A Grand Day Out

A little over a week ago, I went to see Dredd. But we'll get to that. First let me tell you about the day I had in the run up to watching the film.

Because I am me, and therefore pathologically incapable of planning ahead or having any kind of workable time management skills, I just left the house when my bits of housework were done and headed off to Darlington on the basis that there was bound to be a screening at some point round about the time I got there. Surely.

3 and a half hours I had to kill. 3 and a half hours! In Darlington, of all places.

Of course, with loads of time to kill there's only one logical thing to do; so I bought some pringles from the pound shop and sat on a public bench to tweet about how I had loads of time to kill. Which was when it happened. Attack of the Spider!

Have you ever sat and watched a spider run up and down your arm for ages? It goes up. It goes down. It goes up. It goes down. It goes up... I can thoroughly recommend the experience for it's therapeutic properties. There's more to life than spider athletics though, or pringles for that matter, so I roused myself and headed into the town centre.

 As I passed through one of those little tunnels under the road that I can't remember the name of but come in very handy when buskers don't want to get wet in rain showers, I heard a woman bemoaning, in very strident terms, that something 'was not her bloody fault!' I say bemoaning in strident terms. What I mean is yelling at the top of her lungs. As I drew closer to the as yet unseen woman it became apparent that whatever it was she had done wrong, it had involved her being put under pressure to make a decision, in a split second. She's not good under pressure, and the other (unheard, and at this point, as far as I knew, possibly imaginary) person should know this and stop haranguing her (she actually said haranguing, I was gobsmacked) about this stuff.

Turns out the person getting shouted at was a child, of about 8. Who, seemingly oblivious to her distress (or possibly just not knowing what haranguing is), continued to calmly explain that he didn't like that kind of ice cream and wouldn't be eating it, thank you very much. I moved on.

In the market place there was a man. He was hanging off a lamp post and reading scripture, very loudly. Apparently, and I wasn't aware of this so he's taught me something at least, we are all dust in the eyes of God. He went on to explain that it is a sin of presumption to think yourself anything more than said dust. Now, I'm not a particularly religious chap, but I find it hard to fault the logic there. Moving on.

Cafe! Sat in the really cramped cafe with ultra uncomfortable seats and read a bit of my book (A Serpent Uncoiled, by Simon Spurrier, if you must know, and it's effing marvelous) whilst eating chips, beans, and FISH FINGERS! I hadn't had fish fingers in years! Why don't I eat fish fingers anymore? I love fish fingers! Cafe got extra busy so I left as soon as I'd finished eating, rather than carry out my plan of staying and reading for ages while nursing my coffee and looking sullenly at the staff as they made passive aggressive attempts to move me along by wiping around my cup and 'accidentally' bumping my seat.

At this point I was running out of ideas to kill time and still had 2 hours to go. Things were looking desperate. I'm not saying that Darlington has nothing going for it; there are two licensed sex shops with a wide variety of dvd's to suit all tastes, after all. Sadly, and you'll know this if you've ever been in a high street sex shop, they are massively expensive, so not really an option; it's weird, but I have no embarrassment about going in to those places and buying stuff, but if I go in, wander around and then leave empty handed I feel like a dirty old man and get all self conscious. Explain that, Frasier!

Anyway, I decided to go on a mission. Many moons ago when A Dance With Dragons came out I didn't buy it because there was no rush, on account of how I wanted to re-read all the previous books in the Song of Ice and Fire series first. When I finally did get around to buying it, it had gone from the shops. Obviously. I have all the others in hardback; no way was I buying this one in paperback. So with this time to spare I went on a search of all the charity shops and second hand book shops I could find.

I didn't find the book second hand, although I eventually did pick up a copy in a publishers clearance shop, but what I did find was a shop purporting to be given books away! I went inside, it wasn't a scam! Apparently all the books had been rescued from landfill and they just wanted them to go to a good home. You could help yourself! Is this a thing? I approve!

Anyway, I spent a good while after that sitting on a park bench watching a bunch of squirrels prancing around without a care in the world, and a bunch of drunk men be very threatening to various passers by who wouldn't give them a cigarette. Then off to see Dredd I didst gambol. After a quick stop at the poundshop for some more pringles and the old 3 cans of pop for a pound deal. Because have you seen how much that shit costs in the cinema? I'd like to!

Dredd was, as I had hoped; but wasn't, if I'm being honest, wholly expecting given what had happened last time someone made a movie of this character; a bloody brilliant film, full of lashings of hardcore violence, blood splatter, one liners and things blowing up. Just what the Doctor ordered. Although I was a little distracted by the fact that a member of staff sat near me for over half the film. Was he watching me eat my pringles? What are the rules about bringing your own food to the cinema? WHY IS HE LOOKING AT M...Oh, it's fine, he's gone.

After the movie I went to the bakers, got a pasty, a chocolate eclair and a bottle of water and then headed for the bus home. On the way passing a very creepy human statue performer who, I'm not afraid to admit, well put the shits up me. A performer I might add who was in Newcastle two days ago when I was there. I saw her from a distance and after thinking it was a strange coincidence, then discounting that on the basis that coincidences don't exist and coming to the conclusion that she must therefore be stalking me, I steeled myself to pass her. And I still crapped myself when she waved as I went past. Anyway, back to a week ago...

Hard as it is to believe, all that waffle above was meant to be funny. I know, I know. But I'd like to end on a serious note. If you'll indulge me?

Whilst sitting on the bus awaiting departure I heard a shout, from the pavement outside. A mans voice, slurred, shouting about how "that's a nice bag love, how much was that, darling?" I looked up, already having become engrossed in my book again, and say two men bearing down on an attractive young woman, leering like nutcases and obviously drunk. The woman put her head down and carried on walking.

They followed. I watched, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and a nagging voice in the back of my head saying " do something." I didn't. They followed her along the street, asking about her clothes, her bag, how she was doing; all at high volume and all while leaning in extremely closely. She looked terrified, and increased her pace. I still did nothing.

When she neared the corner, she actually started to run, and disappeared from sight. The drunk men stood and laughed for a couple of seconds... then one nudged the other and they started to run after her. I watched the other people on the street; surely one of them would say something? But no. I told myself that I should get off the bus and follow; try to intervene... but I didn't, and the bus started to move, and I told myself I couldn't help now anyway and besides, she'd be all right. She would just go into a shop until they got bored, or she would flag down a security guard in the precinct or...

Even if the woman was in no physical danger, and I'm in no way certain that she wasn't, she was definitely distressed. And I did nothing; not because I didn't think those men were in the wrong, but because I was scared. I wanted to intervene, but I wanted to not get punched more.

I'm ashamed of my behaviour, but I'm not going to lie to you, I think I'd probably react in exactly the same way again if the situation arose. I guess that's just the kind of man I am. A coward. A coward, and a shit.

Dumped

It may have felt like it at the time but Maurice was not a permanent fixture in our house. He came, he went, and occasionally he would stay the night during his 'went' periods because that's the kind of soft touch my Mother was when it came to him, but there were extended periods when he wasn't around. During these times my Mother would even pay lip service to the notion that she and he were done by getting together with other men.

One such 'filler' relationship actually managed to progress to the point of us almost moving in to the guy's house. It was never made official, and we never gave up our own house, but at one point we spent a good few weeks staying with him without setting foot in our own home.

Now, on the one hand, this could be seen as a bad thing, because moving in with him would have meant leaving behind our house on The World's Friendliest Street; a place that I was genuinely happy. None of the shit from my life prior to moving there had gone away, my Mother had not suddenly morphed into Ma Walton and Maurice was probably an even worse Father figure than my own waste of space Dad, but none of that seemed to matter all that much, because I loved living in that place. How would I cope with leaving that behind?

But on the other hand, moving in with him would have meant that we could almost, almost, convince ourselves that Maurice was finally no longer a factor in our lives.

In the end I made my decision on how I felt about the whole thing on the fact that he lived further away from our school. Which meant getting up earlier and walking further. Uphill! The indignity!

Of course, all the worrying and soul searching would eventually come to naught, because in a scenario all too common, we came back from school one day to be told that we were going home. The relationship, which had seemed perfectly fine that morning, was over. Oh, and Maurice was there to help us move our stuff. Now there's a surprise.

I felt sorry for the guy, to be honest with you, as we all trooped out of his house and he said his forlorn goodbyes to each of us individually. I mean aside from the, admittedly pretty major, character flaw of actually seeming to think something of my Mother, he had seemed like a fairly decent chap. Certainly in the weeks we spent in his house he had managed to restrain himself from any fits of ultra violence, so he had that going for him. He knew the situation with my Mother and Maurice going in though, so I suppose you could say he brought it on himself.

So anyway; we trooped off up the horrible big bank that took us home and upon arrival we quickly settled into our old routines. Maurice's 'helping with the bags' shockingly turned into him staying the night, which in a mindblowing twist that I certainly never saw coming, turned into him living with us. Fair play to him though, he made an effort. It must have been, oh, at least a week before his fists started flying.

In truth, I was fairly content with the way things turned out. I was back in the house I loved, surrounded by the neighbours I adored. None of the rest of it seemed to matter all that much; my hatred of Maurice settled back into a sort of background hum of seething resentment, I tuned out the bulk of my Mother's psychological torture and even my sympathy for the dumped boyfriend faded pretty quickly. I don't think I thought of him at all after maybe a couple of days.

Cest la vie.

You may have noticed that throughout this post I've never mentioned the boyfriend's name. I'd like to tell you that it was an effort to protect his anonymity (although I mentioned Maurice's name a lot; but then he is a dick so maybe I just don't care about protecting him?) but in truth it's because I don't remember his name.

That's right. This poor bloke, who's life, and heart, was chewed up and spat out by my oh so lovely family, doesn't even merit my remembering his name. That's just shit.

Twins of... Uncomfortableness

This week, a couple of guys I think I mentioned very fleetingly a fair few posts ago, but never really went into detail on.

Outside of our core group of friends; me and my siblings, Wayne and Lisa, and my cousin Ian when school was off; their were a number of people who kind of came and went from our circle over the few years that we lived in Appleton Crescent. Two of the shorter lived additions to our posse were a pair of twins called M and R.

The twins moved in to a street near to us, which in itself made them kind of outsiders but we tolerated their presence, because that was the kind of tolerant people we were; sort of like a prototype for the Benetton campaign, or the multicultural society in microcosm. Anyway, they were a bit of a novelty, because they were being raised by a single parent; not in itself odd, round my way; but it was their DAD. Much consternation was to be found in our little mindheadscapethings as to how that had come to pass. Parents lived together for a while; maybe married, maybe not; one or the other would cheat and then the Dad would disappear from the kids lives altogether. That was the natural order, this whole set-up smacked of wrongness.

M&R's Dad did his best to fit in with the other single parents on the estate, soon settling into their patterns and routines and he quickly had staples like 'spending all the family allowance on booze and fags' and 'random bouts of frenzied violence' down to an art form. So I suppose you have to give him props for that, eh?

Joking aside, I'm sure the guy had his reasons for being how he was. Certainly, if you spent any amount of time with his kids you would get the definite feeling that some bad shit had happened in their family. I never got to the bottom of whether their mother had left them, or died, or was in prison, or what; I don't think it was a big secret, I just never bothered to ask; but things were obviously not right in their house. Trust me, I know a bit about things not being right in the home.

R was the main reason for this nagging feeling. M, for the most part, was a fairly happy-go-lucky chap, always ready with a quip and a smile, but R... R was a psycho.

Now, I know, I know, it's not generally a good idea to throw around terms likes psycho, or nutter, without knowing the background to the person's behaviour. But I'm not attempting to make a psychiatric diagnosis here; I'm using the term in it's commonly accepted form. i.e. The guy was unpredictable, violent, and scary as hell when he turned.

Also, limber. I remember one occasion when we were all hanging out on the waste ground 'playing football' (dossing around while a ball lay nearby, pointedly ignored like so much sick in the gutter, until a parent passed by and one of us made a desultory stab at maybe coming within a foot of it with a kick; WE ARE GETTING EXERCISE, SHEESH) when from out of nowhere we heard a scream. And it just kept going and going and going. It was R, and I shit you not he screamed, non-stop, as he ran all the way down the street, crossed the road, hurdled the barrier onto the wasteground, crested two mounds of rubble, ran a bit further and then leaped into the air and kicked his brother in the head. It would have been amazing, if it wasn't terrifying. I mean, I'd have been fucking knackered half way down the street.

Here's the thing though; after the kick had been delivered, he just... deflated. The screaming stopped and he just sort of sagged. Then he called M a dickhead and walked off, hands in pockets, looking about as dejected as I've ever seen a human being. The whole situation made me feel very uncomfortable, I'm not going to lie.

I have no great insight to end on here; M&R didn't live in our area very long, and when they left we never heard from them again, so I've no idea how their lives ended up. But they've stuck in my head, that incident (and one other) in particular, for 2 decades, and I often wonder how they got on. Sad fact is, I'd bet money on the police being involved.

That's it for this week. I'd say I hope you enjoyed it, but we all know that's a vain hope. I'm hoping to be back next week, but we'll see. Ta Ra for the noo then.

Happy Birthday To Me

At some point in the near future; and no, I'm not telling you when; I shall have a birthday. A fact which, when realised; I don't celebrate or even acknowledge my birthday, and haven't for a long while; prompted me to have a wander down memory lane and share with you all some memorable birthday moments from my childhood.

Except there doesn't seem to have been any.

I've wracked my brain, I really have, but with the exception of this story , I've got nothing. It seems my ambivalence toward birthdays was present and correct even from a very early age.

A fact which surprised me, if I'm being honest. While I haven't exactly given the subject a lot of thought in recent years, I certainly never had any kind of feeling of having missed out on this stuff as a child; in the long, long, looooong list of festering resentments that I harbour, this one doesn't feature.

The fact remains though, that for whatever reason, I have no memories of childhood birthdays other than the story linked above and a vague idea that the bike used so creatively by my mother in this post   was a birthday gift at some point, I genuinely can't dredge up any birthday memories at all.

It's possible that the events in question were so traumatic that I blacked them out. If that were the case it could even account for my current lack of any kind of excitement about the prospect of my 'big day'. On the other hand, and I'll concede that this may be the more likely scenario, it could just be that I'm getting old and my memory is shit.

Whichever is the case, it seems that all the good intentions I had when I sat down at the keyboard to type this post, of telling a heartwarming tale of familial affection and mercenary gift grabbing, have gone out the window. I have failed you, dear reader; you came here to be entertained and I give you nothing. Nothing! I can only throw myself at your mercy, and hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive a wretch like me.

Sayonara, and keep being awesome.

How Many Times?

How many times?

How many times, when you were a child, did you get chased from a field by an angry farmer in a pick up truck, brandishing a stick and calling you a 'fucking little bastard?'

How many times when you were a child did you make a rape joke about your neighbours daughter and get beaten bloody for it?*

How many times when you were a child did you get caught stealing a roll of heavy duty visqueen from a building site, backyard camp waterproofing for the use of, and get away with it by... swearing at the man and running away?

How many times when you were a child did you get your friend in trouble by loaning him your copy of the Predator novelisation?

How many times when you were a child did you hit a cricket ball, panic that it was heading toward a bathroom window on your neighbours house, gasp in disbelieving relief when it actually went through the *open* 'tiny little window thing above the main window' (technical term) and then burst out laughing when the neighbour came barrelling out angrily screaming about the mirror you just broke?

How many times when you were a child did you sit on another boys chest for longer than could ever be not awkward because you were in a fight and had overpowered him, were too scared to punch him, but too scared to let him up because you knew he would punch you?

How many times have you clicked on a blog link and realised that the person writing had nothing to say so just cobbled together a random selection of rubbish that were'nt good enough for posts of their own?

*The fact that I did not understand why I was being punished for that says a little something about the environment I was raised in. I'm convinced to this day that the severity of the punishment was down to my Mother overcompensating fro the fact that she didn't react when I made the joke, but rather had to be shamed into it by said neighbour.

Mob Justice

There isn't, when you get right down to it, a lot of humour in a discussion of child molestation and/or statutory rape. (Is statutory rape the name for it in the UK? Or do I watch too many American cop shows? You know what I mean, anyway.) With that in mind, this post will not, in all likelihood, be one of the wittier ones I've ever posted; if I can be said to have ever posted anything witty.

(I usually use real names on here, on the basis that *I* come off worse than anyone, so other people can't really complain. Not so here, for reasons which I should think would be obvious, so meet Ricardo.)


When I was a wee nipper my Mother was friendly (not like that, heads out of the gutter!) with a bloke called Ricardo. He wasn't a resident of the worlds friendliest street, like us, but he lived not far away and would often be at our house. The reason being that he was somewhat ostracised by the rest of the estate and we were the only people who didn't treat him like scum.

Personally I think that in his situation; not that I would ever be in his situation, I hasten to add; I would most likely have moved away and made a fresh start. For whatever reason; be it financial constraints, or the fact that he was born and raised in that area and didn't want to be chased off; he refused to leave.

So what was his situation? What was the reason for his being something of an outcast? Well, a few years earlier he had been convicted and sent to prison, albeit for a short sentence, for having sex with an under age girl. Boooo! Pervert! Paedo! Etc.

Here's the aspect of what he did; and bear with me here; that means I've always felt sorry for him. He was in his late teens, and the girl in question was 15. The relationship was a long one, to the extent that she was basically living in his house toward the end. Her parents were aware of, and approved of, the relationship. He was a regular drinking buddy of her father and brothers. Yes, he was breaking the law, and I'm not saying I approve of what was going on, but it was accepted by all involved.

Then they broke up. You can see where this is going, right?

Suddenly she and her parents were crying all sorts of foul, he was under investigation by the police, and his friends and neighbours; who had known him for years and were fully aware of the relationship in question; were disowning him.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, this is all his version of events, right? And of course he's going to skew things in his favour. Well, yes, he was the one who told me the story. But all the neighbours who remembered the situation confirmed it. No-one denied that what he was saying was true, no-one denied that they had been perfectly fine with it when it was happening, but still they all refused to have anything to do with him. Because he was a paedo and a perv.

How many of the people on that estate were throwing abuse at him because they genuinely believed he had done something wrong? And how many were doing it because of a knee jerk 'he shagged a kid!!!' response to an emotive legal term? Worse yet, how  many were using the fact that others were doing that as an excuse to do the same; we can treat this guy like shit, so we will treat him like shit?

Here's the thing; I absolutely don't think he was entirely without blame. If nothing else, he was stupid. But anyone who thinks that teenagers on either side of the age of consent don't have sexual relationships has got their head buried in the sand. And anyone who thinks that such relationships should lead to prison sentences and a lifetime of abuse, is no friend of mine.

Had I been a few years older I would perhaps (definitely would) have pointed out that this made them, not to put too fine a point on it, a pack of hypocrites. I didn't though, because I was young, scared of most of these people, and didn't know what hypocrite meant.

 Of course, I wasn't a few years older. I was a little kid, and I was slightly bemused by the whole affair. In fact, I should think that it's only because of what happened a few years later that the incident has stuck in my memory at all.

But that's a story for another day.

Yes, I bet you thought I had a point to make or that the story was building to some kind of redemptive crescendo, with him being accepted back into society. Fools! Considering the kind of estate we were living on you're lucky I'm not telling you about him being beaten into a coma and his house burned down. No, I just wanted to bring Ricardo up whilst I was writing about this particular time in my life, so he didn't come out of nowhere when his true place in my tale is revealed. It's no happier for him than this part was.

Stay tuned folks.

Hairy man child

A discussion of nicknames. Knicknames? No, definitely nicknames. I think.

The first nickname I ever had was the traditional in my family 'tut', given to the oldest son of the oldest son etc. I was Tut, my Dad was Tut, Grandad Bully was Tut... I don't know how the name got started and no-one in my family could tell me either, but one thing I do know is that I never really took to it. In fact, to be honest, whenever anyone referred to me by that name it always felt; and I'm aware that this is yet another symptom of my burgeoning paranoia; like they were doing so in a condescending fashion, sniggering at me.

 I don't know why I felt that way about the name, but I did. Maybe I felt I wasn't worthy of it, or on the other hand, maybe I felt that I didn't want to be associated with that lineage. The 2nd is more likely.

So the first nickname I had that I actually felt that I could embrace, and didn't feel like a closet insult, was the one I got when I was about 10. It reflected an aspect of my personality rather than a quirk of my birth and it was given to me by someone I liked and looked up to. I felt like I'd arrived.

The name in question was Professor. It started out as Mad Professor but was cut back to just Professor after a while, presumably for fear of being deemed offensive to those suffering mental health problems. I'm just guessing there, I never asked the question.

Anyway, the name was given to me by a lad called Lee, the older brother of a girl called Aisha (spelling questionable), whose name I was never sure how to pronounce and it would wind her up something rotten; she insisted it was like Asia but with a 'sh' sound instead of 's', so Ashia. Which looks all wrong written down and doesn't really trip off the tongue when you speak it either. But that's by the by.

My mother became friends with Lee's mother when she moved into our street. For some reason that I never quite got to the bottom of, and wasn't really any of my business anyway, Lee and sis didn't live with their mother, or their father for that matter, but rather with their grandparents, and would only visit some weekends and school holidays, so it was a while before we met them and when we did, it was mostly Aisha?? that we had dealings with because Lee was a few years older than us, and therefore outside our circle.

Except when he was in the house when we were hanging out there, which was often because they had a NES, and were therefore cool as fuck.

Just Look At It. Pure Nostalgia

 If it was sunny, it was Wayne and Lisa's tents, if it was a rainy day it was Aisha's NES. That was the status quo for a long time.

I looked up to Lee in the same way the rest of them looked up to me; the poor, blind, ignorant fools; which is to say that because he was older he was automatically cooler. Except he reallywas, because while I had little choice in the matter; often being under strict instructions to 'look after' the younger ones; he could have ignored us totally if he'd wanted. Instead, he... tolerated us, I guess.

So why did Lee christen me Mad Professor? Well, it was a combination of 2 things; firstly, I wore glasses, and secondly, I insisted on reading the instruction booklet of a game, cover to cover, before I ever picked up a controller. A speccy who reads? What else was I going to be called?


The name never really caught on, to be honest, but it served the very useful purpose of supplanting Tut for long enough for people to get out of the habit of using it. Since then? I haven't ever really had a nickname. Oh, there has been the traditional 'stick a y on the end of his surname' but in my eyes, calling me Finchy isn't so much giving me a nickname as it is acknowledging that you can't be bothered to come up with one.

In recent years, a customer at my place of work has come up with the somewhat unique, Ewok. Because of my habit of going 6 months or more without a haircut, and therefore, on occasion being slightly hirsute, he thought it would be funny. and to be fair to him, it is. But where the true genius lies is in the fact that once again, just like with the Professor tag, it's actually a contraction of a longer name, which was; wait for it, you'll like this; Ewok, son of Bungle. Son of Bungle! How good is that? So obvious in hindsight, but who makes that connection? An Ewok. And Bungle. Genius.

That name hasn't really caught on either, and it's only that one guy who uses it. But still, what a fucking cool name. Ewok, Son of Bungle. You've gotta give the guy credit for that.