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It’s fairly easy to garden normally, you wander outside & see what needs doing then you either do it or else find a reason why you don’t have to do it right now. You plant stuff, you water it, get rid of the weeds & then it either grows or it doesn’t, it’s not rocket science & is a pleasant way to pass a nice afternoon, however when faced with a blank sheet so to speak things are different. It’s okay at first, or at least it is if you live on my estate since whilst the house is empty all the neighbouring houses seize the chance to dump all their awkward rubbish into the garden so that by the time a new tenant shows up it resembles a landfill site. Once the clearing of mattresses, abandoned wheelie bins & assorted household appliances has been completed though you’re left with a kind of crappy gap between a fence & a hedge & not a clue as to what to do with it. You immediately cut the grass but whilst in a tended garden this immediately lifts the scene positively in a neglected scrap of waste ground all you really achieve is flatter, although it’s something to be able to strim away in the certain knowledge that no damage will be done to any plant worth keeping. (continue reading…)

The kids broke up today & as July seems to be behaving itself they’ve got nothing to complain about & endless weeks in which to run free. They’ll do nothing of the sort of course & instead will find the quickest route to being bored out of their minds that they can, it’s odd but they manage this every year without fail. I can remember being bored rigid during the long Summer holidays as well but as I recall we didn’t manage this until at least a few weeks had passed & all the bikes were broken. These days it’s something of a criminal offence to not to offer the kids constant stimulation but even here there’s a problem since as soon as a chance to learn something comes up they all moan that they aren’t at school anymore? They don’t make it easy, there are things they want to do but since these things always involve quite a big outlay of cash it can be tricky doing more than one or two of them when cash is tight. You’d expect this point to be appreciated by children who live on a council estate which contains mostly poor people but in all honesty they don’t see it, they just expect it to happen. I’m not moaning about this, I’d like to just whisk us all off on a new adventure every day until they were begging me to be allowed to stay home but it’s simply not possible & what is possible isn’t up to the required standards. (continue reading…)

I’m not going to mess about here, this isn’t a post that pretends to explain whether Fridays are evil, they are & that’s all there is to it, the only real question is whether they’re evil by design or intent? I mean Fridays do seem to set out to destroy us, oh they’re great at first, when you’re sat at school first thing Monday morning the coming Friday looks like a beacon of hope in an otherwise bloody bleak world. It shines with the promise of fun & freedom where you can escape the pressures of life & just let it all go. It’s still keeping its’ glorious glow long after our school days are over, it’s still the end of the week after all but now we’re allowed out later at night & after a heavy week drudging the boards for pennies Friday & the bright lights beckon cheerfully. There’s hope attached to Friday that Monday just can’t carry off, yes Saturday always gets top billing but deep down we all know that Friday is king of the hill & that Wednesday is boring, Tuesday’s hardly a day at all & who cares about Thursday? The only reason anyone gets worked up over Thursday is because it’s Friday the day after, & so it goes on, the years pass & we’re lulled into thinking that Fridays are our friend, it’s not though, Friday is out to get all of us. (continue reading…)

There are a few things that get a bad press time & time again but drinking is by & far the winner, there’s hardly anyone in the newspaper or magazine business that wants to do anything except explore the dark side of drink. Okay so it causes untold misery to millions & is responsible for countless accidents & early deaths but aside from that is it really all that bad? The statistics seem to be painting a fairly grim picture of cause & effect & there does appear to be some circumstantial link between consuming large volumes of alcohol & bad things happening but is drink to blame? Even if it is are we only examining the evidence from one side? Hasn’t our addiction for intoxicating beverages brought us anything worthwhile at all or have we been fooling ourselves all along? Could drinking or not drinking make a difference to our lives? Well, if you’re about to fly a plane or perform an operation then nipping out for a few pints is probably not a great idea, then again if you’re a referee you might as well, it might help a bit & you’d resent the booing less. (continue reading…)

Remember your teenage years? The hormones, the first tentative forays into the mysterious world of girls that you still haven’t really got the hang of? The knowledge that it didn’t matter what you wanted to do or whenever you wanted to do it there was no way of doing it? & the discovery that any attempt to do anything wondrously grown-up whether it was drink or sex related came with its’ own embarrassment potential? Of course you do, we all do as we now laugh & wince our way across the adult landscape that’s now somewhat less wondrous but at least free to be explored, well I bring news, if you’ve had kids then your teenage years are coming back. This is not to say that they’re coming back in a good way, just that they’re coming back & with a special twist in the tail to boot, you may think you suffered enough at the hands of your parents to be entitled to occupy their exalted position in your own home bit it’s not going to happen. We aren’t the same as our parents & far more to the point the teens today aren’t anything like the teens we were, we didn’t have expectations without limits & although we were just as selfish & lazy we never expected anyone to approve of it, you might have had it bad growing up but it’s worse when they do. (continue reading…)

I guess it had been coming for a while now, almost a couple of weeks had passed without any kind of Facebook related life interference, it’s back now though as if it was just saving it up. I wouldn’t mind but I hardly get any trouble concerning me from Facebook, okay so I don’t go on much except to update my status here & there & see what everyone else is up to but even so, it’s crazy how much of an effect it has on me. The teens have it the worst I guess as they always seem to do & say now & doing any thinking required later, this is not a good strategy when online both in public & in real time. Considering that just one hasty post made in anger can produce reams of anger & days of threatened retribution you’d think they’d know better but they don’t & afterwards go back to doing it anyway. Normally there’s at least one of the kids embroiled in some meaningless argument during any given week, sometimes it’s due to gossip, sometimes to their joining in with other peoples’ rows but there all the same.This week though it’s been relationship week on Facebook, relationship week is always a barrel of laughs & as the statuses change from single to otherwise & back again the only real surprise is that more people don’t get killed over this nonsense. (continue reading…)

People get paid for working, in some cases for those lucky enough they get paid a lot, sometimes when compared to the majority it’s a hell of a lot. Normally this isn’t a problem least of all for those getting the money but now that the BBC trust has waded in the BBC is going to have to come clean about how much it’s shelling out at the top end. This does raise a few interesting points, the first being whether it’s any of our business to know & if it is just how much we need to know? Is this just an exercise in good management & transparency or a way for the struggling commercial channels to gain a few steps on the public sector? It’s certainly true that if we carry on in this way then the capacity of the BBC to deliver the current quality of programming is bound to be affected if asked to compete with those who can pay what they like. It’s also subjective as well, we all have our favored personas & those we can’t stand watching, will this be the criteria needed to judge who’s worth what? & if it is who gets to say so? At this rate the accountants may as well be booking the performers which can only mean a much steeper drop into the realm of awful TV that caters only to the lowest common denominator. (continue reading…)

I get the theory obviously, if the government can drag more money in than it actually spends then the debt will have to be reduced accordingly, it’s logical but also not quite. If the cutbacks increase unemployment then the government will have to spend some of the money it’s trying to save, & if the cutbacks reduce the amount of money people have then they’ll spend less so unemployment will go up. I keep studying the figures as far as I understand them but I can’t see why this isn’t political suicide, it’s probably a worthwhile risk right now with Labour still outcasts but it remains a risk. It may well be in the interests of the UK to have some harsh medicine to swallow but when the people doling it out are rich & those taking it are not then the risk that they’ll remember come election time has to be considered. People have never liked doing things solely for the common good especially when they’re only going to feel the benefits after years & even then only in the abstract. The lottery may make a comeback but it’s hard to see anywhere else getting a boost out of austerity, I aren’t saying that the job doesn’t need doing or that I care how unpopular the Tories get, just that I thought they were meant to be brighter than this? (continue reading…)

It’s big business these days as more & more people get into researching the old family trees, for some it’s a gentle hobby that takes the place of more mundane hobbies for others it’s a quest to find their most famous relative. I suppose the bragging rights get a tad heated at times, it’s not a game that comes without risk though, I mean, even the dodgiest of folks have kin right? It may be a bit of a laugh finding out that a distant relation a few hundred years ago was a bit naughty but what if you find a more recent example? Families are funny things & more than a few of them have branches that are unknown to the majority of members due to ancient feuds. It may be a pastime that conjures up images of dusty documents but even the electoral rolls can throw up the odd shock if you don’t know about Aunt Marge & the milkman. (continue reading…)

The famous can’t just die it seems, because they have an army of fans & attract the intense attention of the media as they live out their lives in public mere death is somehow beneath them. Not for them the humdrum deathbed or the quiet heart attack in the supermarket car-park, there must be intrigue & doubt or else they weren’t really famous. In deference to the principle that speculation about a famous death must begin at the point the body hits the floor Jackson ticks all the boxes & everyone wants to play. Sooner or later the mystical burger joint where Elvis cooks is going to get a new waiter, conspiracies are way better for many people since without them all you’ve got is a middle aged bloke over-exerting himself. It may be fun to remember Elvis as he was in the fifties but that’s not what he looked like by ’77 & by the same token the Jackson that made “Thriller” wasn’t the guy who was about to perform at the O2 arena, that guy was long gone. As soon as for most of us at least the concept of an actual death has been accepted the logical upshot of way too many people is that he must have been murdered, real stars live forever? Maybe they do, but their bodies don’t go the distance with them, if any other 50 year old drug addict collapsed & died after spending weeks dancing the only surprise would have been that it took weeks for it to happen. (continue reading…)