We Don't Need That Fascist Groove (Thang)

There is a short story in the Independent today by Roddy Doyle. It's worth a read because it is a good story, there is an added piquancy for Blues fans though.

Again in the Independent, from a couple of days ago, Robert Fisk wonders about the unanswered questions relating to the attack on America. He makes clear that he is no conspiracy theorist, but points out there are several fundamental and fairly simple questions that remain unanswered.

Roy Keane has told his players that they must not argue with the ref, which has to be the biggest laugh of the season so far, apart from Steve Bruce's shirt and Martin O'Neill's attempts to communicate with his staff via the miracle of modern technology. Also, Steve Bruce and O'Neill have both apologised to refs this week for comments that they made about them or to them. Bruce hasn't apologised for his shirt yet though.

This all makes perfect sense, ref's don't change their minds, there is no point arguing and to get booked for arguing is the height of stupidity. As for being nice to refs, well, keep calling refs nasty names and it is hardly likely that they will be any more kindly disposed to you next time you meet. Still, it's unusual and I wonder if managers have had their cards marked.

A good win for Blues on Saturday, however, given that every one else will also beat Derby I don't know how significant it will be at the end of the season. I think we look alright though and Bruce has publicly stated that he intends to attack, so I am hopeful of a good season. I think we have already scored more goals than we did in the whole of our relegation season.

Apparently, we are in for Peter Luccin, as in, who the devil is this fuckin' Luccin? You might well ask. We may or may not be in for some other bloke with an unpronounceable name as well, who may or may not be any good. I have said before that I don't know how this season will go for Blues, none of us do, because if we are honest we know hardly anything, if anything at all, about our new players. In the case of De Ridder, we may never know, given his career history of about 1.5 games per season. Of those we have seen so far, they look good, admittedly most of them being British.

Which sort of brings me to Man City. Who would have thunk it? I don't think I should be too embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of most of their signings, after all, the press had a field day ripping the piss out of Sven for buying blokes he had only seen on video (do they still make videos?). As early as it is, it is evident that these Carlos Kickaballs, generally, kick a ball very deftly indeed, whether we had previously heard of them or not. The prem is littered with people of whom we had little or no previous knowledge, but who are comfortable on the ball, confident, happy in the knowledge that they possess the ability to do their job, be it pass, run, tackle or all three.

So back to Blues. Of our new signings, the one likely to cause most excitement is Kapo. I had never heard of him before he arrived and even after the first game, struggled to remember his name. The pundits and experts in the pre season supplements told us that we had not bought wisely, and that Kapo had never settled anywhere, because he isn't very good. I don't think those highly paid experts knew what they were talking about, I don't think they ever know what they are talking about.

They saw an unfamiliar name sign for Blues and did a quick scan of his history via google and made assumptions, the lazy, lazy gets; the same can be said of their attitudes to Man City and others, notably Portsmouth, going back over several seasons. Kapo, is a pleasure to watch. He has style, grace and panache. He looks head and shoulders a better player than anyone else on our books, yet, none of us who are honest enough to admit, it had heard of him before. The experts considered him a journeyman, and maybe, in other leagues he is, but not this one.

Every season we see players come here and surpass our expectations. Take Dugarry. I could never work out how he got picked for France, whenever I saw him he looked hopeless, pathologically unable to score, and, when he signed for us the world mocked. Some wee Scottish bastard whose name escapes me for the moment, but who made his name playing for Ireland, because Scotland didn't want him, as well as turning out for our neighbours, told the world that he was a waste of space.

I am as thick and as stupid as Ray Houghton, (I remembered) because I also thought he was a waste of space, but he wasn't a waste of space; he was a genius at using space, and creating space, but he wasn't a waste of space. In 40 odd years of suffering the Blues, I can only think of Willie Johnstone (briefly) and Frank Worthington who can compare when it comes to taking ones breath away.

So where does the widely held notion that we have the best league in the world come from? I watch a fair bit of foreign football on the box and have done for years; I am not a narrow minded xenophobe, but I have never heard of half the players who turn up here; they are not exactly setting their leagues alight in Italy or France or Spain, yet they come here and show us all up. I have said it before and I will continue to say it: our arrogance and insularity is killing us, we need to wise up.

Meanwhile you could be listening to one of the best shows on the radio.

Talking of radio, more people are listening than ever, apparently, and awhat good thing that is; the interweb is a wonderful thing.

Recipe
Soften an onion, add garlic , some chopped carrot and a chilli, followed a bit later by some tomato puree, throw in two tins of different beans, like chick peas or borlotti, add a couple of handfuls of small pasta bits, cover with about two pints of decent stock, simmer for about half hour. Delicious. Even deliciouser if left for a day.

Too Much Too Young

I finished Donkey Punch the other day and haven't actually reflected on it that much, as I immediately got stuck into the New Bruen, which, as you might expect, is bloody magnificent and has kept kept me up way past my bedtime these last two nights. Bruen is masterful, most definitely the capo of crime writers, either British or American. The highest praise I can give Ray Banks is that he is up there with Bruen............he bears comparison: the trick will be keeping it up.

Derby v Blues on Saturday. I can't even bring myself to think about it, by 5 o clock on Saturday our season could be over, said the drama queen.

A child of 11 got shot in Liverpool. This is horrific and is something I genuinely cannot bring myself to think about, the slaughter of the innocents can bring a tear to the hardest of hearts. Listening, as ever, to the phone ins all day as I drive around there seems to be a consensus developing that we have to hit the bandits hard, make them suffer and squirm, and while we are at it we should make their families suffer and squirm a bit too.

I can't really go along with this. Living in an area which has more than it's fair share of petty crime and vandalism and more than it's fair share of 'orrible little gits, who have no fear of any adult, I find my liberal conscience troubling me, as I become less tolerant, and wish harsh punishment upon those who daily aggravate me, but, then, when I calm down, I try to rationalise it and I can't go along with the idea that it is being soft on crime that has led us to the state we apparently find ourselves in.

I do wonder, often, just what the fuck has happened. It wasn't that long ago that I was a nipper and I was right peeky blinder too, as were all my mates. Christ, the things we got up to. However, I think most of us and those like us, were mischievous and stupid rather than just plain bad. We didn't necessarily fear adulthood or authority, nor respect it, but we paid attention. We wouldn't trespass or damage property if an adult was about, and if were indulging in some wanton vandalism and an adult turned up we would leg it.

If we got caught and suffered a boot up the arse or a punch in the ear, we wouldn't complain, we would just hope the old man wouldn't find out, and he rarely did. Where we live, we get grief regularly from gangs of teenagers and also gangs of much younger nippers; their language and behaviour is.....................educational. They couldn't give a stuff who hears them and they couldn't give a stuff who sees them, there is no consequence of which they are afraid. They know that no adult will actually physically assault them, and they laugh in our faces.

How did it come to this? Well, I can tell you how it came to this, I can tell you how we arrived here...........it was an uncomfortable journey, but we got here in the end, via Thatcherism and the bloody equality gap. It's time to stop blaming the poor and the oppressed and the excluded. It's time to stop blaming teenage mothers and it's time to look at a bit of economic and social history. We are paying the price for Thatchers horrific experiment and Labours fear of the right wing press.

Thatcherism is one of the greatest evils ever visited upon this country. Whole sections of society were abandoned, in some cases entire communities were abandoned to their fate and invited to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Thousands and thousands of people, were just tossed aside, there being no such thing as society, only a collection of self interested individuals. There will always be smart arses, like myself, who escape the daily horror of having no education, no job, no confidence and no hope, but there will be many who don't; some of whom will just sink into a sort of social catatonia, some of whom will become cheerful scallywags and get by as best they can and many of whom will get by with the help of drink, drugs, casual sex and crime.

There will be procreation, lots of it, in and out of wedlock; fathers may be known, they may not. The daily grind of poverty will continue, hopeless lives will stretch out into a blank horizon; there will be no positive role models, peoples lives will be shit and they will seek solace where they can and more babies will arrive and the cycle will continue endlessly on, because communities have been destroyed, industry has gone and respect for the working or non working man eroded.

Children will be born into a world characterised by a moral emptiness, where pleasure is taken whenever and wherever it is available, however short term it may be and regardless of the long term cost. They will have no stake in society, they will not care about society, they will not care about their neighbour and they will be a bunch of aggravating, scary bastards, but, really, whose fault is it? Would any of those people choose their lives, if they had any kind of a choice, I think not. They are abandoned, and they were first abandoned by people with a narrow political agenda who should have known better.

Our society is fucked up, but it's not the people on the estates who fucked it up, they are the victims of the fucking up; we are all the victims of the fucking up. We are the fuckees, not the fuckers. The damage Thatcher inflicted is immense and it will take more than a lily livered Labour regime to put it right. Meanwhile, as I keep saying, the fucking equality gap keeps getting wider, and as I keep saying, where this happens, social cohesion breaks down and life is, for many, nasty, brutish and short.

Tax the rich, squeeze them until their pips squeak and pump all the money into our destroyed and desolate estates. Abandon the olympics, use all that money to provide facilities and coaching in all towns and cities up and down the land. Lets just spend the money. Don't audit it, don't account for it, just spend it; lets give these anti social murderous bastards a reason to believe that they actually belong to this shitty world and have something to gain from engaging with it.

Cryin'

I told you Sunderland aren't very good, then again, neither are we and it could well be that the three that came up will all go back down, together. Many Blues fans regard today's result as unfortunate and blame the ref for giving a poor decision for the pen, or Doyle, for his naivety. They might be right, but I think they are wrong, I think we are poorly managed, and that is why we lost today. Again, we just kick the ball back to the opposition, again the midfield is too far away from the front two, so they look isolated, and the midfield support arrives too late, every time. This has been going on for years, it is not an accident.

West Ham at least looked like a half decent team today, but I still think if we had midfielders possessed of a bit more thrust and attacking intent, they wouldn't have looked so threatening. Bruce has to stop playing two purely defensive midfielders in the middle of the pitch. It's not as if our two wide men are constantly putting the opposition on the back foot to compensate. West Ham had Noble in the middle today and he was a genuinely class act, caused us problems all afternoon and they still managed to accommodate Etherington and Dyer, two players whose instinct is to attack. And West Ham were away. I can't think of any decent teams whose emphasis is on defence to the extent that Blues are.

Bruce isn't going to change, history proves this. Thousands of people spent a great deal of money to watch Blues today. The great Brummie diaspora will have travelled from many miles away, incurring petrol and catering costs on top of the price of admission. And they have all gone home, near and far, disappointed. Again.

It doesn't have to be like this, there are other ways. Bruce either can't or won't see the error of his ways, he either can't or won't see that his style of football is depressing, as well as ineffective. I think we have suffered enough and I think Bruce should go. Watching Blues should brighten the bloody week for us working class heroes, not darken it. We deserve more, we deserve better, not because we are noble, not because we are different, but because we bloody well pay for it. The Blues aren't delivering, the sums don't add up, we ain't getting enough bangs for the buck. It is time for a change, before it is too late.

Through the summer there was anticipation, there was excitement as we signed players that the more honest among us admitted we had never heard of. The general consensus was that the future was bright, because of all this new talent we would have at our disposal. The less credulous among us pointed out that we didn't actually know if any of our signings were any good, moreover, some of us pointed out, it would make no difference unless there was a radical change of thinking and intent on the part of the manager. It looks like we doom mongers had it about right. 1 point out of a possible 6 against teams who could be genuine contenders for a bottom three spot is just plain suicidal.

Still, it's only bloody football. The wonderful Iain Anderson played some Oysterband the other night and they seemed to have ditched the pub rock and returned to their roots, which can only be a good thing. Also a reason to be cheerful, one of the few things that can stop me thinking about the bloody Blues, I have in my possession a copy of the new Ken Bruen. I cannot stress enough how much I want you to click that link.

The new Rilo Kiley is getting good reviews and you can decide for yourself because they streaming it on their myspace site. Bloody hell, something of quality and class, available for free. Karren Brady please take note. The New Pornographers are also getting good reviews. The two sauciest broads in pop release albums in the same week, that cannot be a bad thing, can it?

Classic Northern Diversions

This is good: Jackie Leven

The Dusty Foot Philosopher

The Guardian gets on my nerves when it comes to its coverage of the Blues; I don't mind them being dismissive of us, it's the tired and inaccurate way that they do it which grates. I am afraid that I have become a bit of a one man rapid rebuttal unit, firing off e mails to point out the laziness of the jokes and inaccuracy of the statements, but I have come to forgive them, I have become magnanimous, because the best article of the season has already been written.

To offer a clue as to what it is about, the very long comment thread which accompanies the article contains this gem: It's a good job that so few Villa fans read The Guardian or you'd have the local historical society bombarding you with their views on the latest Messiah.

Mind you, I'm no apologist for the Blues and I don't share the evident joy that some are showing at our collecting of 1 point from a possible 6. We bleat about the unfairness of Sunderlands last minute winner the other night, but once again, we hardly played with gay abandon. The fact is, we invited Sunderland to attack us and they snatched a point. Whisper it, but Sunderland aren't actually very good and we have to view this as two points dropped. If we play in similar fashion against more talented teams we are asking for trouble.

We did play some fantastic stuff at times though and it is endlessly frustrating that our first instinct is always to defend, because if we really went for it we could do some damage. I'm not holding my breath though, because on a very loquacious day for Steve Bruce he commented along the lines that we need to concentrate on not giving anything away.

According to Bruce, football academies aren't working. The nation produces no more footballers now than it did 20 years ago. He has said that over the last 6 years Blues have spent over a million quid each year on the academy, yet no one has come through. So 6 million quid and we haven't produced anyone fit to lace the boots of Steve Bryant. Bruce should be ashamed of himself and resign now, as this is the saddest of all indictments of his reign.

If he has seen that our youth coaches are so useless, why has he not done something about it. With whom does the buck stop? I can think of three Brummies in the premier league outside the Villa. Carsley, Richards and someone else whose name escapes me. What a great scouting and coaching system we must have in a city of about a million people and a conurbation of about 3 million.

I don't get what Bruce is saying. Does he mean we just don't have the talent in the country? That the coaching is shit? or that the coaching is pointless? My guess is that he doesn't believe that theorising about the game has any value; you either have it you don't and the cream will always rise to the top. I might be wrong and I hope I am, because if I am right I might just have to open a vein.

Ajax don't seem to have done too badly with their numerous and varied academies, nor with the barmy idea that, up to to the age of twelve, results don't matter, learning new skills does. Barcelona don't seem to have too much trouble unearthing gems, I believe Fabregas went to Arsenal when he was nipper because he was some way down the pecking order at Barcelona. And on it goes, even in the Côte d'Ivoire, where the academy in Abidjan has noticeably more success at turning out players than Blues, with all our millions. Nearer home, Southampton seem to have a conveyor belt of talent.

Sometimes, old Bruce just makes me feel sad.

Did I mention that tomorrows game is a vital six pointer. Two games in and we are in a relegation dogfight! Win tomorrow and the future is rosy................. lose, and it is going to be a long, hard, dark, and depressing winter.

Pick Up The Pieces

As I have been saying about inequality:

The increasing concentration of income and wealth in the hands of a tiny elite isn't only a gross affront to social justice and any sense of equal worth in a single community. The evidence is clear that greater inequality fuels crime, corrodes democracy, divides our cities, prices people out of housing, skews the economy, is an engine of social apartheid, heightens ethnic tensions, is a barrier to opportunity and stifles social mobility - it's no coincidence that Britain and the US are at the bottom of the industrialised states' social mobility league and the more egalitarian Scandinavian countries at the top.

Another day another slaughter. In my usual naive and simplistic way I cannot see how this is allowed to continue. Forget about the Americans, surely the people of Iraq, those of the who are left, who haven't already died or left for pastures new have had enough? This is what I don't understand. The perpetrators of this mayhem cannot number all that many, so how come those with more goodness in their hearts don't denounce them, don't drive them out, don't betray them?

I appreciate that this is easier said than done and it would be a very brave man who stuck his head over the parapet, still, no rational person can imagine that these atrocities are in any way just or can be condoned. The horror of it is beyond imagining, surely, there are enough sane people left in Iraq who could just turn their backs on the crazed zealots, who could refuse to give them shelter or succour; the place is awash with weaponry, even the good guys must have guns with which to defend themselves, why don't they just turn their backs on the nutters?

There is always football to take our minds off the savagery:

The atmosphere will not resemble carnival celebrations characteristic of sports around the world, but something completely different. The special circumstances are noticeable kilometres away from the stadium itself. There will be special police forces in full riot gear at each big crossing, main streets shimmering blue with police uniforms and police vehicles, and citizens removing their vehicles and avoiding passing by the stadium with their families.

Ken Bruen: To Have And To Hold

We want to control other people and make them what we want them to be. Meanwhile, we are complaining that they do not accept us the way we are. Sometimes the biggest gift we can give to other people is just to let them be. Of course we try and help others, but helping others is very different from controlling them. We help others because we care about them; we control them because we care about ourselves.
- Ven. Chodron

Who Put The Bomp (In The Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)

For one week only, I am supporting Sarajevo, who might just qualify for the Champions League. Recent history in Germany, France, Spain and Italy shows that clubs can surpass expectations and thrive amongst their so called betters, a lesson to us all. We don't have to settle for seventeenth and survival, somebody does, but it doesn't have to be us!

A good start to the season for the Blues. OK , we lost, but we didn't embarrass ourselves and even surprised a few people, including every single one of us. Grave tending duties called me away on Sunday afternoon so I haven't seen much of the game, only about the first ten minutes and I can't say I was impressed, as we just endlessly kicked the ball back to Chelsea. Here we go, I though, same old same old, but it seems that we actually took the game too them and might well have won; I'm still not getting carried away though.

Looking around the superb Saturday Boy to find out what the term Donkey Punch means, I discovered more than I actually wanted to know! I haven't read the novel yet, having only picked it up from the library yesterday, but I suspect it won't leave me disappointed; I just wonder if I should read Saturdays Child first. If the author is anywhere near as good as the authors he likes, well, we will be alright.

I finished The Winter of Frankie Machine. I found it a bit strange reading it, after the Scent of Blood. The latter basically subverts and takes the piss out of the language used in crime books, and then subverts it some more. The Frankie book is full of such dialogue. It doesn't matter though because it is brilliant, and quite different from the also brilliant Power Of The Dog and is full of likeable psychopaths with a fine line in witty repartee.

I read or heard somewhere the other week that the ending toThe Shawshank Redemption isn't the original ending; it was tacked on because the studio didn't want the film to finish on too bleak a note and I wonder if something similar happened here, not that I would want to give the ending away, which would be a crime worthy of a donkey punch in anyones book.

Book recommender in chief, Bob Piper, thinks the book should be filmed and while I see his point, I disagree. The only bloke who could play Frankie Machine is Ben Gazzarra, and he's has to be dead by now.

The time has come to renew my Typepad subscription and I have to consider whether it is worth the money, and, in my case, it isn't. I no longer post enough and I don't get anything like enough visitors to justify it. While I have been gone, Blogger has improved enormously and many of the benefits that I associated with Typepad are now available here, for free, so this is where I shall be doing my blogging, for now, anyway.

You will have to excuse it being a bit crap and messy for a while; it requires a bit of maintenance and housekeeping, and I'm not good at that stuff. Also. I don't think I can be bothered with setting up another blog for the more discursive, personal stuff so you might find a bit more of that on here, if you can stomach it!

I just had a look at the Wychwood Festival site to see if any acts had been announced yet and saw that Country Joe McDonald will be performing. Now I am aware of the man, from the sixties and Woodstock and all that, but I have no knowledge of his music, but there is no reason to remain in ignorance as his website has dozens of songs available to listen to, for free.

Bloody ell. I sign up for Typepad, and now they give Blogger Pro away for free!

For the time being, most of my blogging will over at Typepad.

Oh dear. I am financially phobic.

A brilliant interview with Jake La Motta. If you can get hold of the Observer Sports Monthly, from which it comes, it has some brilliant photos, including one of La Motta knocking Sugar Ray Robinson clean out of the ring.

Bush or Chimp

I find Michael Palin alright in small doses, his website is something to shout about though, jam packed with good stuff it is.

Le Tour

Margaret Hodge reckons that having screwed up so badly in failing to protect the children of Islington she is uniquely qualified for the job of minister for children. Her logic defeats me.
I do not as a rule call for resignations or sackings when people cock up, everyone makes mistakes and the blame culture we live in appalls me.
This is different, she is putting her career first. She is a self seeking cow. If she had any sense she would have seen this coming and declined this job, but no, her eyes and her ego were too big.
It is question I seem to be asking on a daily basis, what happened to the notion of "the buck stops here"?
Children deserve much better

Jeffrey John, the gay vicar who was made a bishop has decided not to take the job. Now, I think he has made the wrong decision, nevertheless here is a chap, who has seen the bigger picture and made what he evidently thinks is the right decision; not for him, but for those he serves.
As bad as the fact that he has had to turn the job downs on grounds of sexuality is that he has to ask the Queens permission to turn it down. Sometimes this country just embarrasses me.


Democratic Underground.

Mr Stabby.

Thanks to Brian, Blues fan, Grand Fromage at Singing The Blues and citizen of Acocks Green, for directing me, in a roundabout sort of way, to the FBI file on Lenny Bruce.

Worldwide Wales TV has little films on all sorts of Welsh towns, including Cwmbran. Leaving aside the fact it is a completely untrue representation of the shithole, it is chuffin hilarious!

Cows With Guns, a brilliant animation and song.

Posts on both my blogs might be thin on the ground for the next week or so. I have managed to get msyelf accepted as a tester for Typepad, a new service which will be up and running, once they have finished testing I suppose. At first glance it looks bloody brilliant, but will be a subscription service, so it depends on the cost as to whether I actually take it up. In the meantime I shall have some fun with it.
So, if things look quiet around here it is probably because I am messing about there. Feel free to look, though it will probably be a bit messy, as I don't really know what I am going to do with it!

Quiz for the bookish among us. I got ten out of thirteen.

This is all a bit pointless, but fun nevertheless, in an annoying sort of a way. Say the colour, not the word.

Bukowski.

I love American noir novels from the thirties and forties, the best of them are much underrated. Bookforum has a brilliant piece on James M Cain.

Church of Me is a blog by a very wordy music fan, too wordy, some might say, but I like it.
Spin is a little more prosaic, but worth a look.

Anyone who has read my other blog will know that I am not very enamoured of my job at the moment. What makes it worse is that at the end of every month, long before the end of every month, I am left without a pot to piss in. I got paid 4 measly days ago and already we have no clue how will get through the month.
So. I have been economising. People keep telling me how good Aldi's wine is, so on the basis that it has to be better than no wine at all, I paid my first visit to an Aldi. I went for one of their more expensive wines, an organic Cabernet from California, at £3.99. It is, in fact........crap. It will do though.
I also got a Chiliean Sauvignon Blanc for 2.99. I am a bit scared of it.


Steve Bell

For such a powerful piece of prose the Declaration of Independence, is a flimsy little thing, well worth reading and it won't detain you long. I wish we had such a thing in Britain. Mind you, I dont think it counts for much in the U.S at the moment.
Magna Carta

I am probably the last eejit in the world to come across this, but here goes. Go to google and type in "weapons of mass destruction" then hit I'm feeling lucky. That's it.
It doesn't work with the toolbar, go to the google homepage to do it.
I downloaded version 2 of the toolbar yesterday, it has a very impressive pop up stopper.

Duct tape ball is bloody annoying.

Misanthrope has updated.

Inspired by Singing The Blues, I shall have a go at the Friday Five.

1. What were your favorite childhood stories?

I used to love Aesops Fables and also when I was a righ nipper in school we all used to sit in the hall and listen to listen with mother. I never knew my mother before she pegged it, and I used to find that programme incredibly reassuring. Probably subconsciously wishing the comforting middle class voice was my mother in heaven, reading to me.

2. What books from your childhood would you like to share with [your] children?

Tom Sawyer

3. Have you re-read any of those childhood stories and been surprised by anything?
Not really. With anything by Twain I suppose you are surprised at how good he is. With anything else that I read to my nippers, I am afraid I am even more starkly aware at how middle class and trite it all is.

4. How old were you when you first learned to read?

I think I may have been able to recognise some words before I went to school, I certainly learned to read very quickly once I started formal education. It's been a pleasure and a curse ever since.

5. Do you remember the first 'grown-up' book you read? How old were you?

I don't remember what it was, probably some porn from the new english library. I jest.
I don't know what it is like now, but when I was a nipper, the branch library in Acocks Green was open till 8 p.m, every night, and I loved that place, I would stay in there till they kicked me out.
They had a biggish junior section, then the adults section stated with a row of shelves which were suitable for teens. I used to sneak around and have a look, not thinking I could read those books as I was only ten, even though my brother was feeding me stuff like Kes and Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner at home.
I think the first adult book I read must have been Kes, or Walkabout.
There is a book I read when I was about 11 or 12 that haunts me to this day. It was about a nipper on his way to a family thing who witness some dastardly business on a train in fenland. He hops it and then and has to trek across county in the snow, pursued by the neerdowells. It was brilliant; I have no idea what it was called or who wrote it.

An interesting (or not) addendum to the libraries thing is that the library in this town close at 5 every night, except Wenesdays and Saturdays when it closes at 12. In Brum, libraries were open till 8 even in the early sixties. And they smelled wonderful too. It is an unfairly maligned city. Don't belive the hype if you read of the love of literature and education in the South Wales valleys.

All you didn't need to know about the number 23.

Now that young Bush has so selflessly liberated the people of Iraq from a murderous regime, do you suppose he will be turning his attention The Congo and Liberia?

What have refugees ever done for us?

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey website is as good as it gets. Where else could you read the details of the court case of several rioters, which took place on this day in 1749, and much else besides.

I have been looking for a decent recipe for apple muffins for ages, but can't find one. I used to have one, but I lost it. TheWilliams Sonoma websites primary purpose is to sell you things, but it has an ace collection of recipes, including one that looks pretty good for hazlenut muffins and this cool looking drink based on horchata. Mrs Buddha loves horchata, I will be earning myself some kudos with this. All I need to do now is find out what the hell a stick of butter is.



Back on Tack is one of those sites that provides dozens of photos illustrating the eccentricity of roadside America. Well worth a look.

The beauty of the web is that I can sit here at 9pm on a Wednesday listening to Monday nights Late Junction. As beautiful, soothing and , well, sexy as Fiona Talkingtons timbre is, I wish she would not pronounce Gillian Welch with a hard G, it's very irritating, even if it is, in fact, correct.

Hemingway's youngest son, Gregory, died in 2001 as a transsexual named Gloria, of causes that put a lot of strain on the term "natural."
The excellent Today In Literature on the suicide of Hemingway on this day in 1961. It seems to run in the family.
Me and Hemingway share a birthdate, and funny enough, I'm feeling suicidal.
Hemingway resource centre. Copious.

A lot of the more obscure political stuff I have linked to over the months was found on Floating Wreckage: Jettisoned Cargo which was a fantastic resource. I can barely believe it was run by one guy. I can believe, depressingly, that it has ceased to be, although some archives remain. The little corner of the radical world that is my kitchen is bereft.
If you have never seen it, have a look, just to see what you have missed.

Here in Cwmbran we have a Jim Crow Square and I have wondered, from time to time, who the bugger is. Plep comes to the rescue, with this link to a museum of Jim Crow.
A quick google provided links to loads of other sites, including this one and this one.
So the town I live in has a square in it named after a mythical character synonymous with the worst of Americas racist history. Nice.
Cwmbrans most famous son, apart from Helen of Big Brother fame, is John Fielding, who won a V.C at Rorke's Drift. Undoubtedly, he was incredibly brave, but he is famous for killing Zulus, admittedly who were trying to kill him. Still, I gotta get out of this town.

I am not often persuaded to agree wityh the Bloody Tories ( I grew up thinking they were actually called The Bloody Tories), but I am with them on the scandal of Margaret Hodge. I think I expressed some outrage following the inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie, that the poor bloody infantry lost their jobs and careers while their superiors, to a man , up to and including the chief executive found themselves in better paid positions. Sickening.
Now we have Hodge, who completely failed abused children in a major London borough, being made minister for children.
Do these fuckers have no shame?

I had lost The War Prayer, but have found it again. Mark Twain is definitely my number one hero, amongst many. Mrs Buddha forbids me to try and infleunce the nippers in their likes and dislikes, I cannot shove the Blues down their throats, for instance, or instruct them to challenge the Christian ethos prevalent in the school nipper number one attends, and I can see the sense in it. However I did force Tom Sawyer upon nipper number one, disastrously. I shan't be doing that againg in a hurry. I hope I haven't put him off for life.

The origin of Chilli Con Carne.

Norman Mailer asks the question: "why did we go to war?", brilliantly.

If anyone has any bright career changing ideas, the Misanthrope would like to know about them.

This word game should keep Bluetitch occupied, it's bloody hard. I got 5 out of ten on my first attempt, which I thought was good, but was, in fact, crap.

The new Blaenavon, day one.

This NYT article on a chaps last Sunday lunch with his mother is a beautiful piece.

NYT interview with, and appraisal of, Clive James

Ode to Tomatoes,and other things by Pablo Neruda, who also wrote love poetry, including this.
He wrote Il Postino, which was made into a film that is well worth getting your hands on, especially if you want to earn romantic kudos by making your Mrs cry.

Somebody appreciates you.

Evil clown generator.

Paul Kimmage is one of the very few reasons why I persist with the Sunday Times, his in depth interviews are excellent.
He was a professional cyclist in the 80's and here he gives a brilliant account of what it is actually like to ride in the Tour de France.

I moan and moan about the BBC's coverage of Glastonbury, but I should just be grateful that we have it at all, it is definitely one of the highlights of the years viewing, especially mow BBC 3 covers it for hours on end.
This year the presenters have been less irritating than usual, the odious Phil Jupitus apart, but still they persist in showing the same bands playing the same songs over and over again. There miust be loads of good stuff going on but all we see is endless re runs of the likes of Radiohead and for some reason, Suede. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen Freddie and the Dreamers over the last 2 days; sorry, of course I mean The Coral. As I type, David Gray is on, again, for about the hundredth time.

Still, we at least got to see a superb and absolutely barking set by The Flaming Lips. I'm a bit fed up about that actually, having been banging on about them for at least 2 years now every silly chuffer is going to know them, and I can't show off. There is a good interview with chief lip, Wayne Coyne, in the Observer. He does seem genuinely off the wall. I like the guy.
Article on the subtle and not so subtle ways Glastonbury has changed this year.

I have had one of those long months where you just end up skint, so did no shopping this weekend, as I had nothing to shop with. Not to worry, we are resourceful, and the kitchen is full of stuff, so we weren't about to starve. I knocked up a carbonara at dinner time, and the kids dug up some of their own spuds which they scoffed with an omelette for tea.

For me and Mrs Buddha I did a simple baked spud. Caramelised some onions, frizzled some pancetta with them at the end, mixed up with the flesh of the spuds, with some Parmesan and Gruyere, all well lubricated with some good olive oil, before shoving back in the oven. It looked good and it smelled good. Unfortunately, another endless repeat started on the Glastonbury coverage, but it was the Lips, so I just set the time and departed for the living room.
Set it for 20 minutes, but forgot to press the button for conventional oven. So they had 20 minutes at 800 watts microwave power. Ever so slightly burnt. I am starving now but can't be arsed to cook anything else. Beer and crisps, I think will do the trick.

Found on B3TA a photo of a message left on the fridge in a shared house, may or may not be genuine.

10 things we were told about Iraq that appear to lack veracity.