in Hull, with Hull Fair and the big flood taking centre stage. It reminded me a bit of the film Crash, not too much though, as I suspect you would be staring at Hull for some time before the city of Los Angeles entered into your consciousness.

There's no real story or plot to it; it is an episodic ramble among the denizens of a run down city and an exploration of the ways in which the bastard universe can always find a way to blow a bit of sand into a sandwich. It focuses on those at the bottom of the social scale, those earning an honest but poor living, or not earning a living at all, and finding ways to get through the working week, so that they can piss it all up the wall at the weekend. It's a bit like one of those Jimmy Mcgovern dramas but without the piety and sanctimony. I'd love to see it on the telly, actually, it would make several great "Plays For Today". They don't do that sort of thing any more though.

Iv'e been sat here in the back yard, drinking a nice bottle of white, surfing the net and listening to the brilliant Jonathan Wilson, with his summery yet dark vibe. And it's about time too.............bastard weather.

We need to talk about Blues. Some Blues fans are taking this whole, lets pretend we don't care that we are shit shtick a bit far. It's becoming a cliche, like singing we want seven when the opposition have stuck 6 past you.


I had high hopes of Chris Hughton, still do, I like the cut of his jib, and unlike his predecessor, the hilarious Scot, he puts his money where his mouth is, but we are a very tattered and ravaged sows ear, no silk purse will be made from the players we have at our disposal. It is ironic, nay, it is fucking tragic that after the cold porridge served up be Eck, Hughton is trying to give us more sophisticated fare, but we still couldn't score in a barrel of fannies. We have a few nice salad leaves, livened up here and there wwith the odd caper or spring onion, but it all lacks a bit of zing and a bit of punch.

I can see why people are pretending to be happy, but they are letting their determination to be seen to be true to the cause cloud their judgement. For all the talk on message boards that players like Spector and Caldwell and Elliot are good enough, the sad fact is, they ain't. And neither are the scrag ends that couldn't be offloaded in the summer. The chumps that got us relegated would have been good enough, just about, cast offs from the Scottish league and 19 year old Kiwis won't be.

Fair enough, it is fun. Fair enough, it is better to watch. Fair enough, some awfully boring cunts no longer seem to want to watch us, but we are deeply fucking wounded and are sleepwalking into catastrophe. The Yeung situation is diabolical. The less credulous among us wondered about him before his arrest, but since, well, what a bleeding embarrassment. We clearly have no pot to piss in, not even a pot with holes, and we have no idea if we ever will again, while we have theses owners. Other teams get relegated and don't find themselves in this pickle; they keep some players, they manage to sign some players, for a fee.

This is a scratch team and it is difficult to know what to make of them, difficult to understand why they are here. It is difficult to believe that any of them would want to be with us if they had better offers. Marlon King evidently saw us as more attractive than Coventry, but that was before Yeungs arrest. This is the thing. Before the arrest, we seemed to be doing aright, getting players in early and talking of not giving the failures away for fuck all. As soon as Yeung was arrested though, that was it. Taps turned off.

I'm enjoying the moment, the Maribor win was a brilliant sideshow, and we might even flatter to deceive until Christmas, but I would not be surprised to see the rest of last years failures, plus Burke and any other player who shows a bit of form depart, come January

Coast to Coast

DUCKS DELUXE - Coast To Coast (OGWT, 1974) by newcanadian

I’ve been reading Pete Dexter’s Spooner. I knew Dexter was a brilliant writer……….Deadwood is brilliant (and, if David Milch didn’t read that before making his telly programme, I will eat my hat), Paris Trout is brilliant, and Train is the second best sports book I have ever read. I have read a lot of sports books, but only one about golf; I can’t stand golf, so for a book about a golfer to be my second favourite sport book gives you a hint about how magnificent it is. So it didn’t come as a surprise that I should like Spooner.

What did come as a surprise was the sheer enormity and brilliance of it. I had to spend a few moments alone once I’d finished it, just to gather my thoughts, and, once I had gathered my thoughts, I was pissed off that I had finished it.

I got into Dexter years ago, probably before the internet was invented, certainly before the likes of me had access to it, but, as you do when you really like an author, you find out what you can. What I could find was all a bit bitty and scrappy, but it was clear that he had lived a very interesting life, and is quite a character. What makes Spooner particularly interesting is that it puts substantial meat on the bones of the bits and pieces that you already know. What makes it special is the writing, which is typically deadpan and matter of fact, but which is capable of making you piss yourself laughing and force you to suppress the odd unmanly tear.

I kid you not about the humour. One bit had me reflecting back throughout the day last Friday, and, every time I reflected back, I had a giggling fit………in work twice, and standing in the queue at Sainsburys, once. And again now, typing this. If you buy it, or borrow it, and you would be mad not to, don’t pass over the acknowledgements at the end, they are masterful.

Usually, once I finish a book as good as Spooner, I struggle to get into another one, but this time I had the good luck to pick up Gene Kerrigans “Rage”. This is a compeletely different kind of book, being an Irish thriller, but it is fucking cracking, as Kerrigans books tend to be. I haven’t finished it yet, but is keeping me up nights, with the familiar mantra………”just one more page”. If a Martian descends and want to know about life at is experienced they will gain more insight from seemingly slight thrillers like this than any number of middle class mediations by the likes of Julian Barnes.

The main thing that Kerrigan does well in this book is write a brilliant, page turning thriller. What he also does well is take a long, hard gaze at Ireland in the aftermath of the great crash. The best writers recognise that there are no moral absolutes, and the best writers, write in the genre of crime. In this book, Kerrigan spares the people who milked Ireland dry no mercy, but recognises that they were greedy, flawed human beings, not all bad, not all good. He extends the same sympathy to the more brutal, common or garden, villains, who are given a history and a hinterland and are mot portrayed simple as evil monsters (take note James Lee Burke) and the good guy, the extremely likeable good cop, also exists in a dubious moral universe.

Kerrigan, incidentally, wrote one of the better pieces I read on the riots last week.

Most of my favourite writers at the moment are from, or write about, the margins; the bits that the mainstream either ignores, or demonises. Thank god for the internet, because it doesn’t matter how brilliantly these people write, you are unlikely to see their work reviewed in the weekend supplements.

There is Kerrigan, obviously, and the peerless Ken Bruen as well as others, like Stuart Neville and Brian McGilloway from Ireland, There is Niall Giffiths, who is not from Wales but may as well be and Robert Lewis who is. There is Ray Banks, Tony Black Alan Guthrie and fucking loads of others from Scotland, and there are people like Ron Rash, Daniell Woodrell, Philipp Mayer, and William Gay. There is not a bad writer among that lot, and there are plenty more where they come from. Unfortunately for them, they write uncomfortable truths, from the heartlands and the hinterlands, from the broken towns and valleys that few people wish to hear about, so will remain as marginalised as the people and the towns they write about.

Blues played in Europe last night. Yes. Blues. In Europe. I emphasise it only because it seems to have become compulsory. The great Bluenose Diaspora is beside itself because we played Nacional, in Madeira, in a competition that no one gives a shit about, with a team that, in the main, contributed nothing to us qualifying for the competition. Don’t get me wrong, I am chuffed about it, and it was good to watch, on a slightly dodgy internet feed, but fuck me, lets have a bit of perspective. Every time Blues achieve something our fans lose all sense of reason. First cup final since……….highest finish since……….first European game since…………….on and on it goes. We have been in Europe before, playing and getting good results against serious opposition, I really don’t think there is any need to come over all unnecessary on account of a glorified friendly.

Someone mentioned on a message board that a Portuguese report described us as quality opposition. Interesting word that: quality. Even the most diehard Blues fan would be staring at last nights team sheet for a long time before the word quality sprang to mind. Few of the starters last night, or in any other game so far this season, would even have made the bench last year. Let’s not forget, last year we were shit. Last years lot were frequently excused on the grounds that if they were any good, they wouldn’t be playing for Birmingham City.

So, in terms of the league we find ourselves in, and the league from which we recently and so indecorously departed, our players, with the best of all wills, cannot be described as quality. But, there is a fucking BUT to consider. Despite the lack of innate quality in the individuals, our new manger seems to be intent on getting them to play quality football, and, incredibly, seems to be succeeding. Forget all the lachrymose bollocks about the great European adventure, this seems like a bright new morning for another reason………we are passing the ball………….to each other!

I’m not daft, these players have been offloaded by teams as mediocre as us, so they will make mistakes, miss easy chances, and give away silly goals, but I don’t care. I accept that we are in the shit, but, playing the game with a bit of élan and purpose, even if it doesn’t always produce the desired result, makes our predicament a hell of a lot easier to bear.

A good man, nay, a great man, asked what I had been listening too lately, and I nevr need a second invite, so here goes, if they are on spotify I will provide a spotify link, but most of these berks aren't millionaires, so it would be courteous to buy a track or three.

Low Anthem: Smart Flesh. Can't really say much about it,more of the same good shit that went before. Not particularly recommended if you need cheering up on a Friday night, not that they are imelancholy, it just sounds like it sometimes

The Felice Brothers: Celebration Florida. Mixed reviews, but there are some fucking classic Felice tracks on there

Gillian Welch: The Harrow and the Harvest: the more you listen, the better it gets

Doug Paisley: constant Companion. Mellow Americana, you have to be in the mood, really.

Mickey Newberry: American Trilogy. Genius at work. Loads of Newberry on spotify, but not this album. Go to his website and you will be able to download 4 tracks, for free.

Danny and the Champions of the World: Hearts and Arrows. A bit of a change of pace and outlook for the Champ. He's gone all pub rock on us, but it's ace. Fucking nothing wrong with a bit of pub rock

Israel Nash Gripka: Barn Doors and Concrete Floors. Ace Americana. Not glum.

http://open.spotify.com/album/1jizPwt9toWCBXUmqetJ48

Musikanto: Sky of Dresses. Brilliant, low key, quirky Americana

http://open.spotify.com/album/1dad0lKC1HEnbh4ynr7CZK

Aiden Moffat and Bill Wells: Everythings Getting Older. Morose but humorous brilliance. Best record I've heard in ages. Not for the delicate.

http://open.spotify.com/album/3GMuRdRY13Ui3jUE1oWG2f

Robyn G Shiels: The Great Depression. God knows where this bloke has been hiding. Some kind of maverick genius

Mick Terry: The Grown Ups. Found via twitter. Lovely, er cockney troubador stuff, more than worth a listen.

http://open.spotify.com/album/2Tz7dOFGnYvnp9XnmMtw20