Week 130, Clean eating, clean drinking

This Blackbird isn't bothered about any of our human based food-fads.

Happy to drink from this bucket of leaf soup.

Along with the foxes and the squirrels.

Clean eating?

Clean drinking?

"Bollocks!" they bark, yap, squeak and cheep in unison.

Animals often have a lot more sense than humans, and are rarely quite so precious.

Although I'm not going to be taking much nutritional advice from wildlife, not until after 'the event'* at least.**

* After 'the event' remain indoors.
** DO NOT THINK ABOUT 'THE EVENT' - 'the event' has already happened.

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Week 129, Compost face

It is our shared duty to compost.

It is also the duty of some of us to empty the compost bucket into the compost bin.

And on the morning of February 22nd this year that is what I was preparing to do.

That is until I saw this...

A face staring back out me out of one of the departmental compost buckets.

7:45am was not the time to face this sort of departure from routine.

I haven't been back to work since and am now on strong medication.*

* I have been to work every day since and any strong medication has been of the IPA variety.

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Week 128, Aesthete Parking Only

Our roads are becoming more filled with vehicles, delays are becoming longer, and motorists are becoming more frustrated.

Due to this increasing road congestion there is an EU proposal designed to take a radically different approach to address the problem.  Drawing on the experience of cities which have used other traffic reducing exercises - traffic reduction exercises such as determining whether a vehicle is entitled out on the road based on odd or even license plate endings or odd or even years of vehicle registration or alternate alphabetical letter license plates - the new directive aims to cut down the amount of activity on our highways.

The proposal is simple and consists of two points.  Firstly, rather than drawing on the characteristics of the vehicle the new measure bestows the entitlement based on the characteristics of the driver.  Secondly, the entitlement is one of being allowed to park the vehicle rather than drive the vehicle.  A vehicle found to be parked anywhere other than in a designated parking space or on private land, and not owned by a driver possessing the correct characteristic, will be removed and crushed.

The first characteristic revealed in the directive is that of 'aesthete'.  The characteristic will be changed frequently and regularly.  Questions have been raised about how this characteristic will be quantified, but this has already been established and can be discovered if one cares to examine the original ratification.  I've summarised some of the quantifying rules below.  

To determine whether there is entitlement due to fulfilling the criteria of 'aesthete' a panel will be assembled which consists of Turner prize judges and former Masterchef finalists.  This panel will review the lifestyle of the applicant and issue notification of parking allowance or alternatively enforcement of non-vehicular use.

That all seems pretty sensible and straightforward, who would not want to be considered a person of taste and culture and be allowed to park on that basis.

Unless I've underestimated the audience it should be obvious this is made up.

Alternatively if this was published in the Daily Express, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail or The Sun it would immediately be believed by those untroubled by the need to find out facts - I'm talking about you, brexiters.*

* These four newspaper groups are responsible for over 40 years of lies and misinformation on the subject of the EU.  These papers are all owned by billionaires, members of the elite who fund and sponsor right wing lobbying groups and organisations such as UKIP.  These people would probably paraphrase these words misattributed to Hermann Goering and say, "whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my Browning!"

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Week 127, Little boxes

What a beautiful day for not thinking.

Thinking is hard.

Thinking is tiring.

Thinking means finding out that your assumptions are wrong - generally.

So I've decided I'm going to join the herd.

To believe every half-baked idea.

And retreat to a protective box.

Hide from every challenge.

Repeat phrases devoid of substance or meaning.

Set fire to my trousers and blame someone else.*

It's the only sensible thing to do.

Become an ignorant article.

Then it's always someone else's responsibility.**

* Before taking them off.
** Trim the box hedge, prepare the box trellis, clean the box glass panes on your listed Georgian box.

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Week 126, Sound man

Sound man - Said in the manner of a Scouse wannabe Manc living on the Manchester side of the Salford and Cheetham Hill border, putting on that nasal twang that's completely inauthentic to the area.

You're twisting my melon man, etc.

Hard at work in the sound archive, fiddling with the already archaic four-track Tascam 244 Portastudio.  Probably bouncing down some backing from a jam session to give space to overdub.

At the time the Tascam seemed fully featured and with a bewildering array of controls, on reflection having used various digital audio workstations it now appears pretty basic.  However it was possible to do some pretty cool stuff if using a little ingenuity.  We fed a guitar through a vintage analogue synth to produce some very peculiar sounds, returned via the effects loop on the Tascam, and many other things which did and didn't work most of which involved the effects loop...  At no point did we attempt to recreate musical instruments using sellotape.*

Although we did what we considered to be interesting stuff the reality is that it was only really of interest to us, and it is worth considering that The Beatles recorded the Sergeant Pepper album a quarter of a century earlier using two four track recorders.  Using twice the technology, and an infinite amount more creativity, The Beatles did a pretty good job.**

* Some have tried and then bailed - Pink Floyd.
** Obviously they did an excellent job - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

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Week 125, Sleep then

How long.

Only two or three days.

A cross town escapade of shallow engagement and unsatisfactory consumption.

No cat, who would think that the difference between a serene, structured life and a perpetual lost weekend.

No responsibility, but back nonetheless.

Slide into the glassy bed, mid-morning, stagnant cold from the unoccupied flat.

Recovering from highs, lows, a washing in and out of alcohol.  And unwashed.

Hollow bones sing an astringent squeal and echo the feel of ice water forced through glacial microfractures.

Dispersed minerals and electrolyte leave a body depleted, in need of artery clogging food and sweet tea.

Teeth clenched, a distant migraine, a knot of constipation, a shattered bag of too many words.

Sleep now.

Now.

Do it.

While a lowering sky tells you an empty story.

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Week 124, Blackley, Crumpsall, Harpurhey

Blackley,* Crumpsall,** Harpurhey.***

The endless quest to tidy and dispose of the past turned up a collection of writing by Michael Bracewell.  Interleaved between returned Open University assignments and tablature harvested from old guitar magazines was a photocopy of some pages from The City Life Book of Manchester Short Stories published in 1999.

The start of the story at the top of the pile was missing but it is about adolescent boys and the dubious activities they engage in.  It mentions Boggart Hole Clough, a large area of parkland which a friend of mine lived near to in Blackley, and some other places familiar to me from my childhood.  Me and my friend once attempted to stay in the park all night, demonstrating a spirit of adventure and lack of fear of the boggart - we each claimed to be staying at the other's house to enable this daring exploit.

We made it until about four in the morning by which time it had become too cold to stay out any longer without ending up deceased or learning a strong lesson about frostbite.  We retreated to a small Wendy house in the garden of my friend's mother's neighbour's house.  This was the garden of the friendly neighborhood Glaswegian armed robber and drug dealer.

It was still bloody freezing.  

I then completely failed to return home at a reasonable time and the subterfuge was discovered.

Useless.  Adolescent boys huh?

My friend and his half brothers will all either be dead or in prison now.  One at least is the latter.  Those weren't the only options on offer but, given the closest adult role models available and the examples they set, at least they were achievable.

Not an advert for growing up there.

* Blackley: Blake as in William, Lee (almost) as in Laurie.
** Crumpsall: Crump as in minor car incident, Saul (almost) as in the first king of Israel and Judah according to the Hebrew Bible.
*** Harpurhey: Harper as in Lee, Hay as in David, the retiring boxer.

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