Get In x2

I make a point of only writing about my personal life in the most guarded, drunken, metaphorical ways (see previous post, although I wasn't drunk as it was posted at 10am or something and even I have only had four or five Stellas by then), unless it concerns Doctor Who but today I am going to bust those rules. This is why:

1) I am being taught in a European University - namely, my poetry is being studied by a student in Vienna, who has been assigned some of my work to look at. Considering that I am not worth one of Ted Hughes's bollocks, this is soooo cool.

2) The final viewing figure for the Doctor Who Xmas special goes as follows:

13.31million.

I'll just repeat that, in case you missed it:

13.31million.


This means that in my local cemetery there is a moss covered stone with "Doctor Who: 1989" inscribed at the top, and a load of "3.1m, 3.6m, 3.9m, 4.0m" figures carved underneath. This stone has now fallen below the surface and is no longer readable.

The Voyage of the Damned is the 8th most watched Who EVER, beaten by one Hartnell and six T Baker episodes.

13.31million. Wow.

The second most viewed programme of any kind (and that includes all the pornography) of 2007.

Top Banana.

New Labour, New Year, New TD

Owing to my failure to be consistently re-elected over a substantial period of time, it is clear that I have become out of touch with my electorate; accordingly I have decided to embark on a sustained series of reforms and modernising initiatives. The resolutions I set myself at New Year itself should be regarded more in the line of aspirations than targets; as we know, reality is dynamic and an individual needs to be just as fluid in dealing with changes to it. In my case this has meant a radical re-appraisal of outdated methods of living and a dramatic readjustment to modern challenges. Indeed, I have decided to grasp these challenges with both hands in a positive and forward looking manner.


There is a meaning to this (ie content, you know, when words do refer to real world events or objects), but I'm darned if I'm going to explain it. Writing in jargon, despite my Resolution, does give me a tingle of authority and professionalism, two things I normally run a mile from. Yes I'm being ironic, but there's a grain of truth in that the opaque language of modern life, drenched with the sentiment of positivity and control, does give me a sense of worth - for a few nanoseconds. Judging by the amount of government garbage I read in my job, I can't be the only one. By contrast, the bluntness and lack of ambiguity inherent in swearing makes it difficult to do except when there are no visible consequences. Imagine the chaos if the government sent a circular to schools saying "Just teach them to fucking read, for fuck's sake."

I mean, someone would have to do it. After spluttering in outrage for a bit, of course.

Warning

Just in case anyone is interested, the current flood of posts is to dry up, owing to the resumption of work soonish. I will try to post a bit more often than before,but I can't guarantee that I can be bothered.

I Was Pissed

Well so much for the resolution to drink more in accordance with government targets. An outbreak of outrageous, and indeed, inappropriate rebelliousness (in felicitous concert with the onset of early middle age) conjoined with an episode of good physical health (for the first time in ages) met to produce a substantial amount of drinking tonight. Or rather, "this afternoon". You see, my type of sub-middle class rebellion (more properly entitled "contrarianism" - as it is de facto the case that lefty stereotypes are true)is against government targets and the core principles of govt agencies. Yes I know it seems ridiculous to the point of being literally fantastic, but there we are. That's my life. I don't have masses of unprotected sex, unfortunately, which means I miss out on unlimited government support, and the moral support of people who think adults cannot be expected to look after themselves sexually, but I am: overweight, a drinker, not an atheist (wow, this should have those who refuse to capitalise God and who write letters to the Torygraph from the National Secular Society in a state of apoplexy: "Sir, In these pluraristic times, it is unacceptable that a non-atheist should occupy any post in civil society..."etc etc), a lover of poetry. All these things put me outside the realm of acceptability; I am well aware of this. Alas I am not a smoker, now-a-days. In the old days, I'm thinking around 1999 here, one would drink ale, eat crisps and smoke cigars, and discuss non-atheist topics (fairies, elves, dimensional transference, God, Christ and so on) until late at night or whenever the lock-in ended. All people do these days is drink orange juice, mutter about what a good idea the smoking ban was, and how much they're in favour of equality, and how awful it is that in this day and age not everyone is an atheist. Jesus this is the age of the grey person in a power-suit going on and on about following guidelines and how anyone who doesn't agree with one is bigoted/xenophobic/homophobic/racist/full of any other kind of hate. I mean, what other reason could there be? Why don't they all fuck off and become diversity outreach co-ordinators; we pay enough tax to fund endless of these non-jobs. Even fucking poetry is stuffed full of all this crap, little grey verse telling us how evil bigotry is and how much they've suffered from not everyone telling them they're wonderful all the fucking days of their stupid little lives. Oddly enough, a lot of it appears in magazines with "Funded by the Arts Council" stamped obscenely on the inside cover. It goes a little bit like this:

I came to England in 1981
and you called me a twat
and I carried this like a ball of cold cheese
in my poor suffering gut

and you never loved my views
or agreed about Mrs Thatcher
and you're a bastard,
a fucking old Tory tosser.

or something.

Surely it's obvious that I'm a fascist, and that if you put a bomb underneath my Ford Fiesta you'd eradicate fascism for a generation, or some such bullshit. Given that I teach one day a week in a state school, I guess I'm a subsidy junkie too, but I do whatever I can to subvert it, by asking questions of Al Gore, by questioning socialism, by reading non-socialist poetry (ie not Adrian Mitchell and such crap) wherever possible, but it never works.

Bugger, I'm sobering up. Arse. I want to spend as little of 2008 as possible sober. What a ghastly state, wherein the mind is forced to locate stability and purpose in philosophy or religion, or something equally appalling. I saw on tv once that elephants dart for the trees full of fermenting oranges, or something: even animals want to get pissed, so why should it be denied us? Ah, bollocks to it all. Not even alcohol is enough - mini cheddars, now that is where life really is at.

The Year So Far...

Well I haven't achieved any of my resolutions yet, unless "not having sex" was one of them, which it wasn't, but then it scarcely needed to be. I certainly _have_ cut down on the booze, if not the one night stands, but then that too is circumstantial. As far as resolutions of substance are concerned - pshaw. The clouds are slinking over the valley, as if they have hangovers, and we are just where we always are - in the depths of boredom.

This being the case, here are a few heroes I'd like to enlist in 2008 to liven things up a bit:

1. Doctor Who (hopefully he'll be along anyway)
2. Ted Hughes (no chance - dead)
3. The Iron Man (see above)
4. Mrs Thatcher (chances of that are slim)
5. Ian Curtis (see no2)
6. Andy Partridge (hmm, it's not 1981 anymore)
7. Iris Murdoch (see no2)
8. Graham Thorpe (hmm, it's not 1994 anymore)
9. Sylvia Plath (see no2)
10. God (well, I guess we'll see with this one).


Although I've stuck Sylvia Plath on the list I don't really read her these days, though she was a big hero of mine many years ago, when I thought poor old Ted was just a rutter of wild animals. I suppose she could be replaced with Tanya out of EastEnders, but that's hardly a like for like swap.