Feeling Better Now.

..says it all.

I am tired, I am weary. I could sleep for a thousand years.

Somehow, returning to a badly neglected blog makes me feel a little surreptitious - like a lost cat that strolls into the room weeks after being designated "missing, presumed fed". Whatever the reason, I'm back...

January and February seem to call back the black dogs, and this year is no different. Dark nights and darker thoughts, crudely numbed by whatever comes to hand. Deep down, but with a steady yellow eye on my every move, the self loathing squats like a toad in my guts.
It's easy to see the dark side. Close your eyes and there it is. Implacable and inescapable. To see the light all you have to do is open your eyes, but that's a dangerous business. It's all there, spread in front of you - your whole life, pinned and labelled, viewed through a piss stained veil. You can find yourself drawn to one exhibit, losing yourself in it's meaning and form, tuning it over, examining it from every angle until it becomes the whole of reality. The past is somehow more real than the present - it's fixed - not subject to the paintbrush of "today". You see traits, not states. The past is dead, gone, and fades more with every tick of the clock. But like a scent it affects everything you think about. You can't ignore the box full of broken toys that are yesterdays dreams. But knowing that they exist somehow stains the dreams of the now. There they lie - silently reminding you that there is no gold at the end of the rainbow, mocking your plans, sneering at your hopes.

But my defences are up.

Busy busy busy,
Busy little Bee.
Must keep busy.
Why can't you see?

Busy busy busy,
Busy little Bee.
Working for the honey.
Nothing comes for free.

Busy busy busy,
Busy little Bee.
A bellyfull of nectar,
But it won't save me.

Sometimes I don't know why I bother.

The future's so bright... hah.

Many years ago I used to work for a small consultancy business that specialised in organisational development and occupational stress, and one of the few things that I remember from this time is that one of the main causes of stress is a person's lack of control (real or perceived) over their life. Why mention this? Well, because I'm not feeling particularly in control at the moment. Like a child's balloon in a hurricane I seem to be buffeted from one thing to another, taking knocks along the way. Whilst wearing my "pater familias" hat I guess that I should be steering the family ship with a firm hand on the tiller and a steely gaze to the horizon, but at the moment the seas seem to be a little too stormy to do anything other than lash myself to the mainmast and hang on. Work as an independent consultant is a very movable feast - you are either working or not, earning or not, and the decision as to whether you work or earn is not entirely in your own hands. A contract lost, a client in trouble, and suddenly you are in the business of looking for work. Not that this is the case at the moment, but the future looks ever more uncertain. I mean, Woolworths for god's sake - who would have thought it? I've seen the effects of this first hand - a company on the same business park as one of my clients supplies Woolworths - last week they laid off over half of their staff (close to 100 people I'm told), and this is only the beginning. A family member works in the car trade - and their dealership sold 2 cars in the last month with a profit margin of £60. The stories of wrecked businesses keep on appearing. God knows what the next year is going to be like. I really don't know how bad the recession/depression is going to get, but right now I strongly feel the need to get a plan together. And this is where it all falls down I guess - how can you plan for uncertainty? Do you just hunker down, cut your costs and hope that it will all blow over? Do you look at more radical alternatives? I think that most people will be hunkering down, which makes me want to go in another direction. If all turns to ordure, I don't think that the social security system will be strong enough to cope - so any safety net needs to be of my own making but what? I think that the answers will be found in the past - right now I'm researching the success stories of the great depression - I'll let you know how I get on.

Haiku

Snow on the cherry tree
A single leaf remains
Solitude or death?

Everywhere you go (Always take the weather with you) Or "a few days with Jesus"

Well, what a week. When I heard I was going to Spain I was less than excited - it was, after all, work and not a holiday, and living on your own in a cheap hotel for four days can be a bit of a drag. So I didn't exactly have a joyous spring in my step when I set off. Overall though, the experience was not as bad as it could have been and better than I had feared. Arriving in Malaga at 8 o'clock at night things did not get off to a good start. I picked up my hire car and quicly realised that;

a) I had not driven a manual car for over 6 years.

b) The steering wheel and gearstick are on the wrong side. (Although this turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because all the drivers drive on the wrong side of the road, so it sort of makes sense.)

c) The sat nav maps on my phone were at least 3 years out of date - and the display might just as well have displayed a skull and crossbones with the message "Here be Dragons" for all the use it was.

d) It was dark.

e) It was pissing down with rain.

So, to a merry accompaniment of shouts of encouragement from Spanish road users I lurched, juddered and swerved my way around Malaga until I spotted the road that I needed to take. It is a measure of my ability to quickly acclimatise that I was only lost for an hour or so. Some time later, I found the hotel. Then, looking for a parking spot, I got lost again and found myself on the motorway, speeding away from the hotel at a great rate of knots. By this time I was a seasoned Spanish driver, so it only took me about 45 minutes to find the hotel again. Cue a calming beer, and off to my room. I decided to use the USB dongle to pick up my emails, as the Internet connection in the hotel cost €24 (!) this proved to be a wise choice, as my Internet usage only came to some £35.....um. The next day it was off to the hills, where I was to be recording the Spanish Voice Over for a computer game.

The Studio

The studio was Little piece of hippy heaven snuggled into the foothills of whatever mountains were looming over us (note to self - pay more attention to geography). It was originally set up be a chap named Usul - a friend of Ravi Shankar's who died a couple of years ago, and was a place that had proudly earned the epithet "ramshackle". Take away the recording equipment and the tipsy wooden beams and placeholder roof would have not looked out of place in Hobbiton. The grounds were studded with orange, grapefruit, lime, clementine that you could just pick straight from the trees. I know, I can hear your thoughts already, but let's be fair, for most of us, the natural environment of the citrus fruit is the supermarket shelf, isn't it? In addition, there were the signs of another recently harvested crop which I would have found much more interesting had I needed to feel at one with life the universe and everything.... Inside, propped in a corner was a sitar that was once played by Ravi Shankar himself! Like any right minded person, I picked it up in the hope that Sitar playing skills had magically descended upon me. Alas no.

So, to work. The work would have gone swimmingly but for the constant interruptions of the local cockerel - every couple of minutes the recording would have to stop whilst we ran outside and shooed away the bloody thing. These things happen. The 2 actors, Jesus and Javier, were absolute stars, and made the trip for me - anyone who introduces themselves with the phrase " you are from England - you know David Icke?" can't fail to be interesting, or baffling. Or both. The work progressed, actors made sounds, we recorded them and all was well (cocks excepted).

After recording, I followed the same routine, hotel, shower, stroll, tapas, beer, hotel. A word about tapas. The tapas in Spain is Brilliant. (capital B intended), whether it's the chorizo, the anchovies, the octopus, the chicken livers, the little kebab things, the salads, the ham, the meatballs, the fried breadcrumbs, the potatoes in "stuff".. well, I'm sure that you get the point. For anyone planning to stay in San Pedro, the best place I found was La Bodega - relaxed, traditional, friendly, yummy and no Brits.

And so it went - having done my research and found that Estepona rejoiced in a year round climate of around 19 degrees, I was not best equipped for the freezing conditions. Evidently it is very rare for there to be snow. Really. And now back to the home front - delayed projects tapping me ever more urgently on the shoulder, things I really should be doing. And here I sit - blogging. Well, no more. To work it is. Until the next time, hasta la vista!

Brothers, Sisters, we don't need no fascist groove thang.

Having fallen off the wagon, I am feeling generally well disposed towards the world at the moment. Farewell road rage, and hello familiar worries. Although I do have some new worries...

The events of the last couple of weeks have been worrying me, although not in the way you might expect. It seems pretty clear that we are heading towards a recession or a depression, depending on who you listen to, and although I don't think that we will be looking at soup kitchens and Jarrow marches, I think that one of the consequences of recession hasn't been seen yet. Always after an economic downturn there seems to follow a radicalisation of politics - liberalism (with a small l) doesn't seem to sit well with a population that's worried about jobs, money and the future that's in store for our kids. *cue some sweeping generalisations* The depression of the 1930's was the manure that gave vigour to the fascist movements in many western countries, and the dole queues were rich recruiting grounds for the National Front in the early 80's. With unemployment nudging 2 million again, how long before the Daily Mail readers start looking at the economic migrants with hate-filled eyes? Immigration has been an issue for debate over the last few years, and that's when there have been plenty of jobs to go around - how will the man in the dole queue view the Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Albanians, Croatians etc when he sees them earning money that "should be his"? I can even feel the stirrings of unease inside my own guardian-reading heart. Similarly, when money is tight, who gives a toss about the environment? When times are hard, who cares what the natives are doing to each other in Matabeleland? When you can't afford to run your own country, can politicians afford to look after another country's interests? "Foreign aid? No thanks, charity begins at home." And when the west is desperately trying to keep it's populations happy, fed and employed, some countries will see this as the perfect time to press their own agenda. Even in the last week, we've seen North Korea and Iran getting more belligerent - pushing the boundaries to see what they can get away with. I'm sure that this is going to continue - what hold we had over Russia and China has gone - and Georgia, has been the result. I certainly wouldn't like to be living in Taiwan at the moment - I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are some major Chinese military "exercises" there in the next few months. As the west sees that it cannot project itself on the world through conventional force, the only deterrent left becomes the unthinkable nightmare of nuclear weapons - raising the stakes of the game to a point where you simply cannot afford to call the bluff of the muscular states. And as the west sees it's hegemony slipping away, there will be those in the wings talking about the destiny of our countries, how we shouldn't bend our knee to the upstart nations, national pride, and even *whisper it* racial purity. And as we see the rise of the right, so too will we see the left gaining strength to balance the equation - the failure of capitalism will be flag, the fight against fascism will be the cause, and China will be the shining example. Throw into the mix a racially and religiously diverse population and we are heading for shit street. Politicians have seldom been so free of ideology as they are at the moment, to a point where it is difficult to say what the different parties (in the UK at least) actually stand for. Pragmatism has been the byword for recent politics, both in terms of the policies and the self-serving agendas of the politicians themselves - but when that pragmatism encourages politicians to swim with the current of public opinion, you get a distorted and amplified view of what 's in the public mind - no matter how ugly that is.

"Hard times in old England, in old England, very hard times."

V

Day four of giving up smoking and I'm not a nice person to be around. Or indeed to be. I'm very very tetchy. Angry almost. The headaches don't help. Driving is especially trying - Bruce Banner goes out of the window, and what is left is not a courteous and considerate road user. I have come up with a strategy however, to try to reduce the risk of a little incident; I have a mental narrative playing, where I try to categorise all other road users by the make of their car. For example, all Vauxhall drivers are cunts. Every one.

Corsa/Nova: Either untermensch chavscum "cruising" round town with their pox riddled fuck puppets advertising to the world their lack of taste in cars, music and women, or semi senile piss soaked grannies who are about as useful behind the wheel of a car as a random bucket of organs from the local butchers.

Astras: Falls into two categories, old Astras and new Astras. Old Astras are the equivalent of a mule in the wild west - cheap, basic transport, invariably laden down with tools, wood and bits and pieces from the local DIY shop. Driven by slouching old men with a roll up behind one ear and trousers held up with hairy string (probably). Highway code? They wrote it. In fucking crayon. Utterly unconcerned by the presence of other road users, probably because they are wondering where the nearest lay-by is so that they can clot their sporran over page three whilst eating a pie.

New Astras are invariably driven by bitter, under achieving, office supplies salesmen (and women). Cheap suits, cheap aftershave, and the flashiest mobile phone they can afford. Bitter at their lot in life, and wishing that they could be eligible for a better car, they always seem to drive as if they have something to prove. News flash: You've already proved it. And we're laughing. We KNOW that you'll never make middle management and the elusive executive upgrade, but do you? One day soon, after a morning spent carving up other motorists and and afternoon failing to sell any A4 copier paper you are going to sit down, assess your life, and make the world a happier place by leaving.

Zafira/Meriva

Where to start? The Paedophiles choice. Mum goes to Iceland, and dad drives a Zafira. For some strange reason, I see a lot of the GSi (is that right?) or "sporty" models about. A little badge on the back of your four wheeled transformer does not a cool dad make, and secretly they know it. People who drive these cars masturbate in the shower whilst thinking of the wife's sister, or the work experience girl. If you own a Zafira or a Meriva your life is over - oh you may still be breathing, but have you ever asked yourself what for? Your kids lie awake at night wondering how much they will inherit when you die. Alright, not as badly driven as some models, mainly because the drivers are acutely aware of their own mortality.

Tigra/Antara/Agila

Tigra - one of the ugliest cars in the world, can only be bought by blind people, who shouldn't be allowed to drive. (actually, I suppose that rich people could buy Tigras and give then to people that they really don't like, but I suspect that this is not a sustainable market given the current economic climate).

Antara "From £21,000". If you cannot think of a better way to spend £21,000 then you are dragging average IQ of the human race down, and you should be shot for the good of us all.

Agila. A Suzuki. Built in Poland. By Vauxhall. On which planet does this sound good? Judging by the drivers, planet Ditzy. Always female (or pre-op transsexual). Often with a passenger who that are incapable of talking to without turning their head and looking them in the eyes "why should I look at the road? It's not as if it's going anywhere..". Not involved in as many accidents as they cause, which is a pity.

Vectra

Ah, the Vectra. Ever wondered what happens to the bitter, under achieving office supplies salesman if he gets promoted? A bitter, under achieving sales manager. Or a policeman. Whatever, the effect is much the same, a cocksure, know-it-all napoleon complex wrapped up in a cocoon of insecurities, spite and bile. Often causes accidents by replying to email offering penis enlargement on their blackberry. Interestingly, many Vectra drivers seem to be aware of this on some level, and often drive the cars as if they really hate them. You know that David Brent would drive a Vectra.