If it helps, imagine me as a carbon copy of Gerard Butler in the movie of the same name. Now, take an oath - for the sake of your own sanity - to never, ever try to find out what I actually look like. The shock might be more than your emotional health is able to cope with.

Now: 300.
I discovered this morning that radio can be dangerous. There I was, driving along a perfectly straight road, when over the radio came the news that a Canadian survey has discovered that Millenials - otherwise known as Generation Y (I maintain that it was originally 'Generation "WHY?"') or Generation Whiners, expect to, or at least assume that they will, receive - on average - three hundred THOUSAND dollars each from their parents in the form of an inheritance. I almost drove into oncoming traffic as I yelled ":ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?" at the car radio (hence the bit about radio being dangerous).

​A few things immediately occurred to me about this:

• ​They'd better not have asked my kids about this (they can't have, surely, or else the average number would have been much lower....wouldn't it?).
• Is this (Generation EGB*) our fault?
• How can we make this all the fault of Generation Y?

*EGB = Emerging Grumpy Bastards
​
In the interests of honesty, I should also point out that it also reminded me of a personal issue (which I won't go into details about) which falls within the realm of inheritances and dovetails with the subject of ​fucking unfair. ​Oh did I accidentally add emphasis then? Sorry.

​So - is this our fault? Have we raised our children in such a way that we are to blame for this kind of expectation or sense of entitlement? Certainly, I feel a sense of responsibility for the undeniable fact that my kids don't have the same kind of awareness that I am 99% sure that I had at their age. However, my young 'uns would not be so daft as to expect a huge inheritance from me - we're simply not living that lifestyle. In fact, our lifestyle is almost the opposite of the societal 'norm', in that we're downsizing and simplifying our lives, and money is less and less of a focus for us.

​But still...for everyone else, just where does this kind of expectation come from?

​I don't understand it. As a result, I am diverting all of my cognitive abilities (the energy from which is sufficient to light up a 0.5 watt LED for precisely one tenth of a second) towards making  this nonsense entirely the responsibility of that entitlement-ridden, whining, largely helpless and, I fear, somewhat doomed generation....

Someone once coined the phrase about life's rich tapestry - I wonder what disaster had befallen them when they came up with that idiom? It's a beauty: gentle, meaningful and powerful all at the same time.
​
​Our colourful wall hanging is currently including a little piece in the bottom left hand corner depicting a pipe pouring water through a concrete basement wall and behind the drywall/plasterboard, in order to be merrily soaked up by the sub-floor particle board. Just to the right of it is a very detailed section which shows a whole series of emails and phone calls, as well as strange people (and some of them are really strange) wandering through the house with tools and clipboards and cell phones pushed against their ears with their shoulders.

It's a work in process, and there are blank spaces yet to be filled, but right now I'm stitching in a block which has some new strange people in my bedroom, some of them are here to pack up some small things, and some of them are here to take away our bedroom furniture. The empty space will soon (I hope) be filled in with floors being ripped up, everything being allowed to dry out for a while, and finally being completed with a brand new floor being laid.

​Fortunately, over the years, the tapestry of my life has - with exposure to the elements - become tear-resistant because there have been a few occasions when I've wanted to get a little bitey with it, and to rip lumps out of it. This is one of those moments.

​The disruption could, of course be much worse - the young folk are not being disturbed at all and we have only lost our bedroom to our minor calamity, so the house is almost completely fully functional. As things stand, we will not be sleeping in our own bed for three weeks at the least, but we have a hotel room locally, only five minutes away. What stresses me (and I'm using the word deliberately and not in the teenage sense, whereby the slightest bit of concern about any tiny little wrinkle is described as 'stressing' - or even worse: 'stressAng') is the whole business of having strange people in my house - and just to pile on the pain, in our BEDROOM.

I've always been a little neurotic about my house. I think it stems from my childhood, when the vast majority of my school friends lived in much nicer houses and had much nicer things. As a kid therefore, I grew to feel ashamed of my home, and I've never quite got over it. On one occasion I even made up a ridiculous excuse for not allowing a friend into the house (he just dropped by while passing) because I was terrified that the house was just too untidy to be seen. It's hard to overstate the level of stress this arouses in me. I know that it's disproportionate, but the darned thing overtakes me like an incoming wave on a beach, and leaves me feeling helpless and powerless in its grip.

​Right now, I'm tapping away nervously at the dining table while the voices coming from the basement reach out to taunt me. Every sound, every sentence is like a small electric shock, each one kicking the stress needle over towards the red zone. I haven't hit the red zone yet and I have no intention of so doing, but it's mighty uncomfortable sitting up here while people I have never met before rummage through some of our belongings down in the basement. As if to demonstrate this, my right leg has begun vibrating as if an invisible dog is dry-humping it. A BIG invisible dog. Occasionally, the left one joins in, but (because, courtesy of 25 years of rugby I still have reasonably large thighs) that only makes my nuts hurt after a couple of minutes, so one or both subside after a short while - only to start up again a few minutes later when I hear a voice say something like: "Did you make a note of the damage on that chair?"

​This brief chapter of our lives will pass us by soon enough, and my irrational fears and my vibrating legs will disappear into a 'Do Not Use' section of my memory. Life will go on, and the stuff which is really important - the people stuff, the loved ones stuff (some of which is going on regardless and in parallel to this minor crisis) will take precedence. I know this, both emotionally and cognitively, but as yet I have yet to find the strategies in my mind to help me cope with this kind of intrusion without feeling just a little overwrought. Maybe I could start a crowdfunding exercise for my therapy sessions?

No, this isn't the title of my latest adult movie, but thank you for thinking of me that way.

Having forgotten to take my phone (with the little bubble-bursting game that drives me fricken insane) with me into the bathroom the other day, I was rather brutally forced to examine life, the universe and my own sense of grumpiness as I stared with slightly bulging eyeballs at the wall three feet away. Quite how my mind arrived at this particular thought is unknown and is likely to remain so, but arrive at it, I did.
It's a startling and disturbing truth: most of the people that I have met in my life have proven to be people who occupy a position somewhere along the asshole (or as we say in England: arsehole - I think it has a nicer ring to it) spectrum. Now before my friends (both of them) leap to their feet in protest, I'd like to make a few things clear. Firstly, that last sentence made it sound like my friends share a pair of feet, and that's simply not true - how would they get around, after all? Secondly, I have more than two friends (and no, the number isn't three either...or four...), and thirdly, anyone I consider a friend definitely does not sit anywhere along the arsehole (I told you it sounded better) spectrum. Finally, I have more than four friends, if you're going to get silly about this.

I have to wonder if it's the same for the rest of us. Most of the people that I have met in my life still fall into the category of work-related meetings, although that particular graph is probably slowly changing shape these days. Having worked in roles that frequently required me to deal with people who had already firmly established their arsehole credentials, it's not particularly surprising that the statistics lean in that direction. Where it gets more disturbing for me is in relation to people who really shouldn't be anywhere on the spectrum (either by virtue of their reputation, their professional position, or their association with someone who is a thoroughly decent person). In such cases, I'm forced to wonder if it's me who's the arsehole.

Most of the time it's easy - take, for example, this evening's encounter with a small, very hairy and shrivelled specimen of ape-descended being who decided - purely on the basis that I had appeared in his line of vision - that I deserved to be told what a useless piece of shit I am, and that he will, when he's feeling up to it, kick my ass all over town. Obviously, this man is an arsehole. I've met him before, and even when sober, he's an arsehole: simple.

What I'm finding, however, is that more and more often people can be so profoundly disappointing - either through poor professional service or observed behaviour in any number of circumstances. Take for example a fellow for whom I had quite a high regard in relation to his professional work. Then, a few weeks ago, I witnessed him behaving in such a way that knocked him cleanly off the pedestal that I'd built for him, and firmly sat him down upon the arsehole spectrum. Or the reasonably intelligent person who, despite knowing enough about me to avoid doing so, insists upon talking to me as if I just climbed out of my alien pod last week. Or the only neighbour who has never made any contact of any kind (eye or otherwise). Or the person who sold me that fucken car last year - now he....he is a HUGE arsehole. Sorry...give me a minute....*deep breaths*....

The problem that I seem to be facing is that my standards are - rightly or wrongly - excluding me from making as many friends as I might prefer. I can't compromise on my values, however...which leaves only one obvious solution: the rest of the world had better get its shit together and stop behaving like arseholes.

No, no: I'm not grumpy, but I am a little tired of the industry - and it does increasingly seem to have become a bit of a monster - surrounding, driving and forcing Valentines Day down our throats.

Almost as soon as Christmas is done, the shops fill with red and pink hearts (you never see a green one, though, do you?), and the greetings card shelves begin to groan under the weight of the thousands of purile ways that card designers have found to say "I love you", or words to that effect. That's without even getting into the Valentine cards from the family pet (if you're stupid enough to find that cute, then go ahead: knock yourselves out and waste your money).

I remember that it used to puzzle me that Valentine messages were traditionally supposed to be anonymous - I always wondered what the point of it was in that case. I mean...oh well, you know what I mean. As a kid or young man I was also very nervous of this date, as it seemed to offer little more than a new opportunity to be rejected. I have therefore sent very few valentine cards in my life (and it must be said, have never received many either - what a surprise!), and I don't really believe that my life has been any less full for it.

Unfortunately, what I'm seeing these days is an industry which exists to raise society's expectations (most explicitly, for some reason, around the male response) - which of course translates directly into the amount of effort and/or money spent on the so-called 'occasion'. What the industry is trying to do - in the best capitalist brainwashing sense - is to encourage spending. It looks like things are going well for the Valentine's Day industry this year, too - I don't recall ever seeing so much product in the stores, or seeing so many commercials on TV (or for that matter, hearing so many on the radio). I say again: Valentine cards from the family pet. Future generations will judge us, be sure of that - and I think that they will conclude that we were a total bunch of bell-ends (look it up in a British dictionary of slang).

My wife and I don't do anything special on this day. No, again: it's not some smug "We love each other enough anyway!" kind of thing - but it is a reflection that we both tell one another every single day, by word or deed, how much we mean to one another. I'm very lucky to be loved by the woman I love, and rather than go out and spend money on silly things, I prefer to simply reflect on my wonderful fortune, and appreciate that my personal wealth is something that not everyone ever finds in life.

We talk, we hug, we kiss: we do the things that truly mean something. More than that I'm not telling you. Weirdo.

I'm just very, very happy to love her, and to be loved by her: Valentine's sentiments are not confined to a single day in our year, and that's pretty darned wonderful.

Yesterday, two teams of approximately three thousand thick-necked and thin-headed men (no women allowed, except for misogynistic purposes) gathered in an enormous stadium, before tens of thousands of variously corpulent, face-painted and unanimously patriotic people, in order to conduct a ritualized battle with a heavily modified and (hopefully: properly) inflated leather bag. The two teams of over-fed, heavily muscled and egocentric players were collectively worth more than the combined economic output of several small African nations. This latter fact partially explains why these men were swathed in enormous amounts of padding around almost all of their very valuable bodies.


For the following three hours, these giants (in most ways, but not all) of the athletic world fought their heavily regulated tribal war, which consisted of approximately fifteen minutes of actual action spread over the theoretical hour of play. By doing so, these heroes successfully convinced the watching billions (at least twenty two billion people watched the game on a reliably-reported eight billion TV sets, many of them inn the deserts of Sudan and Chad) that they were in fact doing something extraordinary.


It mattered not that they took very frequent breaks from their ten-second bursts of activity (and impressive amounts of manly, intimidating grunting) in order for the advertising world to sell their clients' increasingly ridiculous hair products, increasingly unfathomable cars and the increasingly deniable idea that having more stuff makes us all happier and better people. It mattered not that the actual amount of physical contact time - quite separate from the 'playing time' by the way - was laughably, pathetically short when compared with – oh, for example, the world's best sport: rugby. After all, everyone had been thoroughly aroused by the singing of America's national (battle song) anthem by a woman with a name not unlike the first sounds of a six week-old baby. That, apparently, matters; not just to Americans, but also - of course - to the thirty four billion people watching the event both inside and outside the solar system.


Once you've been worked up into a nonsensical fervour by something like nationalism, the facts about what you're watching cease to be important. Being part of a gang - all hollering the same nonsense – can be exciting and a lot of fun. Unfortunately, for those of us who see American football for what it really is (very rich people pitting their teams of highly-paid slaves against each other in mock battles, and charging ordinary people money to watch that shit), it all looks extraordinarily silly.


Super silly, even.
​

A little while ago I read a piece written by the late Oliver Sacks which touched upon the subject of anger subsumed by empathy. It was a very engaging piece - unsurprisingly - and just as was intended, had me reflecting upon my life so far.

Now please don't fall over with shock while I digress for a moment...Last year I was talking to someone about writing a book and I mentioned that I had done so - indeed, had realized my goal and had published a book - and I was faced with a strange reaction to it. Upon hearing that, at the age of fifty, I had written what amounted to a memoir, he was incredulous. "A memoir?" he said, "You're too young to write a memoir!" Now, after bludgeoning him to the ground with a handy baseball bat for having the bloody cheek (and boy, did he end up with bloody cheeks) to express incredulity (and therefore making me spell it twice at some point in the future when I would write a blog piece about it), I picked him up and hugged him for suggesting that I was too young for anything. And then I thought: am I supposed to wait until I'm too old to enjoy it before writing about my life? Silly man, I thought, and as an act of ultimate revenge (I prefer to gloss over the whole bludgeoning issue), I didn't buy a house from him.

So: reflection. Dr. Sacks recounted two stories wherein he was almost killed - or at least seriously injured - by either murderous or merely reckless people, and to which he reacted in two distinctly different ways. In the first instance, after a driver had twice deliberately tried to knock him off his motorcycle, he caught up with the car at a set of traffic lights and, of all things, reached into the car and (incidentally, he was a big, powerful man) and twisted the man's nose with all his strength. Apart from making me laugh out loud, this struck me as the kind of violence that a man of true intelligence - which he most certainly was - might employ, instead of the mindless bludgeoning that, um...some of our...um...less intellectually blessed fellow humans might employ (cue: embarrassed whistling).

On the second, and oddly similar occasion, he followed the inexplicably homicidal driver until his car ended up in a dead-end street with no escape. He leaped off his motorcycle, swinging a camera monopod around his head like...well, like a baseball bat, I suppose... and advanced upon the vehicle with vengeance in his heart. As I said, Oliver was a big, strong guy, and when he reached the car, he found inside four terrified teenagers, one of whom was also a very stupid terrified driver. When he saw this, all thoughts of payback left his mind. He lowered his weapon and walked away without a word, reasoning that all parties, having anticipated death in the immediate past, had little to gain from prolonging the encounter.

What wisdom (like I said, he was a fiercely intelligent fellow) he showed. I wish that I'd read this piece much earlier in my life, because it would probably have saved me from having rather a lot of rage-fuelled episodes (mostly road-related, I have to say). Oh I haven't had tons of actual fisticuffs episodes (just the one, in fact, when I was attacked and I ended up subduing and arresting that particular piece of shit), but I have inflicted upon myself all the emotional loading of such encounters, and as a result - on each occasion - ruined at least one day of my life in the process.

Just lately, however, I've been doing something a little different, and having noticed it, I found the Oliver Sacks piece to be especially meaningful. Recently (over the last year or so), I've been turning down the wick on my annoyance or anger. There are still just as many idiots out there in the world, and I still run into as many reasons to throw my hands in the air (I don't detach them to do so, by the way - come on now, think about it: how would I catch them or re-attach them?), but in most cases, I've started to metaphorically (perhaps metaphysically?) turn the other cheek.

Partly - well actually, mostly - I began to do this as a self-preservation strategy. Firstly, stress is supposed to be a healthy thing, and creating stress needlessly (after all, a dickhead in a car is going to be out of my life in less than sixty seconds no matter what else happens) seems like a less than intelligent choice. Secondly - and this is pertinent now and will become more so as I age even more - I am not the man that I once was. Oh, I think that in extremis I could probably still give a good account of myself, but physical encounters would take a lot more out of me than they ever used to, and that will only become more extreme as the years go by. Simply put: my fighting days are over, and before long, it's going to be very obvious to any young buck that this is so. I haven't had a fight for at least fifteen years (they were all either work or sport-related anyway) and that, frankly, is how I like it. As I grow older, I must abandon the testosterone-laden attitudes of my youth and accept that a last-ditch stand to protect myself and my family would probably be a last-breath event. On balance, it's probably better to walk away - even with dented pride - than to try to back up my bluster with physical action.

It's a ruthless universe, but it teaches me that I really am not the strong and athletic man I once was (stop laughing; it's true!), and that these days, my pen is probably a lot mightier than my sword. It's a chastening realization on the one hand, but on the other, it's also something of a relief to realize that I don't need to be the tough guy that I once thought I had to be, just to survive in a world that frightened me. I would have liked to have found this out a long time ago.

 
 

I have always subscribed to Douglas Adams' idea - at least, ever since I read it - that everyone in the universe exists with a modicum of paranoia - or at least the feeling that they are somehow different. This notion fits in nicely with my own sense of being a little bit unusual, and so it helps to confirm the feelings that I have about not fitting in very well. Perhaps everyone feels this way, but it's hard to tell because asking the right questions to determine this only makes me seem even more weird. I think.

​Leaving aside the facts, such as my sense of humour often being met with blank uncomprehending stares or my increasing frustrations with the way that society seems to be steadily eroding individuality in favour of a strange, media-driven version of normality, it's objectively accurate to say that I - and my gorgeous lady - are diverging from many other people's versions of how to live. Now, I should be clear; we're not starting to shed our clothing on every day with an 'r' in it (we only do that in the summer months or when we have guests), and neither have we taken to worshipping flip-flops as a manifestation of the great foot deity Tarsal, but we do have some less than regular goals.

​It's all quite simple, really. We've given up the pursuit of stuff. We recognize that our happiness is not dependent upon how many things we have, or how big or expensive those things may be, and so we are now headed along a path which is leading us to a simpler lifestyle - as well as hopefully a more physically active lifestyle.

​Increasingly, however, it seems obvious to me that people either cannot or will not understand what we're trying to achieve. That's OK, I suppose, although I don't really see what's so difficult to understand. We want to live simply, to get out of the system which drives us to buy more, and to consume more and more. We are no longer in competition with everyone else: we don't need to be LIKE everyone else, or to fit into anyone else's version of what life should be.

​To that extent, we are starting to live outside society's box. No, we're not living in a rough shelter fashioned from branches, birch bark and maple leaves, and no, we're not clothing ourselves in the skins of captured and killed bears and wolverines, but we have a small-ish and unspectacular home and we make our clothes last. We even take showers. Where possible (I am after all, a strangely-shaped thing) we buy used casual clothing at the thrift store - and so far we haven't noticed an outbreak of cooties. Neither do we yet forage in the undergrowth for fungi, roots and berries (although the berries part does occasionally happen in the right season), and eating roadkill is not on our list of things to try. We do however, eat - with the exception of cheese and yoghurt, both of which are on the list for future home-production - mostly unprocessed food, with the emphasis on organic fruit, vegetables and locally-sourced meat. It's all intended to be simple, and as non-reliant upon large corporations (especially the food industry) as possible.

​If you look into Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, we're focusing on self-sufficiency regarding the fundamentals of survival. To us, it makes only good sense.

Some people get it, of course - in particular most of my wife's female friends, many of whom are on board with the whole idea and either planning to or already executing a similar life strategy. I find that the men that I know tend to be the ones who provide the blank looks. So many men in this part of the world seem to be quite wrapped up in the culture of money and 'stuff' - in particular with regard to big or expensive trucks, cars, boats and motorcycles. If I try to explain our philosophy, it seems to make little or no sense to them, and that worries me. How, I wonder, can it be so hard to understand that a person wants to step away from the constant need for things, from the drive to earn money only to spend it quickly, and to borrow even more? I think that perhaps  it becomes difficult when a way of life becomes addictive.

Perhaps we will end up categorized as 'weirdos' or 'hippies', but I prefer to think quite the opposite. I believe that the modern, gather-as-much-stuff-around-me-as-possible lifestyle is strange and unnatural. I've tried the rat race thing. I've spent as much time away from home as in it in order to make a very good wage, and I drew the conclusion that it made no sense. What happened to me was that I began to accumulate things, but my happiness - and my health - began to diminish. I wasn't seeing my children nearly enough. My marriage, which had been struggling for years, fell apart. In short, simple terms, that lifestyle simply didn't work. I wonder how many people carry on collecting things simply to drown out the small voice which tells them that it isn't working. I have my suspicions. Of course I have no way to know how many people work in a similar way to me, but I have a hunch that there are a lot of folks out there who fool themselves into feeling good about their lives in this way.

Personally, I'm looking forward to harvesting my own food, keeping my house warm and dry, and having time to think about the other important things in life: people.

This post might not go where you expect, but it won't take long for me to take the fork in the road (fork you, cancer?).

Last night I happened upon - well that's not strictly true... it's not as if I tripped over it: I planned to watch it - a fascinating documentary about the industry which has sprung up around the emotive issue of breast cancer. I'm such a cynical old bastard sometimes, but usually that's the result of having been around the block more times than was my fair share, and being a bit dizzy as a result.

My family has been relatively fortunate with regard to cancer's impact upon us. I say this in the full knowledge that cancers tend to be (despite the headlines and endless appeals on social media to the contrary) diseases of the elderly, but my family has lost a lot fewer members than many others to cancers. Of course, in the modern era, this does not mean that I'm unaware of the risks and likelihood of myself or someone I love being diagnosed, but as a matter of statistical fact, my family has been relatively lucky - not untouched, but less so than many others. perhaps this allows me a little emotional room; room to step back and say to myself: "Hang on a bloody minute!"

I have a simple question - and some of the answers were hinted at last night in the documentary that I watched: Where has all the billions of dollars gone? What have been the results of all the research that we have been told is being done into cancer? The numbers quite literally run into many, many billions of dollars, and yet we seem to be little closer to a cure for any of the cancers than we were when I was a child (oh so many years ago!). I've had my unsubstantiated suspicions for many years about this - we are almost constantly bombarded with messages about various types of cancer, and pressure is brought to bear about contributing to charitable causes in order to fund research into cures. And yet...

The documentary offered some validation for my suspicions last night: research into the research has indicated a complete lack of networking, a lack of coordination and of course, a lack of results. It would seem - and if this isn't criminal negligence, I don't know what is - that many experiments are constantly being repeated by different researchers, that many experiments are in fact conducted merely into the efficacy of proprietary drugs rather than the diseases themselves, and that, on the whole, there is a great deal of pointless buggering about going on.

If I wasn't such a gobshite*, I'd be speechless.

*You may want to Google 'gobshite' - trust me: it's worth it - you will discover a word which fits at least one person that you work with.

People are dying while charities - many of which seem to exist purely to...well, exist - take immense amounts of money and funnel it towards 'research' which seems to be getting nowhere fast. how wrong does it have to get before governments start to pay attention? And yes, you're right: there is more than a hint of sardonic fatalism in that last question...

Cancer is, of course, very real - I don't need to remind you of that - but perhaps the group of industries hovering around The Big C is after all, just the biggest CON that we have all ever bought into...

And so it came to pass that the middle-aged curmudgeon, faced with the certain knowledge that his metabolism had all but closed down, and even walking past a Burger King did causeth him to gain weight, decided to do something about it...and the Lord looketh upon him and sayeth "At fucking last!"

​Yes, I've decided to bite the bullet (just so long as there's no carbohydrates in it) and take myself into a land where carbs are the enemy. Of course, being a person with diabetes, carbohydrates are already on the radar...but that's about it. Now, I really need to get something done about my weight before it becomes even more difficult to control, and I'm reduced to a diet of air and water.

​I refuse to adopt any of the advertised plans out there, and in true bloody-minded fashion I shall try to work it out myself without any help from the so-called experts who seem to change their minds every few years anyway.

​Soon, therefore, I shall be a veritable racing snake; an athlete once again and with the world at my feet (just as soon as I can see them over my belly once more). I shall also avoid giving you regular updates on my progress. This is mostly because I know that such posts are as boring as watching a turd air-dry, but also because the chance of abject failure is, in my case, reasonably high, and I don't really want to have to make any embarrassing admissions.

​Short aside: my spell checker recognizes the word "fucking". How lovely - now that's progress!