Deceived By The Bounce: The Graeme Swann Controversy

So Graeme Swann has been forced to apologise by anti-rape campaigners after he compared England’s Ashes defeat to being ‘arse raped’ by the Australians. Had he said ‘butt fucked’ I suppose it wouldn’t have landed him in such hot water or, for that matter, on such a tricky wicket. Yet perhaps it would…

It sometimes feels like we live in a hyper-connected (and hyper-sensitive) age, where certain keywords muttered in one place trigger automated responses elsewhere designed to advance the cause of whichever group believes they have ownership of that particular word, phrase or concept. A high profile figure uses the word ‘rape’ in an offhand manner and it’s no longer surprising when an advocacy group takes the chance to highlight the evils of rape. Had Swann said ‘corn holed’, representatives of the corn industry might have taken offence...

But perhaps that’s a glib thing to say. I’m prone to say glib things that might offend, which is perhaps why this story attracts my attention. Thankfully, I’m not an oft-lauded English off-spin bowler so nobody will really care what I say, glib or otherwise. Before my meaning can be misconstrued, however, let me state here that I believe rape to be the most horrific violation of not just the body but the human spirit. In many ways, it is a crime worse than murder, so what follows is not a defence of rapists or an attempt to degrade the significance of their crime. What interests me is the degree to which we are allowed to use these words and concepts in our everyday language. At what point does a subject become too taboo for the idle quip?

You see, I feel a little sorry for Swann. Swann is an easy target and he’s in no position to defend his use of the phrase. He is speaking in a way that’s familiar in a certain context. It’s the kind of quip often exchanged between male friends, the sort of vulgar joke that might include some reference to the film ‘Deliverance’ and the phrase ‘squeal like a pig’. It’s not sophisticated humour. Nor is it humour that will appeal to everyone. Taken out of one context and placed into another, it will easily offend people who don’t share that sensibility. But it’s a type of humour that is out there and is so very recognisable.

Of course, Graeme Swann doesn’t say any of this. It’s easier for Swann to say ‘sorry’ and move on than it is for him to defend his right to use whatever language he feels appropriate when posting to his brother’s Facebook page. And, really, is there anything he can say that sounds as meaningful as the words of Yvonne Traynor, the chief executive of Rape Crisis, who told The Telegraph:

"We are appalled that Graeme Swann equates a cricket match with the devastatingly serious crime of rape. It is the duty of a people in the public eye to make sure that their own distorted views are kept to themselves and not shared with the general public. These comments lack compassion and intelligence and he should apologise to anyone who has suffered from this heinous crime."

The problem I have is the problem I have whenever an offhand remark is countered with a well-considered response. Anybody can make an offhand remark which can then be made to look foolish with an acutely reasoned reply. Somebody well practised at deconstructionism could take many a mild statement and expose some raw misogyny, fascist leaning or underlying assumption about other people and their cultures. We routinely use words to express ourselves which come laden with all kinds of prior meanings but that isn’t to say that we advocate the murder of the French whenever we say that somebody has ‘met their Waterloo’ any more than there’s an implied support of colonialism when we say ‘I could murder a curry’.

So if there has been no reasonable defence made for Graeme Swann, then I think there should be one. There should be a reasoned argument that says something like: ‘obviously, he didn’t mean to offend anybody who has suffered that most terrible crime of rape, but he used an example of extreme human barbarity to express the profound disappointment he’s feeling at the moment.’ It should go on as follows: ‘Rather than diminish the severity of rape, his comment acknowledges rape’s status as an ultimate taboo in our collective morality. Much of our humour comes from exploring these taboo concepts and his remarks belonged to a long tradition of using such terms for darkly comic effect (see Freud’s Totem and Taboo). Of course, rape exists and it will continue to exist as long as individuals seek to impose their will on other individuals. It is part of all human potential and, sadly, it will always be part of the sum total of what we call “the human condition”. Yet to hide it away and restrict our use of the word for only those moments when we’re talking seriously about something is wrong and denies us an important part of our language.’

But, of course, if that’s reasonably put, it’s also reasonable to say that there is a point at which such comparisons become unacceptable. Swann could have said ‘murdered’ by the Australians and it wouldn’t have raised any objection. Had he compared it with ethic cleaning or, even worse, been so specific as to compare it to the Holocaust, he would have been rightly vilified.

There might, then, be a matter of degree in this situation. ‘Bummed’, ‘buggered’ or even ‘butt fucked’ wouldn’t have raised such alarm. ‘Rape’, however, is such a sensitive subject and in some sense politicised, he should have known better than to walk down the middle of the wicket wearing his spikes and cutting up the rough.

Because, to some, making supposedly funny remarks about rape is tantamount to attempting to reduce the seriousness of the crime. They argue that we desensitise ourselves to the violence of rape by using the word in such a casual manner. And I suppose there might be that danger. The old saying that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ has established wisdom about it. We live in a world where it is increasingly difficult to be shocked. Films have developed such an elaborate language of horror that it’s hard to think of something that exceeds the imaginations of filmmakers. Saw was a shocking movie but tame compared to what came later. The ‘unimaginable’ horrors of films of the 1950s are laughable compared to today’s torture horror. In another fifty years, what might that generation think about today’s Human Centipede?

Yet whatever they think about our horror, I doubt if future generations will have any more developed response to rape. There is a difference between styles of horror and certain depictions of physical violence. Whilst the sight of Norman Bates’ mother, at the end of Psycho, has lost much of its shock value, the same can’t be said of rape scenes from films of the 1960s and 70s. A Clockwork Orange still makes for very uncomfortable viewing as does Straw Dogs. One of the most shocking and uncomfortable films I’ve seen which still shocks today is Hitchcock’s Frenzy.

There is something about the act of rape that isn’t lessened by familiarity or overuse of the word. It simply never fails to shock. I’ve laboured longest over the wording of this brief article than I’ve done over anything in a long time. The very fact that it makes for uncomfortable discussion and there’s been little or no debate about a cricketer’s use of the term would suggest that it retains its power. Horror has its basis in some part of the brain that’s unconnected with our moral actions. Rape remains the ultimate violation, utterly taboo, a place reserved for the worst things that humans can do to one another.

And in this respect, Swann’s remarks belong to that category of darkly humourous exaggeration we use as a way of commentating on something so out of the ordinary. Is it too much of a stretch to say that it was used in the same way that Alexander Pope meant it when he wrote ‘Rape of the Lock’? Well, perhaps it is. Times change and perhaps Swann was unwise to use the word in what might be thought of as a public forum. He might have used the word unthinkingly (but I don’t think it was as unthinking as some would wish). Yet if Swann’s choice of expression was shocking, some might say it was shockingly funny but shocking nevertheless. And that is how it should be and, in that sense, I don’t believe he has any reason to apologise. Just to suggest that he uses it in a way that’s disrespectful of all rape victims is to play unfair games with language. It plays politics with the issue by spinning the spinner’s words.

Dreaming of Tom Waits

I met Tom Waits in my dreams last night. It was the first night I’d slept soundly, undisturbed by the coughing that’s characterised the latter days of my heavy cold. Waits was at his charismatic best, performing a duet with David Bowie in a clever video which I can’t entirely remember but was one part hobo chic and another part travelling balloon carnival. After the song, Waits took to the stage and I was sitting near the front, feeling blessed that I had an opportunity to see my very favourite musician up close. Then he started to hand out free albums and magic beans and the whole thing got crazy.

I can’t remember much of the show except it seemed to involve driving old 1930s cars through a corn field as a dwarf accompanied him on the sousaphone. After the performance, I had chance to meet Waits and I reached out to shake his hand. I thought his hand was small. Perhaps I’d shaken hands with the dwarf instead. I’ll never know. We got to talking about the topless brunette sitting in the Model T Ford and that’s when the telephone rang and I woke up.

Sleep, I think, is important to me. Or at least, dreaming seems to be key to the way my brain functions in the day. I’ve been struggling to come up with good cartoon ideas for the past week, which I think confirms my suspicions that my imagination is tied to getting a solid eight hours. Today I’m supposed to start work on one of the websites I’ll be building instead of enjoying Christmas this year but I also intend to make some room in my afternoon for some serious cartooning.

The lack of time and ideas to cartoon is particularly galling because on Saturday I took the bold step and upgraded my Samsung Note.

I’d found a buyer for my relatively new Samsung 10.1, meaning that I took next to no financial hit when it came to buying the newer 2014 edition I’ve been talking about for so long. I did the deed at the John Lewis store in Liverpool with a little of the money I’d made from my animation project.

The whole experience has been a bit unsettling, given that the first Note had quickly become as useful as my right arm. I’m still not completely at home with the new Note, though that’s partly down to my ordering a case from Amazon that is now going back. I originally ordered one of these, a beautiful case but with major flaws. The magnet in the lid is meant to wake the Note when you open it and shut it down when you close it. This it does but it also shuts down the Note when you fold the lid all the way back, as you do when holding it to draw. The same magnet (I suspect it’s just too powerful) also infers with the magnetic field that S Pen uses to locate its location on the screen, meaning that if you happen to draw in the same spot where the magnet’s located at the back, you have a dead spot on the screen.

I’ve now bought the same type of case as I had on my original Note and hope that things improve. The reason I wanted the newer Note was to draw on the 4k canvasses supported by Art Flow and the experience so far hasn’t made me regret my decision. I think my few scribbled test cartoons are already looking crisper and the whole drawing experience is much improved, with smoother operation and no lag between my hand and the screen. The only problem is a bug in Art Flow which means I can’t export the canvasses to Photoshop. I emailed the developer and apparently he’s working on a fix.

Tomorrow, I’ll post the results, if there are any results and my brain starts functioning again. I suppose the fear I always live with is that one day I’ll wake up and I’m no longer able to think of a funny joke or a funny cartoon. I fear that one day I might wake up to discover that I’ve grown up and become fascinated by tax and the brain rotting seriousness you find among the comment section of The Guardian. I worry that I’ll become one of those serious people when all I want is to be like Tom Waits, casting glitter over the heads of the midget tumblers and brunettes in classic cars.

Getting in the silverskins

The big news today is that I renewed the-spine.com for another two years. Opening my wallet this wide so near to Christmas must mean that I’m still serious about blogging, even if, yesterday, no sooner had I written ‘I’ll be back to my normal blogging habits’ than I got a call to say that I’ll be expected to build three websites over the next fortnight.

I say ‘build’ but they’ll be Wordpress installs with themes I’ll customise. In a way, it’s a disgrace to even suggest that I’ll be building them. Over the last five or so years, website building has gone from being a form of virtual bricklaying to a highly refined form of interior design. Where once I would be found sitting on an old car seat beside a hot brazier, smoking a fag and tutting over my union sanctioned mug of tea as I contemplated the next line of HTML, I’m now usually found flouncing around and clapping my hands and demanding more aqua in the banners PEOPLE! I’m not sure which I prefer.

Talking about unions, I’m increasingly dismayed by the lengths some shops go to prove they’re fun and happy places to work.

At my local Tesco, I spoke to one of the women working the checkouts this morning. She was wearing sagging reindeer horns and a look of joyless intensity.

‘I hope they pay you extra to wear those horns,’ I quipped.

She looked at me blankly and said nothing as she slid me my seasonal jar of silverskins.

On Saturday, I was walking in Liverpool for reasons that will become apparent in coming days. The Clayton Square shopping centre is now almost dead upstairs when I remember it as quite a vibrant little arcade. The Clayton Square planners made a big mistake when they removed the pedestrian entrance, making this little corner of Liverpool a dead end. However, it’s still the easiest way to get up to the level of Lime Street Station (the entirety of Liverpool seems to be one long climb to the railway station) and I used the escalator to take me up to a level and I cut through Boots.

It was in Boots that I saw a woman dressed like a pixie or an elf, complete with mismatching leggings and a red nose. She might have had bells on her toes but I can’t recall, hence the confusion over pixie or elf.

It happens everywhere I suppose but this sight did make me wonder if the poor woman had a choice. What would happen if somebody like me was working for one of these companies and refused to wear something so ridiculous? At one time, the unions would have said something but union power seems to be at an all-time low. If I refused to dress as a pixie or elf, I’d be out on my not-so pointed ear.

I know a person in one of the great professions who is constantly forced to do things which, given any reasonable union power, they wouldn’t have to. Hmm… ‘Great professions’ makes it sound like they work in prostitution when I actually mean the old professions: the law, academia, medicine, TV weather…

Under a boss who micromanages his entire realm, demotivating every employee with his Sauron-like gaze, highly trained people are turned into performing chimps, never making a decision on their own or able to execute the skills they’ve mastered through years of daily grind. I’m being cautious about how I write this because I wouldn’t want my friend to get into trouble. The point is: in all businesses, employees have rights that they’re in no power to enforce. Unions stand by as rules are flouted. In the situation I’m describing, the union representative is as much under the thumb of the boss as anybody and routinely bend to his will.

That isn't to say that things were bad when unions had all the power but now I fear that things have gone too far the other way. ‘Oh, they can’t simply fire so long as you do your job well,’ was always something I believed but I believe it no longer. Companies, organisations, and faculties of the state can always find a way to force a person out if that person doesn’t agree to fiddle the figures, work unreasonable hours, or wear an elf costume.

And, yes, that’s right: two more years of blog posts like this. Won’t that be worth the hard earned £22 I blew this morning?

The Monday After the Month Before

Alongside the animation, the abscess, and the heavy cold I’ve been suffering for the past week, I’m still enduring the disruption caused by my deciding about a month ago to rearrange and tidy my office. The truth is that I’m not the tidiest person but I attacked this task like a North Korean leader arranging the seating around the Christmas turkey and realising there was one uncle too many. I’d amassed so much junk that it was shameful to see how many bags of detritus I took out behind the shed and despatched via firing squad.

I’m still not finished and the work gets harder by the day. Take, for example, The Compact Oxford English Dictionary. Despite the name, the Compact Oxford English Dictionary is not compact. It’s probably the biggest book I own. You might know the edition. It comes with a small box at the top to store the illuminated magnifying glass which you have to use to read the book’s miniscule font. I bought it cheap from a book club many moons ago, probably having only joined the book club to get my hands on a book that I couldn’t afford at full price. Currently, they’re probably going for about £20 on eBay, which says everything about dictionaries in the age of apps, websites, and illiteracy.

My problem now is: what the hell should I do with it? I bought it when I was in doing research in academia, when knowing the derivation of words was a significant part of my life. To throw it away would be amount to admitting that I’ll never again be that person. Not that I want to be that person. Calling myself an academic felt too narrow, too knowing, too definitive of who I was or what I might become. I’m not sure what I have become except deeply disenchanted about a great many things but disenchanted about dictionaries isn’t one of them. Throwing my dictionary away would amount to my admitting that writing no longer matters to me.

And that’s the point. Although I’ve not written a book in about a year (for me, a rare thing), it’s not that I care any less about writing. Yet reading just the other day about the Specsavers literary awards, I noticed the same sad spectacle (pun intended) of celebrities receiving plaudits and the book industry trying to ride out the hard times on the coat tails of TV fools. To be a writer these days is synonymous with a certain lifestyle or it is merely an adjunct to fame. If you didn’t lose your knickers in the jungle or are an ex-rower who climbed the north face of Brian Blessed, to be a writer means conforming to certain stereotypes in order to follow the money: to be the globetrotting internationalist lesbian writing for The Guardian from your solar powered wheel chair, to be the old school pipe smoking socialist in the New Statesmen, or to have the same John Bull beefy lips of the conservative meatheads writing their polemical nonsense elsewhere. At times I can find myself agreeing with all three but, as I found when I tried to be an academic, I don’t sit neatly inside one group meaning that I belong nowhere but this hinterland of blogging.

These thoughts pass through my mind as I start at the Compact Oxford English Dictionary sitting on my desk. Getting rid of it would be like giving up so I’ll keep it.

I might need it because as this post suggests, I’m also back blogging. I know it’s the week leading up to Christmas but, as I sit here, Monday lunchtime, I intend to be blogging regularly, perhaps even get some cartoons finished.

Damn, Hell and Bugger!

As if my luck wasn't bad enough, I've now developed an abscess front upper. Not particularly painful but damn uncomfortable and ready to pop. Just cycled in the hope of seeing a dentist but they couldn't give me time. Just told me to keep rinsing with salt water which I've been doing all day. My mouth feels like the Dead Sea.

John W Henry: The Cartoon Strip – Episode 5

Last night I think I finished the animation I’ve been working on for weeks now. I’ll miss working on it. As if to mark the moment, this morning I woke up feeling rotten. Yesterday I had a root canal done. What surprised me was that it was done without the usual numbing but it had been painless, despite the tooth causing me problems for years. I’d had a crown fitted many years ago after cracking the tooth doing karate. The crown had been painful for months after and only recently have I discovered the reason why. The dentist hadn’t done a root canal, despite my new dentist assuring me that when you do a crown involving a post going into the tooth, you should always do a root canal.

Anyway, whether it’s just a coincidence or the fact that the dentist opened up the root of this tooth and years of bad voodoo have come flooding out, but today I feel rotten. It feels like a lousy cold coming on mixed with the after effects of being hit by a bus. I also have the deadline for another cartoon strip today so perhaps that’s a good thing: I can go and hide in a warm corner and do some cartooning, which is when I’m at my happiest.

As a way of saying that I’m still here and that I hope to blog about as things more uplifting than my previous post, here’s the previous John W Henry strip, which appeared in last week's edition of Red All Over The Land. I enjoy drawing these. I enjoy drawing John W Henry like I enjoy what he's doing for Liverpool. Second in the table isn't a bad way to be heading into Christmas.

A Slow Burning Tragedy Courtesy of the NHS

I rarely write about things that are deeply personal to me. Certainly, I don’t often write about the important things in my life such as my family. I have never, as I recall, written before about the difficulties those closest to me suffer on a daily basis but recent events have brought me to the point where I’m using my blog to do just that. I want to write about the NHS and its systemic failure to deal properly with one particular case.

My sister has been ill since her teenage years when she had her gall bladder removed. At the time, the surgeon said that my sister was the youngest person he’d known that needed to have their gall bladder removed. After the operation, he told us that he’d found so many thousands of tiny stones that he’d had difficulty getting them all out. He warned us that there was damage done that might cause problems for my sister in later years.

The surgeon was right. There have been brief periods of time when she has been well but ‘well’ is such a relative term. My sister has rarely been so well that she can do any amount of physical exercise or do the things that most people would call ‘living a full life’. Simply travelling on a bus can result in days of illness. Strangely, she can ride a bike which doesn’t bring on the symptoms but that is about the extent of her activity. Bending over, lifting things, or twisting motion around her upper body all seem to trigger flare-ups of the condition, which is symptomized by intense pain and a heaviness under her left side ribcage, nausea, fevers, and other things too unpleasant to describe. Two weeks ago she bent down and she’s now endured a fortnight of pain, sickness, and the rest...

Over the years, the NHS has tried vaguely to understand and treat her problem. It sometimes feels like I have lived my entire life against a background of her hospital visits and the usual disappointment of her returning home after another consultant has passed her over to another department. She once had a test to check how quickly food passes through her digestive system. Hours after she’d eaten the 'special sandwich', the doctor running the examination expressed his surprise that the food still hadn’t left her stomach. It was the slowest example of stomach emptying he’d ever seen. Yet doctors never put a name to it. Gastroparesis was something we only discovered recently but that was only through American websites. Nobody on the NHS has ever thought to refer her to a dietician to see if we can help her through better food. My father also had his gall bladder out but he was on medication to help digestion which doctors, for some reason, have not thought to give my sister.

Occasionally, we get a doctor who is caring and seems interested. One doctor thought she might have something called Sphincter of Oddi but when he left (he was a locum), his replacements didn’t recognise the term or want to follow it up. Another caring doctor (a wonderful young Scot) thought she had the classic symptoms of gall stones. He was fascinated when she told him that she hadn’t had a gall bladder for ten years. He wanted to refer her to a specialist but, being another locum, it never transpired.

Meanwhile, whilst many drugs have been administered, the true reason for her illness has never been explained. Nobody actually seems interested or concerned that a person’s entire life is being destroyed.

In the past two years, things have got worse. Our local NHS practice has changed and new doctors have arrived. One doctor doesn’t seem to believe that my sister has anything wrong with her and one day removed nearly all my sister’s medication. Within a fortnight she was extremely ill. The same doctor took her off tablets prescribed by a consultant for fibromyalgia, leaving my sister in constant pain. Another doctor reinstated the tablets saying she should never have come off them (the closest we’ve ever heard one doctor criticising another). A month ago, one doctor gave her something to help her. It did help her until last week a different doctor took her off the same medication.

This is happening week after week, month upon month, like the system has been failing my sister year upon year and even decade upon decade. One doctor contradicts another but all doctors smile behind their enigmatic silence but offer no help.

Why is that? How could that be allowed to continue?

The cruelty of the NHS is in its general indifference to the individual. The NHS is a faceless entity with no compassion. The systemic failure of the NHS to help my sister is partly down to her not having a regular doctor interested in her case or a consultant willing to investigate it properly. It is now a few years since a doctor properly examined her and, in recent months, doctors have preferred to ask about the state of her mental health. This, I suppose, is why I’m now writing, out of a sense of anger at their negligence and presumption.

The thing is: I’ve never met anybody so strong or psychologically well-adjusted as my sister. She is articulate and clever but damned by circumstance. Despite enduring things I can’t comprehend, she still refuses to allow it to get her down. She is no less intelligent than me except I had a chance to do a PhD whilst she has only ever had the chance to suffer. She is self-taught historian, fascinated by politics. She is a gifted writer but illness prevents her pursuing her love of journalism. Yet through it all she remains strong and cheerful. It’s her who cheers me up when I feel down because of her health and the fact that I feel so powerless to do anything about it.

Most days I sit here trying to draw funny cartoons or just to ‘be funny’ when a few rooms away, one of the people closest to me is suffering with intense pain, sickness, and fever. She can go days without eating, the pain under her rib cage only made tolerable by a Tens machine sometimes at full power. Today the pain is radiating up into her shoulder and I suspect it’s another attack of pancreatitis (one of the few words doctors do occasionally mention). Locally, the doctors don’t seem concerned. They don’t seem to even believe her. I think they have us marked down as problematic, worse than the drug addicts and benefits scroungers they normally see.

The saddest part is that we’re now considering paying for a private consultation but this is now a state of desperation. It’s £150 for 30 minutes and I don’t know if it would help given that she would then be left back in the NHS system for tests. We’ve paid before. Doctors took an interest until the money ran out. Then the general indifference of the NHS took over as it always does.

People often tell us to ring for an ambulance when the attacks are at their worst. We did that a few years ago. A doctor at the local hospital examined my sister and told her that he was amazed that nobody had felt the ‘something’ in her side which he suggested might be a cyst. He pushed it so hard he later suggest it burst or removed whatever blockage was causing her trouble. She was violently ill that night but so much better the next morning that they discharged her. She was well for a couple of months and it was as if the problem were solved. Except it wasn’t. It comes back every month or three and now doctors won’t even examine her. They just ask ridiculous questions as if suggesting that she’s making all this up. They even suggest she is imagining her problem when I’ve sat beside her mopping the sweat from her forehead. I’ve seen the readouts on the thermometers, the violent sickness, her terrible pallor, and even her fainting when the pain is at its worst. Sometimes even a cup of soup can make her violently ill. She hasn’t eaten a proper meal in months yet doctors have the temerity to suggest that gluttony might be her problem because she’s not stick thin. That’s not just insulting but it’s downright neglectful.

I suppose that’s why I’m writing this. I would like to think that somebody out there reading this has advice or medical experience to know what to do or where to turn. But perhaps that’s just a ridiculous hope and a sign of my frustration. At the very least, I just want to write this now to put it on the record to say that my sister is terribly ill and nobody on the NHS seems concerned or even gives a damn.

After decades of living with this, I’m beginning to feel at my wit’s end. My recent blog silence isn’t just down to working on other things but trying to look after somebody left stranded by the system. There is no pleasure in life when all you see on a daily basis is suffering and you are helpless because the system doesn’t care. I often joke that I should have trained to be a medical doctor than waste all those years becoming a useless Doctor of Philosophy. Then I could have helped her. As it is, I dream of a gastric consultant taking an interest in my sister’s unusual case but that’s fairy tale stuff. It’s the stuff of newspaper stories where something rare is finally diagnosed when the run-of-the-mill medical professionals don’t care to look. In the past, appointments with consultants end up with five minutes with junior registrars, passed back to the doctor, who simply say ‘keep drinking the morphine when the pain is at its worst and don’t bother us again’.

This is a slow burning tragedy of living with the NHS. It’s the tragedy of anybody stuck with complicated symptoms under a system made for the routine. The NHS works wonderfully for the average complaint: a sprained knee or a broken wrist. It appears unfit for purpose when somebody requires investigation and specialist knowledge. We’re so utterly lost in the system, passed from one faceless doctor to the next, that I even found myself suggesting we walk into a Chinese medical centre yesterday. That’s right. Me, a man who believes in neither Gods nor magic, has started to wonder if there’s something in the ancient medicine. Yet modern medicine is failing us. The medical service is failing us. The only chances that seem left for us are those offered by charlatans and mystics and that makes this feel like a very bad place to be.

 

Brainwashing & Bestiality: The British Shopping Experience

Last night I caught up on the Panorama documentary that exposed the working conditions at an Amazon distribution centre. It made me want to cancel my current Amazon order except, of course, Amazon being Amazon, they’d shipped my order thirty seconds after I’d placed it.

Before the programme, I’d expected to discover that the Amazon operation is dehumanising. Little did I expect it to be ripped from some dystopian novel in which human spirits are crushed with the very worst techniques taught in the gulag. Last year I wrote a book which required me to read up on brainwashing techniques. The Amazon operation reminded me of the techniques the Chinese invented to break a person’s spirit.

I don’t, from memory, recall the characteristic techniques of classic brainwashing but the list is up there on Wikipedia’s entry for Margaret Singer’s ‘Cults in our Midst’:

• "Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how attempts to psychologically condition him or her are directed in a step-by-step manner.


• Control the person's social and/or physical environment; especially control the person's time.


• Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person.


• Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments and experiences in such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person's former social identity.


• The group manipulates a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote learning the group's ideology or belief system and group-approved behaviors.


• Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership approval or executive order."

I think at least five out of the seven techniques might be recognisable in the Amazon routine: trapping a person in a maze, running them against a clock which is continually counting down and beeping warnings, in a closed warehouse environment where they are given punishments for infractions, imposed by colleagues working for a largely faceless corporate structure beyond the control of governments to control… If the average Amazon shelf picker were a chicken, there would probably be some European rule to cover their welfare or at least prevent them from wearing their beaks down on the bars of their cage.

I’d like to say that this morning I cancelled my Amazon order but I haven’t so I can't. The reality is, of course, that none of us are in a position to do very much about Amazon. I wish I had enough money to donate £10-20 a time to a company simply to encourage them to keep existing, even with their higher prices. We vote for governments to protect us from this kind of thing but, for our sins, we seem to have voted for a government who believe in that kind of thing. Would I have used Amazon yesterday if I’d known any this? To my shame, perhaps I would have. To my credit, I hope that I wouldn’t. I just don’t know.

The problem of Amazon is really a problem with the British high street. I only saw the documentary after a day when I’d travelled to Warrington and then Liverpool hoping to find a new Wacom graphic tablet. Late Tuesday, my Bamboo drew its last cartoon and I’ve had to bite the big bullet and upgrade. Because I foolishly still like to shop rather than use Amazon, I biked the long painfully rough cycle path St Helen’s council provide (loose limestone and mud) until I hit Warrington’s cycle paths (beautiful black tarmac) which led me to the big local PC World. It didn’t sell the Intuos model I wanted but they said they could order one in for me. I declined. Since Warrington no longer has any real technology stores, I spent a fruitless morning there and then took a train straight into Liverpool.

Perhaps I was already feeling particularly remote from the crowds by the time I arrived but I began reflecting on how we individually don’t seem to matter to retailers. Outside Primark, a blind guitarist was playing Shadows hits. A crowd had gathered and was cheering and laughing as I passed. They were cheering an old tramp dancing to the music. I wondered if the guitarist knew what was happening. I wondered about people laughing at a dancing hobo who they’d normally ignore or avoid. Are you mad simply by being different to the crowd, dancing to a different tune? I felt that way after going to one store to the next and being told the same thing: that I was asking for the impossible. Why did I want the professional tablet when I could buy the cheaper model right there?

On Paradise Street, the long new shopping avenue that cuts across Church Street, a huge queue had formed. As I walked its length, heading towards John Lewis, I grew increasingly eager to discover the attraction. It was possibly the longest queue I’ve ever seen. The goal of these people was surely something meaningful. Perhaps a particularly good Santa lay at the end. Perhaps some celebrity. Was I about to see Stephen Gerrard or Ken Dodd?

Sadly not. These hundreds of people weren’t queuing to see a person. They were queuing on a freezing cold November day to have their photographs taken standing next to the Coca Cola truck. I can’t say the truck impressed me that much. It was one of those American juggernauts, decked out in Cola red and satanic chrome, with a morbidly obese Santa painted on the side. People stood up by the cab and smiled so they could say ‘this is me standing next to the Coca Cola truck you see in their Christmas ad.’

Coca Cola’s very good at brainwashing and this, I think, was a show of their strength. This was their Red Square. This their Kim Il-sung Square...

At John Lewis, Wacom’s only local dealer, I was told they only stock the basic model. ‘We can order them in,’ they said with a smile. It had become the refrain of my day and my reply was always the same: ‘What’s the point of that? I can do that myself without leaving the house.’

When I heard the same from the helpful guy in Liverpool’s Apple store, I told him ‘it makes you wonder why you even bother go shopping on the high street.’

He smiled. ‘I know,’ he shrugged. ‘I’m afraid we only stock what sells.’

I felt like pointing out that if they don’t stock something then of course it won’t sell. It means that people like me won’t go and buy other things from them and soon those things will also become things that ‘doesn’t sell’, our choices get more narrow, and their opportunities to sell me things become more infrequent. The things that sell become fewer and fewer.

The high street is dying not just because of Amazon but because of the attitudes of retailers, constantly refining their product ranges to focus on only popular products and the biggest demographic. It means that all shops of the same type have the very same stock. And if every shop stocks the same things, then there really isn’t any need for all these shops.

One final note of optimism.

In Warrington, a new shop has opened, hidden in a side street near the bus station. It doesn’t take credit cards so all transactions are cash only. From the outside it looks like a temporary operation. It sells cases for phones and tablets but they’re products you don’t see in other shops. It’s not as cheap as you might think but sells quality and is a reminder of what shopping used to be like, when you came home with some surprising object you’d discovered in your hunt for bargains. I think these shops are a reminder of what we might find growing in the ashes of the high street. These are the shops ready to open once the big branches have cleared out and rents have come down. Perhaps we need to start again, rid ourselves of the huge national chain stores, with their computerised inventories and corporate look. We need individuality back on the high street, where every town looks different and no two stores are the same.

Still Here

I’m sure there are interesting things going on out there in the real world. Some news item about Iran passed under my sniff the other day. Then there was something about the Co-op bank chief investing in crystal meth. And then apparently our cricketers are suffering at the hands of Australian bullies. I didn’t have the time like I didn’t have time to watch last night’s Panorama expose of Amazon’s working conditions. Had I time this morning, I intended to draw a cartoon of Jonathan Trott going for a job interview at Amazon.

Everything I’m doing at the moment is towards getting my animated film finished. I’d vaguely promised that it would take me a couple of weeks. I’m a few days beyond that self-imposed deadline and probably need a couple of clear days run at it to get it completely/reasonably finished. Last night, I invested a heady £3.88 into an app for my Samsung Note which allows me to create hand animations, export them as video via Dropbox, and then load them into Photoshop where I actually produce the finished colour anumation. The result wasn’t too shabby, though it took about four hours hard work last night tracing the finished animation, colouring it, and then outputting it into After Effects where it came to life. This work makes me regret my lousy Wacom bamboo tablet. Every year I say that I’ll upgrade to the Wacom Intuos but I never do.

The blog post in which I reflect on how I'm not making much progress

[caption id="attachment_3475" align="aligncenter" width="640"] One of my earliest cartoons[/caption]

I’ve decided that Sunday is going to be my day of rest so, naturally, I’ve found time to write this blog post. I’m not entirely sure what this post is going to be about beyond wanting to say: the problem of not working the usual working week is that there’s no point at which you can’t be asked to work. Except I’ve now decided that weekends are, generally, going to be my own.

I say ‘my own’ but my Saturday was entirely consumed with drawing a strip for the next issue of ‘Red All Over The Land’, the LFC fanzine. The deadline is Wednesday but I expect next week to be busy so I thought I better get it drawn. I enjoyed the drawing process and I am pleased with the result but by about 7pm last night I was beginning to question my sanity, not that I haven’t questioned it regularly over recent weeks.

The anxiety stems from my distrust of the arts. I was brought up not to believe in art. Not that my parents ever discouraged me from studying the arts but my entire schooling was always about the sciences. It meant that I pursued subjects towards which I felt a general indifference. I like science. Science fascinates me. However, science never excited my imagination. I found learning formula tedious. Wiring a plug didn’t excite me. I didn’t even really want to do a computer degree but I did one anyway. I’d got interested in computers because I was fascinated with computer graphics. I wanted to work for Industrial Light and Magic and I wanted beyond anything to do a Film degree and to make films. When the reality of my interest in computers turned into writing databases for a local telecommunications company, my unhappiness consumed me. A year after leaving polytechnic, I enrolled at the local college for their film course.

Of course, it never worked out like that. People might say we all have the same chances but we're bound by circumstance. So few people enrolled on the film course that it was dropped and the class merged with Media Studies. I spent the next year studying newspaper ownership whilst, ironically, the majority of people setting out to study media studies left the course. The few of us left had all originally enrolled form film studies. I was also doing English at the same time and my English teacher persuaded me to take my A level in a year instead of two. I loved writing so it felt natural to follow his suggestion that I should study literature at university. Eight months after setting out to study film, I was starting an English degree at a proper University. I suppose it was another compromise. I loved literature but my true love has always been film. Yet I have this strange neurosis that limits my actions. I think of it as a ‘working class’ neurosis in that it’s the same belief that study should have some chance of a job at the end of it. I don’t know why but studying literature seemed to fulfill that criteria more than studying film.

Even when I went on to do my degree and doctorate, I never entirely believed in the Arts. Or, at least, I recognised that there was a huge area of the arts devoted to things which defied logic. Modern poetry has become one of my pet hates. I needed to see the structure or design of a poem before I would accept it as poetry. Expression for the sake of expression was meaningless to me. I suppose that’s why I always wanted to study film. Films had evident structure and a clear language.

Although film was always my passion, I’ve always been interested in art and illustration. I remember watching a BBC documentary about Robert Crumb many years ago and I recall being utterly absorbed with him and his work. Yet I also knew that I couldn’t draw. I’d never been encouraged to draw at school. I didn’t even know how to use an eraser.

It laughable now, thinking back on my ignorance. I genuinely thought that to draw you needed to draw something first time as though the perfect artist was Picasso with his one line drawings. Learning to use an eraser was my Damascene moment; realising that drawing isn’t about mastery of the pencil but mastery of the eraser. It has more to do with what you choose to rub away than it has to do with what you draw. Looking at my work now, I can see that I’ve progressed a little but not enough, if you look at my earliest cartoons (below). I also see the gulf between what I can do and what I’d like to produce. I suppose this explains the problem I now face trying to be more casual as a cartoonist. I’ve had such a tortuous path to this point, I can’t simply pick up a pen and draw. I still need the safety net of the pencil line to guide me. When Ralph Steadman looked in my eyes and said ‘always work straight in ink’ I nodded but thought ‘ah, that’s true for real artists but not for me’. And I still believe that.

If you add up my life, place whatever small achievements I’ve made against the false turns, regrets, and many mistakes, I suppose the final sum would amount to not much more than zero. What I mean by that is that I feel like I’ve not really progressed much beyond where I started. I wish I’d started to draw much earlier in life and I wish I’d pursued my love of films. I wish I could grow a hipster beard and be one of those bohemian types. I wish I was the idealised artist I see in my mind who believes in his work so much that he isn’t racked by constant doubts and misgivings. I wish I didn’t feel like a fraud who he wakes in the middle of the night cursing his bad choices and swearing that come daylight he’ll march to the job centre and take the first packing job or postal round they offer him. I wish I had the confidence in my work that meant that I wouldn’t feel so happy about drawing for an entire Saturday and then giving the result away for nothing.

For anybody interested, here’s where I began my cartooning. The dates on these suggests it was about four years ago, though I can’t believe it's been that long. These were some of the first cartoons I ever drew, using a computer package and the same tiny entry-level Wacom tablet that I find myself still using. One day I might feel like I'm a real illustrator and buy myself a professional tablet. Perhaps one day when somebody actually buys one of my cartoons… Perhaps it will be another four years. Perhaps never.





 

 

 







 

On Stu, Elberry, Michael and Me

It’s the Friday after a long hard week and, somewhat gratifying, I woke this morning to find a message from Stu from Horwich, though he didn’t leave an email address so I couldn’t reply directly. But thank you, Stu, for the message and it’s good to see such optimism this far north. You say you think you’ll win The Spectator’s competition ‘along with every other bugger’ but, honestly, I never for once thought I stood a chance of winning. Of course, I hoped, I dreamed, and I would have given my right buttock to draw cartoons for The Spectator. But I assume the Michael Heath cartoon competition already been decided. I’ve not looked in weeks so I wouldn’t know. I really can’t bear to look and discover that it’s been won by some twenty-three year old New Age crystal tapper called Sky or Mist who only took up cartooning last week when doodling lipstick moon symbols on tree bark.

I’m so weary of rejection that I’m finding it hard to write. I suppose the Michael Heath competition was one of the straws that finally broke this particular spine. I could say that I’ve not had time to blog but I would have made the time if I’d had the enthusiasm. It’s grim work, writing and drawing year after year for no reward. This week I feel a little more broken inside. It’s ironic but I was reading the new Private Eye cartoon book the other day where they complain that all their cartoonists are getting on in years. I’ve submitted material, mainly cartoons but also comic prose, on and off to Private Eye for nearly a decade and I have always been rejected. I can’t help but think that there’s a reason why they have a lack of younger cartoonists. They utterly destroy us before they give us a break.

I suppose all bloggers go through a process of falling out of love with blogging. We begin with renewed enthusiasm and eventually fall silent, reflecting the mood of the world. It’s the heat death of the blogosphere. It makes it particularly rewarding to discover that some old friends are still playing the game. I rediscovered Elberry a week or two ago. I once met Elberry in Manchester and I confess that he frightened me. That’s partly down to my own personality. I’m not good at meeting new people but that’s especially true when that person seems as mad as badger hair yet yet possibly the most intelligent person I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet. It also took a while before I realised that he plays a fun game with exaggeration and is actually one of the kindest souls out there. I don’t say that trying to flatter him and I don’t exaggerate. I say that exactly as I mean it. He's really one of the good guys. Just don’t let him hear me say that.

Reading Elberry’s blog gives me renewed enthusiasm to work harder. He reminds me that we work not because of the money but because of the work. That’s why it feels so good to be doing work I enjoy for which I’ll get paid, even a nominal amount. My 90 second animated film improves with each day’s long toil. It’s still not animated enough and much work needs to be done. However, it has become something of a labour of love. I really want it to be the best I can make. I learn new things every day. I’m always moving outside my comfort zone. I want to be proud of it but I also want others to be proud of it. Perhaps in a few weeks, I’ll be able to post it here and say ‘this is what I did instead of blogging’ and people will say, ‘well done, great work, but there’s not enough foliage, the scale is off, and I’d have made his trousers brown instead of blue’.

A Blog Post That Makes Me Feel Queasy Just By Posting It

I’ve never tried my hand at lion taming but common sense tells me that it’s like visiting a dentist in that you should never breathe that final sigh of relief until you step out of their cage.

‘Just a couple of small fillings and we’ll get them done today so you don’t need to come back.’

‘Hurrah!’ I thought, punching the metaphorical air from behind my yellow protective sunglasses which made me look like some 1970s disco crooner, a flesh and blood Disco Stu straight from The Simpsons’ waiting room.

‘Okay, I’ll just numb you and then we’ll do some x-rays to make sure that everything is okay.’

I nod with enthusiasm. I was only going to be in The Chair for half an hour and then I’d be skipping down the street looking for the first shop selling sherbet and boiled sweets.

The numbing happened painlessly and then there was a bit of drilling with wasn’t exactly pain free, despite so much of my face being numb that I couldn’t even feel my boots. I always mean to ask why hitting a nerve gets through the numbing agent but by the time I want to ask these things, I’m incapable of speech.

But questions are for another day. I’ve only got another twenty minutes and then I’ll be able to escape…

As the drill spun down, my dentist sat back and tapped my shoulder reassuringly.

‘Okay, that’s the drilling done. Let me just check the xrays…’

Off he goes. I’m sitting there, a couple of cavities in my dead mouth, anticipating getting out and getting back to work. The dentist takes his time looking over the x-rays before he comes back to me.

‘Okay, I think I’ll have to send you to the hospital,’ he says.

Holy shit! What is this?

‘You have some crud above a tooth that might require a minor surgical procedure to clean out…’

Double holy shit and triple what is this?

‘We might be able to save the tooth but you’ll need a new crown which will cost you everything you’ve earned in the last two months but if that doesn’t hold you’ll lose the tooth and need a bridge which will cost you everything you’ve earned in the last year and when we’re waiting to fit your bridge you might want to wear a palate so you don’t have a huge gap in the front of your smile which makes you look like an alligator farmer straight out of a Louisiana swamp… Oh, the palate will cost you everything you’ll be lucky to earn next year…’

This was explained more professionally than that but the meaning was the same.

The mild panic attack I then had in the dentist’s chair was only relieved by my dentist’s calm manner and a quick glimpse I had in a mirror that indeed confirmed that I looked damn cool in yellow sunglasses. Yet I think my eventual calm was mainly down to my dentist’s kindness. He has a gentility that’s unbelievable. It’s why I always go to him and why I trust him. It’s probably the reason why I’m not sobbing in a corner right now. He explained things. He makes the minor surgical procedure sound like a minor surgical procedure even to me, a man who can turn a pimple into an advanced case of gigantism with a side dose of botulism.

It has not always been the case. In the past, my dentists have been butchers. My first was even nicknamed ‘the butcher’ and as a child I remember visiting his surgery which was in the front room of an ordinary house taken straight from a Edward Gorey print. Every tool he used looked pre-War and seemed to have been licked clean by the dogs that sometimes came in from the living room. One of my earliest memories is having teeth removed under gas. I still recall the smell of the rubber cup they held over my nose. A day later, my tongue turned green and I was a pariah in school because I had the most unholy halitosis. I was like something from the Exorcist and like exorcisms, my green tongue was never explained.

Over the years, the surgery has changed immeasurably. It’s the same house but after numerous renovations it’s unrecognisable and contains a very modern dental surgery with an ultra-high tech computer system on which you can Tweet your x-rays only minutes after they’re taken. The staff have changed too. They’re now more professional yet also more personable and seem genuinely interested in making the whole thing less painful.

Long since gone are the two dentists who made such a mess of the tooth that will now force me to make a hospital visit. I’m hoping that this dentist might finally fix the problem either by giving me a crown that doesn’t fall out every five minutes or pull the tooth so I can be rid of the nuisance, even if that means wearing a bridge, though I’m not entirely sure what that means.

I still can’t get over the disappointment that my thirty minutes has probably turned into six months or more of work or how much of what little earnings I’m scraping together will go to pay for all of this. It’s now a few weeks before my next appointment, when I’ll get an appointment at a hospital, perhaps treatment at the hospital. Only after all that will treatment on the tooth begin.

I’m freaked out, of course. I hope the crud drains away, as the dentist thinks it might, but if the experts think I need the crud removing from above the tooth, then everything becomes a little more real. I recall phrases like ‘peel back the gum’, ‘incision’ and ‘bone’ but I’m telling myself that surely it can’t be as painful as drilling into a tooth, which is the bit that always makes me fret. It’s not the one that sounds like a high pitched drill that strikes fear but the one that sounds like a slow low grind that always gives me pain. That was enough for one day. I’d hoped it would be enough for the next six months but I see I’m going to be Dentistry’s plaything for a little while longer.

No Time

No time to blog. No time to write. No time to draw. Barely enough time to be sick this weekend, though I felt pretty grim yesterday. A visit to the dentist on Tuesday should make this week a gem to remember and since I also have two deadlines I intend to meet, the chances of my blogging in the next five days with a sunny disposition are receding quicker than a House of Windsor hairline.

The Little Old Lady in Boots

So, today I walk into Boots where all I had to do was repeat nine words: ‘Do you sell replacement pads for a tens machine?’ The reply would be either ‘yes’ or (more likely) ‘no’ and I’d either buy some or (more likely) walk out.

Except there was a young woman in the queue ahead of me with just one guy ahead of her being served.

So I waited and in due course the man took his bag of medicine and left. The woman looked at me and nervously walked to the counter. I read the signs. I knew what to do.

I immediately took a couple of steps back and started to look vaguely at the nearest shelf so the woman could retain some degree of dignity in what was clearly a private moment. She clearly wanted to discuss something personal and those two steps back was the least I could do to make that possible. So, as the woman whispered with the pharmacist, I continued to stand there gazing through a display of something I only later realised was super lubricated and ribbed, as I scratched my nose and tried to look ignorant of the private medical drama playing out in front of me. After the whispered conversation was finished, a small bag was handed to the woman and money exchanged.

All was good. Here we go: nine little words…

Except…

In the gap I’d left in order for the woman to be discreet about her problems, another woman was now standing. She was a little old woman holding a box of Kalms. Because I’d done the decent thing, this woman had exploited what I now refer to as the 'they're-talking-about-itching gap' in order to jump the queue. I wanted to say something but the little old lady was only holding a box of Kalms, the natural remedy for nerves, and how on earth could you say anything about queue jumping to a nervous little old lady holding a box of Kalms?

So the pharmacist takes the box, rings it up, money is exchanged and the little old lady is about turn around and leave and I’m about to repeat my nine little words: ‘Do you sell replacement pads for a tens machine?’

But the pharmacist has second thoughts… She floats a question towards the nervous little old lady.

‘You’re not taking any medication are you?’

‘No,’ says the nervous little old lady.

‘Oh, that’s good. I just thought I better check.’

‘But I am diabetic…’

‘Oh,’ says the pharmacist.

‘Shit,’ I mutter, getting agitated. This queue jump was turning into serious downtime in Boots.

‘I better check,’ said the pharmacist, opening the box of Kalms.

A minute later she’s finished reading the leaflet/densely printed brochure. ‘I’ll just be a moment,’ she smiles.

Remember: nine words were all I wanted to ask and this little old lady had jumped into the queue because I was being a gentleman like I was also trying to be a gentleman by not mentioning queue jumping this in case the nervous queue jumping little old lady started to cry.

The pharmacist when to the back of the shop where she adopted the special pharmacist sorting hat or whatever it is that these people consult. About five minutes later, she’s back and my silent muttering is beginning to get audible.

‘Oh, the covering of Kalms is sucrose,’ she said.

‘I’ll give her bloody Kalms,’ I mutter.

‘You just need to be careful,’ explained the pharmacist but this has now triggered the nuclear response that’s always likely when dealing with nervous little old ladies in Boots. The little old lady starts to describe her entire medical history, complete with full list of prescription medicines, the opinion of consultants, and something interesting she once heard in a waiting room.

I’d had enough.

‘Bugger this,’ I said audibly and walked out.

But my point is: never again will I do the gentlemanly thing when a woman wants to talk privately in Boots. ‘You’ve got a rash,’ I’ll shout, hovering over her shoulder. ‘Deal with it!’ I won’t take prisoners. ‘You’re not the first person with a fungal infection,’ I’ll cry, defending my spot in the queue.

And this is why the world is cruel and savage and there’s so little kindness left to go around. It’s the fault of nervous little old ladies everywhere. You have been warned.

Yet another pointless debate about social immobility among the very people causing it

Listening to David Cameron talk about social mobility is like listening to Elton John discussing deep sea welding. I sense that he realises this himself but Cameron wouldn’t be Cameron unless he’s aligning himself with some popular opinion. He’s the consummate ‘me too’ politician of our day and will undoubtedly be the first sitting PM to get himself a tattoo sleeve when he deems it politically shrewd to do so. The latest popular trend will always have him spittling his lips with unctuous words. ‘Of course, the public have spoken and I for one am not going to stand here and say that red hot pokers aren’t a suitable punishment for the work shy if that’s what people in Britain have decided. As Prime Minister, it’s my job to support these public driven initiatives and that’s why I’m also throwing my weight behind Mumsnet’s campaign to ban all knives with sharp edges and any stick that doesn’t have a rubberised tip. Yes, it might mean that we chop down a few trees but that’s a price we need to pay if we want to protect our children’s eyes.’

Of course, ‘social mobility’ is a problem that goes to the very roots out of culture and, much as I hate to say this, I’m not sure that Russell Brand is entirely wrong in what he recently said about revolution. Just look at the Tory’s current motto: ‘For Hardworking People’. It’s code, of course, for ‘we’re no friend of scroungers’ but, as with all things, the reality on the ground doesn’t conform so neatly to their quasi-Thatcherite ideology. Are they for the disabled who might not be able to work? Are they for the old, the poor, or the underclass? Are they really for the person working every hour to live on something much less than the minimum wage? It’s easy to talk about social mobility from a position where social mobility is a given. It’s easy to be hardworking when there’s an abundance of work, especially though family connections, but are they also for people on zero hour contracts and writers who don’t get paid for their work?

In modern politics, the only game that matters is the game that brings in the most votes and the current Conservative plan is to cauterise the places where they traditionally don’t do well. That only increased the problem of social mobility in areas such as my hometown here in the North. After seeing investment under Labour, it’s places like this that are now taking the brunt of Tory cuts.

Of course, they try to argue differently. The whole thing has a bowel knot of familiarity about it and Cameron has already addressed social mobility by leaping to discuss the racial makeup of the Tory Party, as though social mobility is only synonymous with race. Indeed, this new awareness of social mobility will no doubt lead to the usual round of positive discrimination which pretty much ignores the majority of people suffering from the lack of social mobility. I sometimes think that the worst thing you could be in these enlightened days is a white, heterosexual male stuck in a no-name northern town and not suffering from any serious but TV-friendly disability. I’ve never been asked to stand behind any Prime Minister as he gives a speech. In fact, no Prime Minister ever visited this town. The closest we came was Michael Heseltine flying over in a helicopter and arbitrarily deciding where the local boundaries would be drawn, completely oblivious to the regional allegiances on the ground.

I don’t know any celebrities and I don’t know anybody who knows any celebrities, except perhaps for one person I’ve spoken to online who is from Oxford and whose children were friends with a star of the Harry Potter films. Look at the profile of the average celebrity and they will have been school friends with other celebrities or their families or connected through marriage or their parents would have been famous in their own right. Look at that Claudia Winklewoman and tell me that she deserved to host the BBC's premier film show.

The problem I’ve argued for a long time is simply that there are huge areas of the country where chances are few to none. The country is run from London, with nothing much of note happening outside the major cities. All the major newspapers no longer cover news outside London with much conviction. A year or so ago, we were ravaged by a huge storm which barely made the news. A similar storm hits London and it's 24 hour coverage. Entire regions of the country are now covered by (at best) a single reporter, a fact highlighted by the sadly unambitious plans mentioned in this article from earlier this year. Compare The Guardian’s push into North America with their plans for northern England and, indeed, the area where The Guardian originated as the Manchester Guardian.

And that's what all this hand wringing comes down to. If the most liberal media in our country can’t be trusted to care about social mobility, then is there really any hope?

Worst Blog Post Ever

It disappoints me when I don’t blog. I didn’t want to miss another day for precisely that reason. I had a hellish weekend and it annoys me that I’ve not drawn a gag cartoon in nearly two weeks. Monday and Tuesday, I was busy/distracted/worn out by a variety of jobs that needed doing. I had people to see, places to go, and blogs I didn’t have time to write. In my various travels, I did get to hold the new Samsung Note 10.1 (2014 edition) and it was a beautiful as I thought it would be. Somewhat annoyingly, had I waited, various offers might have made it less than the price of my current tablet.

In other news: lost a spoke on my bike and it’s next to impossible to find a place to replace it at a decent price. Can’t do it myself because spokes have to be right length, down the millimetre.

Still no word about cartoon competitions. I guess it has been announced. I’m not looking and I have to stop even mentioning them.

The only positive is that I’ve managed to make a little progress on my promotional video.

Okay, this was definitely my worst blog post ever. I’ll try to do better tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are some strange shots I took after I discovered the panoramic function of my phone. For some of these, I Just held the camera to the window as the train moved and the camera did its magic. I think they came out looking surprisingly reasonable.

 

The Monday Carton

‘Dear friend! Lovely day! Glad to hear that you're in the market for cartons…’

This was the first email in my inbox this morning and it made from grim reading. Needless to say, I’m not in the market for cartons. I’ve never been in the market for cartons. For some inexplicable reason, cartons don’t excite me on a Monday morning.  Oh, you could say that I’m just a carton denier or perhaps I’ve never been with the right carton. You could even argue that I must have some deep latent love for cartons that I’d want to blog about it. Perhaps this email exposes the great carton lie I tell myself every single day.

‘Damn it, man!’ you should cry, while grabbing my lapels and slapping me around my face. Yes, you would need at least three hands to do that but you’re gifted and you like to make your important points impressively. ‘There’s nothing wrong with a man expressing his love for cartons. Some of the greatest men in history have been secretly in the market for cartons. What about Gladstone, Ghandi, Ulysses S. Grant? Nobody looks on them differently because they enjoyed the company of slatternly cartons. There’s nothing wrong with expressing your love for a good carton once in while.’

And indeed there is not. And perhaps if the circumstances were right, I would be in the mood for cartons. Perhaps dressed seductively, their pouting cardboard lips irresistible, they would be irresistible and I would succumb, possibly up to three times a night and sometimes even rinsing them out. And frankly, given my recent luck, I might have a better chance if I was I’d gone in for some carton competitions, rather than cartoons.

But alas, for the carton producers of China's Hebei province, this will have to remain my secret. Perhaps one day the world will be ready for a man to express openly his love for a carton but until that happy day, these emails will have to be stored in a safe place, such as the trash folder.

You're Now Entering... The Comfort Zone

Saturday was a day of two emotions. I sat down at one point to make headway on a project I’ve just started for an American startup. As soon as I sat down and focussed my mind on the task at hand (animating a tree so it sways gently in the breeze), I felt my body relax. My tensions eased and the things that have been preoccupying me in the past week just disappeared. I was actually happy.

The alternative was my other work which preoccupied the rest of my day. I was like a caged beast grinding down my teeth on iron bars. I suppose more than anything I was struggling with myself. The problem comes down to this: I don’t want to install Skype on my PC.

It sounds such a dumb thing to get agitated about but I hate Skype. I hate the way it lurks, ready to spring into life. I hate the presumption that I want to be connected with hundreds of smiling people, all with great teeth and feeling so damn happy. I hate Messenger too, though I’ve very reluctantly installed it. I hate that it sits next to me when I’m working. I dislike the way it informs the world when I’m sitting at my desk and when I’m away. I can, of course, make myself ‘invisible’ but then why have the foul machinery installed in the first place? And what business is it of other people if I am sitting at my desk, if I’m working or idle? Yet if I accept that Messenger is a good way to communicate, then Skype is a step too far. I hate phones, generally dislike mobile phone culture which increasingly cuts us off from the people around us. Phones also break my concentration, allow devious bastards like marketing agencies to bother me. Generally I don’t have them in my room. I’m also not one of life’s great small talkers. I have too many interesting things I could be doing rather than discussing the weather.

Yet as much as I don’t want it, I’m told that I must have Skype. I thought I’d install it on my iPad so I can at least turn it off when I’m working… Except, it seems that’s not enough. I need Skype on my PC so I can be watched as I work. Skype will allow others to see my desktop and others want to instruct me, guide my hand so I’d just be a lump of unthinking meat responding to commands and moving a cursor around a screen. Yet I’m so damn truculent that I can’t accept that. I’m stubborn. This is beginning to feel intrusive. My PC sits in my office which is my studio, my work environment, my writing den, my home. In this space, I have peace and I can think and I can write. I’d want to install Skype on my PC in the same way that I’d want to install a karaoke machine in the corner of the room and purchase a series of sweat soaked drunken Japanese businessmen, one for each day of the week, to take turns singing Barry Manilow classics when I’m trying to write.

Yet I must be wrong. Doesn’t everybody use Skype? Why must I be so damn difficult? Why can’t I just say yes? Why must I stand by my principles?

Still agitated by all this, I then receive an email directing me to this video on the website www.addicted2success.com.



I’m told I must watch it. It will ‘help me’. I’m not entirely sure how it would help me or even if I need help. I appreciate that somebody wants to help me but I watched about a minute of this video and wanted to stick my fist through the computer screen. When I agreed to do this work, I didn’t agree to have my psychology tested and changed. I don’t want to be a different person. Other than wanting some success in my writing and cartooning, I’m actually quite happy being me.

But why don’t I just conform? Why do I want to scream at the top of my lungs: I fucking hate self-help gurus promising instant abs, popularity, and success with the ladies? Sending me a video of this kind is like hanging a red rag before a bull. They promise me money and fame and to change my life but I despise every smiling grifting one of them. They’re charlatans, they’re goons feeding on the vulnerable, offering instant fix solutions to age old existential problems that Sartre, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Socrates and Plato couldn’t solve. Yet Bob’s solved it and Bob’s bought himself a luxury house in Florida. And Bob’s success could be your success too…

The tradition of snake oil salesmen is as old as most countries, strongest in American folklore. The Magnificent Oz was the prime example but American culture is steeped in their tales popularized by writers such as Mark Twain. These days, it’s harder for these chancers to sell snake oil. They have to find other ways to promise rewards in exchange for magic. Many of them become SEO experts and the purveyors of that most miraculous magic of all: success at social networking. Others peddle business theory, advice on how to be a great manager. They always talk about teams and positivity, as though it were that easy to dismiss the essential individual yearnings of each of us. I’ve never believed in any of it and it saddens me that other people believe in it. Taking this kind of bad advice destroys many young companies. It’s the reason why group meetings usually involve people sitting around feeling uncomfortable and refusing to speak. Ask anybody in one of those meetings what they want to do and they’ll either say ‘go home’ or at least get on with their work. My last job was made difficult by the same kind of micromanagement that ultimately demoralized the staff. Always told to be a team and be motivated, nobody would actually pull their weight because they knew that anything they did would ultimately be criticized and changed. So they did nothing and eventually the business folded.

None of which solves my problem today except I’m going back to animating trees in my comfort zone.

 

John W Henry: The Cartoon Strip – Episode 4

My latest comic strip for Red All Over The Land, currently being handed out around Anfield ahead of this afternoon's match against Fulham. This one was rushed to hit a deadline. Also not sure how many of these I'll do. This morning's news that BT have bought all the rights to the Champion's League makes me even more disenchanted with football. It might just be easier to stop watching it entirely. I have books, films, writing and cartooning to keep me busy. Football was another luxury I could easily cut from my life. I suppose it's another glowing success for our market economy...

One Friday that definately wasn't as good as Christmas

If there was a day when I needed a phone call from Michael Heath saying ‘congratulations’ for the cartoons, then today would have been that day. There hasn’t been a phone call, an email, or a sniff of good news. For my health I think I’ll now stop checking The Spectator website for the competition announcement. I don’t think I could take the disappointment. Not today.

My lack of a blog post yesterday should have confirmed that it was a hard day but I enjoyed working long hours and I got a lot done. Today I’m not enjoying as much. In fact, it’s been a freakishly hellish Friday. I wish I could blog about it but I can’t. Today I really needed a friendly ear but there’s none to be had anywhere.

To clear my mind, I went shopping but that didn’t help. Not only didn’t I find a friendly ear, I was disgusted to see my local Tesco are now declaring that ‘there is nothing as good as Christmas’. I know. Horrible, isn’t it, to see religious persecution writ large in their seasonal advertising. I don’t know… To me it sounds just a little too much like they’re saying to Jewish people that Yom Kippur isn’t as good as Christmas, to Muslims that Christmas is far superior to Ramadan, to Hindus that Krishna Janmashtami is a mere distraction because there’s only one really meaningful religious holiday on the calendar. They’re shouting to Pagans: ‘Hey, you Pagans! Your Autumnal Equinox isn’t a patch on Christmas because there really is nothing as good as Christmas.’ I’d be surprised if Pagans weren’t offended. I think I can even hear their moonbeam wheat crystal ear pendants / dreamcatchers rattling as they murmur spells over their flagons of cider.

Of course, Tesco are not just talking about major religious holidays. They’re saying that there’s ‘nothing’ better than Christmas. So, a mother’s love isn’t as good as Christmas. National prosperity isn’t as good as Christmas. A small puppy just missing the front wheels of a loaded Tesco refrigerated wagon isn’t as good as Christmas and, to my ears, that sounds like Tesco saying that they wish that puppy dead.

The end of war isn’t as good as Christmas, feeding the starving isn’t as good as Christmas, and even world peace isn’t as good as Christmas. When Obama rings Putin and asks for complete nuclear disarmament and an end to all proxy wars, Putin will simply say, ‘Barak, that sounds like it’s the best thing ever but haven’t your forgotten about Christmas?’

‘Hot damn!’ cries Obama and slams down the phone as he reaches for a small puppy to throw under a refrigerated wagon.

But perhaps I’m not realising the full significance of what Tesco are saying. The beginning of the universe, the very Big Bang itself, which brought everything into existence including Christmas, even that isn’t as good as Christmas in Tesco’s all-seeing eyes. Humanity and civilisation means nothing to Tesco. Customer satisfaction isn’t as good as Christmas, heaving no horse meat in their burgers isn’t as good as Christmas. Damn it! Tesco themselves are not as good as Christmas, which I grant you is the only part of this which is believable. They’re definitely not as good as Christmas.

I mean, it’s not as though we’re talking about Asda…

Council Business

I often wonder how many of you actually read the day’s entire blog. I’m not saying I’m blessed with hundreds of people reading but I do know that I can count regular readers on one hand, sometimes even two. That’s one finger per hugely intelligent and divinely blessed individual with the good sense to have bookmarked this blog.

And bookmarking www.the-spine.com is definitely the way to go. I wouldn’t like to think that anybody visits via a link on another blog that only takes them to the latest post when I’ve actually written two other posts today (this and this) , one of which (this) was the day’s proper blog post.

This post, for example, is just an update to say that there’s more civic news from Counciller Barry Prunefield over at The Pangolin. Today he’s discussing council bin collections. Any similarity between Barry’s views and my own are mere coincidental. Any similarity between Barry and other council officials is also a coincidence. Sadly, he doesn't make the following observation which I've just made whilst standing in my slippers in the rain: why do the bin men only arrive at 4pm in the afternoon when you put out your bins at 11pm the previous night? And why when you forgot to put out your bins the previous night do you only remember to put them out when you hear then go flying past on their wagon at 7am?

In other news: it’s raining, The Spectator still haven’t rang about the cartoon competition, and I fear that another cartoon opportunity has passed me by. However, in good news: I have underwear in the wash and tomorrow my loins will smell like Lenor lilacs.

Finally, a message to St Helens Council and our council leader, Barrie Grunewald, regarding their advice to now put cardboard in our black boxes instead of our now largely empty green wheelie bins: you are idiots!

Tattoo Culture

I sat down intended to write ‘half a mile’ but then I thought I better check my facts on Google Earth. The radius of the circle I drew was 86 metres. That’s 718 metres short of half a mile. 718 metres of being plain wrong.

The 86 metres is the distance between a succession of local shops that have opened in the past couple of years. Would it surprise you to know that in this small working class town, population not much more than 20,000 people, there are no fewer than five tattoo parlours, all contained within that circle drawn with an 86 metre radius? We don’t have that many doctors, dentists, or vets. We have no bookshops (Tesco’s bestsellers don’t count), no stationers, and now we no longer even have a further education college which was recently demolished along with three quarters of our library (now just one room mainly devoted to romantic thrillers). We used to have two bicycle shops but they both closed down as did our specialty sweet shop. We've had a succession of We once had a jewellers but that disappeared about five years ago. A long time ago we had a general hardware store where you could buy nails and wood but not any longer. Blockbusters closed this year, so there’s now no video store. We once had a cinema but that closed its doors back in the 1970s and was later destroyed by fire. Local rumours hint at arson. The cinema had stood derelict for a decade or more, some kind of preservation order on the old façade which was of historical significance stopping the site from being redeveloped into ‘luxury’ apartments. But like I said, that’s just local rumour.

On our high street, it’s impossible to buy books, treacle toffee, lengths of wood, a watch or necklace, or leads for a mechanical pencil. Yet the same town can support five independent tattooists, all no more than 172 metres of one another.

The fact they have become so ubiquitous is an interesting modern phenomenon which probably says something deeply revealing about our culture. Perhaps they are symbolic of a culture that no longer values the spiritual or the intellectual and instead has embraced materialism and a totemic obsession with the body. Perhaps they have something to do with our false illusions of individuality.

I think that begins in school. Schools are supposedly about educating us but I’m sure they’ve always really been about breaking youthful spirits. Riding past a junior school yesterday, I saw the kids peering out though the railings. It’s probably a clichéd observation but it’s one I hadn’t made before but I realised how those railings don’t so much protect the children from the world as protect the world from the children. The iron fences keep the kids inside as if the world can’t operate normally with youth running around. School teaches us to stop being youthful and to conform to certain lifestyle patterns: the nine to five routine, our place in a hierarchy, the repression of ambitions, dreams, and foolish joy.

Of course, life after your school years has changed. Perhaps it’s no wonder that people do choose to adorn themselves with tattoos when the world is increasingly alienating, where there are fewer ways to be unique and individual.

I was in Wilko yesterday and a guy in front of me was covered in various names and mottos. He was also bald and on the back of his head he had a big tattoo written in the usual flowing script. ‘One Life’ it said and beneath that ‘Live it’. I immediately thought: live it with a tattoo on the back of your head? Live it doing something as extraordinary as shopping in Wilko wearing a vest, tracksuit bottoms, and lots of gold chains?

But I guess it’s easy to mock these ridiculous aphorisms and note that most expressions of individuality can be found in the standard tattooist’s sourcebook, available from Amazon. Yet what other opportunities do many of these people really have for expressing themselves? They are defined by family, football, and celebrity: all of which feature prominently in tattoos. Some also have God or, in God’s place, some esoteric wisdom, reduced to a cryptogram written down a forearm. Beyond that, what else is there?

Not many years ago, there was a time when people engaged in hobbies. A person would learn to play a musical instrument or learn a foreign language even if they didn’t have a reason or particular desire to travel to that country. A person would make things in a shed or take up drawing or ballet or join a rock and roll band. I guess these things still happen but I suspect they’re increasingly rare, especially in working class England where music shops have closed, libraries disappeared, colleges turned into flats, theatres demolished. Life is increasingly dictated by the strip of American style fast food operations that line the main routes between our towns. Cinemas have moved into retail parks, impossible to get to without a car, prohibitively expensive even if you can drive. Between Thatcher and Murdoch we now have sport available to only those who can pay for it. Movies and culture too are for those with the means to buy them. The BBC News reported just a few nights ago that culture spending in the UK is £69 per person in London, £4.60 for the rest of us. Given that the majority of my £4.60 will go to art in regional cities like Manchester and Liverpool, what is the actual cultural budget around here? I suspect it’s pence and that definitely shows.

So instead of hobbies and culture, we have Twitter: the constant babble of people wishing to sound significant. And that, perhaps, is the key similarity. Perhaps tattoos aren’t such a surprise. Perhaps like Twitter, they’re a collective scream, part of some deep nihilistic urge to sanctify the self and to give us all meaning. They are the affirmation of lives increasingly devoid of any significance. Perhaps tattoos are to individuals what blogging is to cowards: a way of writing something meaningful for a world of individual spirits increasingly deaf, distracted or simply defeated.

 

Damn You, Vodafone!

Vodafone, you blithering fools! My mobile phone never rings! So few people have my number that when my phone does ring, I think it’s important. I know it's important...

Last week, I sat here hoping I might win the Jonathan Cape Graphic Short Story competition over at The Observer but the phone never rang. This week I sit here hoping and praying I might have figured in the Michael Heath cartoon competition at The Spectator. So, Vodafone, why do you mock me by choosing this week to ring me and asking me if I’m happy with my package? You've never done it before. Do you think my being happy with my package makes my hands shake like this? Does a cold call make my heart race? I can barely strike the keys cleanly on the keyboard.

Why Vodafone? Why did you raise my hopes? Why, damn you! Why?

A Bonfire Night Cartoon

‘Remember, remember the fifth of November; the Gunpowder treason and plot…’

I often wonder how many people actually remember why we have bonfire night or realise that it’s effectively a prolongation of the anti-Catholicism of sixteenth and seventeenth century England. In Lewes, they actually burn an effigy of Pope Paul V, or at least, I assume they still do.

Not that I’m for banning Bonfire Night on the grounds of religious intolerance. 99.999% of people lighting a banger tonight won’t be screaming ‘papist’ or shaking their hot dogs towards a burning cardigan and slacks topped with a Jimmy Savile wig. Bonfire night has become the one night of the year when the health and safety police are forced to cower behind their sofas as the rest of us express our personal freedom to stick a couple of sparklers down our underpants and wear a Catherine wheel as a hat. Not that I advocate sticking a couple of sparklers down your underpants or wearing a Catherine wheel as a hat. In fact, I’d probably recommend that you don’t do either. Leave that to the experts, as they say, or at least the guy who lives at the end of your road and has a glass eye due to a previous year’s larking about with incendiaries. As for myself, I’ll be indoors. I’ve not actually bought fireworks since I was a kid. ‘A fool and their money are easily parted,’ is a phrase I associate with November the fifth. All through my formative years I’d hear it muttered every time a particularly loud explosion shook the house.

I suppose the only reason we should ban Bonfire night is because of the injuries caused to innocent victims by local yokel types suddenly excited to rediscover fire. Tomorrow the news will no doubt have the usual reports. ‘Somebody thought it funny to set off a roman candle in a phone box but it took out the entire street…’ ‘He threw petrol on the bonfire but it set his trousers alight…’ ‘They tired bangers to the dog but it ran in the house and ignited the curtains…’

However, here’s a cartoon I drew last night whilst rewatching ‘God Bless America’ but with the commentary track enabled (highly recommended). If I’d had time today, I might have redrawn the kid and the parent but I don’t have the time.
I’m going to be on the 12.25 into Manchester where I intend to buy some new spokes for my bike and enjoy a coffee in a hopefully quiet and banger-free Waterstones.It's just started to rain so I'm stuck at my desk editing video.

Man in Motion

Another of the many cartoons I drew but didn't eventually send to The Spectator's recent cartoon competition. The theme, obviously, was 'man in motion'.