Remember

Down from the church where etched names had faded to leave numbers.

Two years old. Six months old. Twelve years old.

The valley spread out before them as was and will be. Nothing here has moved. Nothing is moving still.

And the cars are lined up at the bottom of the hill, passengers bowed and the engines muffled. Surrounding what is, ridiculously, a roundabout. What was, before, and is, somehow, a monument. A lone pillar. And a circle of us. Watching.

Names here etched and not faded. Not in stone and not in memory. Each syllable on the lips of the blue blazers, with red poppies and a row of shined metal.

And the bugler blows as the signal for it to begin. Silence, then. And still nothing moves.

School children in yellow jumpers hold flags and know that something happened, but the generation has slipped. It’s not Grandad now. And it’s an ask to make them understand it. You can see that, you can see there are less each time.

But there is enough, today. Ironed. Pressed. Combed. Each year to relive what was. It is a shared burden. It is a kind of death, still.

And the church bells ring as those chosen lay wreaths at the foot of concrete to remember.

And then the army major screams his order and the drum beats the march and the procession turns and marches up the hill.

The church waits, as it always does. It’s doors always open to receive those who always will end up there. Names that soon too, will fade to leave numbers.

Hero

They walked up the stairs of the bus and stared at us like they were the police. If it wasn’t for the big, ugly TFL badges on their coats I would have expected them to pounce on an innocent member of the public and shoot them several times on suspicion of being a terrorist. As it was, they were here to check tickets.

Not that that lessened their own sense of self-importance in any way. They checked tickets like immigration papers in Australia or religious persuasion in Nazi Germany. You half expected them to pull out some chalk and plaster star of davids on the back of offending ticket-jumpers’ seats.

As it was, they didn’t get a ‘hit’ until they reached the man opposite. The smile on their faces, it was evil. The misguided sense of power, edible it was so apparent.

I’ll be brief: the passenger’s student bus pass was out of date. He explained that this was due to the Royal Mail strike preventing delivery of his new card. The TFL website, he explained, said old student passes could be used for seven days after expiry due to the Royal Mail problems.

Fair enough, right?

Wrong, apparently. The inspectors, showing an amazing degree of intelligence, said: “Well we haven’t got the internet have we, so we can’t prove if that’s true.”

The they said they were going to charge him £150.

He argued, obviously. So they rang base. And were told that the website said nothing about student cards. They argued some more.

Then they took him to the back of the bus for correction from where we heard the screams of indignation and torture.

Jade demanded I come to the rescue and, like a modern day Schindler, I got on the mobile internet to the tfl website.

Guess what?

Within three clicks there was a big banner saying how expired student cards were valid because of the Royal Mails trike. How did ‘base’ miss that I wonder?

Trembling, I walked to the back of the bus. They saw me coming. They saw something was up. I knelt down and handed my phone to the passenger.

“Is this what you read on the site?”

Jubilation. Yes, I was a hero. I didn’t want applause but God I deserved it. He was in shock, the experience had been traumatic. But he was grateful. Yes, I was a hero.

The inspectors poured over it. They looked for trickery and counterfeit. They were lost. They had lost. We smiled. We smiled and were happy. I hid my trembling hand. No weakness. NO WEAKNESS.

I walked back proud and largely ignored by the rest of the bus. We heard the inspectors giving the passenger his name and address back. And them apologise for the next twenty minutes, babbling about following wrong orders.

England is full of little Hitlers. The receptionist at the doctor’s surgery, the shop manager, the community support officer, the traffic warden, the underperforming line manager, the health and safety officer… and pretty much all of TFL.

Stand up to them England. Your hand may tremble, but you could be a hero.

Masks

The man at the bar in the dress slides down the bar and schmoozes. Face made up and a cape. Leering and red-eyed. “What have you come as?”

“For you, mainly disappointment and minor embarrassment, possibly with a hint of a reminder of your own misguided inflated self-worth”

He’s serving us pints later.

And Lara Croft is sat behind me, middle-aged and overweight. And the slutty witch in the mask keeps staring at me. Directly. Not hint of deception. It’s brisk.

Behind the girls stand the vampire and the ghost, hovering. Grinning. They’ve never been this close. I sit and they scurry.

And Scooby Doo and a wind-up doll are entertaining as we watch. The three witches to our left, obese and rotten, applaud and wish. The dance floor is open space. But in comes the short skirt swaying and the fat friend shuffling and they taunt into some kind of separation. We’re watching two shows. There’s, and Scooby’s.

“Confident or drunk?”

Jade considers.

“She can move. And she’s not ugly. The former.”

Two lads try their luck, but the luck’s out. It’s a solo dance. And the band whip it up and the girl sways sideways and tempts more in. Soon they’re all up there swaying.

And the old man from the start. The one who shouted “ABRAHAM ABRAHAM” to the Dracula question, his mullet rippling, he’s up there too. Smiling.

We weave through ghouls and goblins and witches and wizards and bats and devils and we wink goodbye to Wonder Woman, still trying his look, red eyes redder.

To think, we didn’t dress up. On Halloween.

It leaves you without the excuse.

Date

Blond girl. Blond guy. Standing at the bottom of the lift.

Lunchtime date. Definitely. There’s that nervous standing too far apart thing going on.

She looks at him, jolly, bubbly. He’s trying to look cool. His hair is platered to his head. He’s made an effort.

“So,” he says, arms raised as he says it, offering.

“So,” she says, expectant, waiting, wanting.

Now’s his chance. Seal it. Ask her. Make a joke. Something. Be creative.

“So,” he says.

And I have watched Spring’s first blossom get trod into April showered pavement.

 

Single

When Beyonce sang “All my single ladies”, I wonder who she had in mind. Because, in my experience, single lady friends of happily loved up ladies are not the nicest of people (with notable exceptions, you may ask if you are one of them).

Far from wanting to have a nice dance around a white room in their leotard, they would rather sit and drink themselves into a messy pile of bitterness and paranoia. Far from strong independent females standing shoulder to shoulder, they are instead taking careful aim at their friend’s back. With a rather large knife. And far from, god forbid, being happy for their loved-up friend, they instead concentrate all their efforts on being as cuntish as possible.

I say this from practical experience.

Meeting for a drink with Jade’s friend who previously asked if I could be left at home when we come to visit Jade’s parents. Responding to this, Jade had taken two days off to spend time with her before me weekend arrival. She had behaved impeccably for those two days, obviously.  Saturday night, when I arrived, less so.

Early warning signs consisted of:

1.  The fact she was paralytic

2.  The fact she was completely paranoid

3.  The fact she gave me an evil look when asked if she wanted a drink then replied “Vodka and orange, he can afford it.” Not even a ‘you’ but a ‘he’. Ouch.

Clearly, it deteriorated. An hour of comments such as “Jon is about six levels below you” ended with me standing outside with the bouncers, having foolishly offered to walk the paralytic mess to a taxi, which was met with a “YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT ME!”, and waiting for Jade to talk some sense into her.

The three of us, me and the two bouncers, stood outside and watched the two girls scream at each other in the doorway.

“YOU’VE CHANGED” was the main thrust of the argument. Well it was the only thrust of the argument. It was single engined and spluttering badly.

“We don’t tend to get involved in those ones,” said the bouncer eyeing them wearily.

“Thank yourself lucky you have a choice,” I replied.

After much trouble we got her into a taxi and packed her off to her self-imposed hell.

Not the best way to end an evening, being accused of abandoning your friend, being changed by an evil boyfriend, not being a true person, lying… Jade did well not to punch in her self-obsessed face.

And it isn’t uncommon to have this. Women all over the world who are single and over 25 suddenly become complete arse holes to their taken friends. Bitter and nasty and irrational. They are incapable of being happy for a friend and instead want to punish them.

To them I say grow the fuck up.

Trapped

There was a fair bit of choice. And I had four pints of the exotically named and rather tasty Lindeboom in my belly. And my bloodstream. Hence Somerfield became stupendously confusing.

I was trying to persuade myself to be healthy while stood next to the chocolate muffins. Chocolate, nuts, that’s a fruit isn’t? I thought about asking the American couple next to me who were testing the bread for softness. But they appeared to be unfriendly. They had thin faces with bones and teeth and well it looked all a bit severe. And I wasn’t confident I could articulate it.

I couldn’t really justify £1.98 on chocolate muffins. Mainly because I couldn’t count my change. To do that would have required a degree of balance that as far as I could tell I had pissed into the blocked urinal along with what was left of the Lindeboom after it’s corrosive journey through my body.

So I sloped over to the cereal and the more roundly priced variety pack. Variety. Now that is interesting. I spent some time studying the variety and discovered that in fact it was not as various as it claimed. Two packs of Frosties and two packs of Coco Pops. And one box of something pretending not to be Coco Pops but that was Coco Pops. So out of 8 boxes 5 were not very various at all. This must be how God thought after thinking he made a multi-cultural world. Boil it all down and we’re all bloody Coco Pops.

Still, chocolate. And the health illusion of milk. Done deal.

Milk. I’ll be needing that won’t I? Hmmm, two pints. That should do it. Now to pick it up. Variety pack in one hand, bag hanging off the other shoulder. Something’s going to give.

I put it all down. Put the milk next to it. Then picked all three up in a bear hug. In retrospect, it probably looked mental.

So I go queue and the queue is quite long. So the spot I join is opposite the magazines and there’s two girls on the front of Zoo with pretty faces and breasts the size of shopping bags. Not just normal shopping bags but those monstrous bags for life. Except bags for life don’t have any plastic anymore and those girl’s boobs, well, they were about as natural as Kelly Brook acting.

And the person in front of me in the queue is a woman and the person behind me is a woman and they both look it me as if I am a pervert.

It’s a problem. Male on his own, slightly drunk, clutching a variety pack and a two-pint bottle of milk at 10.30pm and standing next to a couple of blondes with their baps out on the front of a magazine.

It didn’t look good for me. They were positively begging me to pick up the magazine so they could tut. I swear the one behind me tutted anyway, just in case I took it. Sexist that is. They don’t have to contend with naked men with surgically enhanced cocks staring at them in a queue.

Luckily, the staff at Somerfield are very efficient and I soon found myself at the till where, in putting down my items, I managed to spill change all over the counter. Which was great. The check out guy just stared at me, justifiably, as I scavenged my coins back, helplessly trying to put my non-existent finger nails under the coins to elevate them from the shiny flat service. I sacrificed a penny. It just wasn’t worth it.

And then off I went. Back to an empty flat. My variety pack in hand.

I don’t think I’ll go back to that Somerfield. You know, because.

Baboons

AA Gill shot a Baboon, so he could feel what it felt like to kill a human. If you killed person, because you thought they were the devil, you still get done for murder, despite you not believing the victim to be human.

As AA Gill seems to think Baboons are humans, even though they are not, should the same rule not apply? He shot it because he believed it close enough to human to give him the murder’s adrenalin rush. Danger to society: AA Gill. Lock the bugger up.

Twitter is positively cumming with indignation obviously. I’m starting to think it should be renamed the PCC. It seems that no newspaper is safe from the bandwagon portal that is twitter. Log on. You just take a look. There are people on there who’d kill a Baboon just to have the chance to join a trending topic and let everyone know they’re outraged.

And there’s the entirely repugnant victory dance. Seventeen million smug “TWITTER DID IT!” posts. No-one seems to realise how incredibly white middle class it all is. They’re essentially writing angry letters. And then celebrating ‘people power’ like Twitter is their child who just managed to shit in a toilet for the first time. “Well done Jimmy! Now to get you to wipe your own arse.”

Eugh.

It spoils the fact they are generally right. Jan Moir is a cunt, AA Gill is a cunt. Trafigura are cunts… the list goes on.

But then there is something unsavoury in the need to constantly try and prove you are on the side of right, screaming “I’M AGAINST STUFF TOO!”. It’s a bit like saying, yeah, I love black people. It’s a tad patronising.

But I guess that’s Twitter. At university I was horrified by the number of Guardian-hugging (but never bothering to read) liberals, most of whom did not understand what liberal emant, speaking for minorities when trying to speak up for them. I found it repulsive. And I see similar traits on Twitter.

You know, it kind of makes you have homicidal thoughts. I wonder what it’s like to kill a human. Maybe I’ll shoot a Baboon, they’re pretty much a human, aren’t they?

Oh dear. I’m AA Gill. Perhaps he was on Twitter at the time?

 

Shop

There’s a man touching a bin. And there are several others watching. It’s a bin orgy. Flaps being pulled up. Buttons pushed. Yeah, they’re getting really into it. Go on, give it a stroke. Yeah, that’s better. You love that action.

And everywhere is white. Fridges, freezers, washing machines, dishwashers, lights, floors… people. It’s a BNP wet dream in here. Anaemic. Polished.

And it’s our first time. We’re nervous. John Lewis. What if someone finds out we don’t have a mortgage or a child at grammar school? Am I really ready to feel the wrath of a strongly worded letter on headed paper?

Fuck it Jade, we’re out of our depth.

We cross the road and, my god, I haven’t seen something this full of shit since I last watched Kate Humble present on the BBC. It’s like someone kidnapped the local bootsale and dressed it in a shellsuit. TK Maxx.

I’m looking for a fire exit. This much polyester melting could be Pompei all over again. Within thirty seconds it’d be a life-sized lego town.

We reach the shoes and I pick up a pair of trainers. Around fifteen pistachio shells drop out. Of course they do. It’s a shop and there are fifteen million fucking shoes so why the fuck wouldn’t I pick up a pair and pistachio shells fall out of it? Stop being unreasonable Jon. Don’t judge it.

Fuck you. Political correctness can kick itself in the cunt. I’m leaving this shit pit. I need a shower.

But I can’t leave because some obese collection of fat cells with a mouth is pushing a trolley and picking up tat like Pac Man. A gigantic ball with a gigantic mouth consuming everything it sees. It’s a juggernaut of cholesterol and BO.

We’re outside and I’m breathing in the fresh air and Jade is giving me that look. Maybe it’s us. We don’t fit in.

Ahhh but H&M. There you are. I snuggle a sweat-shop-pretending-not-be-a-sweat-shop produced t-shirt and know I’m home.

Shuffle

Recently, I have been dropping in, sporadically, on Jade’s relationship with her ex – a man I have seen a picture of just once when in the midst of paranoia I sought out his myspace page and was gleefully faced with the antithesis of myself – a very effeminate metrosexual pretty boy. But, thankfully, one good looking enough to assure me my Mrs has, at least, taste, even if it was directed, for a time, to the wrong type of aesthetic (yeah, take that articulation).

And I say ‘dropping in’ purposefully, though you may think it not literal.

For when a couple attains a level of togetherness, there comes a mixing of possessions, a blurred line: a mixed iTunes. And a mixed iTunes gives a mixed list of songs from which to select when a person presses shuffle on an ipod.

So, when riding the tube home the other day, the strains of a song I knew not but rather enjoyed. I swiped my thumb and there it was. Death Cab for Cutie.

Right.

Not only was this a band I had discarded without listening to due to the fact their name reeked so much of American emo that you almost bleed black eye liner upon listening to it before writing poetry about how no-one gets you, but it was also, probably, pretty much certainly, given to Jade by her ex boyfriend.

And more bands have popped up since with the same back story.

They were songs given by a lover to a lover, and then the love ended. Then they were handed to a new lover. They are love batons. Not in a sleazy sense. Not literally.

They are songs that were shared by them, that came to symbolise moments in their relationship, that triggered memories, that were in jokes and sly grins, that were presents and gigs and birthdays, that, let’s not be afraid to be crude, they probably shagged to (but in a far inferior physical expression of passion than her current arrangement, obviously).

And you think it’s weird, don’t you? Odd that I am willingly opening up the past.

But I like the songs, mostly, and they’re only songs, right? It’s not that I am sadistically making myself listen to them in an effort to come to terms with a past that has traumatised me, I’m not that pre-mediated. Or traumatised, for that matter.

You can’t erase history anyway, you can’t cheat it.

I just like to think I have attained a level of maturity, of comfortableness, where it doesn’t matter what those songs once stood for, perhaps still stand for. It happened. The meaning is not mine to worry about. It’s Jade’s, and her ex’s.

For the most part, for me, they are just songs I like listening to.

Except Dashboard Confessional. They are just shit. Vomit in a sugar bowl. And any man listening to that must have a small cock.

A-hem.

Jon 1, ex 0.

BNP

So Nick Griffin is on Question Time tonight. That’s BNP leader and national figure of fun Nick Griffin. It’s a bit like inviting David Ike on to Question Time. You know David Ike? Check it out. Scary stuff.

Except that Nick Griffin is an elected member of the European Parliament. So, in the north-west at least, he is not completely a joke figure. Some people haven’t got the joke. That Nick Griffin, is a joke.

Which scares a lot of people. They think that by putting him on Question Time we are in some way giving legitimacy to his views. And that means more people will not get the joke. That Nick Griffin is a joke.

The thought goes that some people may believe Nick Griffin tonight when he denies the holocaust. Or when he says that non-white people are ruining Britain. Or whatever else he says to incite a reaction. Because that’s what he is doing. Baiting you. He went to Cambridge, he’s educated enough to know he’s talking bollocks, but with infamy comes fame, and you get the impression he likes the attention.

Even more reason to keep him off the telly then!

Well, not really. As an elected member of the EU he has a right to speak. And, if we look at it properly, it is not him personally that people are objecting to, it is the thought that members of the public will support what he is saying. Like worried parents, we are trying to protect the children of society (the idiots and the disenfranchised) from seeing the scary stuff and getting sucked in. Don’t do drugs! Don’t do the BNP!

It’s unlikely the idiots or the disenfranchised will be watching Question Time. I’m pretty sure ITV will have something tasty on to compete, like “When pets attack…” or “My armpit makes a farting noise when I put my other hand in it and squeeze”, something high-brow and expensive to make like that.

But even if they do watch, and they should watch, there is nothing to fear.

For in keeping Griffin in the shadows, his words gain gravity. In the shadows he is unchallenged, you can’t punch a ghost (though we’d all love to try). And he sits smugly because he knows he will never be found out. He knows that his voters only listen to buzz words and don’t think about impact, collateral or truth.

Put him out in the open, with a panel of intellligent people and a host who has been briefed to highlight the ridiculousness, then Nick Griffin is likely to crumble. He’s likely to look like a twat. A lying twat at that. And a bigot to boot. Oh, and a racist.

Suddenly those sweeping statement he is so fond of aren’t so appealing.

Block immigration completely?Fine, but the country will self-destruct without the help of migrant workers and your supporters will lose their jobs and their lives will be worse off Mr Griffin…

The holocaust never happened? Well there are six million bodies of gassed jews that says it did, would you like me to show you the photos? Or I could bring in some of the survivors if you like… what evidence do you have that it didn’t happen… oh, you didn;t bring your folder….

It would go on like that.

We shouldn’t be afraid to hear Nick Griffin speak on Question Time. We can’t baby the public and only give them the mainstream line. It romantacises the margins. It’s like chidlren. Tell them not to do something and they will do it. Block Nick Griffin from talking and he becomes a martyr for the unspoken Britain.Not letting him speak gives him a credibility he does not warrant. Letting him speak destroys this credibility.

So give him a voice. And enjoy the punchline.

Nick Grififn is a joke. And tomorrow more people will be laughing than today.