The law I do is concerned with blood splatter patterns, bodily fluids and firearms residues as opposed to the more esoteric (and lucrative) commercial stuff. I am also a published novelist ('twentytwelve' published by Adonis and Abbey in 2006) which you should all order immediately in support of my desperate attempt to get its amazon.co.uk rating below half a million!
A strange story has come to my attention. The online magazine Don't Panic is in a spot of bother with Conservative Future - a rebranded version of the Young Conservatives - over this videoclip. London Conservative Future has managed to get the above clip taken down on YouTube after claiming copyright. Not liking that sort of censorship under the guise of copyright - can't these people take a joke? - here it is...
Young people these days. Tut...
My profile includes an exhortation to WR readers to buy my novel twentytwelve in a desperate bid to get its amazon.co.uk rating below half a million. No-one took any notice at all and the amazon rating drifted down and down to over 1.1 million. Imagine my surprise when checking for the first time in ages yesterday to see an amazon rating for twentytwelve of a mere 110,000, Before I got too excited, I reminded myself that this probably simply meant that someone had bought a copy. There are two things amazon will not explain: how many copies of anything they sell and what their ratings mean. Ratings can whizz up and down in bizarre patterns and small sales can cause huge shifts in ratings. I occasionally think whimsically that everyone who has vaguely thought of buying twentytwelve when they get around to it should form some sort of virtual flash mob and order it at the same time. The rating would (briefly) go stellar! I can dream...
I caught Neil Young at Glastonbury on TV on Friday night. It must be said that the elderly gent was on stonkingly good form. What particularly amused me was that at one point he was performing with one sleeve of his jacket having arm inserted and one sleeve flapping loose. He doesn't care. He's not called the godfather of grunge for nothing. On Saturday, I moved out of London flat with the aid of the Polish removal guys (see WR 12 Feb for Polish removal guys and background). I'd got the flat at the end of 2008 and it came to represent everything that pissed me off. I don't like living on my own, it cost far too much for somewhere I didn't spend much time in because now pretty much all my work is in the Midlands and not in London and the flat was nothing special for something so expensive. So I invoked the break clause in the tenancy agreement and the present deal is that I should be moving into a flat in Birmingham to share with a colleague in the not too distant future until - well - something else happens. In the meantime, I'm of no fixed abode again but hopefully for no more than a couple of weeks.
I celebrated being of no fixed abode by going to a very fine - and not too expensive Indian restaurant in Brockley - South East London for the uninitiated - and much to my annoyance missed Bruce at Glastonbury on TV due to the very short gap between returning from restaurant and retiring to share a room with a snake. It was okay - the snake doesn't do much. Apparently all it does is eat one large or two small mice a fortnight and then sleeps the meal off (it swallows them whole) and sheds its skin once a month. Personally, I would prefer a more active pet.
Having mentioned Neil Young, here is the elderly gent (when hugely younger) with The Band and Helpless. I do like the line 'blue, blue windows behind the stars...'
...in which the rabbit moves out of his London hutch (too expensive, don't particularly like it, only there at weekends mostly, break clause time) without quite having sorted flat in Brum yet (spend all the working week there and thereabouts now). It should be interesting...
In the meantime, here are some pics by some wags who tweak World War II posters for the era of blogworld.
Brown being on the ropes, an Iraq inquiry was promised to his irate backbenchers. Let it never be said that Brown is not a man of his word because we lucky punters have got one!!! Except...
It's in private! Oh - and guess what? It will report after the next election.
Why am I not surprised?
The starting point is to look at the composition of the 'inquiry'. The head honcho is a Sir (it seems you have to be at least a knight to get in on the act) John Chilcot. It is considered unlikely that our man will kick over the traces. A retired civil servant, he doesn't do that...
Next we have Sir Lawrence Freedman. Apparently he promoted the theory of 'liberal interventionism' to Blair who took the theory to heart and - erm - invaded Iraq. Reassuring to have one of the numpties who dreamed up the template for the Iraq cockup in the first place sitting in judgement on it.
And then Sir Martin Gilbert who is even older than Sir John Thingy and once compared Bush (as in the idiot son) and Blair to Roosevelt and Churchill. Don't hold your breath waiting for stinging criticism from this one.
Finally we have Baroness Usha Prasha and Sir Roderic Lyne. No, I haven't a clue either.
Presumably if the hearing is in private, there will be no reports of its proceedings - no TV, radio,newspaper or other simultaneous or next day reportage. By extension anyone leaking its proceedings will presumably be in peril off some sort of sanction. I assume there will be no right of representation - for example for the parents or spouses of British soldiers killed in Iraq. Who will summon the witnesses? Will they (or at least the British ones - it strikes me as unlikely that Cheney or Rumsfeld or the idiot son would show up and there would be nothing to make them) be under any compunction to attend?
And who will ask the awkward questions? And is there any point in asking them? Will we ever know that they were asked?
PUKE! PUKE! PUKE!
What is to be done? The 'inquiry' seems to me to be beyond redemption in its present form. Perhaps the only thing to do is to treat this latter day Star Chamber with the contempt it deserves and provide it with nothing that gives it any form of legitimacy - such as appearing before it.
Otherwise I can only think of an alternative, unofficial enquiry - open and in public with representation if sought. What's to lose?
Hat Tip to Beau Bo D'Or (link to left) - not for the first time - for artwork.
Meanwhile in Nottingham, the local police are having fun with tasers (see clip). The Nottinghamshire Police announce that they have voluntarily passed the video to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (a body usually as much use as - erm - the Iraq 'Inquiry' may be expected to be). Assistant chief constable Peter Davies helpfully explains 'We understand that some members of the public may be concerned about this...'
Tsk... Such bad taste. Swine flu seems a bit of a damp squib so far. Apparently there were flu epidemics in 1958 and 1967 that killed about 50,000 people apiece in the UK alone. No-one got very worked up.
The image is from the consistently excellent Beau Bo D'Or (link to left). As I have sworn never to vote Labour again while well-known war criminal Tony B. Liar lives and breathes, I'm not sure why I'm doing this but here goes. This is a memo explaining to Labour MPs what to do. I'll type slowly as some of them are not the brightest...
1. Dump Brown. Drag him kicking and screaming out of No 10 leaving ten smouldering streaks of fingernail indentation in the carpet. The guy is box office poison. End of. Whereupon the Tories and their preppy twerp of a leader will start shouting for an election because they think (probably quite rightly) they would win it. Tell them to fuck off. 2. Elect whatever new leader is best bet for at least limiting the damage so that the next election is a defeat as opposed to a 1931 type slaughter (apparently Johnson, he typed with a shrug). 3. New leader announces a flat out programme of constitutional reform featuring:
Electoral Reform - ideally STV but at least Alternative Vote+
Four year fixed term Parliaments
Right of recall for errant MPs with some safeguards against abuse of recall powers
Open primaries for major party candidates.
4. Once legislation is in place a referendum on the four points set out above.
5. If referendum votes in favour, election under proportional representation system as soon as possible.
This may actually save a lot of Labour MP bacon but is there any chance they will do this or anything like it? Nope - cos they are thick, tribalist and have a death wish. We will be governed by a preppy twerp who thinks his wife is unconventional because she went to a day school. Labour deserves this but the people they are supposed to represent do not.
On a more cheerful note, I see Australia got knocked out of the World Twenty/20 having lost both games...
HA! HA! HA!
Polls for the most erotic song ever are usually won by Some Velvet Morning and I'm not arguing. Embedding on the original Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra version has been disabled by request of some arse so here is the Primal Scream version featuring - um - Kate Moss. I was amused by the story that CBS who issued the original then had censors, people whose job it was to spot the mucky bits and cut them out. Lee Hazlewood managed to persuade the CBS censors that the lines...
Some velvet morning when I'm straight/
I'm gonna open up your gate.
Were about the nice little boy holding open the garden gate for the nice little girl. Nice one Lee...
It has been drawn to my attention that the late Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco had more in common with Adolf Hitler than had previously been known. Or did he? It turns out that Franco was wounded in the lower abdomen at El Biutz, near Ceuta, Morocco, in June 1916. No less reputable a source as the BBC pronounces 'Biographers have long speculated this affected the reproductive organs of the dictator'. They have? The phrase 'should get out more' springs to mind'. Now one Dr Ana Puigvert, the grand-daughter of Franco's urologist, has spilled the beans (as it were) to an unsuspecting world. "Franco was monorchid - he had only one testicle," she said. Monorchid. There's a weird word. Why are bollocks named after a family of flowers? I think we should be told...
Hitler, it was frequently asserted, not least in song, only had one ball. But is this actually true? The evidence seems a little tenuous. A Doctor Johan Jambor who treated Hitler during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 told his priest that Hitler had been injured in the abdomen and lost a testicle. He said the first question Hitler had asked him was: "Will I be able to have children?".
Nope. Unlike Franco who had a daughter.
Oh and the Soviet autopsy on what was left of Hitler after the deep fry job on his mortal remains announced that our man was - erm - monorchid too. Whether anything put about by the Stalinists of that era is to be believed is another matter...
So what is it about fascists and missing testicles? Does the creepy Nick Griffin have anything to tell us?
At least the stories of the time kept the British army occupied as they marched along singing (to the tune of Colonel Bogey)..
Hitler has only got one ball Goering has two though very small Himmler is very similar And poor old Goebbels has no balls at all
Or assorted variants...
On a completely different topic, Minx kindly asks about my welfare. I am pleased to say that I am now completely off crutches (day 3) and hope and expect a full recovery.
The above clip is from the Kinski remake of Nosferatu the Vampyr, which naturally takes me to smeargate and unfounded rumours about Tory MPs. The splendidly named Nadine Dorries is threatening to sue over some allegation she did something or the other. The allegation is of course completely untrue. Here is the terrible truth: Dorries is 'tasked' (another loathsome neologism that ought to be banned) by Conservative Central Office with obtaining the blood of virgins to be fed to Thatcher to preserve her (Thatcher, that is and not Dorries) in her un-dead status. There was one unpleasant incident when Dorries, finding herself a bit stuck on the virgin front (the permissive society etc) offered Thatcher, by then in the advanced stages of blood withdrawal, Ann Widdecombe who though technically qualifying was not to Thatcher's liking at all. Thatcher attacked Dorries and inflicted nasty throat wounds. Since then Dorries has been careful with her choice of victim. In fact the above clip is not a re-make of Nosferatu the Vampyr at all but Dorries doing the rounds. Honest.
Random fact the rabbit didn't know until last week - Procul Harum (a popular beat combo from the rabbit's youth) was named after someone's cat.
Least surprising headline of the week: something to the effect that the Israeli Defence Forces had investigated themselves as regards any human rights abuses/war crimes while dishing out the Guernica treatment to the hapless population of Gaza. Having investigated itself, it concluded there weren't any. Well there's a surprise. Yeah. Right. Sure...
For the sake of completeness, following the comments of HHJ Gledhill (see last posting on HCA's) the relevant firm - Bullivant and Partners - have bitten back (oh dear, a lot of biting in this post) with a response http://www.wikicrimeline.co.uk/images/c/c9/Hcaresponse.pdf
Allegedly the Judge said 'solicitor' in a funny tone of voice or something - allegedly...
The image is a combination of Hogarth's Beer Street and Gin Lane for no particular reason apart from why not?
A series of observations by His Honour Judge Gledhill QC as regards some HCAs (Higher Court Advocates) who appeared before him has come to my attention and deserves wider dissemination.
REGINA
V OIU YEU
KHI-SAN VOONG
QIANG XUE
DAU YEE CHENG
"Miss Roxborough, I will address you if I may, as during the course of this trial you are the only one of the 4 solicitors representing these defendants that I have had no cause to criticise. What I have to say therefore does not arise from your conduct of the case. Conspiracy to Defraud is on any view a most serious allegation and on conviction, on the facts of this case, merits a substantial term of imprisonment. It follows that each of the parties, including the prosecution, should be represented by an advocate, that is, a barrister or solicitor, who is experienced enough and competent enough to properly represent their respective client. Mr Fitzgerald has demonstrated that he has both those qualities essential to prosecute the case. As I made clear, during the course of the trial, I have been concerned that when prosecuting originally 5 defendants, 4 at trial, he should have had more assistance – either in the form of a junior or at least a representative of the CPS in Court. For much of the trial he has only had the help of the officer. Whilst that help has obviously been invaluable, there have been times when it has not been enough.
You will recall that during the prosecution case, I have on a number of occasions been critical of your colleagues who represent the other defendants. Basic rules, both of law and procedure, have been regularly broken. One solicitor in cross examination on 2 occasions addressed the jury directly. Another clearly had no idea what the rules of re-¬examination were. The jury were misled about one of the defendant's bad character, until it was corrected by prosecution counsel. Some of your colleagues appeared to have little or no understanding of hearsay. The list goes on and on. At one stage I was so concerned with the cross examination of a prosecution witness, that I had to rebuke your colleague in rather stark terms. I was concerned that that solicitor had neither the experience nor competence to adequately represent his client. I was also concerned that if his representation continued in a similar way, the stage would be reached when I would conclude that the defendant was not properly represented and that I would have had no alternative in those circumstances but to discharge the jury. Fortunately, that stage was not reached.
When I raised these concerns, I asked your colleague whether his client had been advised that under the rules governing the Legal Aid scheme, the defendant he had a choice of representation – either an independent barrister with sufficient experience and competence to conduct the case, or a solicitor with higher rights who had the necessary experience and competence. At first your colleague declined to answer the question. I will put that down to simply been taken by surprise at being asked the question. When I pointed out that I was not asking him to breach his client's privilege, but simply to tell me whether he or his company had fulfilled their duty, he told me that his client had been told of his right to choose the advocate who represented him in court. His reluctance to answer the question has caused me to consider asking the defendant the same question directly. In the event, I have decided not to do that.
I have also considered requiring the senior partner of your solicitors to attend and explain how and why this solicitor was selected to represent this defendant on such a serious charge. I have no doubt that that solicitor has done his best to fulfil his duties. However, his knowledge of the law, procedure and advocacy skills fall below that which is needed in this case. Of course, he did not deliberately flout the law and the rules. He simply does not have the experience necessary to conduct such a serious case. No doubt with time he can acquire those skills. I very much doubt that he had little if any say in whether he undertook this case. I suspect he was told that the case had to be kept in house and he was going to do it. Similar observations of the experience of your other colleagues could be made.
Why then was the solicitor selected to represent this defendant. Several considerations would have come into play. Firstly, the prosecution case was largely admitted and the defence was relatively straight forward and so it might have been thought that little experience of Crown Court trials was needed. With a moments thought, if that was a consideration, it was a very naïve approach – as indeed the events occurring during the trial have demonstrated. Perhaps more importantly, finances played an important role in deciding who would conduct the defence. By instructing an in-house advocate, the fee for representing the defendant at trial, the litigators fee, would be paid to the company, rather than to a barrister or INCA from without the company. The solicitors would therefore get both the preparation. fee and the litigators fee, in effect doubling. the income from the case. I am well aware that recent reductions in the rates of Legal Aid have hit solicitors particularly hard. On a practical financial level, it must be sorely tempting to keep the trial within the company. I understand that. However, if the consequence is that an accused person is not adequately represented, it is simply not acceptable — not acceptable to the defendant, and not acceptable to the public as it is not in the interests of a fair trial and therefore not in the interests of justice. In some cases, neither will it be in the interests of the solicitors company, because if a jury has to be discharged, they risk having Wasted Costs Orders been made against them.
This is not a question of a judge favouring barristers against solicitors, or one solicitor against another. It is about the principal duty of a trial judge to ensure that each of the parties have a fair trial. Every defendant who has the benefit of Legal Aid should be clearly informed of their right of choice of advocate, and that advocate, whether barrister of solicitor, should have the appropriate experience and competence to conduct the trial.
In the circumstances, I have decided not to ask the senior partner to attend court. The remarks I have made speak for themselves. I hope they are widely distributed through the criminal legal professions."
The pic is good, innit? It came up when I googled 'words picture'. The rabbit continues to be on the mend 23 days after accident. I can now get around on one crutch on flat surfaces and even take a few steps without a crutch at all provided there is something available to cling on to. Hopefully in a couple of weeks, I will be off crutches altogether but in the meantime I am slower and clumsier as regards anything physical but - with support - have been working since a week after the accident. the woman from the bank asked how long I was signed off for. I said I'm a self-employed barrister. We don't do signed off. Now to the main business...
There has recently been a report concerning words that are disappearing from the language. The report occasioned some minor media excitement. I have a different take on this, namely words and phrases that ought to disappear from the language. There are two rich sources of irritating gibberish: the drivel emanating from the disembodied voices that plague the public transport system and commercial newspeak. Actually, there’s a third: the mangled and excluding governmentese (I think I just invented a word that ought to disappear from the language!) spewed out by the political and bureaucratic class. Okay, there’s a fourth: sporting commentary by clunking cliché. Here’s a list of verbal rubbish for banning in no particular order of dreadfulness:
How are you spelling that? I’m not yet. The genesis of this nonsense is the bizarre belief that to ask ‘how do you spell that?’ is excessively confrontational
I won’t be a second. True, you’ll be a lot longer than that. Taken literally, the statement is preposterous. It’s usually a fob off prior to a protracted wait.
You are? This means ‘what is your name?’ I don’t know quite why, but there’s something about ‘you are?’ that makes me want to smack the questioner in the face
I can only apologise. This translates as ‘we fouled up but we’re not going to do anything about it’.
Planned engineering works. Our first railway related horror. ‘Planned engineering works’ are a device to torment anyone having the temerity to actually want to travel anywhere by train or tube on a weekend to no discernible benefit. Actually, it’s more the activity than the phrase that I want banned.
Customer. It’s not so much the word I object to but its inappropriate use by public transport systems. When I go to the corner shop I am a customer; when I get on a train I am a passenger.
Your call is important to us. This piece of commercial hypocrisy is regularly churned out when you are waiting forever on some commercial enterprise’s automated system waiting to speak to an actual person. NO IT’S NOT!!! Just my money.
This train is formed of eight carriages. What’s wrong with ‘this train has eight carriages’
Literally – or rather the misuse of literally as in ‘I was literally over the moon’. You were? Impressive trick! Football people infamously tend to be over the moon when they are not being as sick as a parrot.
This is not original – it came from an article in the Observer by the splendidly named Carole Cadwalladr: wags, camel toe (she confesses she really wishes she didn’t know what that one meant) and Croydon facelift. I agree as regards the disappearance of wags being no loss to the language but the infantile vulgarian in me rather likes camel toe and I am similarly fond of Croydon facelift. I even like Croydon, a place much patronised in journalistic cliché by people who have never been there.
Otherwise, I am resisting the temptation to make up rumours about Conservative politicians even more scurrilous and unfounded than the Smeargate ones (to the extent that we may gather what they are). I may have to give in to temptation...
An explanation for the late despatch of the last post is in order. Last Tuesday morning, having completed the last post in draft the previous evening, I set out to court fortified by bacon butty and infusion of coffee feeing perfectly content with life. The court is less than 5 minutes from chambers Birmingham office.
I break rules 1 (look where you are going) and 2 (pick up your feet) and do yer pavement tripping production, going over like a tree on to my left hip. A crowd of concerned people gather. I ask a couple of blokes if they would help me to my feet as I can't do it on my own. They sportingly oblige. I stand clinging to a lamp post and wobbling. Two of West Midlands finest thereupon appear. They take over and - rightly - insist I get off to A & E in an ambulance. I was still - just about - in mad bugger mode and ready to keep walking to court despite being - erm - unable to walk.
The ambulance people were great, as was everybody else I met that day and I trundle off to City Hospital Birmingham, strapped to a trolley. I know what's coming next: x-rays, that's what.
X-rays to elbow and wrist are fine. The registrar isn't sure about the x-ray of my left hip but concludes that the x-ray of my hip is fine too and I can go on a pair of crutches. I'm given crutches. I can barely walk on them.
Consultant is summoned. He concludes that I have fractured my hip and he's the man to put this right by insertion of screw and plate. Nothing more to eat or drink except 10mg oral morphine. This is still morning and I am admitted as inpatient and await surgery. The anaesthetist comes for a chat. General anaesthesia can loosen teeth he warns me. Any problem teeth? he asks. I indicate a couple. He didn't lie. They are not long for this world after the general anaesthetic. I am wheeled into whatever they call the anteroom to the operating theatre sometime early evening.
I already have two cannulae in my right hand. One for the saline drip and one for the anaesthesia I have a jokey little chat with the anaesthetist. Don't remember a thing after that...
I come round on the ward. The non-saline cannula will feed me intravenous morphine on demand. I make a discovery...
Intravenous morphine is rather nice.
I was on the intravenous morphie for the next two days, then I decided to ask them to switch it off. Although nice it makes you very woozy (not to mention constipated) and I needed to focus to get outta there. Just before going to sleep on the Thursday evening I treated myself to a great big toot of intravenous morphine and asked the nurse to disconnect it on the Friday morning, which she did.
Hospital is mostly boring. You just lie there. I read a 70-odd page novella called Water Source by a 11 year old called Will Goddard. It's very good and he deserves a big shout out, which he just got. I also started reading a Patricia Cornwell crime novel, which I may blog about sometime. Otherwise my new mate Pete - the seriously tattooed bloke in the next bed, he was in there after being bitten by an alsatian - brought me a paper in the morning as he was more mobile than me. I chatted to Pete and listened to Radio 4. That's about it...
Well there was the physiotherapy. I was the physiotherapist's teacher's pet - I got seriously stuck in because I really, really wanted outta there. I was released today (sounds like a prison sentence) and a good friend is putting me up for the next week or so while I recuperate.
Oh and every cloud has a silver lining. I stopped smoking and it was dead easy. I'd started smoking again during stresses and strains of last year as per posting below and it had developed into a serious hobby. No smoking in hospital of course and I had been told that smoking is a particularly bad idea after hip operation. Something to do with circulation of the blood.
I say it was dead easy. With all the morphine I couldn't have cared less about cigarettes. By the time I had stopped the morphine I was pretty much through the withdrawal stage. It's a pretty drastic way to stop smoking but it worked for me...
This posting has been delayed for about a week for reasons about to be explained...
The above clip has recently come to the rabbit's attention and is presented without further comment, say to say that it was put together by some very naughty Australians, hence the prominence of Australiaon the maps so helpfully proffered to the interviewees.
It is equally true that lawyers are not stupid. Well-known fact innit? Or is it? The rabbit is shocked to discover in The Lawyer that the intelligence of lawyers is declining towards the mean. This is apparently something to do with Ally McBeal. All lawyers of goodwill should do their best to contribute to this decline. The rabbit will be leading the way.
The following is pretty old stuff but there may be a few people who haven't come across it yet. Some of it may suggest that lawyers actually are dumb! They come from a book called Disorder in the American Courts and are real courtroom exchanges from court transcripts.
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there
(I think that's my favourite)
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shittin' me?
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Now whose death do you suppose terminated it?
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work
ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people. Would you like to rephrase that?
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh....are you qualified to ask that question?
There are clearly some fine minds at work in the legal system, despite this stuff in The Lawyer...
On a completely different subject and as a public service, it has come to the rabbit's attention that many Man Ure supporters are - poor little pets - in a state of great distress after their 4-1 home thrashing by Liverpool, a condition not helped no doubt by losing 2-0 to Fulham last Saturday (complete with Shrek aka Wayne Rooney being sent off). So sad is the confusion and hurt that there is now a dedicated helpline for distraught scummers - sorry Man U supporters, I don't know what came over me...
I've been meaning to do a couple of blogs of late, one serious one on the revolting Avigdor Lieberman and one not so serious one following a report about which words and phrases have disappeared from the language - my take would be what words and phrases ought to disappear from the language. Hopefully both soon...
So a few random comments...
I pinched the above from Jailhouse Lawyer - the new style Conservative posters are so susceptible to parody. I liked this one...
Will on cricket blog The Corridor (link to left) is very pissed off indeed. I liked his comment 'England quickly reverted to type and approached their innings with all the testosterone and impetus of a fucking flamingo stuck in quicksand'.
Nice metaphor Will...
There is also a blog in why nobody listens to anybody these days. I recently approached a bloke in Balham Sainsburys wearing the staff uniform finding myself caught a little short.
A dread warning from history: before even my time the late mother of well-known jailbird Jeffrey 'Lord' Archer (apparently she was named Lola) used to write a column in the local paper about her dear son 'tuppence' setting out the endearing history of his - erm - formative years. And look what happened to him...
Julie Myerson appears incapable of learning the lessons of history. For the uninitiated, Julie Myerson is a British novelist and appears on Newsnight Review regularly where she equally regularly shows up her shallowness in contrast to the commentators on that august arts magazine who actually have something thoughtful and knowledgeable to say.
She is also a relentless self publicist for whom no detail of her family life seems to be beyond milking for her 'literary' ends. She has a son called Jake (pictured). I should declare a slight connection: when Jake was Jacob, he was in the same class as my younger son in primary school. He was the class 'boffin' and apparently a decent cricketer. I began to notice that articles began to appear in the Guardian from la Myerson concerning her family life. They grated for two reasons: their insufferably smug, narcissistic tone and the fact that she was milking matters which really belong in the private sphere to sell articles in the press. What child wants or needs their mother endlessly gushing about them in the popular prints? One particular piece that sticks in my mind was one concerning the joys of nappies (that's diapers for American readers) and the description of her son's penis as a 'tiny comma'.
Okay guys, hands up if you would like your mother to burst into print describing your penis as a 'tiny comma'.
Thought not...
So far so cloyingly awful. But along has come trouble. On her version, Jake who is now 20 has become a skunkhead and his erratic and violent behaviour was so bad and disruptive of family life that two years ago his parents changed the locks and threw him out. Since then he has apparently been living with friends' parents and in squats. He works in the music industry. He claims that he has not seen his mother in over a year.
Now this was just be sad and a private matter except for one thing...
She's written a bloody book about it! Is there any aspect of her family life that this woman considers too difficult, delicate or - if she has any concept of the word - private to be used a source material to advance her literary career and presumably bank balance?
Apparently not...
Jake has hit back. Our heroine claimed in an interview in a magazine appropriately enough named The Bookseller that her son read a manuscript and was 'generous enough' to understand her need to write about the trauma. Jake's response to this is to the effect of 'no I bloody wasn't' and that he didn't want the book published although she apparently paid him £1,000 to use some poetry he had written in the book. The temptation to speculate that the money went up in smoke is irresistible. I record without comment that he describes his mother as 'slightly insane'. He further complains 'my mother has been writing about me for the past 16 years'. I can see his point.
The media commentariat have seized gleefully on this story. La Myerson has not come out of the media barrage well. Nor does she deserve to. Maybe consider the lesson: whoever you may be your children are private individuals and not a source material to be milked for your literary career.In other words 'just shut it!'
The link is pretty contrived but it's as good an excuse as any - here's The Kinks with Lola...
Here's the incredibly violent French revolutionary song Ça ira. Not unreasonably, it's all about stringing up aristocrats. the Youtube clip doesn't actually say who the singer is but it has to be Edith Piaf. Surely?
I'd like to dedicate this to that little numpty 'Prince' Harry.
Ça ira Ça ira Ça ira...
On a completely different note, the occasional TV advert achieves cult status. This seems to have happened with an advert for a certain UK chocolate manufacturer. Yes, it is funny. take a peek...
I don't really like blogging as confessional stuff but I guess an explanation is in order to the kind people who have left messages during my period of absence, for which many thanks. Okay, it goes something like this...
2008 was an - um - interesting year. As is relevant, events start in February when I was red carded out of marriage. I'm hugely not going there as to why - not that there is anything scandalous or even exciting to tell - sometimes things just run their course and I was and remain fine about it. 'Nuff said.
The practical effect was that the house needed to be sold because of the seperation and because the (not exactly tiny) mortgage had come off its discounted rate and financially it was all getting too much - that's like literally too much. Now in 2007, this would have been a doddle. Name a monstrous price, form an orderly queue, no pushing at the back and no offers. The house would have gone in days. But that was then and just before - as we were fond of saying in my youth - capitalism collapsing under its own contradictions. We had an offer. The guy totally gave us the runaround. I don't know what he was playing at but end up concluding that he was never serious about buying the house in the first place. This went on for months as the wheels came off the financial wagon. In the end we accepted a second offer - lower but still okayish. This was from a couple who were as present as the original bloke had been elusive. It seemed they were round every ten minutes with builders etc. They had to complete by early September so as to get the building works completed in time to move in by Christmas. So far so good.
Then the couple announced that building works would be more expensive than originally expected and wanted to drop the price by £20,000. Over a barrel and desperate to sell we agreed. Things dragged on. The previously very - in fact irritatingly - omnipresent couple went to ground. In the end they resurfaced with a last minute reduced bid trying to slice a further £60,000 off. The by then divorcing rabbit and wife were as one on this one. They could fuck off and die. But what do do? We desperately needed to sell. The estate agent came up trumps - it must be said that contrary to the general reputation of estate agents he was a nice guy - he got punting on the phone and found a developer. The developer visited the house on the Wednesday, made an acceptable offer, and instructed solicitors on Thursday and exchanged on Friday. One week completion. The reaction of the generally annoying conveyancing solicitor was comic when told of this timetable. 'But they'll have to raise enquiries' he said weakly. 'These are developers' I explained patronisingly. 'They don't do that'. They didn't either.
In the interim, I'd put a deposit on a rather nice rented flat with two rooms - one for me and one for the (now adult) children for whenever they wanted. Some friends agreed to put me up for a couple of weeks until the flat became available in mid-October. My furniture etc would go into storage for a short period. So I was outta there on the Wednesday before the Friday (do keep up at the back) and installed with friends in Dulwich.
Then things went radically wrong. Because my credit rating by then sucked bigtime I needed a guarantor for the rent in the flat. A digression: if the government wanted to do something genuinely popular as opposed to endlessly bossing us about they would cut the credit reference agencies down to size (preferably very small indeed) and make the banks do their own dirty work. They won't. A friend agreed in principle to be guarantor but when he saw the guarantor form threw a wobbly. It was, it must be said, a very intrusive form and in particular wanted his bank details in full. Not unreasonably, he didn't want to give anyone and everyone with access to the form his bank details.
'Ever heard of identity theft?' he asked. This was fair enough.
So that was that. Flat fell through. I couldn't stay at the place I was at more than a few more days, which was fair enough too.
'Oh shit', I thought. I'm actually homeless'.
Another digression. Shortly after I moved out of ex matrimonial home and before becoming prospectively homeless, I met Charon QC (see link to left) for a very congenial evening's drinkies in Chelsea. As the trains from Sydenham Hill (nearest station to where I was staying) were - as I discovered on arriving at the station - not functioning (usual ballsaching reason: planned engineering works) had to get a cab back from Brixton, the nearest point on the underground to where I was staying. I came out of the tube and stood on the nearest traffic island on Brixton High Street. A dodgy looking bloke shuffled up to me.
'Skunk?' he enquired.
'No thank you' I replied.
There was then a pause for thought on dodgy looking bloke's part. A process I suspect he found problematc.
'Rock?' he eventually ventured.
'No thank you' I replied again.
Then he just stood and stared at me.
'Have a very good evening' I said, distinctly insincerely. He took the hint and shuffled off.
Anyway, there I was imminently homeless. I rang a friend about something completely different but at the end of the conversation, told him I was homeless.
'No you're not' he said. 'You're a mate'.
So I moved in with him for the rest of the year. It was a lifesaver. There is homelessness and homelessness and an en-suite in a gated estate in Beckenham is pretty good as homelessness goes. The guy from the first place I stayed at drove me and a pile of possessions (loads of stuff in carrier bags, partly because the Polish guys who packed for me and moved my stuff to storage packed away a big suitcase I meant to keep and partly because you accumulate all sorts of random stuff living like this) over. When we got to the gate he asked me.
'Should I tell them I've got a homeless person with a load of carrier bags here?'
'Best not to' I replied.
I got to like Beckenham and was very well looked after. My host eventually said to me:
'You can stay here as long as you like but you'll never get your life back until you've got a door you can close behind yourself'.
It was true.
I found letting agents who didn't want to have the guarantor's banking details, give him a rectal probe or anything alarming like that. They found me a flat in Balham (apologies to those not familiar with the geography of South London). I moved in on the 30th December. Or rather I almost didn't. I arrived with keys and Polish removal guys only to discover that there was a deadlock to the front door I hadn't been given a key to. Eventually a neighbour appeared, let us through to his back garden and provided a ladder one of the Polish guys climbed over, into the back garden and opened up the flat via the garden door, which I did have a key to. The flat is fine for my present purposes and is wonderfully well located for tube, shops, restaurants, bars etc.I haven't spent much time there as I've been working in the Midlands mostly and pretty much flat out workwise, which is good.
This is all very well, I hear you say, but why no blogging? Well, just after my last posting whenever I tried to go online I bluescreened out. After this happening several times I contacted Dell. They ran a test. 'It's your hard drive!' they exclaimed. Don't even try to log on or you'll create huge problems for yourself. My itinerant lifestyle meant that it took me forever - okay until last night to finally resolve the programme. I had my lappy checked out - nothing wrong with my hard drive. Updating and de-fragmenting in order but that was it. I collected lappy and tried to log on. Bluescreened out again - this was last night. Then I tried the simple expedient of restoring Internet Explorer. Problem solved...
So that's plenty enough about me. Normal service hopefully restored. I'm now officially divorced. Apparently you get a certificate - which is nice - but I haven't got it yet. I'm quite content and, as Scarlett O'Hara observed 'tomorrow is another day'.
That's all very well, I further hear you ask, but where do you stand on Marmite?
Can't stand the stuff.
Have some Dead - Franklin's Tower for no particular reason apart from why not...
