Sheffield Wednesday have been crap for years. Which is easy to say for a Liverpool supporter. For people like us reaching (and losing) two major finals represents a disappointing season. Though Liverpool haven't won the title for 26 years and have rarely even threatened to do so, it's still only just over a decade since we last celebrated being champions of Europe. We have one of the most sought after managers in world football and a sense of entitlement that is so heightened that we can afford to leave a £32million striker on the bench and have a good laugh at his ineptitude when he does play.
Sheffield Wednesday know nothing of this. They were relegated from the Premier League in 2000 and haven't been back since. They slipped into League One soon after that and only returned to the Championship when they beat mighty Hartlepool in the play-off final in 2005. I was there that day in Cardiff due to the footballing allegiances of Emma and her family. Since then I've watched them battle it out with the likes of Carlisle United (twice), Blackpool, Tranmere Rovers (now a non league outfit), Bolton Wanderers and Wigan Athletic.
The 2015/16 season has been a vintage one by Wednesday standards, certainly in the time I've been following them since meeting Emma. After years of plodding along in mid table without the prospect of either promotion or relegation they were good enough to secure sixth place and a place in the play-offs. Even then expectations were low that they would overcome a Brighton side which had finished third in the table, especially not over a two-legged semi final. But overcome them they did, booking a place at Wembley for the Championship play-off final where they would face Hull City for a place in the Premier League. It would have been rude not to take the opportunity of a weekend in London for Wednesday's big day.
With a 5.00 kick-off on Saturday afternoon we could have driven down there on the morning of the game but decided to go straight from work on Friday. Previous experience of staying at the hotels near to Wembley Stadium told us that it would be much more cost effective to stay elsewhere and get the tube across to Wembley on the day. That meant battling with the Friday post-work traffic and saw the journey take five hours, but better that than spending Saturday morning parked on the M1 and risking being late. We chose Canary Wharf because we have been there before and knew that we could get around London easily from there.
We were placed on the 13th and top floor of the Brittannia International hotel, which would have been very interesting in the event of a fire. Still, after such a long time on the motorway I wasn't prepared to challenge it. In any case, in all the years I've been travelling around the world, staying in the hotels of varying quality both with Emma and with the basketball team I've only once experienced the spine tingling awfulness of a broken lift. That was in Chester some years ago when I chose to solve the problem by descending two flights of stairs on my backside. These days I'm not sure I can do 13 flights, especially given how dramatically my fitness and all around health has regressed since my time as a pretend athlete. But it was late. I just wanted a beer and something to eat. I was happy to take this risk.
These meanderings serve a purpose other than just logging my travel exploits. Whether anyone reads this or not (and sometimes I think I could use this space to reveal my darkest secrets or confess to a string of murders and nobody would be any the wiser) it acts as a reminder to me of all the interesting experiences I've had, good or bad, on my travels. It allows me to tell the stupid stories I manage to be part of with such regularity. It's also meant to inform others who use wheelchairs about any access issues they may encounter if they find themselves in the places I visit. Well better that than reading reviews on tripadvisor maybe. You don't know the people who post those so how are you going to know whether to trust them? You can have more faith in what I tell you. Even if you are reading this and thinking what a pleb I am. Either way, you have your answer on whether my recommendations hold any sway for you. What I'm saying is that what follows is the practical bit.
If you have an arse that is any wider than mine, or if you have difficulty transferring in and out of your wheelchair then room 1302 of the Brittannia International is not for you. There was just enough room to get my chair in to the bathroom so that I could use the toilet, but closing the door behind me was not an option without vacating my chair. The door swung away in front of the sink on the left hand wall, thus blocking me from using said sink. Leaving my chair outside the bathroom didn't help as it meant that I was sat on the floor so had no chance of reaching the sink. Washing was strictly limited to taking place in or over the bath as was brushing my teeth. How the other half live. You people. You don't know you're born. Thankfully there was more space elsewhere in the room. It not being a disabled room we were spared that all too common indignity of twin beds. You'd be surprised how often this happens. Or maybe you wouldn't. The implication is that the only person your biff arse is sharing a room with is your carer.
The plan for Saturday was to have breakfast late and then get to a pub near Wembley called The Green Man. We'd have a few pints and wait for Emma's mum and dad and their Wednesday-supporting friends to arrive. Before we get there some more advice. Not access-related but if you're having breakfast in Canary Wharf do it at Wetherspoons rather than at All Bar One. The latter's offering is twice the price and half as enjoyable. Also, Wetherspoons are unlikely to have young, attractive bar staff running after you and shouting 'DO YOU WANT TO GO TO THE TOILET?' when they see you heading that way. Acquiring my own radar key hasn't yet taken all of the ignominy away from basic bodily functions, it seems.
It's fully 18 stops between Canary Wharf station and the one at Wembley Park. That sounds like too many to bear but they are quite closely bunched. The entire journey takes around 35 minutes. Wembley Park's platform is not totally accessible but helpfully Canary Wharf's platform has a clearly marked boarding point for anyone using a wheelchair travelling to Wembley Park. The platform is long enough that we had to let one train go because we hadn't quite reached the accessible boarding point, but the regularity of tube trains and the lateness of the kick-off meant that this was never going to be a major problem. Wembley has two tube stations but for access reasons we needed Wembley Park. We did see a couple of Hull City fans get off around Baker Street to get on the Met Line which Emma reckoned might be quicker but isn't accessible.
Everything had gone virtually to plan then until we got off the train at Wembley Park and began trying to find The Green Man. Emma had 'Googlemapped' it so had some idea of where it was. Except she didn't really. We spent the first few minutes going up a steep hill in the wrong direction before realising our mistake and turning the ship around. The journey was supposed to be around 17 minutes and for the first few of those once we'd turned around I was lulled into a false sense of security. It was all downhill and I didn't have to do a thing except slow myself down a little on the slope. And then it flattened out. And then the path started to climb uphill. Not only that, but it was sloped horizontally aswell as vertically. A double whammy that is a killer for most wheelchair users, let alone one whose last athletic endeavour was 10 minutes on a hand cycle four years ago.
Frustratingly, we passed two or three bars on the way but we'd arranged to meet at The Green Man and so had to press on. Those bars looked a bit dingy and empty, but it's surprising how little that mattered to me at the time. Two minutes battling the double slope had given me quite a thirst. They must have been expecting plenty of business at those bars anyway because there were security staff on the door. Helpfully they pointed some other fans in the direction of The Green Man. Unhelpfully their instructions were to carry on down the road we were on. Up the hill, on the path with the sideways slope.
It's a good thing that there were plenty of other fans heading to The Green Man, otherwise we might never have known to take the left turn we took up another ludicrously steep hill. We'd long since given up on Google Maps and besides, neither of us had a hand free to operate a smart phone since we were now both helping out with the pushing. When we reached the top of the ludicrously steep hill we discovered another one where the fans we were following started to head. We were both gassed by then and loudly cursing whoever came up with the idea of meeting at this particular pub. We crossed the road towards the latest (and thankfully last) slope and were asked by the security staff at the bottom of the drive whether we were Sheffield Wednesday fans. Of course I'm not, but after clumbing Kilimanjaro I wasn't going to tell them that. It was only a small lie anyway. I was supporting Sheffield Wednesday that day and I'm certainly not a Hull City fan. Football has now become so uncivilised that they have to allocate entire pubs to one set of fans or the other on occasions like this. This is not what I'm used to as a rugby league fan. When Saints played Wigan on Good Friday I went for a few beers before kick-off at a pub in town called The George. Every single regular in The George is a Saints fan but that didn't stop hundreds of Wiganers from getting in and mixing with us. I was quite happily chatting away to a few of them as we watched the Hull derby on the television. Yet apparently that sort of integration is not possible in football, which is undeniably sad and a bit of an embarrassment to the sport.
The lawn outside The Green Man was already covered with fans when we got there just after midday on what was now an absolute scorcher by British standards. There were no empty seats inside but getting served at the bar was still reasonably easy. We took our drinks back outside and enjoyed some well earned refreshment as the crowd built up. As it did so the accessible entrance became the stuff of myth and legend, doubling as it did as the fastest route to the ladies toilet. From quite early on and for all of the four hours or so we were there the queue was constantly backed up outside the door. Having a wee was going to be a challenge as it would mean battling through the throng of weak-bladdered Yorkshire women. I have enough trouble getting in my own bathroom ahead of one weak-bladdered Yorkshire woman. I was seriously contemplating leaving it until we got inside the stadium but Emma would see to it that I wouldn't be doing that. Probably for the best. I didn't get stage four kidney disease by treating my bladder kindly.
It wasn't long before we got talking to the obligatory chatty bloke. There's always a few people on these occasions who, despite being a total stranger, will chat to you as if they've known you forever when they've had a pint. Truth be told I'm probably one of them. Or at least I was before even I got sick of myself. This one was called Richard, and he hadn't slept for four nights waiting to find out if he'd got tickets for today in the ballot. He mustn't go to very many Wednesday games. We got our tickets based on the fact that we had accrued a small number of points from the few games that we have been to over the last few years. We had to get Roland's friend Norman to pick them up for us but the point is we qualified without the need for entry into a ballot. He seemed confused and slightly miffed when it came up in conversation that we had driven down from Liverpool last night, but Richard was not a grudge holder. He was going to have a good time come what may and he told me several times that I would too.
To that end his was one of the loudest voices joining in with the unofficial Sheffield Wednesday play-off final song. They all knew it word for word and they sang it incessantly. As a consequence I know it word for word. To the tune of Billy Ray Cyrus' Achy Breaky Heart they sing;
'We've got Bannan'
'Barry Bannan'
'I just don't think you understand'
'The wee Scotsman'
'Is better than Zidane'
'We've got Barry Bannan'
There's something pure and wonderful about a set of fans so joyously celebrating something as mediocre as Barry Bannan. It's almost self deprecating, which is something that seems totally absent from fans of the traditional elite clubs. Glory hunting has plunged such depths that I recently read a tweet from one Asia-based fan which expressed disbelief at ending the 2015/16 season as a Leicester City fan before going on to proclaim 'WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS'. The capital letters belong to the person writing the tweet, not to me. The message is clear. That individual was going to support whichever team made off with the Premier League title this season and will probably adopt the same philosophy next season. There is nothing in this world less valuable than his kind of glory and it's something which speaks loudly about the modern Premier League. Yet here we all were waiting to attend a game for which the prize on offer is a place in that very same, soulless cash-fest.
At around 1.30 Emma got a call from Roland. They'd arrived but couldn't get in to the pub because the security people were now employing a strict one-in, one-out policy. We decided to stay firstly because we weren't confident of getting in anywhere else at that stage and secondly because we didn't fancy negotiating more hills in the quest. So Emma went back down the drive to collect our tickets from Norman. I was left making small talk with Richard and his mate Dave (no really) but not for very long. The next person I saw that I recognised was not Emma but Susan, her mum. She wasn't alone either. Roland and Norman were there along with Norman's daughters Lisa and Jenny and Jenny's young son Dylan. Clearly there were enough people leaving the pub to make room for everyone, which was a relief really because the whole point of pushing up those 17 hills was so that we could meet up with everyone.
Inevitably the time came to address the toilet situation. A couple of pints of watered down Fosters will do that to you. Still I was happy to hang on but Emma couldn't. Not wanting to get in the massive queue she made me dodge my way through the weak-bladdered Yorkshire women so that she also could use the disabled toilet facilities. I was pretty put out by this but on reflection I'm a bit more philosophical about it. There aren't many advantages associated with being with a man like me so I suppose you take what perks there are. To be fair the female population of Yorkshire were more patient and accommodating than I'd imagined. Nobody got angry and nobody batted an eyelid when we both went into the disabled toilet together. Sometimes having everyone assume that you can't wipe your own arse can come in handy. It's no less humiliating for all that, mind.
Three o'clock ticked around and so time for Saints to kick-off. They were also playing Hull, specifically Super League leading Hull FC at the KC Stadium. Current form suggested very little chance of a Saints win and when the first Twitter update reported that Luke Walsh had left the field injured and that we were already 6-0 down that chance all but evaporated for me. I was cheered slightly by rumours of Wigan arsehole John Bateman bottling one of his team-mates on a night out, but a loss is a loss even when your rivals are beating each other up. In the end we lost 32-24 with Keiron blaming most of it on the referee. Whatever the reason for it finding out that my team had lost to a team from Hull seemed a pretty bad omen.
The Green Man closed at 4.00. That seems odd in the age of 24-hour drinking but was actually quite handy. It takes the gamble of having just that one more pint before you leave out of the equation. As we made our way back down the hill towards the stadium the fans were still chanting about Barry Bannan (or Gary Balloon in Susan's case) and spirits were still very high. Perhaps Richard was right and we would all have a great day no matter what. As we rolled on down Wembley Way I veered off the road to allow a slow-moving car to pass me. It's progress was being held up by the hordes of fans in the road but that was just giving the man in the back seat time to film the scene on his phone. As he passed me I turned to find that the man poking his head out of the window was former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan. Vaughan is the poster boy for celebrity Wednesday fans now that Roy Hattersley and David Blunkett are yesterday's news so it was no surprise that he was at Wembley, despite having been working for BBC Radio on England's test match with Sri Lanka at Durham. It's a long way from Durham to Wembley, but Roland had been listening to the radio earlier on and heard Vaughan say that he had a helicopter picking him up to take him to the Wednesday game. All of which was all Susan needed to run up to his open car window and ask as to the whereabouts of said helicopter.
On the way up to Block J I bumped into an old basketball team-mate. I knew he'd be here as he's a regular at Wednesday but it still felt strange seeing him in a crowd of 70,000. We were led through a gate and made our way to section 134, coming to rest in our seats at the back of the first tier directly behind the goal where all the Wednesday support was assembled. From that moment, right up until the final whistle those fans were relentless and unfailing in their support. That's all the more remarkable given the low quality of their team's performance and of the game in general. If this were Saints playing this poorly in a game this bad it would be all of five minutes before the bitching and moaning went into overdrive. It goes back to that sense of entitlement again. Wednesday fans just don't have it. They love their team unconditionally. The media talk a lot about the best fans in football being those in Liverpool or Newcastle or Glasgow but this lot are right up there.
The atmosphere dipped only slightly when Mo Diame scored the winner from out of absolutely nowhere with about 20 minutes left. It seemed a decisive blow even then. Wednesday were creating very little in terms of goal threat and the decision by manager Carlos Carvalhal to use the lumbering and useless Adte Nuhiu as a substitute before the gifted Lucas Jiao seemed like an admission of defeat. Over 90 minutes Gary Balloon proved beyond doubt that he was not better than Zidane or even Kilbane, and there were those who couldn't keep up the pretence as the clock ticked down to their timid defeat. One lad sat directly in front of me had spent almost the entire game singing and chanting, hitting me on the head with blue or white balloons (probably Gary's) at regular intervals. But when Diame scored he sat down quietly, resigned to his team's fate and scarcely even able to watch.
Before time was called there was one half-hearted shout for a penalty for handball and one wasted opportunity which the inept Jeremie Helan stroked over the bar, but in truth Wednesday didn't do nearly enough to avoid a painful defeat. Despite their low expectations there was palpable disappointment in the Wednesday end and it was hard not to get a little caught up in that dejection. Particularly if you're a miserable bugger to begin with. This was a whole season's work that had come to nothing and done so without much of a fight. The more philosophical Wednesday fans might reflect that this is a side which isn't quite ready for the big league but in the context of Leicester City winning the thing this year that may no longer ring true. Another year in the Championship could help them develop and come back stronger, but equally there are no guarantees that they'll get this close to promotion again any time soon. Wednesday's loss is probably the Premier League's loss too. I've certainly seen enough of Hull City's yo-yo act over the last few years to believe that they won't add much more to it than another scrapper aiming only for survival.
We said our goodbyes to the others when we met outside the ground. None of them were staying in London for the night so understandably wanted to get away. It was well after 8.00 by the time we got away from the stadium and we were held up further by the police limiting the number of fans getting into Wembley Park station at any one time. We got off the train at Westminster so that we could visit the Red Lion, a small pub around the corner from the Houses Of Parliament. It's a place that oozes character. You sense it's history. You can well imagine many a political strategy or big decision being mulled over here by prominent political figures over the years here. It's unlikely that those politicians were drinking bottles of San Miguel when they considered the country's fate, but there's enough in the décor and the layout to give it the sense of history that is slightly diluted by what they now sell.
Sadly they don't sell it for very long these days. We got there at around 8.35 thinking we'd have time for a couple before heading back to Canary Wharf, but for reasons best known to the management they closed at 9.00. Nine o'clock on a Saturday night! I don't remember this being the case on our last visit but it certainly has made us think again about coming here when we're back in London next weekend for the Bruce Springsteen gig. For now we made our way back to the station, making sure to take a photograph of an illuminated Big Ben looking resplendent in the fading early summer light. Certainly a lot more attractive than a couple of the selfies I had posted earlier in the weekend, one an ingenious in-joke with a friend who's partial to a car selfie, and the other an altogether better affair rescued by Emma's presence.
We finished the night back in Canary Wharf at a bog-standard, tourism-proof Slug & Lettuce. We made plans for next week while I tried not to vomit at the sight of self-adoring football superpower Cristiano Ronaldo scoring the winning penalty for Real Madrid to beat rivals Atletico in a Champions League final shoot-out. Theirs is the highest honour in European club football but it's highly doubtful that it meant as much to them as the day they went to Wembley meant to the insomniac Richard and the rest of the Wednesday faithful.
Monday, 30 May 2016
Wednesday, 4 May 2016
The A Word
Two things I can talk a lot about today....disability and television. For the last six weeks I have been spending part of my Tuesday nights watching the BBC's six-part autism-based drama 'The A Word'. This may have something to do with the fact that I don't have BT Sport and therefore consider the Champions League dead to me until such time as Liverpool qualify for it again or it returns to Sky Sports. Whichever happens first.
Regardless, 'The A Word', though not perfect by any means, was at least if not more diverting than Arsenal's annual hobble through the group stage and inevitable exit in the Round Of Arsenal. It is meant to centre around Joe, a 5 year-old boy with autism. Or, as every character in the story annoyingly insists on saying, a 5 year-old boy on the autism spectrum. That's our first problem. Here's a drama that hopes to tackle autism by populating its narrative with people who can't bring themselves to refer to Joe as 'autistic'. Chief among the culprits here is Joe's mum Alison played by Morven Christie. She's in denial about Joe's autism to the point of self-defeating mania. The ugliest character traits that one can possess all come frothing out of Alison as she harasses and bullies everyone around her in her wild and misguided attempts to stop people she doesn't know and shouldn't care about from noticing that Joe is a little different. I'm not a parent, let alone a parent of an autistic child (sorry, one on the spectrum, I mean), but I would doubt whether those that are carry on in quite the hysterical manner of Alison. By the end of episode six you'll find yourself wanting to donk her over the head with something heavy. If not before.
It's not all about Alison, but it's more about Alison than it is about Joe, unfortunately. He's only 5 years old, but as a central character his own thoughts and feelings are criminally under-explored. This is basically a family drama about the people around Joe, from his overbearing bully mother Alison to doormat dad Paul (Lee Ingleby) and comedy granddad Morris (Christopher Eccleston). Alison has a daughter Rebecca (Molly Wright) from a previous relationship which apart from leaving me wondering how Alison got two men to put up with her in her lifetime also inspires Paul to scandalously attempt to emotionally blackmail Alison into having another baby. He wants a 'normal' child of his own he admits in one moment of spectacularly insensitive but very possibly realistic drama. Publicly most people mock use of the word 'normal' in the context of anyone not disabled. 'The A Word' appears to contend that it's still in common usage behind closed doors, which is as depressing a thought as one can muster.
Along with Joe's immediate family there's his uncle Eddie (Greg McHugh) and his recently unfaithful wife Nicola (Vinette Robinson) who along with Eccleston do a fine job of taking the attention away from Joe with their own, arguably bigger personal problems. Eccleston's Morris provides the comedy highlight when he's offered a no strings sexual relationship with his singing teacher. Recently widowed he spends much of his time after this unusual proposal comically displaying the awkwardness of a 13 year-old who is being romantically pursued by the kid nobody else at school talks to. But Morris is in his 50s, and so eventually does what men do and sleeps with her anyway. He's clearly there for comic effect which the excellent Eccleston pulls off easily. The point of Eddie and Nicola is less clear, although the latter has a medical background and so occasionally offers some vague insight into autism. Beyond that she seems only to be there to offer sage advice to Rebecca when she runs into boyfriend trouble. As for what Eddie gives the story, I'll maybe get back to you on that.
The last word should be about Joe, wonderfully portrayed by Max Vento. He may not get to see much of the action and drama as everyone else goes to bits around him, but there's something undeniably endearing about a boy who communicates with his fussing mother only by belting out the opening line to The Human League's 'Don't You Want Me'. His odd musical taste (everything he listens to appears to have been made about 25 years before his birth which is a bit like me filling up the mp3 player with Drifters numbers) and his quirk of opening a door and closing it before opening it again to walk through it seemed much more like the sort of thing that should have been focused on. As good as he is Vento is always on the periphery. The only one who ever seems to get through to him is Rebecca, and that's almost certainly because she's the only one who doesn't waste time trying to bend him to her will. Come and do a puzzle. Come and read this book. Come and look at the animals. Joe's life with anyone other than Rebecca consists of a series of commands which he clearly struggles to see a reason for. It's probably not a coincidence that Rebecca is also the only one who feels no shame in using 'The A Word' and has no desire to cover up Joe's differences.
Rebecca's only 16 so perhaps the message is that it's an age thing. I've always felt that people younger than me or my peers have a greater capacity to deem disability irrelevant. They have had the benefit of a greater education on the subject than people my age. It's like language. If you teach a child early enough they'll find it easier to understand. I'm not sure the writers of 'The A Word' quite mastered that concept.
Regardless, 'The A Word', though not perfect by any means, was at least if not more diverting than Arsenal's annual hobble through the group stage and inevitable exit in the Round Of Arsenal. It is meant to centre around Joe, a 5 year-old boy with autism. Or, as every character in the story annoyingly insists on saying, a 5 year-old boy on the autism spectrum. That's our first problem. Here's a drama that hopes to tackle autism by populating its narrative with people who can't bring themselves to refer to Joe as 'autistic'. Chief among the culprits here is Joe's mum Alison played by Morven Christie. She's in denial about Joe's autism to the point of self-defeating mania. The ugliest character traits that one can possess all come frothing out of Alison as she harasses and bullies everyone around her in her wild and misguided attempts to stop people she doesn't know and shouldn't care about from noticing that Joe is a little different. I'm not a parent, let alone a parent of an autistic child (sorry, one on the spectrum, I mean), but I would doubt whether those that are carry on in quite the hysterical manner of Alison. By the end of episode six you'll find yourself wanting to donk her over the head with something heavy. If not before.
It's not all about Alison, but it's more about Alison than it is about Joe, unfortunately. He's only 5 years old, but as a central character his own thoughts and feelings are criminally under-explored. This is basically a family drama about the people around Joe, from his overbearing bully mother Alison to doormat dad Paul (Lee Ingleby) and comedy granddad Morris (Christopher Eccleston). Alison has a daughter Rebecca (Molly Wright) from a previous relationship which apart from leaving me wondering how Alison got two men to put up with her in her lifetime also inspires Paul to scandalously attempt to emotionally blackmail Alison into having another baby. He wants a 'normal' child of his own he admits in one moment of spectacularly insensitive but very possibly realistic drama. Publicly most people mock use of the word 'normal' in the context of anyone not disabled. 'The A Word' appears to contend that it's still in common usage behind closed doors, which is as depressing a thought as one can muster.
Along with Joe's immediate family there's his uncle Eddie (Greg McHugh) and his recently unfaithful wife Nicola (Vinette Robinson) who along with Eccleston do a fine job of taking the attention away from Joe with their own, arguably bigger personal problems. Eccleston's Morris provides the comedy highlight when he's offered a no strings sexual relationship with his singing teacher. Recently widowed he spends much of his time after this unusual proposal comically displaying the awkwardness of a 13 year-old who is being romantically pursued by the kid nobody else at school talks to. But Morris is in his 50s, and so eventually does what men do and sleeps with her anyway. He's clearly there for comic effect which the excellent Eccleston pulls off easily. The point of Eddie and Nicola is less clear, although the latter has a medical background and so occasionally offers some vague insight into autism. Beyond that she seems only to be there to offer sage advice to Rebecca when she runs into boyfriend trouble. As for what Eddie gives the story, I'll maybe get back to you on that.
The last word should be about Joe, wonderfully portrayed by Max Vento. He may not get to see much of the action and drama as everyone else goes to bits around him, but there's something undeniably endearing about a boy who communicates with his fussing mother only by belting out the opening line to The Human League's 'Don't You Want Me'. His odd musical taste (everything he listens to appears to have been made about 25 years before his birth which is a bit like me filling up the mp3 player with Drifters numbers) and his quirk of opening a door and closing it before opening it again to walk through it seemed much more like the sort of thing that should have been focused on. As good as he is Vento is always on the periphery. The only one who ever seems to get through to him is Rebecca, and that's almost certainly because she's the only one who doesn't waste time trying to bend him to her will. Come and do a puzzle. Come and read this book. Come and look at the animals. Joe's life with anyone other than Rebecca consists of a series of commands which he clearly struggles to see a reason for. It's probably not a coincidence that Rebecca is also the only one who feels no shame in using 'The A Word' and has no desire to cover up Joe's differences.
Rebecca's only 16 so perhaps the message is that it's an age thing. I've always felt that people younger than me or my peers have a greater capacity to deem disability irrelevant. They have had the benefit of a greater education on the subject than people my age. It's like language. If you teach a child early enough they'll find it easier to understand. I'm not sure the writers of 'The A Word' quite mastered that concept.
Tuesday, 3 May 2016
Leicester City And The London Marathon
It feels like I should mention Leicester City about now. Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard is not just a cynical rant, though that is it's main strength. It's also a record of significant events. There are entries about the deaths of Michael Jackson and Prince. There's a piece about Paul Wellens' retirement. So the greatest upset in the history of sport seems noteworthy.
And that's what Leicester City's Premier League title win is. Leicester City? Are you shitting me? I read earlier today that the 5000-1 odds on Leicester City winning the Premier League when the season kicked off were the same as those of Elvis being found alive and well and of aliens arriving on Earth. That is just how unlikely this outcome was. Some rather bitter and cynical folk have tried to crap on the fairy-tale by pointing out that Leicester now have wealthy owners. That they do, but those owners tend not to spend their money on strengthening Claudio Ranieri's team. The team which was most often selected by Ranieri set the club back about £52million, which is a good deal less than was splurged to assemble the squads representing so-called bigger clubs like Manchesters City and United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool. Most of those clubs have spent more than that on an individual player at one time or another.
That Leicester have done the impossible in the manner that they have has very possibly changed the face of football. For as long as anyone can remember there has been a direct correlation between a club's wage bill and it's prospects for winning a title. Even Liverpool's flirtation with a title win in 2013-14 was powered almost entirely by the freakish brilliance of Freddie Mercury tribute act Luis Suarez. They failed, Suarez moved on and everyone settled back into a pattern of expecting City, United, Chelsea and Arsenal to carve it up between them forever. Leicester's miracle is brilliant not only because it shames traditional and newly-rich heavyweights alike, but also because it eliminates the excuses trotted out by Premier League clubs outside the Champions League elite. If Leicester are Premier League champions then at what point do the Newcastles, Evertons, West Hams and even (though they came close this year) the Tottenhams of this world stop selling us the lie that they can't compete due to finances? Now would be a good time.
Should these clubs take confidence and inspiration from Leicester's deeds we may find ourselves being transported back to a time of footballing unpredictability for more than just this one season. Leicester's triumph has been compared to that of East Midlands neighbours Nottingham Forest's title win in 1978. That led to two European Cup wins for Brian Clough's side, who somehow managed to carry off the title in their first season following promotion from the old second division. But theirs was an era which contained no billionaires funded by oligarchs or sheikhs, no commercially over-sized national institutions made seemingly untouchable by gargantuan TV deals and scandalous ticket prices. The playing field was a little more even back then, and the only thing hindering Forest was the perception that they were a little unfashionable. Not that it stopped them from becoming the first English club to pay £1million for a player when they brought in Trevor Francis from Birmingham City. Leicester will likely remain among the lowest spenders in defence of their crown while the fat cats will no doubt embark on another spending spree to try to re-establish the accepted Premier League order. I can't be the only one hoping they fail.
Staying with sport I wanted also to make mention of last week's London Marathon. I didn't actually watch it. In the On Demand era there are infinitely better options than watching CJ from Eggheads wheeze his way around the streets of the capital. But whether you are watching or not it is probably a good idea to stay tucked away from the general public if you happen to be a wheelchair user when the London Marathon is on. I'm not alone in having lost count of the number of times I've been asked why I'm not in the wheelchair race. Of course the real reason is that at my time of life and with my ailments I would rather be stabbed in both eyes with rusty forks than attempt to haul my arse down 26 miles of road. You might just as well ask me why I'm not Director General of the BBC or why I don't present Masterchef.
To assume that I could and should compete in the wheelchair marathon is a flagrant disrespect of the proper athletes who endure it year after year. They're not volunteers, these people. It's not something they do to prove to fucking Cameron and IDS that they're disabled and therefore qualify for PIP. They're serious athletes who train hard for this shit. The failure of the general public to get its collective head around that fact, and to realise that one doesn't actually have to complete the wheelchair marathon to be validated as a human being with a disability is one of life's imponderables. A sad legacy of the Paralympics in London in 2012 and one which will no doubt rear its head again during this year's shebang in Rio. Just why am I not out there chasing David Weir around a track?
I ought to be ashamed.
And that's what Leicester City's Premier League title win is. Leicester City? Are you shitting me? I read earlier today that the 5000-1 odds on Leicester City winning the Premier League when the season kicked off were the same as those of Elvis being found alive and well and of aliens arriving on Earth. That is just how unlikely this outcome was. Some rather bitter and cynical folk have tried to crap on the fairy-tale by pointing out that Leicester now have wealthy owners. That they do, but those owners tend not to spend their money on strengthening Claudio Ranieri's team. The team which was most often selected by Ranieri set the club back about £52million, which is a good deal less than was splurged to assemble the squads representing so-called bigger clubs like Manchesters City and United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool. Most of those clubs have spent more than that on an individual player at one time or another.
That Leicester have done the impossible in the manner that they have has very possibly changed the face of football. For as long as anyone can remember there has been a direct correlation between a club's wage bill and it's prospects for winning a title. Even Liverpool's flirtation with a title win in 2013-14 was powered almost entirely by the freakish brilliance of Freddie Mercury tribute act Luis Suarez. They failed, Suarez moved on and everyone settled back into a pattern of expecting City, United, Chelsea and Arsenal to carve it up between them forever. Leicester's miracle is brilliant not only because it shames traditional and newly-rich heavyweights alike, but also because it eliminates the excuses trotted out by Premier League clubs outside the Champions League elite. If Leicester are Premier League champions then at what point do the Newcastles, Evertons, West Hams and even (though they came close this year) the Tottenhams of this world stop selling us the lie that they can't compete due to finances? Now would be a good time.
Should these clubs take confidence and inspiration from Leicester's deeds we may find ourselves being transported back to a time of footballing unpredictability for more than just this one season. Leicester's triumph has been compared to that of East Midlands neighbours Nottingham Forest's title win in 1978. That led to two European Cup wins for Brian Clough's side, who somehow managed to carry off the title in their first season following promotion from the old second division. But theirs was an era which contained no billionaires funded by oligarchs or sheikhs, no commercially over-sized national institutions made seemingly untouchable by gargantuan TV deals and scandalous ticket prices. The playing field was a little more even back then, and the only thing hindering Forest was the perception that they were a little unfashionable. Not that it stopped them from becoming the first English club to pay £1million for a player when they brought in Trevor Francis from Birmingham City. Leicester will likely remain among the lowest spenders in defence of their crown while the fat cats will no doubt embark on another spending spree to try to re-establish the accepted Premier League order. I can't be the only one hoping they fail.
Staying with sport I wanted also to make mention of last week's London Marathon. I didn't actually watch it. In the On Demand era there are infinitely better options than watching CJ from Eggheads wheeze his way around the streets of the capital. But whether you are watching or not it is probably a good idea to stay tucked away from the general public if you happen to be a wheelchair user when the London Marathon is on. I'm not alone in having lost count of the number of times I've been asked why I'm not in the wheelchair race. Of course the real reason is that at my time of life and with my ailments I would rather be stabbed in both eyes with rusty forks than attempt to haul my arse down 26 miles of road. You might just as well ask me why I'm not Director General of the BBC or why I don't present Masterchef.
To assume that I could and should compete in the wheelchair marathon is a flagrant disrespect of the proper athletes who endure it year after year. They're not volunteers, these people. It's not something they do to prove to fucking Cameron and IDS that they're disabled and therefore qualify for PIP. They're serious athletes who train hard for this shit. The failure of the general public to get its collective head around that fact, and to realise that one doesn't actually have to complete the wheelchair marathon to be validated as a human being with a disability is one of life's imponderables. A sad legacy of the Paralympics in London in 2012 and one which will no doubt rear its head again during this year's shebang in Rio. Just why am I not out there chasing David Weir around a track?
I ought to be ashamed.
Thursday, 21 April 2016
Oh No...Not Prince....
I was watching an episode of Boston Legal earlier. In it the brilliant Alan Shore (played by the equally brilliant James Spader who can currently be seen with far less hair in The Blacklist) uses the phrase 'summarily schmidt-canned'. I was working on a way to work this phrase into these pages (just done it) when I noticed a Facebook post by a friend which declared the death of Prince. That Prince. Prince Rogers Nelson for feck's sake. He was just 57.
It has been a severely testing couple of days. A bizarre chain of events facilitated the almost complete erosion of my self-esteem. Just when you get through that, when you finally digest the notion that the majority view on you doesn't matter enough to justify a total meltdown, you find out that Prince has died. The word 'genius' is grossly, horribly over-used. There are very few true geniuses in modern popular culture, much less music. Most of the artists I like fall way short of this billing. I basically like anyone who is easy to copy on karaoke (and therefore musically limited in a technical, music snobbery sense) and a certain soul diva from the south coast. But genius she is not. Anyone who has heard 'Don't Cha' Wanna Ride' will know that Miss Stone's best work is when she is covering forgotten oul classics from the 1950's and adapting the odd White Stripes number. But Prince? Prince was different gravy.
Purple Rain is perhaps the most iconic of his enormous catalogue of hits but the truth is everything he did was pretty magical. I defy even those people who find Sinead O'Connor's 'Nothing Compares 2 U' to be mawkish nonsense (it doesn't help that she actually cries during the performance) to listen to Prince's version and not have their view of the whole song changed for the better. He wrote the song, aswell as The Bangles classic Manic Monday (who doesn't like The Bangles?) and many more hits for many other artists that you've probably bellowed along to on the drive to work. I know I have. Not so much Carpool Karaoke as Peter Kay's Car Share.
Some of his songs were a little on the risque side, leading to the perception that he was....well....a bit of a perv. I remember sitting listening to one album and realising that pretty much every song had a sexual connotation on some level. That could have been the mind of a late teenage male but with titles like 'Soft And Wet', 'Do Me Baby' and 'Sexy MF' the jury has to be out. But on the other hand if you can bury blatantly offensive lyrics amid the spell-binding Hendrixian guitar prowess and a vocal range that made Mariah Carey sound like Bruce Springsteen then you'll probably get away with it. And he did.
Slightly unnerving sexual obsession wasn't Prince's only oddity, of course. Who can forget him changing his name to an unpronouncable symbol in some kind of protest against gender labelling? Word is he wasn't that fussed. Or the time he attempted to shame his record label into settling their dispute by writing 'Slave' on his face? Some thought at the time that a millionaire recording artist shouldn't have been trivialising slavery. I remember Cristiano Ronaldo getting in hot water for a similar loss of perspective. But he too is one of those few true geniuses in modern popular culture I mentioned, so perhaps it's a pre-requisite. It wasn't all bad from Prince anyway. Occasionally he would derive pleasure from giving albums away at a ridiculous price with certain Sunday newspapers. Publicity stunt? Possibly, but certainly better than the £19.99 charged by many hugely inferior artists for the 'deluxe' versions of their work.
As a long-time critic of the general public expressing too much, inappropriate emotion following the loss of celebrities this column breaks every rule. But for me there's a genuine difference between trying to articulate some feelings about one of the most influential human beings of all time and writing RIP to the latest reality show no-mark who has passed, as equally sad as their deaths are to the people who knew and loved them. So, just deal with it if you wouldn't mind awfully. Thanks.
Reflecting now on Prince's death while that terrible song he did which Tom Jones covered plays in the background on one of many hastily cobbled tribute shows on MTV my great regret is that I will now never get to see him live. Latterly he had taken to announcing tour venues and dates at about a week's notice which makes life difficult. Bloody annoying but again the sort of thing you get away with if you're a bona fide genius and an icon. I wouldn't really begrudge him this right. His passing is a genuinely appalling day for the arts, for music, and for anyone with any interest in human achievement in general.
It has been a severely testing couple of days. A bizarre chain of events facilitated the almost complete erosion of my self-esteem. Just when you get through that, when you finally digest the notion that the majority view on you doesn't matter enough to justify a total meltdown, you find out that Prince has died. The word 'genius' is grossly, horribly over-used. There are very few true geniuses in modern popular culture, much less music. Most of the artists I like fall way short of this billing. I basically like anyone who is easy to copy on karaoke (and therefore musically limited in a technical, music snobbery sense) and a certain soul diva from the south coast. But genius she is not. Anyone who has heard 'Don't Cha' Wanna Ride' will know that Miss Stone's best work is when she is covering forgotten oul classics from the 1950's and adapting the odd White Stripes number. But Prince? Prince was different gravy.
Purple Rain is perhaps the most iconic of his enormous catalogue of hits but the truth is everything he did was pretty magical. I defy even those people who find Sinead O'Connor's 'Nothing Compares 2 U' to be mawkish nonsense (it doesn't help that she actually cries during the performance) to listen to Prince's version and not have their view of the whole song changed for the better. He wrote the song, aswell as The Bangles classic Manic Monday (who doesn't like The Bangles?) and many more hits for many other artists that you've probably bellowed along to on the drive to work. I know I have. Not so much Carpool Karaoke as Peter Kay's Car Share.
Some of his songs were a little on the risque side, leading to the perception that he was....well....a bit of a perv. I remember sitting listening to one album and realising that pretty much every song had a sexual connotation on some level. That could have been the mind of a late teenage male but with titles like 'Soft And Wet', 'Do Me Baby' and 'Sexy MF' the jury has to be out. But on the other hand if you can bury blatantly offensive lyrics amid the spell-binding Hendrixian guitar prowess and a vocal range that made Mariah Carey sound like Bruce Springsteen then you'll probably get away with it. And he did.
Slightly unnerving sexual obsession wasn't Prince's only oddity, of course. Who can forget him changing his name to an unpronouncable symbol in some kind of protest against gender labelling? Word is he wasn't that fussed. Or the time he attempted to shame his record label into settling their dispute by writing 'Slave' on his face? Some thought at the time that a millionaire recording artist shouldn't have been trivialising slavery. I remember Cristiano Ronaldo getting in hot water for a similar loss of perspective. But he too is one of those few true geniuses in modern popular culture I mentioned, so perhaps it's a pre-requisite. It wasn't all bad from Prince anyway. Occasionally he would derive pleasure from giving albums away at a ridiculous price with certain Sunday newspapers. Publicity stunt? Possibly, but certainly better than the £19.99 charged by many hugely inferior artists for the 'deluxe' versions of their work.
As a long-time critic of the general public expressing too much, inappropriate emotion following the loss of celebrities this column breaks every rule. But for me there's a genuine difference between trying to articulate some feelings about one of the most influential human beings of all time and writing RIP to the latest reality show no-mark who has passed, as equally sad as their deaths are to the people who knew and loved them. So, just deal with it if you wouldn't mind awfully. Thanks.
Reflecting now on Prince's death while that terrible song he did which Tom Jones covered plays in the background on one of many hastily cobbled tribute shows on MTV my great regret is that I will now never get to see him live. Latterly he had taken to announcing tour venues and dates at about a week's notice which makes life difficult. Bloody annoying but again the sort of thing you get away with if you're a bona fide genius and an icon. I wouldn't really begrudge him this right. His passing is a genuinely appalling day for the arts, for music, and for anyone with any interest in human achievement in general.
Sunday, 17 April 2016
Kelly & Cal
I'm going to put this here because it's important that you see it. All four of you. Ordinarily it would sit in my film blog but even the four of you don't bother with that. You don't want to have Star Wars ruined for you, or something. I have news for you. I didn't ruin Star Wars for you, that was JJ Fucking Abrams.
Anyway this kind of fits here too. Where better to tell you about a film which tries to deal with some very similar issues as Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard endeavours to do? Kelly And Cal tells the story of the relationship that develops between the mother of a new-born baby and her wheelchair-using teenage neighbour. She, Kelly that is, is played by Juliette Lewis who I love. She's beautiful in that interesting way that the likes of Rihanna and Cheryl Whateverhernameisthisweek could never be. And as she shows here she's supremely talented. She's also mad, but not in an 'all women are mad' way but a quirky way.
As we'll see there's much that resonates about Kelly And Cal for me. That would be the reason that I'm up writing at 1.20am. However it is not a perfect film. For starters, the way in which Kelly and Cal's relationship begins is utterly implausible. She's in her back garden having a smoke and he's peering over the fence. After bludging a cigarette from her he tells her she has nice tits. As opening gambits go it's not up there for me, that one. Kelly tends to agree and is about to admonish Cal until she looks over the fence more closely. This is when she sees him rolling away down a ramp and when she sees the wheelchair for the first time. She confides in husband Josh about this and resolves to apologise to Cal the next day. She shouldn't have shouted at the boy in the wheelchair. But the idea that she should feel guilty about his rudeness because of his disability just isn't a realistic one. It certainly isn't my experience of what's happened when I've been rude to women. To pretend that Cal is justified is to make him a victim regardless of his behaviour. Or it could just be me. Maybe you can say what you like when you are as handsome as Cal, played by Jonny Weston.
Josh doesn't get essily offended by Cal either, and this is something I can identify with. As Kelly and Cal's relationship develops Josh doesn't even have the decency to feel threatened. And it's not even because his relationship with Kelly is that rock solid. They argue over the fact that they haven't resumed their sexual relationship since the birth of their son Jackson (it's Juliette Lewis, you idiot). Yet despite Josh's insecurities he still sees no problem with Cal turning up on his front doorstep suited and booted and ready to take Kelly out to a swanky dinner. I rarely do swanky dinners but I have, in my distant past, blatantly snogged the face off a woman right in front of her fella's face. And he was one of those Rottweiller boyfriends, eight feet tall and twice as wide. An able-bodied man would have been beaten half to death by him in my situation. I'd have taken that just to feel respected by him. Threatened. Like I was in the game. At the time I probably laughed at my own audacity, but I know it wasn't long after before I realised that actually I was being mocked.
Josh doesn't get the funk on until Cal, who it turns out is an artist, creates a sculpture of a topless Kelly having seen her undressing in her bedroom window one night. He has a telescope which is a fairly offensive characterisation of the disabled as Peeping Toms, as if that's how we're getting our kicks since we're not getting much else. He does get fairly close to Kelly. At the school after they've vandalised it in protest at 'bullshit proms' or something. But then the police come and Cal's moment goes. Before that there's the cliched conversation about whether Cal can have sex that seems to be a mandatory part of any romance dealing with disability. It's almost always done awkwardly and it's no different here.
The sculpture scenario does provide what was for me the film's comedy highlight. For reasons I won't go into Cal has to steal back possession of his creation. He's spotted by Kelly pushing away from the scene with the thing laid out across his knee. He's wearing a balaclava in a bid not to be identified which is just hilarious. It illustrates perfectly how being the only wheelchair user in the village will get you banged to rights. This has happened to me at work. If any other member of our team gives out duff information the unfortunate recipient can't identify who gave it to them. The best they can do is tell us whether it was a man or a woman. But when it is 'the one in the wheelchair' there's nowhere really to hide. Luckily we don't operate in a culture of blame but you get the point. Sometimes the worst thing about disability is the inability to blend in and go un-noticed. Like being a celebrity only without money or girls. Like Ian Fucking Brady.
Cal comes across as a bit of a childish tit when he doesn't get his own way with Kelly in the end. As a leading authority on being a childish tit I thought they took this a bit too far anyway. He's clearly bonkers about her by the end but he still finds time to call her old and saggy and offer tips on how she might make herself more attractive to Josh during one spectacular blow-up. Is this really what you would say to someone you love, even with a skinful of ale down you? Doubtful. At a stretch you could maybe make the argument that he's just passionate about her. There are those couples who stay together despite arguing constantly and seemingly being constantly on the verge of a break-up. I suppose anything is possible if you're a childish tit.
For all its faults Kelly And Cal is a thought-provoking attempt to examine disability and romance, and more particularly romance in which disability isn't the only potential barrier. But you don't need to see it now, anyway.
Cheers, it's now 2.00am. Sleep well.
Anyway this kind of fits here too. Where better to tell you about a film which tries to deal with some very similar issues as Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard endeavours to do? Kelly And Cal tells the story of the relationship that develops between the mother of a new-born baby and her wheelchair-using teenage neighbour. She, Kelly that is, is played by Juliette Lewis who I love. She's beautiful in that interesting way that the likes of Rihanna and Cheryl Whateverhernameisthisweek could never be. And as she shows here she's supremely talented. She's also mad, but not in an 'all women are mad' way but a quirky way.
As we'll see there's much that resonates about Kelly And Cal for me. That would be the reason that I'm up writing at 1.20am. However it is not a perfect film. For starters, the way in which Kelly and Cal's relationship begins is utterly implausible. She's in her back garden having a smoke and he's peering over the fence. After bludging a cigarette from her he tells her she has nice tits. As opening gambits go it's not up there for me, that one. Kelly tends to agree and is about to admonish Cal until she looks over the fence more closely. This is when she sees him rolling away down a ramp and when she sees the wheelchair for the first time. She confides in husband Josh about this and resolves to apologise to Cal the next day. She shouldn't have shouted at the boy in the wheelchair. But the idea that she should feel guilty about his rudeness because of his disability just isn't a realistic one. It certainly isn't my experience of what's happened when I've been rude to women. To pretend that Cal is justified is to make him a victim regardless of his behaviour. Or it could just be me. Maybe you can say what you like when you are as handsome as Cal, played by Jonny Weston.
Josh doesn't get essily offended by Cal either, and this is something I can identify with. As Kelly and Cal's relationship develops Josh doesn't even have the decency to feel threatened. And it's not even because his relationship with Kelly is that rock solid. They argue over the fact that they haven't resumed their sexual relationship since the birth of their son Jackson (it's Juliette Lewis, you idiot). Yet despite Josh's insecurities he still sees no problem with Cal turning up on his front doorstep suited and booted and ready to take Kelly out to a swanky dinner. I rarely do swanky dinners but I have, in my distant past, blatantly snogged the face off a woman right in front of her fella's face. And he was one of those Rottweiller boyfriends, eight feet tall and twice as wide. An able-bodied man would have been beaten half to death by him in my situation. I'd have taken that just to feel respected by him. Threatened. Like I was in the game. At the time I probably laughed at my own audacity, but I know it wasn't long after before I realised that actually I was being mocked.
Josh doesn't get the funk on until Cal, who it turns out is an artist, creates a sculpture of a topless Kelly having seen her undressing in her bedroom window one night. He has a telescope which is a fairly offensive characterisation of the disabled as Peeping Toms, as if that's how we're getting our kicks since we're not getting much else. He does get fairly close to Kelly. At the school after they've vandalised it in protest at 'bullshit proms' or something. But then the police come and Cal's moment goes. Before that there's the cliched conversation about whether Cal can have sex that seems to be a mandatory part of any romance dealing with disability. It's almost always done awkwardly and it's no different here.
The sculpture scenario does provide what was for me the film's comedy highlight. For reasons I won't go into Cal has to steal back possession of his creation. He's spotted by Kelly pushing away from the scene with the thing laid out across his knee. He's wearing a balaclava in a bid not to be identified which is just hilarious. It illustrates perfectly how being the only wheelchair user in the village will get you banged to rights. This has happened to me at work. If any other member of our team gives out duff information the unfortunate recipient can't identify who gave it to them. The best they can do is tell us whether it was a man or a woman. But when it is 'the one in the wheelchair' there's nowhere really to hide. Luckily we don't operate in a culture of blame but you get the point. Sometimes the worst thing about disability is the inability to blend in and go un-noticed. Like being a celebrity only without money or girls. Like Ian Fucking Brady.
Cal comes across as a bit of a childish tit when he doesn't get his own way with Kelly in the end. As a leading authority on being a childish tit I thought they took this a bit too far anyway. He's clearly bonkers about her by the end but he still finds time to call her old and saggy and offer tips on how she might make herself more attractive to Josh during one spectacular blow-up. Is this really what you would say to someone you love, even with a skinful of ale down you? Doubtful. At a stretch you could maybe make the argument that he's just passionate about her. There are those couples who stay together despite arguing constantly and seemingly being constantly on the verge of a break-up. I suppose anything is possible if you're a childish tit.
For all its faults Kelly And Cal is a thought-provoking attempt to examine disability and romance, and more particularly romance in which disability isn't the only potential barrier. But you don't need to see it now, anyway.
Cheers, it's now 2.00am. Sleep well.
Monday, 4 April 2016
A Silk Purse From a S'au's Ear
There’s a photograph doing the rounds of Junior S’au. For those of you who don’t know, he’s a rugby league player with the Salford Red Devils. The photograph shows him shaking hands with a young disabled fan. It’s meant to show rugby league players in a more favourable light, especially those from Salford following the unsavoury incidents in the crowd at the end of their match with Huddersfield Giants last week. The point being that the media just love to jump on the bandwagon of any negative rugby league story so here’s something which proves that actually rugby league players are a lovely bunch of lads and don’t get half of the credit they deserve.
All of which may be true. The anti-league media do love to highlight the negatives while routinely ignoring the game the rest of the time, and so there is a need for more positive publicity around the sport. Yet as with anything that is well intentioned and is related to disability I have a fucking problem with this particular example. Here’s my problem. It’s a flagrant misuse of disability which I personally find vile and offensive. Of course, I would. Here we go a-fucking-gain. But then you think about it. If that fan meeting S’au is not disabled it significantly lessens the impact of that photograph. It no longer says ‘ah, look how nice our players are’. It just says ‘here’s a picture of Junior S’au meeting a fan’. So in hoiking this photograph around the rugby league community what we are actually doing is using disability to romanticise the players. A kind of inspiration porn in reverse. We’re not saying that the child is marvellous for getting out of bed and living life with such an awful curse as we do with conventional inspoporn, we’re saying S’au is marvellous for choosing to be seen with the child in public. But meeting a disabled fan does not make S’au a hero or a role model. It is not an act of kindness or selflessness. It is run of the mill community spirit. Two equals saying ‘how do you do?’ at the end of a game in which one has paid good money to support the other. A common courtesy. Politeness and nothing more. S’au does not have to go any more out of his way to meet this fan than he would any other. Yes, there may be extreme circumstances with this fan in particular. Her plight may be particularly disastrous and so who am I to deny what is obviously a pleasure for any rugby league-loving child. But there's no context in the photograph and in many ways it doesn't matter anyway, the point stands.
But that view doesn’t tally with the agenda, which is that rugby league players are not louts but gold-hearted champions of the less fortunate. I made this point on social media and was invited to ‘get over myself’ by one person. Which is the great problem with trying to explain disability issues to people who are not disabled and don’t quite have the intellect to debate them properly. The default setting of most people is to believe that disabled people are less fortunate than they are, which fosters a culture of pity over one of respect. Which is why a photograph of S’au shaking hands with a disabled fan is seen as an appropriate way to demonstrate his all-around awesomeness. Look at him giving up his valuable 12 seconds to be the highlight of some poor disabled person’s entire life. That assumes far too much about that young fan’s life and in any case, whatever the circumstances, I would hate to think that someone giving me a small amount of the time of day could be used in this way. I remember when Wigan Athletic got to the League Cup Final about a decade ago, and their then chairman Dave Whelan was rubbing the heads of all the disabled fans in the front row behind the goal during the celebrations. I recall remarking that if Dave Whelan, or any of the players for that matter, had come over to me at the end of a semi-final win like that and put his hands on me I would have punched him square in the nose. It’s not acceptable. Please keep your sense of superiority to yourselves.
I hate to use the word patronising as it is a fairly meaningless catch-all term given to what amounts to a lack of respect for disabled people and a lack of acceptance of them as equals. Yet I have not been able to help but notice over the years how often I have been talked down to by people who have, frankly, very little going for them. Fat people, smelly people, thick people, Tories, all kinds of people who need to have a good look at themselves have been guilty of it. Their sense of superiority is laughable and makes me pity them as much as they do me. And yet still the overriding feeling in society is that people like me deserve pity. The only reason I deserve pity is that my life is made more difficult by the ignorance of others who persist with this appalling attitude. And it isn’t just strangers or casual acquaintances. I’ve had it from people closer to me. For them it is not a lack of respect or acceptance. For them sweeping away these sorts of issues is their way of down-playing disability because they don’t want to see it as an issue and they don’t want you to see it that way either. But that is full-on, ostrich, head-in-the-sand stuff. Disability is an issue, and it is more of an issue today because the general public see fit to approve of the S’au photograph as some sort of example of outstanding benevolent gallantry.
Of course, since everyone else on the planet is in favour of this kind of thing there is peril in pointing out its flaws. Disabled people have to get used to being labelled the bad guy when they make any social comment about their treatment in society. The classic chip on the shoulder. Some choose not to be labelled so and so sit and suffer in their dignified silence. Others, like the clown writing this, are happy to wear the bad-guy tag if it means that one day we will get to a place where disability is not used to glorify the ordinary in a way that only serves to re-inforce the idea that we are somehow less than we really are.
All of which may be true. The anti-league media do love to highlight the negatives while routinely ignoring the game the rest of the time, and so there is a need for more positive publicity around the sport. Yet as with anything that is well intentioned and is related to disability I have a fucking problem with this particular example. Here’s my problem. It’s a flagrant misuse of disability which I personally find vile and offensive. Of course, I would. Here we go a-fucking-gain. But then you think about it. If that fan meeting S’au is not disabled it significantly lessens the impact of that photograph. It no longer says ‘ah, look how nice our players are’. It just says ‘here’s a picture of Junior S’au meeting a fan’. So in hoiking this photograph around the rugby league community what we are actually doing is using disability to romanticise the players. A kind of inspiration porn in reverse. We’re not saying that the child is marvellous for getting out of bed and living life with such an awful curse as we do with conventional inspoporn, we’re saying S’au is marvellous for choosing to be seen with the child in public. But meeting a disabled fan does not make S’au a hero or a role model. It is not an act of kindness or selflessness. It is run of the mill community spirit. Two equals saying ‘how do you do?’ at the end of a game in which one has paid good money to support the other. A common courtesy. Politeness and nothing more. S’au does not have to go any more out of his way to meet this fan than he would any other. Yes, there may be extreme circumstances with this fan in particular. Her plight may be particularly disastrous and so who am I to deny what is obviously a pleasure for any rugby league-loving child. But there's no context in the photograph and in many ways it doesn't matter anyway, the point stands.
But that view doesn’t tally with the agenda, which is that rugby league players are not louts but gold-hearted champions of the less fortunate. I made this point on social media and was invited to ‘get over myself’ by one person. Which is the great problem with trying to explain disability issues to people who are not disabled and don’t quite have the intellect to debate them properly. The default setting of most people is to believe that disabled people are less fortunate than they are, which fosters a culture of pity over one of respect. Which is why a photograph of S’au shaking hands with a disabled fan is seen as an appropriate way to demonstrate his all-around awesomeness. Look at him giving up his valuable 12 seconds to be the highlight of some poor disabled person’s entire life. That assumes far too much about that young fan’s life and in any case, whatever the circumstances, I would hate to think that someone giving me a small amount of the time of day could be used in this way. I remember when Wigan Athletic got to the League Cup Final about a decade ago, and their then chairman Dave Whelan was rubbing the heads of all the disabled fans in the front row behind the goal during the celebrations. I recall remarking that if Dave Whelan, or any of the players for that matter, had come over to me at the end of a semi-final win like that and put his hands on me I would have punched him square in the nose. It’s not acceptable. Please keep your sense of superiority to yourselves.
I hate to use the word patronising as it is a fairly meaningless catch-all term given to what amounts to a lack of respect for disabled people and a lack of acceptance of them as equals. Yet I have not been able to help but notice over the years how often I have been talked down to by people who have, frankly, very little going for them. Fat people, smelly people, thick people, Tories, all kinds of people who need to have a good look at themselves have been guilty of it. Their sense of superiority is laughable and makes me pity them as much as they do me. And yet still the overriding feeling in society is that people like me deserve pity. The only reason I deserve pity is that my life is made more difficult by the ignorance of others who persist with this appalling attitude. And it isn’t just strangers or casual acquaintances. I’ve had it from people closer to me. For them it is not a lack of respect or acceptance. For them sweeping away these sorts of issues is their way of down-playing disability because they don’t want to see it as an issue and they don’t want you to see it that way either. But that is full-on, ostrich, head-in-the-sand stuff. Disability is an issue, and it is more of an issue today because the general public see fit to approve of the S’au photograph as some sort of example of outstanding benevolent gallantry.
Of course, since everyone else on the planet is in favour of this kind of thing there is peril in pointing out its flaws. Disabled people have to get used to being labelled the bad guy when they make any social comment about their treatment in society. The classic chip on the shoulder. Some choose not to be labelled so and so sit and suffer in their dignified silence. Others, like the clown writing this, are happy to wear the bad-guy tag if it means that one day we will get to a place where disability is not used to glorify the ordinary in a way that only serves to re-inforce the idea that we are somehow less than we really are.
Tuesday, 22 March 2016
Cuts Both Ways
It's not as easy as you might think to keep an updated blog. Not that it is difficult to find the words. I could waffle for England. I never write 10 words where 100 will do. The problem is finding the time for it. When I come home from my boring job if I'm not working on my expanding rugby league writings all I really want to do is eat, watch Eggheads and one of the several mildly diverting dramas I've managed to get hooked on recently, and then go to bed.
So all of this is an explanation for why there has been nothing on these pages since January 29. That's fully 53 days ago. Another explanation is that, truth be told, I get a bit sick of myself. This column is supposed to be about living with a disability. Loosely at any rate. It is always likely to stray off onto the odd tangent. But driving home from work one day last week I was thinking about the lack of recent material in Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard and the reasons for that. The thought occurred to me that I'm actually sick of bollocking on about disability. It seemed to me that actually the more columns like this one complain about disability issues the less the writers of said columns are actually out there doing something to address them. They become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Wouldn't we all be better off if people like me just got on with living with a disability instead of barfing on about its injustices all of the time?
Easier to say than do. Even if I'm not writing about disability there is someone on social media who is. How many posts have you seen on your Facebook timeline recently, for example, telling you which politicians voted for the £30 reduction in some disability benefit? It's got to the point now when it would be quicker for me to tell you which politicians didn't vote for it. Generally speaking, and as you might expect, I'm not in favour of cuts to disability benefit. But the way in which politicians who voted for the cuts are being routinely demonised does make me think that the issue is being rather over-simplified. If you think that disabled people should have lower benefit entitlement then you're evil and that's an end to the matter.
But is it that simple? To presume that it is that simple is to fall into the trap of thinking that all disabled people are the same. Helpless victims who can't provide for themselves or their families and who are having the food snatched from their mouths by cruel policy making. I've no doubt this is true in some circumstances. Except for the bit about families, that is. How are you having a family if you're a social pariah who can't get it up? There I go... falling into the same trap the rest of society does. I apologise.
I apologise because we're all different. I was at the rugby club the other day when the subject of benefits was brought up. Someone turned to me and said that I must be really angry about losing my £30. Not especially, I replied. It isn't going to make a huge difference to me because I have a job. Even if it is a boring one. I'm against the cuts because they might seriously impact on people less fortunate than I. But what I am more at odds with is the lazy notion that all disabled people sit at home relying on government handouts. I know people who do, and I did it myself years ago. That was because if anything I was paid too much to stay out of work. I was disincentivised right up until the point that both mine and Emma's names went on the mortgage. If there are disabled people who can't provide for themselves it is not always because their physical limitations dictate it. It's often because of this disincentivisation, and because up until my generation most disabled people were denied the right to quality education and training and have become all but unemployable as a result. And so the good people in society still want the state to provide for the lot of us as if we are as one. It's well meaning, but what it actually serves to accomplish is to keep us all in our little disability victim box, the intended effect of which is so that socially inept fucktards won't have to engage with us in their working lives. We'll be out of harms way, but it would be fine if only the state would look after us. And some disabled people are happy to accept that idea, and actively perpetuate it. But it's not fine. Not by a long chalk. We can't scream about inequality if we're not prepared to get in amongst them and force the workers of this country to integrate with us daily.
So I don't really care who voted for cuts to disability benefit. What I want to know is whether there is anyone in government offering anything above and beyond the standard level of lip service to try and help those disabled people who are physically fit enough to enrich their lives by going to a boring job every day.
So all of this is an explanation for why there has been nothing on these pages since January 29. That's fully 53 days ago. Another explanation is that, truth be told, I get a bit sick of myself. This column is supposed to be about living with a disability. Loosely at any rate. It is always likely to stray off onto the odd tangent. But driving home from work one day last week I was thinking about the lack of recent material in Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard and the reasons for that. The thought occurred to me that I'm actually sick of bollocking on about disability. It seemed to me that actually the more columns like this one complain about disability issues the less the writers of said columns are actually out there doing something to address them. They become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Wouldn't we all be better off if people like me just got on with living with a disability instead of barfing on about its injustices all of the time?
Easier to say than do. Even if I'm not writing about disability there is someone on social media who is. How many posts have you seen on your Facebook timeline recently, for example, telling you which politicians voted for the £30 reduction in some disability benefit? It's got to the point now when it would be quicker for me to tell you which politicians didn't vote for it. Generally speaking, and as you might expect, I'm not in favour of cuts to disability benefit. But the way in which politicians who voted for the cuts are being routinely demonised does make me think that the issue is being rather over-simplified. If you think that disabled people should have lower benefit entitlement then you're evil and that's an end to the matter.
But is it that simple? To presume that it is that simple is to fall into the trap of thinking that all disabled people are the same. Helpless victims who can't provide for themselves or their families and who are having the food snatched from their mouths by cruel policy making. I've no doubt this is true in some circumstances. Except for the bit about families, that is. How are you having a family if you're a social pariah who can't get it up? There I go... falling into the same trap the rest of society does. I apologise.
I apologise because we're all different. I was at the rugby club the other day when the subject of benefits was brought up. Someone turned to me and said that I must be really angry about losing my £30. Not especially, I replied. It isn't going to make a huge difference to me because I have a job. Even if it is a boring one. I'm against the cuts because they might seriously impact on people less fortunate than I. But what I am more at odds with is the lazy notion that all disabled people sit at home relying on government handouts. I know people who do, and I did it myself years ago. That was because if anything I was paid too much to stay out of work. I was disincentivised right up until the point that both mine and Emma's names went on the mortgage. If there are disabled people who can't provide for themselves it is not always because their physical limitations dictate it. It's often because of this disincentivisation, and because up until my generation most disabled people were denied the right to quality education and training and have become all but unemployable as a result. And so the good people in society still want the state to provide for the lot of us as if we are as one. It's well meaning, but what it actually serves to accomplish is to keep us all in our little disability victim box, the intended effect of which is so that socially inept fucktards won't have to engage with us in their working lives. We'll be out of harms way, but it would be fine if only the state would look after us. And some disabled people are happy to accept that idea, and actively perpetuate it. But it's not fine. Not by a long chalk. We can't scream about inequality if we're not prepared to get in amongst them and force the workers of this country to integrate with us daily.
So I don't really care who voted for cuts to disability benefit. What I want to know is whether there is anyone in government offering anything above and beyond the standard level of lip service to try and help those disabled people who are physically fit enough to enrich their lives by going to a boring job every day.
Friday, 29 January 2016
An Actual Fire Hazard
I've just read a story about a woman using a wheelchair who was asked to leave her local cinema during a screening of In The Heart Of The Sea. The headline, in The Metro, claims that she was asked to leave for being a 'fire hazard'. As the title of this blog suggests I know a thing or two about this. I also know the difference between being labelled a fire hazard because you use a wheelchair and.....well....,being labelled a fire hazard for causing a fire hazard.
Before we get to the reason why I say that let me first assure you that nobody needs to throw me out of a Chris Hemsworth movie. I'm leaving of my own accord lest I be subjected to two hours of the same smug facial expression. Second, and perhaps a tad more on point, I'd love to know what turgid hackery led the writer to describe the woman as a 'disabled athlete' in the very first paragraph. The story goes on to explain that she's a professional boccia player. All well and good, but so what? In what way is that relevant to the perceived injustice? Had she been a pen pushing underling like myself would the story have carried less weight? The great legacy of London 2012 appears to be that disabled people are acceptable only if they've competed in top level sport, and even then not if they've shot their partner dead through the bathroom door. If you're not an athlete then your last chance to gain respect as a disabled person is to get yourself a gig cracking shit jokes on Adam Hills' sofa. Or else be Adam Hills.
Back at the ranch, this particular woman's complaint develops a flaw when you read further into the piece. She was asked to leave the cinema not because she was using a wheelchair but because she was sat in the aisle and declined to move. Anyone would be thrown out of a cinema if they sat in the aisle and refused to move, wheelchair user or not. A disability isn't a free pass to ignore safety regulations that apply to everyone. It doesn't gain you access to that which would otherwise be unreasonable. If I can't turn up at Jennifer Lawrence's house and expect her to cede to my demands because I've got a blue badge, then why would I be able to sit in a cinema aisle rather than my accessible seat?
The woman's complaint should actually be twofold. First of all that the access on offer was inadequate. She'd moved to the aisle because her front row seat was too close to the screen and looking up was causing her neck pain. There should have been adequate accessible seating further back to eradicate this. The irony of a minority group so often pushed to the back finding themselves pushed to the front against their will is probably not lost on the woman. That there was not alternative seating available is a bloody outrage and so she has my complete empathy there. Secondly, the piece claims that the woman's 'assistant' was pulled out of the theatre and informed that the pair must leave. You're probably ahead of me in wondering why the cinema staff did not speak to the woman herself. Could a compromise not have been reached that way? That would involve actual one-to-one interaction with the disabled however, and despite London 2012 we're obviously not quite ready for that yet.
That's all for now. You can go back to clicking 'like' under that photograph of a Paralympians dinner.....
Before we get to the reason why I say that let me first assure you that nobody needs to throw me out of a Chris Hemsworth movie. I'm leaving of my own accord lest I be subjected to two hours of the same smug facial expression. Second, and perhaps a tad more on point, I'd love to know what turgid hackery led the writer to describe the woman as a 'disabled athlete' in the very first paragraph. The story goes on to explain that she's a professional boccia player. All well and good, but so what? In what way is that relevant to the perceived injustice? Had she been a pen pushing underling like myself would the story have carried less weight? The great legacy of London 2012 appears to be that disabled people are acceptable only if they've competed in top level sport, and even then not if they've shot their partner dead through the bathroom door. If you're not an athlete then your last chance to gain respect as a disabled person is to get yourself a gig cracking shit jokes on Adam Hills' sofa. Or else be Adam Hills.
Back at the ranch, this particular woman's complaint develops a flaw when you read further into the piece. She was asked to leave the cinema not because she was using a wheelchair but because she was sat in the aisle and declined to move. Anyone would be thrown out of a cinema if they sat in the aisle and refused to move, wheelchair user or not. A disability isn't a free pass to ignore safety regulations that apply to everyone. It doesn't gain you access to that which would otherwise be unreasonable. If I can't turn up at Jennifer Lawrence's house and expect her to cede to my demands because I've got a blue badge, then why would I be able to sit in a cinema aisle rather than my accessible seat?
The woman's complaint should actually be twofold. First of all that the access on offer was inadequate. She'd moved to the aisle because her front row seat was too close to the screen and looking up was causing her neck pain. There should have been adequate accessible seating further back to eradicate this. The irony of a minority group so often pushed to the back finding themselves pushed to the front against their will is probably not lost on the woman. That there was not alternative seating available is a bloody outrage and so she has my complete empathy there. Secondly, the piece claims that the woman's 'assistant' was pulled out of the theatre and informed that the pair must leave. You're probably ahead of me in wondering why the cinema staff did not speak to the woman herself. Could a compromise not have been reached that way? That would involve actual one-to-one interaction with the disabled however, and despite London 2012 we're obviously not quite ready for that yet.
That's all for now. You can go back to clicking 'like' under that photograph of a Paralympians dinner.....
Wednesday, 13 January 2016
Electronic Begging
This is a cry for help. I hate to have to do this, and if you know me then you'll know I wouldn't unless I was absolutely desperate. Or maybe if I was taking the absolute piss.
In a despairing bid to raise money to travel to Cloud Cuckoo Land for an operation to have my spine fixed I've taken to crowdfunding. For those not familiar with putrid internet jargon that basically means I'm setting up my own web page where people can donate money to help me reach my goal. I want to straighten my spine so I can walk. So I can be more like James Bond than Richard III. The aim is to be six foot two by a week next Thursday. Nobody will mock or patronise me then.
It's taken me 40 years to realise it but I'm no longer prepared to put up with my disability so I need you to fund the imaginary solution. I've tried going down the less expensive route of getting people to change their attitudes towards me but frankly miracle surgery still seems a more realistic option. Only yesterday I was subjected to young children circling me in a cafe while staring at me as if I were a newborn elephant at Chester Zoo. It's not just children, and it's not an isolated incident. People who can barely walk unaided themselves try to push me up hills when I'm out and about. On one occasion I was reading the menu from the queue at McDonald's when a complete stranger approached me and tried to give me some money to buy a hamburger. As if disability and homelessness were indistinguishable. To be fair to the old git I hadn't shaved that day.
So let us have no more of this humiliating intolerance. Please give what you can at my GoFuckYourself page and help eliminate disability and therefore discrimination. For me anyway. Sod everyone else. Yes, I know there are more desperate, more deserving people than me, and maybe if you had any extra money lying around which you could spare you'd choose to donate it to a charity which helps starving children or helps fight cancer. All worthy causes, but no match for my own sense of entitlement or my persecution complex I'm sure you'll agree. And at least I'm doing my begging electronically. If everyone follows my lead then our cities could be cleansed of the eyesore of people sleeping in cardboard boxes in an instant. Overnight, if you will. There's nothing more unsightly and for me it's quite dangerous. I remember being in San Diego once where the streets were lined with homeless people. I was waiting for Emma outside a 7-11 and I had to duck inside before the public started throwing coins at me. It can smart a bit if you get hit in the wrong place by a quarter. Electronic begging is the future.
Please log on now at www.GoFuckYourselfOrford and donate NO MONEY now because I have a job and miracles don't exist........
In a despairing bid to raise money to travel to Cloud Cuckoo Land for an operation to have my spine fixed I've taken to crowdfunding. For those not familiar with putrid internet jargon that basically means I'm setting up my own web page where people can donate money to help me reach my goal. I want to straighten my spine so I can walk. So I can be more like James Bond than Richard III. The aim is to be six foot two by a week next Thursday. Nobody will mock or patronise me then.
It's taken me 40 years to realise it but I'm no longer prepared to put up with my disability so I need you to fund the imaginary solution. I've tried going down the less expensive route of getting people to change their attitudes towards me but frankly miracle surgery still seems a more realistic option. Only yesterday I was subjected to young children circling me in a cafe while staring at me as if I were a newborn elephant at Chester Zoo. It's not just children, and it's not an isolated incident. People who can barely walk unaided themselves try to push me up hills when I'm out and about. On one occasion I was reading the menu from the queue at McDonald's when a complete stranger approached me and tried to give me some money to buy a hamburger. As if disability and homelessness were indistinguishable. To be fair to the old git I hadn't shaved that day.
So let us have no more of this humiliating intolerance. Please give what you can at my GoFuckYourself page and help eliminate disability and therefore discrimination. For me anyway. Sod everyone else. Yes, I know there are more desperate, more deserving people than me, and maybe if you had any extra money lying around which you could spare you'd choose to donate it to a charity which helps starving children or helps fight cancer. All worthy causes, but no match for my own sense of entitlement or my persecution complex I'm sure you'll agree. And at least I'm doing my begging electronically. If everyone follows my lead then our cities could be cleansed of the eyesore of people sleeping in cardboard boxes in an instant. Overnight, if you will. There's nothing more unsightly and for me it's quite dangerous. I remember being in San Diego once where the streets were lined with homeless people. I was waiting for Emma outside a 7-11 and I had to duck inside before the public started throwing coins at me. It can smart a bit if you get hit in the wrong place by a quarter. Electronic begging is the future.
Please log on now at www.GoFuckYourselfOrford and donate NO MONEY now because I have a job and miracles don't exist........
Saturday, 2 January 2016
Train Pain.......Again
I've been drinking too much over the festive period to find the time to relay this true story to you. Yet now, as my impending return to work looms on the horizon like a great big looming arsehole preparing to crap all over me, let me take you back to the events of Wednesday December 23 2015, the last day at work before the Christmas break.
We had finished work around 1.15. This was a massive bonus in light of the brain-mashing tedium of what had gone on the previous year. Then we'd had to listen to the business as usual mantra for what seemed like decades until finally we were released, literally staggering home with boredom after an unsuccessful round of Spot The Student. Of course there weren't any because students give up on attending university weeks before the staff take their break. So this year common sense had prevailed and by 1.20 the first round of drinks had been ordered at the pub next door.
We didn't stay long, just a couple of hours. It's nice to have one or two with colleagues on the last day but at the same time everyone was ready to officially start the Christmas break. That means going home to their families and not spending the rest of the day with people who, lovely as I'm sure we all are, are nevertheless inevitably associated with the sinister evil that is work. You might get on really well with your dentist. You might even fancy his assistant. You still don't want route canal treatment.
I remember how cold it was on the push from the pub to Lime Street Station. This December has been unseasonably mild, but as we all know that's of little consolation to me because I don't have a coat. I have tried to find one but I'm the wrong shape. Everything is either too small around my Bud-gut or too long in the sleeves. My mum said I should just buy one and she'll hem the sleeves, a kind offer which I have not yet accepted on account of no longer being eight years old. The uphill slopes between the pub and the station helped to warm me up in any case.
I arrived at the station at around 3.40. The train to Thatto Heath was scheduled to leave at 4.00. I asked the man on the gate for assistance and he nodded and mumbled something into the radio. At this point you probably know what's coming, don't you? Twenty minutes should be more than enough time to arrange for someone to walk around to the platform to help me access the portable ramp. It hasn't taken much longer than that for me to write this story. I could, it being the festive season and all, have popped into the Head Of Steam for a pint and still had time to catch the train. There's two bars in the station but the inaccesibility of the other one has caused me to banish its name from my memory. It's dead to me.
In the event I decided to just wait on the platform as I have done a million times before. I had my MP3 player with me so I was content to just wait it out, keeping an eye on the digital clock on the platform. It wasn't until about 3.58 that I began to feel a queasy mixture of alarm and deja-vu. As the clock ticked and no assistance was forthcoming I found myself remembering the last time this happened. A quick look through the archives of Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard proves that I missed a train home from Lime Street due to a lack of accessibility and assistance in 2010. Twice in the space of two weeks actually. Getting back on the Motability Scheme and back behind the wheel of a car means that I don't have to put up with this shit very often. But on this occasion I'd been drinking, and even if I hadn't there was still the fact that Emma had the car in Plymouth visiting her brother and his family.
What baffles most is that still, five years on from the last time they just didn't bother to offer assistance, we are still living in a country where trains are not accessible to wheelchair users without having to rely on assistance from temperemental station staff. It's positively primitive, and yet more evidence that while the we all feel so pleased with ourselves about how we now treat disabled equally and with the appropriate level of respect, we're actually telling ourselves a pile of horse shit. Access costs too much, clearly, and pounds and pence have always taken precedence over the need for genuine integration under successive governments.
I huffed back through the gate after watching the 4.00 to Thatto Heath roll away. I sarcastically thanked the staff for their excellent service and continued on my way. One of them caught up to mem tapped me on the shoulder and said something to me, though I don't know what. I'd lost interest at that stage, so much so that I didn't even bother to take my ear-plugs out. Music was a far better option than whatever bullshit excuse for dehumanising me he was going to offer. In the end I got a taxi from just outside the station, still too fuming to turn off the music and engage in yuletide small talk with the driver. I suppose I should just be grateful not to hear him say that he didn't 'do wheelchairs'.
Even if it did cost me £35........
We had finished work around 1.15. This was a massive bonus in light of the brain-mashing tedium of what had gone on the previous year. Then we'd had to listen to the business as usual mantra for what seemed like decades until finally we were released, literally staggering home with boredom after an unsuccessful round of Spot The Student. Of course there weren't any because students give up on attending university weeks before the staff take their break. So this year common sense had prevailed and by 1.20 the first round of drinks had been ordered at the pub next door.
We didn't stay long, just a couple of hours. It's nice to have one or two with colleagues on the last day but at the same time everyone was ready to officially start the Christmas break. That means going home to their families and not spending the rest of the day with people who, lovely as I'm sure we all are, are nevertheless inevitably associated with the sinister evil that is work. You might get on really well with your dentist. You might even fancy his assistant. You still don't want route canal treatment.
I remember how cold it was on the push from the pub to Lime Street Station. This December has been unseasonably mild, but as we all know that's of little consolation to me because I don't have a coat. I have tried to find one but I'm the wrong shape. Everything is either too small around my Bud-gut or too long in the sleeves. My mum said I should just buy one and she'll hem the sleeves, a kind offer which I have not yet accepted on account of no longer being eight years old. The uphill slopes between the pub and the station helped to warm me up in any case.
I arrived at the station at around 3.40. The train to Thatto Heath was scheduled to leave at 4.00. I asked the man on the gate for assistance and he nodded and mumbled something into the radio. At this point you probably know what's coming, don't you? Twenty minutes should be more than enough time to arrange for someone to walk around to the platform to help me access the portable ramp. It hasn't taken much longer than that for me to write this story. I could, it being the festive season and all, have popped into the Head Of Steam for a pint and still had time to catch the train. There's two bars in the station but the inaccesibility of the other one has caused me to banish its name from my memory. It's dead to me.
In the event I decided to just wait on the platform as I have done a million times before. I had my MP3 player with me so I was content to just wait it out, keeping an eye on the digital clock on the platform. It wasn't until about 3.58 that I began to feel a queasy mixture of alarm and deja-vu. As the clock ticked and no assistance was forthcoming I found myself remembering the last time this happened. A quick look through the archives of Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard proves that I missed a train home from Lime Street due to a lack of accessibility and assistance in 2010. Twice in the space of two weeks actually. Getting back on the Motability Scheme and back behind the wheel of a car means that I don't have to put up with this shit very often. But on this occasion I'd been drinking, and even if I hadn't there was still the fact that Emma had the car in Plymouth visiting her brother and his family.
What baffles most is that still, five years on from the last time they just didn't bother to offer assistance, we are still living in a country where trains are not accessible to wheelchair users without having to rely on assistance from temperemental station staff. It's positively primitive, and yet more evidence that while the we all feel so pleased with ourselves about how we now treat disabled equally and with the appropriate level of respect, we're actually telling ourselves a pile of horse shit. Access costs too much, clearly, and pounds and pence have always taken precedence over the need for genuine integration under successive governments.
I huffed back through the gate after watching the 4.00 to Thatto Heath roll away. I sarcastically thanked the staff for their excellent service and continued on my way. One of them caught up to mem tapped me on the shoulder and said something to me, though I don't know what. I'd lost interest at that stage, so much so that I didn't even bother to take my ear-plugs out. Music was a far better option than whatever bullshit excuse for dehumanising me he was going to offer. In the end I got a taxi from just outside the station, still too fuming to turn off the music and engage in yuletide small talk with the driver. I suppose I should just be grateful not to hear him say that he didn't 'do wheelchairs'.
Even if it did cost me £35........
Friday, 1 January 2016
2016 - My Year - My Arse
The first Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard of 2016 should probably be one of reflection, and of looking forward. I certainly hope to see some improvement in this tat and, who knows?, I may even get around to putting some of this stuff to good use by adapting it for that work of fiction everyone is always telling me to write. Well.....three people.
Through the wretched post-booze blurgh-iness of this New Year's Day I have already taken some steps towards the further promotion of my work. Ok one step. And not a particularly big step. I don't expect to be on Chatty Man promoting my book in 2016. However, I do expect to feature regularly in something called Disability Blogger Link-Up. This is part of the website at disabilitythinking.com which allows writers who either have disabilities or write on disability issues (often both) to post their work and thus get further exposure and spread the word on everything from inspiration porn to that awkward moment when you get asked 'what's wrong with you?' by a completely rude, nosey bastard stranger. So far I have only posted the old stuff from Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard that I think is most relevant, but I hope to be a lot less lazy about this in 2016. Take a look anyway, and if you're feeling bold you might even want to contribute which I believe you can until Sunday. If 48 hours isn't long enough for your muse (and let's face it he's probably wired from last night) then there'll be another opportunity on January 15. Last time over 80 pieces were posted, only one of which was mine.
I feel compelled to share with you an anecdote from the New Year's Eve celebrations. With Emma's mum and dad staying with us the plan was to get into Liverpool mid-afternoon and then meet Emma after work for a few drinks before getting the train back to Thatto Heath and visiting one of its delightful watering holes. Work, I know...I moan about my job and will no doubt continue to do so until it is inevitably ripped from my grasp in the name of 'progress' but at least being based at a university (you know the one, does a lot of good work for charity?) means that I don't have to work at all over the Christmas and New Year period. I just hope that Jeremy Hunt never gets the education gig otherwise I'll probably end up eating my Christmas dinner at my desk.
I'd left the house a few minutes after Roland and Susan owing to the need for an inconvenient pit-stop. I was sure I'd catch them up. I toyed with the idea of taking a shortcut and meeting them at the station since it was absolutely lashing down with rain. If I'd done that I might not have found them for a good few hours, because as I passed by the entry near to the chippy I heard Susan shouting me to stop. I found this very strange. It wasn't the weather for stopping, and certainly not in an entry by the chippy. On closer inspection they had stopped to help a man who had fallen down and bashed his head. He was lying on the ground, his head covered in blood and his pants covered in piss. Which was all rather sad really. The first reaction of most people, including me if I'm honest, is that he'd just started his celebrations at an hour that is traditional for alcoholics and fell down drunk. Which he may have. A man falling down drunk in an entry in Thatto Heath is about as unusual as being loved by anyone or having fun with anyone (ask your granddad) so some cynicism here is understandable. But he later told Susan that he had dementia.
A passing council worker had called for an ambulance and when the paramedic arrived the man told her that he had blacked out. He did not mention the dementia as far as I know, although we left him in her capable hands once she had assessed him and told him that the blackout meant that he would have to go to the hospital. He was not keen on this idea as we moved on, leaving him to his protests. Whatever the circumstances I just hope he was ok in the end. He may have had to spend New Year's Eve in the hospital which if nothing else puts sitting in a freezing cold Wetherspoons in Liverpool before engaging in bang average karaoke in the Springfield into some sort of perspective.
And so the first entry in Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard for 2016 is a fairly alarming, melancholy affair, which to be fair is totally in keeping with the normal demeanour of its author. I don't suppose anybody comes here looking for messages of hope and tales of triumph. Perhaps that's why nobody comes here.
2016 resolutions;
Turn Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard into something useful
Keep job
Finish seasons 3-4 of Scandal and 3-7 of The West Wing
Buy coat
Provoke wrath of fellow Saints fans with Redvee columns and forum posts
Make no 2016 resolutions
Happy New Year!!
Through the wretched post-booze blurgh-iness of this New Year's Day I have already taken some steps towards the further promotion of my work. Ok one step. And not a particularly big step. I don't expect to be on Chatty Man promoting my book in 2016. However, I do expect to feature regularly in something called Disability Blogger Link-Up. This is part of the website at disabilitythinking.com which allows writers who either have disabilities or write on disability issues (often both) to post their work and thus get further exposure and spread the word on everything from inspiration porn to that awkward moment when you get asked 'what's wrong with you?' by a completely rude, nosey bastard stranger. So far I have only posted the old stuff from Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard that I think is most relevant, but I hope to be a lot less lazy about this in 2016. Take a look anyway, and if you're feeling bold you might even want to contribute which I believe you can until Sunday. If 48 hours isn't long enough for your muse (and let's face it he's probably wired from last night) then there'll be another opportunity on January 15. Last time over 80 pieces were posted, only one of which was mine.
I feel compelled to share with you an anecdote from the New Year's Eve celebrations. With Emma's mum and dad staying with us the plan was to get into Liverpool mid-afternoon and then meet Emma after work for a few drinks before getting the train back to Thatto Heath and visiting one of its delightful watering holes. Work, I know...I moan about my job and will no doubt continue to do so until it is inevitably ripped from my grasp in the name of 'progress' but at least being based at a university (you know the one, does a lot of good work for charity?) means that I don't have to work at all over the Christmas and New Year period. I just hope that Jeremy Hunt never gets the education gig otherwise I'll probably end up eating my Christmas dinner at my desk.
I'd left the house a few minutes after Roland and Susan owing to the need for an inconvenient pit-stop. I was sure I'd catch them up. I toyed with the idea of taking a shortcut and meeting them at the station since it was absolutely lashing down with rain. If I'd done that I might not have found them for a good few hours, because as I passed by the entry near to the chippy I heard Susan shouting me to stop. I found this very strange. It wasn't the weather for stopping, and certainly not in an entry by the chippy. On closer inspection they had stopped to help a man who had fallen down and bashed his head. He was lying on the ground, his head covered in blood and his pants covered in piss. Which was all rather sad really. The first reaction of most people, including me if I'm honest, is that he'd just started his celebrations at an hour that is traditional for alcoholics and fell down drunk. Which he may have. A man falling down drunk in an entry in Thatto Heath is about as unusual as being loved by anyone or having fun with anyone (ask your granddad) so some cynicism here is understandable. But he later told Susan that he had dementia.
A passing council worker had called for an ambulance and when the paramedic arrived the man told her that he had blacked out. He did not mention the dementia as far as I know, although we left him in her capable hands once she had assessed him and told him that the blackout meant that he would have to go to the hospital. He was not keen on this idea as we moved on, leaving him to his protests. Whatever the circumstances I just hope he was ok in the end. He may have had to spend New Year's Eve in the hospital which if nothing else puts sitting in a freezing cold Wetherspoons in Liverpool before engaging in bang average karaoke in the Springfield into some sort of perspective.
And so the first entry in Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard for 2016 is a fairly alarming, melancholy affair, which to be fair is totally in keeping with the normal demeanour of its author. I don't suppose anybody comes here looking for messages of hope and tales of triumph. Perhaps that's why nobody comes here.
2016 resolutions;
Turn Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard into something useful
Keep job
Finish seasons 3-4 of Scandal and 3-7 of The West Wing
Buy coat
Provoke wrath of fellow Saints fans with Redvee columns and forum posts
Make no 2016 resolutions
Happy New Year!!
Sunday, 27 December 2015
Come As You Are
One of the reasons I started this nonsense, by which I mean Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard rather than this particular entry in it, was to try to raise awareness of disability and what it's really like. You can go to as many Disability Awareness events as you like, complete any online diversity modules you like, but it's all just bullshit lip service. Box-ticking of the most putrid kind. Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard might not be the stuff of Helen Fielding or Sue Townsend, but it is at least a first hand account of the shit that is flung at you through disability. It keeps it real.
Which is why I want to tell you about a film I watched recently which was a noble attempt to do something similar. Come As You Are requires a bit of effort. It's not the easy watch that Avengers Age Of Ultron is. It's played out entirely in Flemish with English subtitles, which I realise is enough to put many people off. For reasons too absurd to go into I saw a subtitled version of the third Hunger Games movie at the cinema and it was all very off-putting. But somehow it's different when the language you are hearing the characters speak is not English. Either way this one is well worth that extra bit of endeavour.
Come As You Are tells the story of three young disabled men who plan a trip to a Spanish brothel in a bid to lose their virginity. Now there's an obvious problem with this I know. Such a premise suggests that disabled men who do not visit brothels must have their virginity intact. Which of course is a nonsense. Some disabilities make the loss of one's virginity more difficult than others. And in choosing men of varied disabilities for protagonists the writers seem to be tarring them all with the same shitty, soggy old brush. One is paralysed from the neck down, another is almost completely blind, while the third uses a wheelchair because he has an inoperable, soon to be fatal tumour. I can just about get my head around why the writers thought that the two wheelchair users would need to embark on their quest. The paraplegic Phillip is unable to dress or feed himself. His parents put him to bed at night and get him out of bed in the morning, and his mother washes him. Tumour-suffering Lars has more mobility but is equally fussed over by his parents. If I can testify (and I can) that something as relatively benign as Spina Bifida can interfere with your ability to attract the opposite sex, then it's a fairly safe assumption that guys in Phillip and Lars' predicaments will have a tough time with that also. Immobility is not sexy. Women see it as weakness, which is as uncomfortable as it is true. But the third protagonist, Jozef, is blind remember. What is it about blindness that renders one sexually ostracised? Josef was noticeably less attractive from where I sat than either Phillip or Lars so perhaps that was his problem. Or perhaps the idea being proposed is that the vanity of women prevents them from falling for someone who isn't with them at least in part for the way they look.
Away from their sexlessness, the saddest part of the lives of Phillip and Lars in particular is how they are not trusted to do anything by their parents, despite being young adults. They live a depressing, strangled existence and know very well that they will not be given permission to go on the trip if they reveal the reason for it. So they lie, and when the first nurse that they plan to take with them backs out at the last minute they are refused permission to go regardless. So they end up having to sneak out against their parents wishes. Which I loved. I've known people with various disabilities who have declined to do things for themselves based on what their parents would think and it's just tragic. You just want to shake them by the shoulders and scream at them. None of which is necessary with Phillip, Lars or Jozef.
The nurse they had booked finds them a replacement and it's all back on again. Claude brings a new dimension to proceedings as she firstly struggles to get on with the men but then slowly wins them over. Her clashes with Phiilip are particularly entertaining. He's not very likeable but then that's ok. Not all disabled men are. I've spent tireless hours being rude to people so I'm something of an expert. Refreshingly, the film doesn't try to pretend that everyone should love or feel sorry for Phillip just because he has a disability. An arsehole is an arsehole whatever problems they might have. This is very well illustrated by a scene in which Phillip almost gets his lights punched out by a hotel guest. Only the imposing and slightly scary figure of Claude gets him out of the sticky spot that his smart mouth gets him into.
Disappointingly only Jozef manages to make an actual emotional connection to anyone by the end. The girls at the brothel are clearly there for one thing and are deemed so irrelevant that their dialogue isn't even subtitled. This approach misses the target for me. Yes if you had reached the ages of these men without losing your virginity then the sex part would be important, but it's wrong to suggest that men of this age are only interested in physicalities. That's just part of it. Of feeling like you're accepted and not being dehumanised by everyone. My own masculinity takes a hit every time a woman opens a door for me. In this respect these issues are handled better by something like Inside I'm Dancing, a similar story with a similar premise but which has its protagonists looking for something deeper. Something real.
Come As You Are is funny, thought provoking but undeniably tragic. And well worth an hour and three quarters of your time if you find yourself combing through the iplayer for an alternative to cooking shows over the festive period.
Which is why I want to tell you about a film I watched recently which was a noble attempt to do something similar. Come As You Are requires a bit of effort. It's not the easy watch that Avengers Age Of Ultron is. It's played out entirely in Flemish with English subtitles, which I realise is enough to put many people off. For reasons too absurd to go into I saw a subtitled version of the third Hunger Games movie at the cinema and it was all very off-putting. But somehow it's different when the language you are hearing the characters speak is not English. Either way this one is well worth that extra bit of endeavour.
Come As You Are tells the story of three young disabled men who plan a trip to a Spanish brothel in a bid to lose their virginity. Now there's an obvious problem with this I know. Such a premise suggests that disabled men who do not visit brothels must have their virginity intact. Which of course is a nonsense. Some disabilities make the loss of one's virginity more difficult than others. And in choosing men of varied disabilities for protagonists the writers seem to be tarring them all with the same shitty, soggy old brush. One is paralysed from the neck down, another is almost completely blind, while the third uses a wheelchair because he has an inoperable, soon to be fatal tumour. I can just about get my head around why the writers thought that the two wheelchair users would need to embark on their quest. The paraplegic Phillip is unable to dress or feed himself. His parents put him to bed at night and get him out of bed in the morning, and his mother washes him. Tumour-suffering Lars has more mobility but is equally fussed over by his parents. If I can testify (and I can) that something as relatively benign as Spina Bifida can interfere with your ability to attract the opposite sex, then it's a fairly safe assumption that guys in Phillip and Lars' predicaments will have a tough time with that also. Immobility is not sexy. Women see it as weakness, which is as uncomfortable as it is true. But the third protagonist, Jozef, is blind remember. What is it about blindness that renders one sexually ostracised? Josef was noticeably less attractive from where I sat than either Phillip or Lars so perhaps that was his problem. Or perhaps the idea being proposed is that the vanity of women prevents them from falling for someone who isn't with them at least in part for the way they look.
Away from their sexlessness, the saddest part of the lives of Phillip and Lars in particular is how they are not trusted to do anything by their parents, despite being young adults. They live a depressing, strangled existence and know very well that they will not be given permission to go on the trip if they reveal the reason for it. So they lie, and when the first nurse that they plan to take with them backs out at the last minute they are refused permission to go regardless. So they end up having to sneak out against their parents wishes. Which I loved. I've known people with various disabilities who have declined to do things for themselves based on what their parents would think and it's just tragic. You just want to shake them by the shoulders and scream at them. None of which is necessary with Phillip, Lars or Jozef.
The nurse they had booked finds them a replacement and it's all back on again. Claude brings a new dimension to proceedings as she firstly struggles to get on with the men but then slowly wins them over. Her clashes with Phiilip are particularly entertaining. He's not very likeable but then that's ok. Not all disabled men are. I've spent tireless hours being rude to people so I'm something of an expert. Refreshingly, the film doesn't try to pretend that everyone should love or feel sorry for Phillip just because he has a disability. An arsehole is an arsehole whatever problems they might have. This is very well illustrated by a scene in which Phillip almost gets his lights punched out by a hotel guest. Only the imposing and slightly scary figure of Claude gets him out of the sticky spot that his smart mouth gets him into.
Disappointingly only Jozef manages to make an actual emotional connection to anyone by the end. The girls at the brothel are clearly there for one thing and are deemed so irrelevant that their dialogue isn't even subtitled. This approach misses the target for me. Yes if you had reached the ages of these men without losing your virginity then the sex part would be important, but it's wrong to suggest that men of this age are only interested in physicalities. That's just part of it. Of feeling like you're accepted and not being dehumanised by everyone. My own masculinity takes a hit every time a woman opens a door for me. In this respect these issues are handled better by something like Inside I'm Dancing, a similar story with a similar premise but which has its protagonists looking for something deeper. Something real.
Come As You Are is funny, thought provoking but undeniably tragic. And well worth an hour and three quarters of your time if you find yourself combing through the iplayer for an alternative to cooking shows over the festive period.
Wednesday, 16 December 2015
Star Wars - Anticipation And Anxiety
I’ve been reading some headlines about the critics’ reception of the new Star Wars film. The Force Awakens premiered somewhere posh this week, and has its UK premiere somewhere else posh today. The great unwashed get their first opportunity to see it when it opens in cinemas on Thursday. Having read those headlines, I’m already regretting my decision not to go on the first night in a bid to avoid the horror that is Other People, Most Notably Children. As a consequence of that decision I am waiting until Monday, and already finding it difficult. I literally can’t wait. If I wasn’t on a cocktail of drugs to prevent it I might do a small wee at this point. Almost without exception, the UK’s press reviewers are lining up to declare it a resounding success. They are using words like ‘triumph’ to describe JJ Abrams’ Disneyed-up Episode VII, with some calling it the best of all of the Star Wars films.
I haven’t read the detail in these reviews because I don’t want any spoilers. You certainly won’t find any here. Not until I have seen it at any rate. By then you will probably all have seen it anyway, all three of you. I’m sure some of you make my level of fandom look like a mild passing interest. Regardless, and despite my excitement about seeing it, The Force Awakens cannot possibly be the best of all the Star Wars films. That would be going some. I’m a massive Star Wars fan even if my decision to wait until the start of next week to see the new film might suggest otherwise. Not even George Lucas’ laughable inability to write romantic dialogue can blunt my enthusiasm for what is essentially the greatest story ever told. Not even Darth Vader’s self-parodying cry of ‘no……….!!!!!’ upon hearing the truth economising tale (spoiler alert for those who have been in a coma since 2005) of how he killed his own wife could persuade me to give up on watching Star Wars films. Even if I am riddled with scepticism about where it could possibly go from the end of Return Of The Jedi. I will watch as many Star Wars films as they make in my lifetime and I’ll get preposterously excited before each and every one of them. Shit, I’ve even seen a few of those awful Clone Wars cartoons on Nickleodeon or whatever it is. But is The Force Awakens the greatest of all Star Wars films? I’d love to be proved wrong but, Nah. Doubt it.
One reason for my disturbing lack of faith (Star Wars fans will see what I did there) is that I don’t think that in 2015 it is possible to recreate the jaw-dropping majesty of Star Wars Episode IV’s opening shot in a cinema, or many of its other spectacular visual innovations. Or the feeling of what it would have been like to have been there to have seen it in 1977. There’s too much going on, too much is possible now, technologically and cinematically. An infeasibly large space ship cruising above your eyeline into shot, slowly moving away from you for what seems like an eternity was the height of cinematic ambition 38 years ago. Nobody had ever seen anything like it. These days it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. When a film tries to show me something visually spectacular now I’m likely to choose that moment to go and empty my bladder, safe in the knowledge that I won’t miss anything resembling a plot while I’m away. Nobody has combined visuals like that with that level of intrigue in film ever since, and my natural cynicism tells me that they never will, no matter how many Star Wars films they make. No matter how my bladder copes with the anticipation of each new release.
I suppose my apprehension at the concept of more Star Wars films is because I already consider the story to be complete, and I’m not sure what we are doing tampering with it. I don’t just mean the original trilogy when I refer to ‘the story’. The flaw-infested prequels were a necessary evil. We had to see Anakin’s regression from Jedi hero to hate-fuelled Sith in order to try to understand Vader better. It’s just that we could have benefited from a better script and some superior acting. A bit more ‘you were the chosen one’ and a bit less ‘what have I done….?’ If you like. And I just don’t know what else we need to know about the Star Wars universe post-Vader. He’s redeemed and dead, we’ve come full circle. Isn’t everything from here on in just a re-telling of the same message, parping on about the same themes but to a lesser effect? We won’t know until we see the film, but I’m worried that it is. Abrams’ most notable work so far is his long running disaster epic Lost, which began brilliantly. It was interesting and inventive with intriguing characters with cleverly woven back stories. Yet by the end of series 327 it all fell in a crumpled mess to the point where there is now nobody alive who fully understands the ending and what really happened on that island, or whether there even was an island to begin with. Had it not been for Evangeline Lily half the audience would probably have stopped watching after series 2.
To the naysayers Star Wars is just a rather childish fantasy about people who live on fictional planets blowing things up, but to some of us it’s an epic story with a masterful understanding of human nature. Of how we start off fine before life slowly throws enough shit our way to break us down. OK, so we don’t all go around building a space station with enough power to destroy whole planets, or chopping our own children’s hands off, but there’s a bit of Darth Vader in every one of us. That’s why he is the greatest movie villain of all time, because so many of us identify with his struggle, even if we don’t necessarily endorse his fashion sense. The trailers for The Force Awakens reveal that he is at least referred to in the new story, but without his actual presence, without David Prowse awkwardly staggering around in a heavy suit practising high level dark arts, without James Earl Jones’ childhood defining voice talents, it seems implausible that you could actually have the best of all the Star Wars films.
I’m just hoping against all hope that the Star Wars saga, that much beloved relic of my childhood years, doesn’t outstay its welcome. At least two more films amongst other projects are on the way over the next few years. But when you add Abrams’ previous to the Disneyfication of the whole thing you might, as a Star Wars fan, find cause for concern. And then what will you do?
If you’re anything like me, you’ll go and watch the next instalment with the same level of excitement all the same…..
Regrettably, the words to this piece will not scroll away from you at an interesting angle……….
I haven’t read the detail in these reviews because I don’t want any spoilers. You certainly won’t find any here. Not until I have seen it at any rate. By then you will probably all have seen it anyway, all three of you. I’m sure some of you make my level of fandom look like a mild passing interest. Regardless, and despite my excitement about seeing it, The Force Awakens cannot possibly be the best of all the Star Wars films. That would be going some. I’m a massive Star Wars fan even if my decision to wait until the start of next week to see the new film might suggest otherwise. Not even George Lucas’ laughable inability to write romantic dialogue can blunt my enthusiasm for what is essentially the greatest story ever told. Not even Darth Vader’s self-parodying cry of ‘no……….!!!!!’ upon hearing the truth economising tale (spoiler alert for those who have been in a coma since 2005) of how he killed his own wife could persuade me to give up on watching Star Wars films. Even if I am riddled with scepticism about where it could possibly go from the end of Return Of The Jedi. I will watch as many Star Wars films as they make in my lifetime and I’ll get preposterously excited before each and every one of them. Shit, I’ve even seen a few of those awful Clone Wars cartoons on Nickleodeon or whatever it is. But is The Force Awakens the greatest of all Star Wars films? I’d love to be proved wrong but, Nah. Doubt it.
One reason for my disturbing lack of faith (Star Wars fans will see what I did there) is that I don’t think that in 2015 it is possible to recreate the jaw-dropping majesty of Star Wars Episode IV’s opening shot in a cinema, or many of its other spectacular visual innovations. Or the feeling of what it would have been like to have been there to have seen it in 1977. There’s too much going on, too much is possible now, technologically and cinematically. An infeasibly large space ship cruising above your eyeline into shot, slowly moving away from you for what seems like an eternity was the height of cinematic ambition 38 years ago. Nobody had ever seen anything like it. These days it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. When a film tries to show me something visually spectacular now I’m likely to choose that moment to go and empty my bladder, safe in the knowledge that I won’t miss anything resembling a plot while I’m away. Nobody has combined visuals like that with that level of intrigue in film ever since, and my natural cynicism tells me that they never will, no matter how many Star Wars films they make. No matter how my bladder copes with the anticipation of each new release.
I suppose my apprehension at the concept of more Star Wars films is because I already consider the story to be complete, and I’m not sure what we are doing tampering with it. I don’t just mean the original trilogy when I refer to ‘the story’. The flaw-infested prequels were a necessary evil. We had to see Anakin’s regression from Jedi hero to hate-fuelled Sith in order to try to understand Vader better. It’s just that we could have benefited from a better script and some superior acting. A bit more ‘you were the chosen one’ and a bit less ‘what have I done….?’ If you like. And I just don’t know what else we need to know about the Star Wars universe post-Vader. He’s redeemed and dead, we’ve come full circle. Isn’t everything from here on in just a re-telling of the same message, parping on about the same themes but to a lesser effect? We won’t know until we see the film, but I’m worried that it is. Abrams’ most notable work so far is his long running disaster epic Lost, which began brilliantly. It was interesting and inventive with intriguing characters with cleverly woven back stories. Yet by the end of series 327 it all fell in a crumpled mess to the point where there is now nobody alive who fully understands the ending and what really happened on that island, or whether there even was an island to begin with. Had it not been for Evangeline Lily half the audience would probably have stopped watching after series 2.
To the naysayers Star Wars is just a rather childish fantasy about people who live on fictional planets blowing things up, but to some of us it’s an epic story with a masterful understanding of human nature. Of how we start off fine before life slowly throws enough shit our way to break us down. OK, so we don’t all go around building a space station with enough power to destroy whole planets, or chopping our own children’s hands off, but there’s a bit of Darth Vader in every one of us. That’s why he is the greatest movie villain of all time, because so many of us identify with his struggle, even if we don’t necessarily endorse his fashion sense. The trailers for The Force Awakens reveal that he is at least referred to in the new story, but without his actual presence, without David Prowse awkwardly staggering around in a heavy suit practising high level dark arts, without James Earl Jones’ childhood defining voice talents, it seems implausible that you could actually have the best of all the Star Wars films.
I’m just hoping against all hope that the Star Wars saga, that much beloved relic of my childhood years, doesn’t outstay its welcome. At least two more films amongst other projects are on the way over the next few years. But when you add Abrams’ previous to the Disneyfication of the whole thing you might, as a Star Wars fan, find cause for concern. And then what will you do?
If you’re anything like me, you’ll go and watch the next instalment with the same level of excitement all the same…..
Regrettably, the words to this piece will not scroll away from you at an interesting angle……….
Friday, 11 December 2015
World Club Challenge - Thanks, But No Thanks
I'm a season ticket holder at Saints. As it's winter, I'm starting to have withdrawal symptoms owing to the lack of rugby league at this time of the year. Football and the NFL get you so far, but there is nothing really like the rugby league season. Langtree Park may be the coldest place in western Europe and the quality of rugby on show is not always the highest, but there's no room for this kind of reasoning once you are hooked. I have to wait eight more weeks for anything resembling a competitive rugby league match, and I have just received the following email;
IT'S YOUR FINAL DAY TOMORROW TO RESERVE YOUR WORLD CLUB SERIES TICKET BEFORE FULL GENERAL SALE.
YOUR SEAT OR PLACE WILL BE KEPT ON RESERVE FOR YOU UNTIL 4:00pm TOMORROW, SATURDAY 12TH DECEMBER, AFTER WHICH THEY WILL BE RELEASED TO JOIN THE GENERAL SALE TICKETS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE.
Saints will face Sydney Roosters at Langtree Park on Friday February 19th (KO 8:00pm) as part of the prestigious World Club Series.
It is a rematch of the first ever World Club Challenge game which saw the then Eastern Suburbs face St Helens in 1976.
The 2016 Roosters will come to the town having won the Minor Premiership for the last three seasons - and are packed with a host of NRL stars such as Shaun Kenny-Dowell, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves and Mitchell Pearce.
Saints will no doubt be blooding new signings Lama Tasi, Dominique Peyroux, Theo Fages and Jack Owens too.
It will be a real Super League v NRL test!
Demand for this fixture is expected to be high and 2016 Members can now exclusively reserve their ‘spec'.
Tickets are priced at:
Hattons Solicitors West Terrace, East Terrace and Family Stands:
Adult - £22.50
OAP and Young Adult - £15.50
Junior - £10
Solarking South and Totally Wicked North Stands:
Gold:
Adult - £30
OAP and Young Adult - £22.50
Junior - £12
Silver:
Adult - £28
OAP and Young Adult - £20.50
Junior - £12
Bronze:
Adult - £25
OAP and Young Adult - £18.50
Junior - £10
Tickets can be bought by 2016 Members only by calling into the Ticket Office at Langtree Park or by calling 01744 455 052.
A package for all three games (Leeds v North Queensland, Wigan v Brisbane) costs £60 and can be purchased by visiting www.rugbyleaguetickets.co.uk or calling the Rugby League Ticket Hotline on 0844 856 1113.
Here's the thing. I'm not going. I have 24 hours to change my mind, but as things stand I am absolutely not going to the Saints v Roosters game. As I will be in Hull tomorrow for a family do there is little chance of me finding time to book my ticket even if I wanted to. Which I don't, and I'll tell you why.
This game is meaningless and my club, in trying to sell me a ticket for it for £30, is trying to take the piss out of me. Did you note the phrase 'prestigious World Club Series' in the email above? How exactly is it prestigious? In rugby league the teams that win the European Super League and the Australasian NRL meet every year in the World Club Challenge. The title of World Club champions is bestowed upon the winners of this game. Saints played in it last year and were roundly whipped 39-0 by the then NRL champions South Sydney Rabbitohs. That was prestigious, even if it did only serve to prove that there is a gargantuan gap in quality between the NRL and Super League at the moment. This will continue to be the case so long as the NRL salary cap is around 10 times higher than that of Super League. Several of the current England national team play their club rugby in the NRL for this very reason. All of which dilutes the quality of Super League but arguably increases the unpredictability of it. The previously cash-rich clubs can no longer just out-bid their smaller foes for the best players and so there is a more even spread of what quality there is in Super League in terms of playing talent.
Despite this obvious and still expanding chasm between the two leagues, the decision makers have seen fit to expand the World Club challenge to include the top three sides from each. Well....sort of. As before, only the two champion sides actually have anything to play for in terms of the title of World Club champions. The rest of us are expected to swallow the idea that our games matter as part of a series between the two competitions. The idea that I would support Leeds or Wigan (this year's other two representatives in the World Club series from Super League) against their NRL opposition is absurd. I hope that the North Queensland Cowboys and Brisbane Broncos run up cricket scores against those two. I wouldn't want Wigan to win a tombola and I don't much care for Leeds either. They won all three trophies on offer in Super League last season and it was unpleasant viewing for the rest of us. Why would I want to sit and watch them pick up yet more silverware on a cold night in February? The only reason I will watch these games on television is in anticipation of them taking a fearful, humiliating battering.
The other problem I have with this whole shebang is the lack of a credible qualification process. Saints did not qualify for this event and have no business being part of it. We finished fourth in Super League last season, were knocked out of the play-offs in the semi-finals and went out of the Challenge Cup at the same stage. Originally the idea was for the league winners, Grand Final winners and Challenge Cup winners to be the three Super League representatives but with Leeds scooping all three they've had to have a re-thing. Hence the presence of beaten Grand Finalists Wigan. Logic suggests that as Wigan finished second in the league the final place would go to either the third placed team or the beaten finalists in the Challenge Cup, Hull KR. But Hull KR managed to lose the Challenge Cup final to Leeds by a mortifying, arse-clenchingly embarrassing scoreline of 50-0. They were too much of a risk, so out they went. Third placed Huddersfield Giants didn't get the gig either. It has been suggested that it was offered to them and they declined, but that would seem to make little sense given that there is no fee involved for them to participate, only television revenue. Huddersfield, despite their qualities, only manage to attract an average crowd of around 5-6000 fans in Super League, and I don't think I enter controversial territory if I suggest that this may have been a prominent factor in their absence from the line-up.
I understand the need to have international club competitions like this, and applaud the attempt to expand the game in this way. But in many ways the fact that the game needs this kind of exposure to enable it to rival the Omni-present evil that is rugby union makes the way they have gone about it even more of a crime. Are we really 'showcasing' our sport by offering up a non-tournament with little competitive integrity? I've been offered the argument that we must start here if we are to expand the concept in the future but I'm not having that theory across my welcome mat, let alone in my house. Start as you mean to go on. Be bold. If you are going to have a genuine six-team World Club competition then the least you can do is ensure that every team involved in it has the opportunity to win it, and that they have qualified for it on merit and not just because they are top three in terms of fans through the turnstiles. Fifty thousand people turn up to watch Newcastle every other week, but they won't be plonked into the Champions League at the expense of the rather more modestly supported Leicester City if the foxes can somehow continue their surprising early season form in the Premier League.
So after tomorrow someone else will have the privilege of snapping up my regular seat in the North Stand for the Roosters game, provided they are willing to part with their £30 for a glorified friendly. As long as my nerve holds......
IT'S YOUR FINAL DAY TOMORROW TO RESERVE YOUR WORLD CLUB SERIES TICKET BEFORE FULL GENERAL SALE.
YOUR SEAT OR PLACE WILL BE KEPT ON RESERVE FOR YOU UNTIL 4:00pm TOMORROW, SATURDAY 12TH DECEMBER, AFTER WHICH THEY WILL BE RELEASED TO JOIN THE GENERAL SALE TICKETS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE.
Saints will face Sydney Roosters at Langtree Park on Friday February 19th (KO 8:00pm) as part of the prestigious World Club Series.
It is a rematch of the first ever World Club Challenge game which saw the then Eastern Suburbs face St Helens in 1976.
The 2016 Roosters will come to the town having won the Minor Premiership for the last three seasons - and are packed with a host of NRL stars such as Shaun Kenny-Dowell, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves and Mitchell Pearce.
Saints will no doubt be blooding new signings Lama Tasi, Dominique Peyroux, Theo Fages and Jack Owens too.
It will be a real Super League v NRL test!
Demand for this fixture is expected to be high and 2016 Members can now exclusively reserve their ‘spec'.
Tickets are priced at:
Hattons Solicitors West Terrace, East Terrace and Family Stands:
Adult - £22.50
OAP and Young Adult - £15.50
Junior - £10
Solarking South and Totally Wicked North Stands:
Gold:
Adult - £30
OAP and Young Adult - £22.50
Junior - £12
Silver:
Adult - £28
OAP and Young Adult - £20.50
Junior - £12
Bronze:
Adult - £25
OAP and Young Adult - £18.50
Junior - £10
Tickets can be bought by 2016 Members only by calling into the Ticket Office at Langtree Park or by calling 01744 455 052.
A package for all three games (Leeds v North Queensland, Wigan v Brisbane) costs £60 and can be purchased by visiting www.rugbyleaguetickets.co.uk or calling the Rugby League Ticket Hotline on 0844 856 1113.
Here's the thing. I'm not going. I have 24 hours to change my mind, but as things stand I am absolutely not going to the Saints v Roosters game. As I will be in Hull tomorrow for a family do there is little chance of me finding time to book my ticket even if I wanted to. Which I don't, and I'll tell you why.
This game is meaningless and my club, in trying to sell me a ticket for it for £30, is trying to take the piss out of me. Did you note the phrase 'prestigious World Club Series' in the email above? How exactly is it prestigious? In rugby league the teams that win the European Super League and the Australasian NRL meet every year in the World Club Challenge. The title of World Club champions is bestowed upon the winners of this game. Saints played in it last year and were roundly whipped 39-0 by the then NRL champions South Sydney Rabbitohs. That was prestigious, even if it did only serve to prove that there is a gargantuan gap in quality between the NRL and Super League at the moment. This will continue to be the case so long as the NRL salary cap is around 10 times higher than that of Super League. Several of the current England national team play their club rugby in the NRL for this very reason. All of which dilutes the quality of Super League but arguably increases the unpredictability of it. The previously cash-rich clubs can no longer just out-bid their smaller foes for the best players and so there is a more even spread of what quality there is in Super League in terms of playing talent.
Despite this obvious and still expanding chasm between the two leagues, the decision makers have seen fit to expand the World Club challenge to include the top three sides from each. Well....sort of. As before, only the two champion sides actually have anything to play for in terms of the title of World Club champions. The rest of us are expected to swallow the idea that our games matter as part of a series between the two competitions. The idea that I would support Leeds or Wigan (this year's other two representatives in the World Club series from Super League) against their NRL opposition is absurd. I hope that the North Queensland Cowboys and Brisbane Broncos run up cricket scores against those two. I wouldn't want Wigan to win a tombola and I don't much care for Leeds either. They won all three trophies on offer in Super League last season and it was unpleasant viewing for the rest of us. Why would I want to sit and watch them pick up yet more silverware on a cold night in February? The only reason I will watch these games on television is in anticipation of them taking a fearful, humiliating battering.
The other problem I have with this whole shebang is the lack of a credible qualification process. Saints did not qualify for this event and have no business being part of it. We finished fourth in Super League last season, were knocked out of the play-offs in the semi-finals and went out of the Challenge Cup at the same stage. Originally the idea was for the league winners, Grand Final winners and Challenge Cup winners to be the three Super League representatives but with Leeds scooping all three they've had to have a re-thing. Hence the presence of beaten Grand Finalists Wigan. Logic suggests that as Wigan finished second in the league the final place would go to either the third placed team or the beaten finalists in the Challenge Cup, Hull KR. But Hull KR managed to lose the Challenge Cup final to Leeds by a mortifying, arse-clenchingly embarrassing scoreline of 50-0. They were too much of a risk, so out they went. Third placed Huddersfield Giants didn't get the gig either. It has been suggested that it was offered to them and they declined, but that would seem to make little sense given that there is no fee involved for them to participate, only television revenue. Huddersfield, despite their qualities, only manage to attract an average crowd of around 5-6000 fans in Super League, and I don't think I enter controversial territory if I suggest that this may have been a prominent factor in their absence from the line-up.
I understand the need to have international club competitions like this, and applaud the attempt to expand the game in this way. But in many ways the fact that the game needs this kind of exposure to enable it to rival the Omni-present evil that is rugby union makes the way they have gone about it even more of a crime. Are we really 'showcasing' our sport by offering up a non-tournament with little competitive integrity? I've been offered the argument that we must start here if we are to expand the concept in the future but I'm not having that theory across my welcome mat, let alone in my house. Start as you mean to go on. Be bold. If you are going to have a genuine six-team World Club competition then the least you can do is ensure that every team involved in it has the opportunity to win it, and that they have qualified for it on merit and not just because they are top three in terms of fans through the turnstiles. Fifty thousand people turn up to watch Newcastle every other week, but they won't be plonked into the Champions League at the expense of the rather more modestly supported Leicester City if the foxes can somehow continue their surprising early season form in the Premier League.
So after tomorrow someone else will have the privilege of snapping up my regular seat in the North Stand for the Roosters game, provided they are willing to part with their £30 for a glorified friendly. As long as my nerve holds......
Thursday, 10 December 2015
TV Times
Until recently I still needed a Sky engineer to come and reconnect the Sky+ box to the telephone line. This despite several loud and angry attempts to arrange it which are documented elsewhere on these pages. Consequently, over the last few months I have occasionally been left relying on the actual free-to-air television schedule for entertainment. It has been quite an eye-opener, particularly on a Saturday night.
Currently, Saturday night free-to-air television must be worse than it has ever been. I used to watch Strictly, I must confess. Millennia ago, the idea of fat, ageing celebrities donning the spandex and getting ritually slaughtered by a panel of mortifyingly pompous judges was an amusing one. Now though, well into it's 451st series, the joke is falling flat. The format is tired and predictable, the narrative formulaic. Television by numbers. The judges say the same things to the wholly interchangeable slebs. The soap actors, boy/girl band singers and athletes do well (especially if they happen to be good looking) while the television presenters, politicians and ageing thespians and crooners are bounced out after a few weeks of cheap ridicule. Even Dave Arch must be getting bored by now.
Not that there is any respite on what used to be known as 'the other side'. I've never actually sat through an entire episode of X-Factor but I've seen enough of it to know not to bother. Just as watching Jeremy Vine (or equivalent middle-aged, middle-class doyen of awkward) thrusting his pelvis around stopped being funny some time around the beginning of the credit crunch (remember that?), so the spectacle of the genuinely delusional trying their hand at pop music has surely lost it's edge by now? How do these people not know that they're shit in any case? As you know, I do a bit of singing. Sometimes I even get away with it. Yet never in a thousand series of Strictly would I ever contemplate trying to pass myself off as a professional. You know very well if you're rubbish. And if you are it's not funny. It's just embarrassing. So stop laughing at the same joke and maybe then we'll be offered something approaching original and creative television on a Saturday night. It might all be justifiable if the winner could look forward to something resembling a music career. Where is Michelle McManus anyway?
Lurching back towards the Beeb I regret to report that their encore to Strictly is Dr Who. Christ's arse....this is rubbish isn't it? I can't work out if the BBC want us to take it seriously or not. The later time slot suggests that we are expected to. This isn't CBeebies. But the Doctor looks like he's about to pass into the next life at any given moment. Is this intentional? He looks critically ill in a way that even William Hartnell could never manage. In a brazened attempt to uphold the traditions of the programme the aliens and monsters remain straight out of a primary school stage production. It's as if CGI had never been invented. The result is a puerile and pitiful attempt at sci-fi that would make the creators of the original series of Star Trek blush. And this is prime time on a Saturday. How does this happen? Is it that they know there's only me who is socially inept enough to be at home channel hopping at this time on a Saturday night? Is that it?
In the end I resorted to repeats of Dave Gorman's Modern Life Is Goodish (unlike modern tv which as we have seen is shitish). It's on Dave. Dave on Dave. I've seen that particular episode, in which Dave tries to decipher how YouGov have deemed the fans of Little Mix to be more politically right wing than those of Adolf Hitler, a number of times now and it still feels more original than anything on the Saturday night schedules of the free-to-air broadcasters. Saturday Night Dross, my dad used to call it just as he made his escape to the nearest social club. That was 30 years ago and he was talking about Game For A Laugh and The Price Is Right. The really awful stuff. If anything we've regressed since then.
Of course there is a large portion of laughable shit on Sky too. I've watched three episodes of an enviably terrible drama called Blindspot on Sky. It's about a woman who turns up in a bag in the middle of Times Square in New York. You know, the sort of thing that happens every day. She doesn't know who she is. She can't remember, but she has the name of an FBI agent tattooed to her body. Aswell as a number of other tattoos that make Michael Schofield's prison map efforts look like he's allergic to ink. Every week she and the FBI argue about whether or not she should go with them to their latest assignment. She always goes, and she always beats the shit out of someone three times her size. Turns out she is an ex-navy SEAL. In the latest instalment they identified her DNA, so that should at least cut out the irritating debates about who she is over the coming weeks. More time for beating up bad guys. Dreadful. But I'll keep watching in the spirit of you X-Factor fans who apparently know that what you are watching is bullshit yet you press on regardless. You troopers. I can sort of see how that happens after a few episodes of Blindspot. I drew the line at Supergirl, however.
So apart from Dave on Dave is there anything good on television anywhere? Does anything meet with my approval? Everyone likes Homeland, don't they? After a rip-roaring start in its first two series it has chugged along pointlessly for a couple of years but seems now, in its fifth term, to be back to its best. The writers seem to have twigged that the audience is irritated by Carrie's mania but they seem unable to let it go completely. That's probably because Claire Daines is so exceptionally good at playing someone annoying, so they take her back to it from time to time. All of which makes for a bit of an inconsistent mish-mash but if you can put that aside there is much still to enjoy. (Spoiler alert) Alison Carr is a CIA mole in the very finest traditions, almost 24-esque in her indecision about which side she is on. We should have been suspicious of her from the very moment we found out that she was sleeping with Saul Berenson. There just had to be an ulterior motive for her to be shacking up with him and his frightful upside down head. Meanwhile Carrie's inevitable future squeeze Peter Quinn continues to cheat death in ever more elaborate and interesting ways. He's like a superhero with no cape. Far more interesting than that self-satisfied ideologically befuddled prat Brodie. I haven't been as glad to see the back of anyone since Thatcher resigned. And I was only 14 when that happened.
Homeland has been around for a while, having more than enough time to establish itself. The Last Panthers is still trying to find its way into the national consciousness but on the evidence so far it might just catch on. It ticks an important box for modern day television drama in that it is mostly subtitled. Strictly speaking a drama needs to be subtitled and Scandinavian to have the critics fawning over its brilliance, but setting this tale of diamond heists around mainland Europe was the next best thing. I've absolutely no idea who is who and what their motivations are despite being four episodes into the first series. This is mostly due to everything being darkly lit and everyone having the same haircut. What I do know is that some bad guys have done something wrong relating to diamonds and in the process of doing something wrong relating to diamonds they have managed to kill a small child. Samantha Morton and John Hurt are running around in pursuit while not getting on very well. If nothing else it is nice to see Hurt in good health after seeing him at Wimbledon in the summer looking ill to the point where he was hardly recognisable.
However that ends, let's hope it does so more plausibly than the mostly excellent but ultimately deflating London Spy. Now this was something the Beeb could be proud of broadcasting, for a time at least. Not a desperate celebrity nor a pompous judge in sight. It starred the currently ubiquitous Ben Wishaw as Danny, an ordinary bloke from London who just happens to be gay and one day happens upon a chance meeting with the mysterious Alex. From a starting position of butt-clenching awkwardness they eventually hit it off and begin a relationship, whereupon Alex is suddenly murdered. Over the course of this five-part series Alex turns out to be called Alistair, and Danny finds out that the name of his lover is not the only thing that he didn't really know about him. In support of Danny is his friend Scotty, a father-figure of a presence played by the usually comic but always brilliant Jim Broadbent. He's gay too, and he probably has a bit of a thing for Danny. It's all very complex and intriguing as Danny fights to convince everyone that he has nothing to do with Alistair's murder. That is until the clumsy and unlikely denoument which even the presence of Charlotte Rampling can do nothing to redeem.
London Spy was fresh and innovative, but in the absence of too much else which fits that description I find myself still plodding on with what are by now old favourites in serious danger of running their course. The Blacklist is one example of this. For how long can Red and Elizabeth's mysterious, slightly creepy relationship keep us in suspense? It seems that the answer to that lies in how many contrived scenarios involving notorious criminal masterminds can be conjured up by its writers. While some of those may grate, none of them can compare on that score to the head-banging irritant that is Agent Ressler, a man last seen trying to schmooze up to Brodie's wife in Homeland while the latter was away wrestling with the thorny issue of whether to blow himself up. Actually, he succeeded in the schmoozing, for a time. Until they all got written out of it for the greater good. But he's back here and he's schmoozing again, but this time its FBI Agent Navabi, who seconds after finding out that her brother who she believed to be dead was actually a well-connected terrorist, jumped into the sack with television's greatest predator of the emotionally vulnerable. And I thought Red was creepy....
Last on my list for now is Elementary. Goodness only knows how many series we are into now of the US drama based on English literary stalwarts Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Too many. But when you start watching something from the beginning it takes either a special kind of will power or a special kind of awfulness for me to not see it through to the end. Three series of The Following testify to this, as do a mammoth seven series of Lost, which truly was lost by the time it reached its airy-fairy, ambiguous conclusion. And that bloke is in charge of the new Star Wars movies. My apprehension about The Force Awakens is palpable. It's all a bit like making Tony Blair a sepcial envoy to the middle east. As if anyone would be that mad. What? Oh.
Back to Elementary, and Holmes is still English, but lives in New York with the American Dr Watson. She (yes, she) used to be a surgeon and is now some kind of happy-clappy life coach sent by Holmes' father to assist him with his various addictions. But Watson ditched that idea some time ago and instead has been schooled by Holmes in the art of detective work. Together they interfere in everything dug up by the NYPD and, irritatingly, the brilliant Holmes always finds the solution while the ordinary law enforcement people scratch their heads in bewilderment. The best thing about Elementary is Holmes' lack of social skills. I think they are trying to suggest that he has some form of autism or aspergers syndrome. Anything that perpetuates the myth that the disabled are actually all geniuses gets my vote. The worst thing about it is that there is no middle ground for anyone trying to play along at home and work out who the killer is each week. It's either blindingly obvious when they first appear on screen, or it's someone who hasn't been mentioned until about seven minutes before the end when it all gets rather hastily put into place.
Rather like one of my TV review pieces....
Currently, Saturday night free-to-air television must be worse than it has ever been. I used to watch Strictly, I must confess. Millennia ago, the idea of fat, ageing celebrities donning the spandex and getting ritually slaughtered by a panel of mortifyingly pompous judges was an amusing one. Now though, well into it's 451st series, the joke is falling flat. The format is tired and predictable, the narrative formulaic. Television by numbers. The judges say the same things to the wholly interchangeable slebs. The soap actors, boy/girl band singers and athletes do well (especially if they happen to be good looking) while the television presenters, politicians and ageing thespians and crooners are bounced out after a few weeks of cheap ridicule. Even Dave Arch must be getting bored by now.
Not that there is any respite on what used to be known as 'the other side'. I've never actually sat through an entire episode of X-Factor but I've seen enough of it to know not to bother. Just as watching Jeremy Vine (or equivalent middle-aged, middle-class doyen of awkward) thrusting his pelvis around stopped being funny some time around the beginning of the credit crunch (remember that?), so the spectacle of the genuinely delusional trying their hand at pop music has surely lost it's edge by now? How do these people not know that they're shit in any case? As you know, I do a bit of singing. Sometimes I even get away with it. Yet never in a thousand series of Strictly would I ever contemplate trying to pass myself off as a professional. You know very well if you're rubbish. And if you are it's not funny. It's just embarrassing. So stop laughing at the same joke and maybe then we'll be offered something approaching original and creative television on a Saturday night. It might all be justifiable if the winner could look forward to something resembling a music career. Where is Michelle McManus anyway?
Lurching back towards the Beeb I regret to report that their encore to Strictly is Dr Who. Christ's arse....this is rubbish isn't it? I can't work out if the BBC want us to take it seriously or not. The later time slot suggests that we are expected to. This isn't CBeebies. But the Doctor looks like he's about to pass into the next life at any given moment. Is this intentional? He looks critically ill in a way that even William Hartnell could never manage. In a brazened attempt to uphold the traditions of the programme the aliens and monsters remain straight out of a primary school stage production. It's as if CGI had never been invented. The result is a puerile and pitiful attempt at sci-fi that would make the creators of the original series of Star Trek blush. And this is prime time on a Saturday. How does this happen? Is it that they know there's only me who is socially inept enough to be at home channel hopping at this time on a Saturday night? Is that it?
In the end I resorted to repeats of Dave Gorman's Modern Life Is Goodish (unlike modern tv which as we have seen is shitish). It's on Dave. Dave on Dave. I've seen that particular episode, in which Dave tries to decipher how YouGov have deemed the fans of Little Mix to be more politically right wing than those of Adolf Hitler, a number of times now and it still feels more original than anything on the Saturday night schedules of the free-to-air broadcasters. Saturday Night Dross, my dad used to call it just as he made his escape to the nearest social club. That was 30 years ago and he was talking about Game For A Laugh and The Price Is Right. The really awful stuff. If anything we've regressed since then.
Of course there is a large portion of laughable shit on Sky too. I've watched three episodes of an enviably terrible drama called Blindspot on Sky. It's about a woman who turns up in a bag in the middle of Times Square in New York. You know, the sort of thing that happens every day. She doesn't know who she is. She can't remember, but she has the name of an FBI agent tattooed to her body. Aswell as a number of other tattoos that make Michael Schofield's prison map efforts look like he's allergic to ink. Every week she and the FBI argue about whether or not she should go with them to their latest assignment. She always goes, and she always beats the shit out of someone three times her size. Turns out she is an ex-navy SEAL. In the latest instalment they identified her DNA, so that should at least cut out the irritating debates about who she is over the coming weeks. More time for beating up bad guys. Dreadful. But I'll keep watching in the spirit of you X-Factor fans who apparently know that what you are watching is bullshit yet you press on regardless. You troopers. I can sort of see how that happens after a few episodes of Blindspot. I drew the line at Supergirl, however.
So apart from Dave on Dave is there anything good on television anywhere? Does anything meet with my approval? Everyone likes Homeland, don't they? After a rip-roaring start in its first two series it has chugged along pointlessly for a couple of years but seems now, in its fifth term, to be back to its best. The writers seem to have twigged that the audience is irritated by Carrie's mania but they seem unable to let it go completely. That's probably because Claire Daines is so exceptionally good at playing someone annoying, so they take her back to it from time to time. All of which makes for a bit of an inconsistent mish-mash but if you can put that aside there is much still to enjoy. (Spoiler alert) Alison Carr is a CIA mole in the very finest traditions, almost 24-esque in her indecision about which side she is on. We should have been suspicious of her from the very moment we found out that she was sleeping with Saul Berenson. There just had to be an ulterior motive for her to be shacking up with him and his frightful upside down head. Meanwhile Carrie's inevitable future squeeze Peter Quinn continues to cheat death in ever more elaborate and interesting ways. He's like a superhero with no cape. Far more interesting than that self-satisfied ideologically befuddled prat Brodie. I haven't been as glad to see the back of anyone since Thatcher resigned. And I was only 14 when that happened.
Homeland has been around for a while, having more than enough time to establish itself. The Last Panthers is still trying to find its way into the national consciousness but on the evidence so far it might just catch on. It ticks an important box for modern day television drama in that it is mostly subtitled. Strictly speaking a drama needs to be subtitled and Scandinavian to have the critics fawning over its brilliance, but setting this tale of diamond heists around mainland Europe was the next best thing. I've absolutely no idea who is who and what their motivations are despite being four episodes into the first series. This is mostly due to everything being darkly lit and everyone having the same haircut. What I do know is that some bad guys have done something wrong relating to diamonds and in the process of doing something wrong relating to diamonds they have managed to kill a small child. Samantha Morton and John Hurt are running around in pursuit while not getting on very well. If nothing else it is nice to see Hurt in good health after seeing him at Wimbledon in the summer looking ill to the point where he was hardly recognisable.
However that ends, let's hope it does so more plausibly than the mostly excellent but ultimately deflating London Spy. Now this was something the Beeb could be proud of broadcasting, for a time at least. Not a desperate celebrity nor a pompous judge in sight. It starred the currently ubiquitous Ben Wishaw as Danny, an ordinary bloke from London who just happens to be gay and one day happens upon a chance meeting with the mysterious Alex. From a starting position of butt-clenching awkwardness they eventually hit it off and begin a relationship, whereupon Alex is suddenly murdered. Over the course of this five-part series Alex turns out to be called Alistair, and Danny finds out that the name of his lover is not the only thing that he didn't really know about him. In support of Danny is his friend Scotty, a father-figure of a presence played by the usually comic but always brilliant Jim Broadbent. He's gay too, and he probably has a bit of a thing for Danny. It's all very complex and intriguing as Danny fights to convince everyone that he has nothing to do with Alistair's murder. That is until the clumsy and unlikely denoument which even the presence of Charlotte Rampling can do nothing to redeem.
London Spy was fresh and innovative, but in the absence of too much else which fits that description I find myself still plodding on with what are by now old favourites in serious danger of running their course. The Blacklist is one example of this. For how long can Red and Elizabeth's mysterious, slightly creepy relationship keep us in suspense? It seems that the answer to that lies in how many contrived scenarios involving notorious criminal masterminds can be conjured up by its writers. While some of those may grate, none of them can compare on that score to the head-banging irritant that is Agent Ressler, a man last seen trying to schmooze up to Brodie's wife in Homeland while the latter was away wrestling with the thorny issue of whether to blow himself up. Actually, he succeeded in the schmoozing, for a time. Until they all got written out of it for the greater good. But he's back here and he's schmoozing again, but this time its FBI Agent Navabi, who seconds after finding out that her brother who she believed to be dead was actually a well-connected terrorist, jumped into the sack with television's greatest predator of the emotionally vulnerable. And I thought Red was creepy....
Last on my list for now is Elementary. Goodness only knows how many series we are into now of the US drama based on English literary stalwarts Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Too many. But when you start watching something from the beginning it takes either a special kind of will power or a special kind of awfulness for me to not see it through to the end. Three series of The Following testify to this, as do a mammoth seven series of Lost, which truly was lost by the time it reached its airy-fairy, ambiguous conclusion. And that bloke is in charge of the new Star Wars movies. My apprehension about The Force Awakens is palpable. It's all a bit like making Tony Blair a sepcial envoy to the middle east. As if anyone would be that mad. What? Oh.
Back to Elementary, and Holmes is still English, but lives in New York with the American Dr Watson. She (yes, she) used to be a surgeon and is now some kind of happy-clappy life coach sent by Holmes' father to assist him with his various addictions. But Watson ditched that idea some time ago and instead has been schooled by Holmes in the art of detective work. Together they interfere in everything dug up by the NYPD and, irritatingly, the brilliant Holmes always finds the solution while the ordinary law enforcement people scratch their heads in bewilderment. The best thing about Elementary is Holmes' lack of social skills. I think they are trying to suggest that he has some form of autism or aspergers syndrome. Anything that perpetuates the myth that the disabled are actually all geniuses gets my vote. The worst thing about it is that there is no middle ground for anyone trying to play along at home and work out who the killer is each week. It's either blindingly obvious when they first appear on screen, or it's someone who hasn't been mentioned until about seven minutes before the end when it all gets rather hastily put into place.
Rather like one of my TV review pieces....
Thursday, 3 December 2015
Not In My Name
The UK is at war again. After a vote among MP's it has been decided that military action against Syria is the answer to the world's recent ills. This decision, with its inevitable loss of civilian life in that part of the world, was shamefully cheered to the rafters of the Palace Of Westminster by the MPs in favour and has been loudly backed by the usual war-fancying 'patriots' on social media and in the public eye. These of course include Prime Minister David Cameron, who outrageously suggested in public this week that anyone who opposes this action is a terrorist sympathiser.
To recap in case you have been in any world but this one these last few weeks. Almost three weeks ago a group of extremist maniacs arbitrarily murdered over 100 restaurant and theatre-goers in Paris, and also tried to blow up the Stade de France during France's international football friendly with Germany that same night. Three people died in that incident. It could have been a lot more. Now clearly this is horrific. Rightly we were angry and scared by this, and rightly we showed our solidarity with France and expressed our deepest sympathy for their losses. Or most of us did. There were those who made the somewhat sickening argument that the French would not have done the same for us, and so by that rather speculative logic we should not worry our heads about them. Fuck the French was essentially their message.
All of which makes it all the more surprising to note that now, in their call for someone or something to eradicate the terrorist group responsible, these same people are citing this attack on the French as a compelling reason for UK involvement in an aerial bombing campaign in Syria. These people who so dislike the French, use terms like 'frogs' in 2015, and who endlessly bang the drum for the UK to have nothing more to do with the EU, are nevertheless so enraged by what happened in Paris that they want someone to pay. Even if they're innocent. Syria as a nation state is no more responsible for ISIS than the USA is for the two whackos who killed 14 people in a social services centre in San Bernardino today. President Obama will not be authorising a bombing campaign on California any time soon. Nor should he.
This lust for blood might not be as baffling and frankly unpalatable to me if there was even the remotest chance that it would eliminate or even reduce the risk of terrorism in the UK and Europe. Yes it may have a significant impact on ISIS and its resources, but so too will it radicalise others who may then plot more atrocities around the world. In the city where you live, perhaps, or the beach you use on your holidays. As we have seen before with Iraq following 9-11 our miltary interventions tend to cause more problems than they solve, further destabilising the middle east and perpetuating this endless cycle. The idea that we can end terrorism by bombing Syria is berserk. The fact that it is all being sold to us by a toff twat in a suit who won't be anywhere near a war zone throughout is just stomach turning. Just as his claim that we are all in this austerity thing together is bogus, so his suggestion that 'we' must go to war to fight terrorists is similarly insulting.
So bomb whoever you like Dave (not California). You're going to do it anyway. Just don't do it in my name.
To recap in case you have been in any world but this one these last few weeks. Almost three weeks ago a group of extremist maniacs arbitrarily murdered over 100 restaurant and theatre-goers in Paris, and also tried to blow up the Stade de France during France's international football friendly with Germany that same night. Three people died in that incident. It could have been a lot more. Now clearly this is horrific. Rightly we were angry and scared by this, and rightly we showed our solidarity with France and expressed our deepest sympathy for their losses. Or most of us did. There were those who made the somewhat sickening argument that the French would not have done the same for us, and so by that rather speculative logic we should not worry our heads about them. Fuck the French was essentially their message.
All of which makes it all the more surprising to note that now, in their call for someone or something to eradicate the terrorist group responsible, these same people are citing this attack on the French as a compelling reason for UK involvement in an aerial bombing campaign in Syria. These people who so dislike the French, use terms like 'frogs' in 2015, and who endlessly bang the drum for the UK to have nothing more to do with the EU, are nevertheless so enraged by what happened in Paris that they want someone to pay. Even if they're innocent. Syria as a nation state is no more responsible for ISIS than the USA is for the two whackos who killed 14 people in a social services centre in San Bernardino today. President Obama will not be authorising a bombing campaign on California any time soon. Nor should he.
This lust for blood might not be as baffling and frankly unpalatable to me if there was even the remotest chance that it would eliminate or even reduce the risk of terrorism in the UK and Europe. Yes it may have a significant impact on ISIS and its resources, but so too will it radicalise others who may then plot more atrocities around the world. In the city where you live, perhaps, or the beach you use on your holidays. As we have seen before with Iraq following 9-11 our miltary interventions tend to cause more problems than they solve, further destabilising the middle east and perpetuating this endless cycle. The idea that we can end terrorism by bombing Syria is berserk. The fact that it is all being sold to us by a toff twat in a suit who won't be anywhere near a war zone throughout is just stomach turning. Just as his claim that we are all in this austerity thing together is bogus, so his suggestion that 'we' must go to war to fight terrorists is similarly insulting.
So bomb whoever you like Dave (not California). You're going to do it anyway. Just don't do it in my name.
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