Idle Dreary Days

maybe if the global timeline’s less cluttered we’ll start to focus more on what’s happening in front of our noses. If it’s relatively quiet, David Cameron is likely to start getting it in the neck. If anyone has benefited from an action-packed year, it’s him. Every time the shit was about to hit the fan for Cameron in 2011, something spectacular happened somewhere else on the map and he somehow managed to slip away unscathed during the commotion. It’s as though no-one genuinely believes he’s responsible for anything, in much the same way as no-one seems to blame Ant and Dec for shoving cockroaches up Fatima Whitbread’s nose because they’re merely the frontmen…

…I wouldn’t be surprised to discover Cameron has been making all this news up: he’s paying the media to run entirely fictional stories to distract us whenever he cocks up – just like the fictional military campaign in Wag the Dog but with a bit more variety. If that’s the case, then I have a newfound respect for the prime minister: he has a vivid imagination. That nuclear reactor thing in Japan was a bold move….

Unless your relationship with your parent is genuinely communicative – a rare state of affairs and one that I frankly consider un-British – then ignoring Father’s Day is making the following statement: I’m happier to risk my father thinking that I don’t care about him than society at large thinking I’m a mug.

What a brilliant form of extortion. It works on the same principle as kidnapping – that people’s concern for their family usually outstrips their aversion to being ripped off – but doesn’t have the attendant legal problems.

…I do not want to lose the ethical, political, and also ideological at times, case for abortion rights and reproductive justice. Women have the right to own and control what happens to their bodies. These rights are enshrined in laws and human rights principles that the UK has signed up to. And all women are entitled to them….

let’s also remember that our work is political: our rights to our bodies is a contested ideological terrain. Let’s not be so keen to leave this arena lest we suddenly find ourselves out of the conversation altogether

A few nights ago i walked into a pub on my way home and ordered a guiness.
I didn’t look at my watch, but i knew it was before 8 o’clock. It was tuesday and i could hear the television in the background still running the latest episode of ‘Eastenders’ - a soap about the day-to-day life of cheeky, cheery working-class people, in a decaying, mythical part of London.
I sat in a booth and picked up a copy of a free newspaper someone had left on the seat beside me. I’d read it before. There wasn’t much news in it. I put down the paper and decided to sit at the bar.
It wasn’t a busy night. I could hear the murmuring of the distant TV above the chatter of the people at the bar and the clack clack of colliding snooker balls.
After ‘Eastenders’ came ‘Porridge’ - a re-run of a situation comedy series about a cheeky, cheery prisoner in a comfortably unoppressive, decaying victorian prison.
Almost imperceptibly, spirits leaked from the optics of upturned bottles behind the bar. Droplets of whiskey and vodka formed and fell soundlessly as i watched.
I finished my drink. I looked up and the barman caught my eye. “Guinness?” he asked, already reaching for a fresh glass. I nodded.
The barman’s wife arrived and began to help with the trickle of customer’s orders.
At 8:30, folliwng ‘Porridge’ came ‘A Question of Sport’ - a simple panel quiz game featuring cheeky, cheery sports celebrities answering questions about other sports celebrities, many of
whom were as cheeky and cheery as themselves.

Jocularity reigned.

“I’ll tell the barman about the leaking optics” I thought.
“The Nine O’Clock News” follwed “A Question of Sport”. Or, at least for 30 seconds it did, before the television was switched off and cheeky, cheery pop music took its place.
I looked over at the barman. “Just half this time” i said.
As he filled the glass, i solemnly asked him why he’d switched off the news. “Don’t ask me - that was the wife” he replied, in a cheeky, cheery manner, as the subject of his playful targeting bustled in the corner of the bar.
The leaking optics had ceased to have any importance for me.
I finished my drink and left, almost certain the TV would be silent for the rest of the evening. For after ‘The Nine O’Clock News’ would have come ‘The Boys From Brazil’, a film with few cheeky, cheery characters in it, which is all about a bunch of nazis creating 94 clones of Adolf Hitler.
There aren’t many cheeky, cheery characters in V FOR VENDETTA either; and it’s for people who don’t switch off the news.