Let's All Hold Hands & Talk About

Yeah, so basically what I want to say is that people do change. This is an open letter addressed to my former self/any undergraduates/someone in their early twenties/anyone who can sense the end of the beginning or the beginning of an end in some part of their life. And my message, as I stop and take stock, is that people do change.

I’m about to complete my degree which feels very strange. It provides a handy way of bookending the last four years of my life. A lot has changed. I see the world very differently then I did way back when I was starting. For one I’ve gone brown bread. To any alarmed cockneys out there I am still alive, but what I mean is I’ve grown to appreciate brown bread. I’ve grown to appreciate taking the time to experience the genuine article when it comes to loafs and I hope in other aspects of my life too. I drink coffee as I talked about here. I’m also closer to being vegetarian than I’ve ever been in my life. And I’m a fully paid up cyclist. I cycled about 30 miles today! Even a fortnight ago that would have been pretty hard to picture.

From my vantage point it is clear that I’ve changed a lot. I started uni as a scruffy wannabe hipster. I leave uni as a less scruffy, houmous scoffing, ukulele playing, kindle reading, confirmed hipster. The people I’ve had the pleasure of spending the last four years with have changed too and it’s been a joy spending time with them and I look forward to seeing the weird and wonderful directions they’re going to go in! Time is strange, it takes fixed points in order to apprciate how much I and others have changed. It feels like aeons ago that I was matriculated at Glasgow university - that it would take radio carbon dating to pinpoint when my student ID card was printed. Yet on the other hand, it seems all I’ve done is blink since I was there tentatively holding a pen signing the UCAS form wondering what was ahead of me… But now four years has past and what have I learned? A bit about theology, a bit about comedy, quite a bit about life. And I’ve learnt that people change.

My message here to you in this open letter is that people do change, and I’d urge you not to listen to claims that people (or ‘some’ people) ’don’t change’. Because people do. The last four years of my life give me a window to see how life when examined reveals change in everything, in people’s attitudes, convictions, hopes, fears, humours. I think that people who seem really set in their ways are in fact constantly changing. The only way that they are able to appear so consistent is through constantly changing to match a world which always changes. We constantly impute new information and our response necessitates a changed outcome. It saddens me when you hear the sentiment often bitterly expressed that ‘people don’t change’ - that people have a true nature, a real nature that some external force like alcohol, or stress or tragic circumstances will suddenly reveal when their guard is down. In this view there is a core of a person that lurks through the good times and either steps up or crumbles in the bad times.

After the last four years that doesn’t ring true.

I do believe that there is some kind of an individual essence, that is individual to each individual. But the idea that this essence is something readily visible if a person is put under strain, I’m not so sure of that. The essence of who someone is, their exact calling, their vocation, what they actually are and could be is something I think that is clearly and necessarily just beyond our grasp. When people say that ‘people don’t change’, it’s understandable because we are often hurt by the changes other people make in our lives and it’s comforting to feel there are distinct categories of people. We can navigate towards the ones that don’t hurt us and away from the ones that do. But in my experience the interplay of hurt is much more complex. We can’t excuse the pain people cause us as simply a component of the way they are and use it as a grounds to rule them in or out. Just ‘the way things are’ shouldn’t determine ‘the way things have to be.’ People have to find a way of forging a common life together, a life that is constantly changing and evolving populated by networks of individuals that are themselves constantly changing and evolving.

People adapt because the nature of life is one that is always changing. Probably the most constant thing about a person is their name (although even that is not immutable). When a person’s name changes it tends to be rarely and then only slowly. Marshall McLuhan uses a quote from James Joyce’s Finegann’s Wake (“Who gave you that numb?”) to underscore the fact that “…the name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.” This is an evocative, bittersweet way of thinking about a name. My case here is that names are powerful and therefore only change slowly, but everything else is readily changeable. How that name is deployed for instance is up for grabs. That name, that numb, what’s in it? What’s in a name?

In the second year of my course I met a fantastic, highly engaging lecturer who goes by the name of AKMA. He is only ever known by his initials A.K.M.A - AKMA. He made a special point on the first day of our class to memorise the full name of everyone in the class (almost 30) by repeatedly addressing us each by name throughout. There was a wonderful warm atmosphere and by the second class he knew every student’s name off by heart, every single student. Some feat. I asked him once why he made the effort to memorise everyone’s names so quickly in the term. He replied that it was a sign of respect - if he wanted us to listen to him and get to know him - he wanted to listen to us and get to know us. This really struck me two years ago and it still strikes me now. What a great way to think about teaching. They say that interested people make for interesting people and that was certainly the case here. In his act of taking the courtesy to remember all of our names, AKMA has become a name I’m never going to forget.

As I stand on the precipice, writing this open letter, I’m thinking a lot about names and what it is to change n’ all that. At different points in life our names can be altered we can gain letters and lose letters. This can be through marriage, education, knighthood or even deed poll. In each instance the process is exceptional, incremental and gradual but - change happens. Even the numbing blow of our name can be changed. There are constants within which and through which we interact but we can always change. Kind of liberating huh? We can always change. Thanks for reading and all that remains is to ask you - what’s in a name? And perhaps - more specfically - what’s in your name?

I recently had the joy of seeing my mum and company perform in Tennessee Williams’ ‘The Glass Menagerie’ in the Cottiers theatre in Glasgow. The play is a bittersweet memory piece, elegant and stylised but written with a lightness of touch. The by turns dreamy, by turns sparse staging of this production gave the play’s four contrasting characters plenty of room to breathe as the bittersweet plot shifts gear from the outrageous and the hilarious to the gently moving. 

It was also a real trip for me seeing my mum on the stage playing a vibrant single mother of two twentysomething children… Fortunately for me there is a sufficient gap between the dysfunctional Amanda Wingfield and my mother. That said, it was startling seeing animate gestures and mannerisms I’ve known for so long being orchestrated into this character at once familiar and alien.

There are several memorable lines from the play but one that stands out is when the character of the ‘Gentleman Caller’ Jim says to Amanda’s daughter Laura, ‘I’m not made of glass.’ The fragility of glass is a reoccurring theme throughout the play (Laura collects glass ornaments of animals - the Glass Menagerie). The long exchange between Jim and Laura playing between earnest naivety and something darker and more knowing is as enjoyable as it is disquieting. When Jim tells Laura he’s not made of glass it’s a loaded proposition - yes he’s not fragile, but he’s not transparent either.

What are you made of? A question we all have to ask of ourselves and we frequently ask of others. Sterner stuff? True grit? Scottish girders? We’re all too aware of public figures with feet of clay. But if we’re not made of glass - what are we made of? Stone? Metal/mettle? MDF? In the physical sense apparently we’re mostly water, water and recycled materials. We’re green man! With a rubber soul (made from old car tyres and costing over £5 for the A5 at Paperchase).

What I’m made from I guess depends on my experiences. Nature and nurture both happen to you, and in retrospect a lot of the decisions we have made ‘happened to us’ too. Hindsight. It was always going to be this way. Stanley Hauerwas says “For what we are, our sense of ourselves, rests as much on what we have suffered as what we have done.” That means it takes everything to make me and none of it was indispensable. Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe I’m Bruce Lee.

Countless times I’ve been compared to Chris Addison and was once mistaken for him. It’s got so frequent I’m considering writing an open letter asking Armando Iannucci for a part as Olly’s brother in next series of The Thick Of It, could be a Millibands situation. A stranger comparison I’ve had recently was to Bruce Lee. In Asda the other day a shopper pointed towards a picture of Bruce Lee and a picture of me and back again. Not sure if I see the comparison myself, don’t think that’s what I’m made of. I appreciate that shopper’s estimation though, must have been channeling Bruce Lee vibes that day.

When it comes down to it, when it actually comes down to it, I’m made from my mother and my father. Both were in theatre meaning as well as everything else I’m also a little bit compromised of that side of them and their performances. So I’m taking a little bit of Amanda Wingfield and The Odd Couple’s Felix Unger with me too - talk about neuroitc! But also kinda cool. What about you - what are you made of?

Where were you when it happened? When the whole world was thrown into panic, when everything was turned on its head? The day Wikipedia shut down. That Wednesday was my generation’s Cuban Missile Crisis. Everything we thought we knew about the world, all our references points thrown askew - Wikipedia wasn’t there. Drunken bets couldn’t be resolved, or academic papers finished. Pub quizes were brought to a standstill up and down the land. The Wikipedia Game ceased to exist.

(SIDEBAR, the Wikipedia game consists of two or more combatants racing to get from one preappointed Wikipedia article, to another preappointed article ONLY through the links WITHIN each Wikipedia article. Follow the trail, be surprised how quick it can be to navigate between the combustion engine and Gandhi or Mormonism and marsupials).

Yes Wikipedia died. But Wikipedia was coronated again on the Thursday.Wikipedia para la vida! Life goes on. The more things change. Et cetera ad infinitum anon.

When I was away over New Year I had no access to internet or phone reception in our idyllic cottage. There was no Wikipedia to resolve fact disputes or clarify semantics. And know what? That was a real highlight. The lack of digital media was as refreshing as the Argyle air. Although there was one point when he had to face the limitations of a world without Wikipedia. One afternoon, while breaking bread, we were trying to name the world’s largest rodent (but of course). We’d hit a road block, by a convoluted route we had ended up here. Our conversational satnav had taken us up this avenue and here we were, with no Wikipedia fact GPS.

We had to throw our heads together. Our best bet was that it was something South American, and large, with big teeth. Then, minds still buzzing - we moved on (remember, before Wikipedia, we used to just ‘move on’?). We were all sitting round together reading just like they used to do in the 1940s and in the pyramids n’that. It was a right lark going through the mountain of literature we had amassed. Then, out of the blue, one of our party was reading a novel, which suddenly, coincidentally referred to ‘Capybara’, you guessed it - the world’s largest rodent. How cool!

There’s nothing wrong with blitzing facts through the information superhighway but sometimes it’s a bit like queue jumping. It was actually more satisfying to stumble across the info, serendepitously, in context. This wasn’t vital information that needed to be accessed straight away. Compare the experience of waiting 7 seconds for someone with a laptop to tell you the world’s largest rodent with the experience of someone suddenly exclaiming ‘Capybara’ to an instantly baffled assembly, apropos of… seemingly nothing, before it dawned on us. Joyful. Let’s all hold hands and shout ‘Capybara!’ That was an experience you have to queue for.

I was in a queue yesterday. A woman skipped. She was attempting a strange version of the Chat & Cut that Larry David identifies in Curb Your Enthusiasm. She asked the lady in front of me some information about the queue. And then did not leave. The lady in front of me informed the jumper where the back of the queue was. Her response was ‘Yes, that’s fine, I don’t mind.’ She didn’t mind… skipping. Well as long as it wasn’t a problem for her. The lady in front of me got quite agitated at the jumper but the jumper remained calm, stressing how it was ‘all fine’ and that really ‘it wasn’t a problem for her.’ Life has rhythms, and it has queues. Sometimes it’s important to follow them. The people in the immediate vicinity of this jumper did not take kindly to her or her strange logic and so she ended up filtering back anyway. Sometimes jumping in ahead is a short cut for a long delay. When life is taken more at its rhythm you get the change to take things at face value.

The other day I was walking down the street when I was asked by a friendly group if I wanted to quote, unquote “Come join us paintballing.” I was busy that afternoon but it was a nice suggestion. Yes I could interpret the fact that they were all wearing matching t-shirts and were holding pamphlets to mean they were actually just inviting me to pay for some paintball just like any other customer. But I choose to think that they just saw me and thought, it would be fun to play paintball with that guy, let’s defintley invite that guy. Face value.

As I write this last paragraph I see there’s a guy across from me wearing a proper massive signet ring, like for wax seals. That dude is committed to snail mail! Does he send emails? Sure. He’s here on one of the computers right? But he also appreciates (I assume) that sometimes, the fun is in the waiting. So take your time, let some information take it’s time to get you. Of course the irony is that in the process of writing this post I went on Wikipedia to check the spelling of capybara. Oh well, the King is dead, long live the King…

This year I’m enjoying spending Christmas down at my sister’s although I’m somewhat perturbed that she refers to her Christmas tree as (and I quote) ‘Kevin’. I’m as puzzled as you are. I think we need to talk about Kevin.

In lieu of arranging to send any actual card cards, I thought I’d take the opportunity to post a Christmas blog (and I know it’s not the same but it’s already had a reference to an anthropomorphically personified tannenbaum, so we’re doing well). I’d like to wish you all A Christmas Like Jagger (Have you got Christmas like Jagger? I’ve got Christmas like Jagger, I can assure you… although I have not an idea what that means) and a Happy New Year.

I’m here down south for Christmas and will be right up north for ‘The Bells’ waxing and waning lyrical, rhapsodising and reflecting on the year past and ahead wholly in person and so thought I’d better blog now as will be largely off the grid until 2012. Reflecting on the year past will be a mixed blessing for me as the last year has been largely awful really, without question the worst of my life, coping with the loss of my Dad. And yet there have been bursts of light and laughter shooting through the undergrowth. I’m grateful for the company I keep and the wisdom they speak. I’ve learned a lot about myself and about life, and am always learning more about my Dad as I work through his poetry, plays and photographs, ‘right Dad?’ (‘Right Son’).

2011 was a grim year but as I said, one with highlights. At the end of the roughest year of my life I feel wiser, fitter, sharper and more accomplished. As I got myself together I have joined a gym and stuck to it, taught myself to play the ukulele, dipped my toe in the world of slam poetry, started my dissertation, have earned and saved, sold a violin and got a tennis racket (I am of course not the first to use a violin to make a racket).

To get through this all activity I have relied on my friends and on food. I have been cooking constantly, I have even learned how to bake a cake (I have now made 3). I wish you all the best for the feasting season, where one can seriously ‘tuck in’ with all the restorative qualities that phrase intones. It would seem in fact that our Scottish cusine is set to get all the more restorative and sunnier as international experts suggest that our food should be fortified with vitamin D, due to the lack of it we would get the traditional way (out of the sky n’that). I don’t know about you, but for me right now the idea of being able to bottle sunshine is very appealing.

Food’s already pretty full of sunshine really, as I look back on the last year sunny memories of gathering together to eat come up over and over again. Whether that be pakora on the shorefront with Mr Pickles. Or the delicious ‘Pieman’ with the Scottish diaspora at Scargill. Curry Night with Camsaq. Shepherd’s pie with my Aunt Trina. Ice Cream cones with JK & DM. Cake & Coffee with @Trioka & @joerpwaterfield. Risotto with Team Woubit. Meatballs and a singalong with the Musketeers. Christmas Lunch with Div Dept. My mum’s birthday ceilidh. Toast and tea with Cornertown. A Lamb feast at the Young’s in Stirling or Turkey with my mum and sister tomorrow.

So as I said, we needed to talk about Kevin. And as it transpires, as I have enquired - Kevin is alive! Kevin is vested with an apellation appositely as he is to maintain as a mainstay of festivities of the future. Kevin is not a one off, Kevin is to be replanted! He symbolises the rejuvinating spirit of life that keeps on going! This’ll keep me right for the year ahead. Kevin is life man! Like eating is life! Like sunshine is life! Like the Christmas story is one of life that we might live. It’s a bottle of sunshine. That’s nature’s rock and roll baby, you can’t stop it, irrepressible, unflaggable, just strutting about, evergreen, kinda like, I dunno Mick Jagger or something.

Ah yes… I get it now. So yes, I’d like to wish you all A Christmas like Jagger.

So far this week I’ve bought some pomegranates and some persimmons and I’m going to work out how best to do justice to each AND I’ve started teaching myself how to play the ukulele. Oh yeah, I’m all about the self improvement. I’m unstoppable. I’m making a difference (Yeah, let’s change the world or something, right? Who’s with me? Right? Making a difference…)

By the TW, the ukulele is THE most heartbreaking bittersweet instrument there ever was. If you don’t belive me, take a look at this. (As a sidenote, what do you listen to when working/studying? If you ever have to wade through several existential philosophy essays I suggest you listen to this kind of thing. It makes you feel like you are inside a Woody Allen film. Quite a trip.)

I’m a sucker for the bittersweet and it oftentimes sneaks up on you unawares. Once, at a low time in my life, I found myself standing… in the cue of, remember I wasn’t feeling myself… the cue of… Chicken Cottage. OK OK, like I said, i wasn’t feeling myself. So I was shuffling towards the counter just wanting something fast and fattening, when I heard, drifting lazily over the speakers, the forlorn voice of Dionne Warwick. I don’t know about you, but there’s nothing more bittersweet and tragic than standing in the cue of Chicken Cottage, desolate, listening to Dionne Warwick.

I had a rather different music experience recently which was far more life affirming. Last week I had the pleasure of going to see a show choir of mixed ability young people and adults all singing together. It was a simple, low key night but one of the most moving experiences I’ve had in recent years. So enabling and inclusive, and it felt so right. As my toe was tapping my heart was bursting throughout to see such a diverse group of people making the effort to work together against the odds.

So yeah, self-improvement’s great, we all have our ukuleles and pomegranates to bear, but maybe we don’t need to be so hung up on making the difference in this driven ’improving ourselves to improve the world’ thing. Maybe that’s not really the way to make a difference, maybe that’s a whole lot of the same. Just lots of people trying to prove themselves and proving the world can be made different.

The night of that concert left a real impression on me. I think making a difference can’t start with yourself, it has to start with someone else. Somone else making a difference to you is what makes you make a difference. Making a difference, whatever that means, getting up and getting involved, has to be experienced. Something like, unless ‘you’ve been made different you can’t make different.’ I think anything that makes a difference to just one other person, that helps them make a difference, that’s what really makes a difference.

Let’s all hold hands and talk about it. Thanks for reading :-)

What? What will ‘Gym’ll’ fix? Dunno, makes for a title OK?

So I have joined the university gym for the second time in my academic life. In first year I got a membership and used it once - for a shower. Straight in and out, not so much as a by your leave to any of the fearsome exercising machinations. I was in the middle of doing a Commedia Del’Arte run at the Ramshorn Theatre and needed somewhere that would welcome a crumpled dandy such as myself and allow me to do my ablusions. Once I had abluted, I never returned - I spent £35 on one shower.

So speed forward to Take 2, now in my final year at Glasgow I wanted to feel fitter and to get into a better headspace so I resolved to go to the gym. I know from my running days that you feel much better - body, mind, soul, for exercising. It helps with lethargy, restlessness, and anxiety. And I get anxious. I worry. I worry about all kinds of things. I worry about making eye contact with cyclists.

Bear with me.

This is not due to some kind of pent up, repressed, pathological fear of cyclists, born from any feelings of inferiority or jealousy. But in the West End, you get a lot of these fey Amelie types wafting up and down on their 50’s bycyles, with no helmets. In happy-go-lucky fashion they duck and weave between Glasgow traffikers taking their lives into their own hands with no protective gear at all. It’s enough to set you on edge.

So the other day a cyclist made eye contact with me. I don’t know if she thought she recognised me or what but she saw me through the traffic, a long way off and smiled quizzically. As I walked forward and she kept looking I got paranoid that our continued eye contact was going to derail her. She’d get distracted, lose her balance and then a truck would end her. But then I got worried that if I turned away too quickly she would think I had blanked her which would sufficiently preturb her enough to momentarily unbalance her and then BAM, aforementioned truck would end her.

So I did what any of us would have done, I checked my phone. This is a universal body language get out clause, just checking my phone, totes natural, nothing to see here. Carry on cycling. Maybe you recognise me, maybe you don’t, but just focus on taking the utmost care. I saved a life.

I tend to over think things.

So I made good to get myself together and join up so this morning that’s what I did. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a gym ‘induction’. It sounded ominous, positively cultic, what was I getting initiated into? I was hoping my indoctrination wouldn’t involve rites, I wasn’t up for rites when I set out this morning. Always with the rites nowadays, sometimes a guy’s just not in the mood for rites.

But I’ve done it, I’ve had my induction and first session this morning. And I’m blogging about it, because that’s what petite bourgeoisie like me do (it’s gonna help me pull through alright). Know what? It was great. My gym instructor was very helpful, got me started on my learning curve and let me get stuck in. There were no rites to speak of (apart from some ritualistic nodding and some fairly liturgical instructions) and I really felt like I’d acomplished something.

I feel amazing, bit achy n’that but over all, all holistic and good and such, my limbs all laconicly following each other one after the next. And it’s completley got me away from worrying about cyclists crashing. There’s defintley something to this lark, maybe that’s what Gym’ll will fix. My body may not turn into a temple over night, but you know, I’ll enjoy it and have realistic aims, maybe my body can be like… I don’t know… a garden centre…

There has been the occasional sign of hope in recent years but with Midnight In Paris I can confirm that Allen has 100% returned to form. That’s right, 100% - Midnight In Paris can actually compare with the 70s/80s Allen. A bold claim but honestly I was bowled over.

This film is not an indulgent faux-intellectual exercise that allows its bitterness to get the better of it (see much of Allen’s 00’s output). The tale is heartwarming with lovely flights of fancy and a nice mix of well drawn loveable & irritable characters in the classic Allen mould.

There is a wonderful support cast including Marion Cotilard & Adrien Brody in fun roles, Michael Sheen doing a great job in the smarmy Tony Roberts/Alan Alda friend role, Rachel McAdams as a well observed brittle foil for our hero - Owen Wilson, who for my money is the best actor to balance the Allen archetype character’s smart aleckness & vulnerability in recent years.

Where films such as Melinda and Melinda, Scoop & Whatever Works were close to capturing the magic but still felt a little forced, Midnight In Paris has the easy charm of classics such as Broadway Danny Rose, Play It Again Sam and Hannah in Her Sisters.

Who knows, after thinking it was ridiculous to even consider he still had a Manhattan or an Annie Hall left in him, Woody Allen might find himself (like one of the characters in Midnight In Paris) in a rather unexpected renaissance…

We’ll start with a riddle. You have to work out what object I’m talking about.

‘I’m classy but practical. Elegant but useful. Often found in the kitchen but wouldn’t be out of place in the bedroom. What am I? That’s right of course – I’m a ramekin.’

So I’ve just left the kitchen and I’m drinking coffee, black coffee, like a man. I’ve ascended from milk tea with three sugars and I have now arrived at the manly destination – black coffee. Gone is the boy in joggers wearing trainers with flashing lights, scampering around carefree in chunky black trainers which had the dazzling feature of flashing red when the heels were stamped on the ground.

I must have been quite the talk of the steamie cutting round in those sci fi shoes. I was glad to see recently that this type of shoe is still in rotation. With retro-futurism on the way out apaz (this is how we say ‘apparently’ now, apaz) it’s nice to know that a silly little dalliance such as a futuristic shoe is still knocking around.

But that taste of the future is now consigned to the past forever and gone also is the ‘just milk’ skater kid who owned an ill advised ‘off road skateboard’ with monster truck style wheels, (twas ever thus) and the cappuccino swilling youth with the crazy hair and the perilously pointy Portuguese Winklepickers. I am now the twenty-something wearing a brown v neck jumper, corduroy trousers and a pair of what my dad wonderfully used to call ‘baseball shoes’. Drinking coffee - black.

Now to the coffee itself. I noticed in the kitchen (when I had finished coming up with my riddle) the description on the coffee I was about to plunge in the cafetiere (I’ve not yet graduated to the macchinetta). The coffee is described as being ‘100%’ but it is ambiguous as to whether this refers to the ethical nature of the coffee or the high quality of the coffee. There is room for doubt. Now ideally it means both but I got to thinking what if it only referred to one. Either the coffee is 100% ethical or 100% good n’that. Which would I prefer?

Now obviously I like me some ethical coffee and I’m far from a coffee aficionado, so the ethics are of more concern than the quality, but then, the mind gets to thinking. What is 100% ethical? Is there such a thing as one hundred percent ethical. I mean of course ethics are great and everything but we all know that big international business is going to be a little bit, you know, unethical or something, I mean, it’s pie in the sky to think that the coffee’s going to be 100% ethical, right? Right? I think we can recognize that a few percent have to be shaved off here and there.

And like, I’ve paid for this coffee, wouldn’t it be a bit unethical for them to not give me the 100% high quality I’m after? I mean that would be unfair right? I mean yeah, I hope it is ethical, with the best will in the world, lets hope it’s you know, 80-90% ethical, but we’ve got to be realistic. Of course there are limits, it’s got to be at least 70/75% or I’m not drinking it, I’m willing to make that sacrifice. But so much as a 10/15% drop in quality – and you expect me to drink that bleeding heart, gushing, self consciously self aggrandizing piss? With milk? But probably not cow milk, no, probably like goat milk or oat milk, or hummus milk or something. That’s what you want eh? Eh?

Now obviously that’s like satire or whatever and of course the ‘100%’ refers to both the quality and the ethical nature of the coffee which is lovely. But it’s just a series of thought processes we mature coffee drinker types go through all the time. Bargaining out of the ideal and slipping to the defensive, protecting our rights rather than fostering our responsibilities. Opinions are not prescribed to us, they grow organically and logically (even if they look ridiculous when taken to their ‘logical’ conclusion).

It makes sense logically that the coffee trade is a moral minefield and there is only so much ethical practise we can expect from it and so the quality of the coffee is a legitimate priority. It also makes logical sense to accept that if the injustice is not good enough (which it isn’t) then we can change things for the better by buying more responsibly and supporting tentative corporate ethical gestures.

But the moral high ground is where you get nosebleeds and buying a trendy coffee and blogging about it is fairly inconsequential compared to taking direct action for people who need it, such as having plans to share the coffee with folks who could really use some time to share some coffee with. Left vs. right etc etc political point scoring means that we argue more about the coffee we choose to drink as such than we do thinking about the people we are willing to share it with, so to speak.

Big mature, grown up things there then eh? But you learnt a cool new word, ‘apaz’ [sic] and there was a clever riddle about ramekins. Now I wonder if they still make those light-up shoes for a size 10.½ …

Tumbling, fumbling, that tune you’re humming, a little something about something or nothing.

Sitting, wishing, reading, what you output is what you input, but who put and why put, here put, so put the foot - in, kick the boot - in, intellectual looting, ineffectual looting.

Tragedy is not a competition, never, but some none the less, concerned with, the defence of the entrants, make it competitive and so derivative, wanting to chip something into the milieu, hop on the platform, with their content, discontent, citizen journalists, a citizen furnace.

It’s a riot, can’t deny it, the bonfire of the vanities, the transparencies, the twees, shuffling twees with shuffling opinions putting their values on random, ear phones instead of speakers - as they don’t want to demand them.

Cardinal sins making marginal dins, needles and pins. Apathy, but minimal, the effects are subliminal and subliminally felt, the glare from your screen, unintelligible, negligible not eligible, illuminating you and nothing else.

I like that point you made, you must have toyed with it for days, not all ways are crazed, if you feel disenfranchised, keep battling the tide, the tide outside, inside and that that can’t be denied, a King Canute with a Pied Piper’s flute.

Hoped for and hoped against, tense, RSI, you can’t deny, it’s a riot, what you put in you output, nothing or something about something, that tune you were humming, fumbling, tumbling.

Did you know that if you’re walking and you swap around the left and right earbuds on your headphones it feels like you’re going backwards?

Here are some other excerpts from a live lived…

Some Sausage Dogs can be upwards of five feet long.

Brunch is not optional. 

If you ask for WiFi access in a pub in Saltcoats they’ll try to burn you ‘for being a witch.’

@Iain_Champion is worth a follow on Twitter. He’s Wolverhampton’s answer to a question nobody asked.

It’s OK to drink wine out of a tumbler as long as you call it a ‘Wine Chimney’.

The Holy Grail can be exchanged for nectar points.

Having the curry set meal for two but sharing it between three people is an act of civil disobedience.

The hottest musical tip you or anyone will hear this year is the band Lighting Claw. You can only hear them live. Listen. Dance.

If you get work experience with PETA, don’t suggest Fursday as a hip alternative to dress down Friday. Only yourself to blame.

Bowls are tawdry. Get your house in order. Use a ramakin.

Smoothies are in, milkshakes are out. If you must have a milkshake call it a smoothie. Or something cool like a ‘milkshark’.

Use pesto, you’re a grown up, that’s what we do.

Only get a refill when the glass if half full, not when it’s half empty.

Smile more.

Give blood, you’ll get a kick out of it.

Oh and if you want to wear jeggings in like Waitrose while keeping up the pretence that, ‘They’re jeans really’, you can. I won’t tell anyone.