Candy Fags

We now buy our cigarettes in "plain" packaging.

But we still can't buy Sweet Cigarettes at all !

What a world!

Hashtag That

I'm not worried about the demise of the pound.

How can I be when the Americans think # is a 'pound sign ....when of course it is...

a) octothorp  

b) a readily planted drug in the Southern states, if Smokey and the Bandit is anything to go by.

Must go ... have to kill a fly ....I'm trying to  stop muttering to them "Tell your friends..." as I watch over their last wing beats.

But it's hard.

Doh!

Men, it's important when you're in a relationship to be needy.

You have heard the old adage that people get what they need in life not what they want.

That is the case also in relationships because ultimately that's what they will learn to look for.

Of course people will ask them what they are looking for, what they "want".

But in reality they will ultimately need to search for what they need, unless like a rollercoaster has a never-ending appeal.

They'll look for a fun loving go-getter, a cheeky charmer with a great sense of humour.

But after they've married a couple of those, and divorced them in between, they'll say they got it all wrong. Charmers are leopards.

But they didn't get it all wrong.

They just got what they wanted, not what  they needed.

People need to need. And they need to be needed.

So if you want to be needed, you need somebody who's needy.

It's a paradox, like most of life, but this trail has been successfully blazed by better men than me. Even at its most  elementary level of not doing the washing up very well. Essentially it's quite a sophisticated technique.

Learn it well.

Some of us have developed not to be over needy.

Some of us are not nearly needy enough.

That's a mistake. 

It's too late for me. 

But for the sake of humanity, act now. 

Save yourselves.

Three Sixties

Firstly Jazz..

then it was Horseradish...

And now I'm already reversing my position on a third thing in life.

Three!! 

In as many decades.

I know.... sloppy! But this is more development of personal taste rather than incorrectitude itself.

Coleslaw!!

Admittedly Iceland's Luxury Coleslaw - (no rubbish) - but nevertheless.

It makes up a worthy triumvirate.

Today we welcome you, Coleslaw.

In small doses, and preferably with sushi.

Quotable Me 30

If you think you're always ahead of the game, leading from the front, one step ahead of the pack, open your eyes a little wider....

Maybe you're the one causing the tailback.

Ten Hut

Hypothetical:

There may be an advantage to being an outlier.

Always assuming, of course, that there is a growth and projection of worthy, interesting, exciting principles that are based on something solid.

An advantage, I mean, other than the romantic idea of a soul original in thought and uncompromising in direction and deed.

An advantage other than the black-and-white appeal of someone who is not a sell-out. 

That doesn't mean they have the satisfaction to the owner. 

Quite the reverse, most probably.

And if you just want to be good at what you do then maybe that's enough. That's why they call it 'good enough'.

But if you are a good person who is good at what they do, do you really get good rewards?

Or do you actually get little reward or recognition, or perhaps none at all?

What good is good?

And if good isn't even good? What the hell good is 'good enough'?

Start as an outlier and you are outside that game.

You don't play that game.

Your starting position is the opportunity to be outstanding.

It is inevitable that being an outlier is a subset... a requirement,  of being outstanding.

So why wait? 

Well for one thing, the trouble is you start without a safety net.

But do you really want to wait for somebody else to break the shell of your egg?

They are just as likely to do it with a heavy foot and damage the contents.

They are just as likely not to do it at all and let you auto-digest yourself.

Take the lead. 

Choose the corners you want to look round.

If timing is everything, then go by your watch.

Take action. 

Be your own revolution.

And time the rebellion.

June

If you want to be part of something august....

don't leave it till September.

All the Single Ladies

The good news is that there is somebody out there for you.

The bad news is they're out there.

Life Sentences

I was just reading a User Review on IMDB of a 1970s television series... children's sci-fi ...the sort of scares you could air when it was OK to give kids a fright as well as a treat. You could give them a supernatural thrill at 4:20 PM as long as you also promoted breakfast that provided central heating (for kids ) and a toothpaste that would give them a ring of confidence.

The viewer was commenting about a long forgotten TV series called Sky which I seem to remember trying to watch but when it didn't grab me in the first episode I didn't bother again. Maybe I will have grown into it by now

But the reviewer comments 

"Unfortunately, my parents chose to have a row during the last episode and switched the TV off ! The series was repeated and I watched again only for there to be a power cut when the last episode was due to broadcast" 

And there we have it. 

Conditions from a bygone age. 

Cruel lessons for children to negotiate.

Miss your opportunity and you are left with a lifetime of questions.

(But witness a show without the sort of spoilers that are so in-your-face today and something could shock the living daylights out of you. I'm thinking of the final scene of Blakes 7. You can think of your own).

Parents can be a tricky thing for children to manage. I distinctly remember my Dad on several occasions banning my brother and I (probably mainly me) from watching television just because he had lost an argument. But I remember particularly vividly when he went out on Saturday night and took the crucial aerial cable with him, making a bending of that imposition utterly impossible. Nowadays of course I can think of 100 ways of watching a program but in those days that was that.

You just missed it. And when you had no aerial your could not even use the VCR.

If it was something that you needed to see, missing it would live with you forever, possibly until a DVD release 35 years later. 

A 35 year punishment... what do people generally get for killing somebody nowadays... 7?

And they get all the TV they can watch.

I know from many retro TV and radio shows, and countless stand-up comedians, that I wasn't the only one who would record themes on tape cassette. There was a shared consciousness amongst the generation of presumably males wearing down and repairing their C90s for repeated battle. Of course I was using my Dad's Dolby double decker, so he probably felt entitled to march into the living room, make a big loud noise, exclaim loudly, and shake, rattle and roll the paper at the very moment that I was recording the 45 seconds it took to get the Dukes of Hazard theme down. And every time from then on that I listened to my tape,  I heard him do it again, over and over and over.

Inconsiderate! 

It's not like a wife, of course, you can tell one of those to shut up for 45 seconds because you are a master of the household.

But my own father was filling that role himself at the time. 

Which brings me to the user's second observation.... the power cut. The reviewer bought the DVD release in 2014 of his TV series because the power cut prevented him watching it in . I think therefore a number of other people must have suffered a similar plight. I certainly had. It was during those few years when there were a lot of three episode miniseries coming out of America, usually 3x 90 minutes. I was staying up late watching quite a racy miniseries called Studs Lonigan at Grandma's house. It was episode 3 and I'd watched the other two. Power cut! They promised they would retransmit it but if they ever did, they never told me. Thanks to the National Grid, I only caught the third and final episode last year. 

If this 10-year-old boy could have seen Stud's transition from goodhearted boy to embittered, physically shattered alcoholic, what sort of a different life might I have led?

Goodthing

What has to happen for one to embrace a member of the opposite sex, and for her to raise one foot in the air?

Is it a timelessly heady concoction of French champagne, Cary Grant & Audrey Hepburn. Or of flowery dresses, Vespas and a lilting chanson. 

Or simply instinctive expression... or mother-daughter training from the days when a lady would thank a gentleman for a pleasing sojourn out.

I hope so.

It can't just be plantar fasciitis.

Quotable Me: Point Zero

I have noticed  something recently - it's just a subtlety. You would probably dismiss it and you probably should. I wouldn't give you any argument.

I should give you a bit of background.. I'm considered to be a "professional person" but nobody really cares about that. 

I care. 

But in all honesty pretty much nobody else does.

I work in a profession, one that has been largely usurped by people who don't work in the "profession". That's fine. It's the way it is. I don't lose sleep about it.

The strange thing is that people do have an interest in my profession - it covers 50% of the TV schedules - it's just that they don't care about the professional aspect of it. 

They don't know or understand or bleed what it takes. I don't expect them to.

I don't lose sleep about it.

As for the "person" bit, well... it's unprofessional for professionals to care that someone cares who they are. As Mr Mitchell, my old school French teacher, used to say when he was teaching us to correctly spell the French word for teacher.. singularly Foolish, doubly Stupid..

Suffice to say that I don't come home to a hallway full of flowers.

This reality is more a result of the profession than of me. And the system in the country I have spent my life in. Which I wouldn't change.

I actually do think what I do has value. But I have never been able to prove it...by even the lowest levels of proof acceptable to any independent observer. 

And so... it doesn't. It doesn't have value. 

The free market system, the outsourcing companies, the Zeitgeist.. everything.... means it doesn't.

Don't get me wrong. That doesn't excessively trouble me. 

I simply observe that it is true and I make an adjustment in my next sidestep.

I factor it in to future decisions and directions.

I regret my worthlessness, but I strive for better.

And still I wouldn't change anything that brought me here.

But I've noticed something recently...just say in the past few months... let's call it, oh, I don't know....2016.

The people I noticed this from are, I suppose, the sort of people you might term 'semi-close' relationships. 

Not close, because most of those have long dismissed me.

Not far away, because all of those have long dismissed me.

But semi-close, some getting closer, some staying, some coming by.

And what I've noticed is this.

I'm. Getting. Quoted.

I say this with some self-cynicism (there must be a word for that) because I have ironically long included a section on this decaying blog called Quotable Me.

What happens is this. I notice my own words coming back at me -  my own words being repeated within my own earshot.

One a few days ago was an improvised suggestion I made around six weeks ago, (also in the earshot of somebody else who recognised its source).

It's fascinating hearing a story for the first time that you know the words to.

Ownership of words is a strange thing. It only takes three or four words for my brain to know the end to the sentence it is responsible for inventing. 

In this case I could have punched the date and punched the time of when those words were said in that order, likely for the first time in human history.

It's actually a nice thing. I don't copyright my thoughts. I offer them freely. And for free. I just prefer not to be knifed for them.  (It's a preference, not a rule) 

So I appreciate that six weeks ago something hit home, got remembered, and I was around when it got repeated. 

It's... funny ....and make no mistake... funny is always good.... Remind your sad acquaintances of that if they ever try to score points against you're funny. And don't spend time in their company again.

But this is not the point I'm making.

In, say, the last three months, I have had somebody look me in the eye and tell me, perhaps a total of ten times, "It's like [you] say". 'you' means 'my name, usually abbreviated' 

And then they quote me.

Now that is an extraordinary thing. It's never happened before.

It's..interesting. 

Nothing more. I'm not used to any deference. I am trained in being a punchbag.

But when something undervalued, becomes valued, in some dark corner of a semi-strangers mind, then that is something, isn't it?

Something that is not nothing.

Perhaps ...even something special.