petercampbell

The problem with chemicals is that they really fuck with your head. That's the problem, or maybe the advantage, depending on your circumstance and point of view.

Douglas had one of really sore phases last night and, bombed up with painkillers, attempted at one point to bite my thigh.

Yes, he was really, really out of it.

This wasn't as bad as the time a few years back when he attempted to run naked down the street wearing only a tammy hat and catch the bus to Edinburgh (this was at one in the morning, in winter. Think rationally Douglas, are you going to stand shivering in the nuddy, in the snow, at the bus stop for eight hours? Oh, mind you, if you'd been rational you wouldn't have attempted to run down the street bare scuddy in the first place) That time I had to wrestle him down to the ground and hold him pinned there for a good two hours. The cause? He'd been on strong antibiotics for a foot infection and had decided, fatally, to have a glass of wine. There's a good reason why they tell you not to mix antibiotics with alcohol.

Yes it's amusing, it's a good story. But it wasn't amusing at the time.

Those are the legal drugs. Then there are the illegal ones.

One of our friends was a heavy dope smoker. Well, that and ecstasy and speed. He was bright and creative and sharp and funny. He'd always suffered from occasional depression was, I think, probably bioplar. One day he cracked and smashed up the house he lived in with his family. He disappeared from view, institutionalised, and when he emerged a few months later he had the spaced, sluggish expression of the heavily medicated. Speaking to him, you'd get time-delay responses, it was if something had come loose in his head and was rattling around, trying to find its correct location. They'd replaced the illegal drugs with legal ones, that was what was wrong.

He's moved away now. Occasionally I'll get an email from him that invariably reads something like this: "Hi, man. How are you man? Sorry haven't been in touch. Still having problems. Love you man." That's been five years now. It reminds me of Jim Carroll's "People Who Died", except the death isn't literal, it's on an emotional, intellectual level.

I never cared for illegal drugs much. Certainly not cannabis, which just made you spaced and lethargic and which always made me vomit in any case. Speed made you hyper, and brittle, and possessed of an endless energy, but to anyone watching it was like watching up a cartoon on fast-forward, with the soundtrack in Japanese. I did like hallucinogens though, with their eroding of the senses' boundaries. I even liked the flashbacks, which invariably seemed to be triggered by trees' dappled shadows, or the sodium glow of streetlights. One evening I became one with a rocking chair. It was interesting. Hell, it was even profound, in a rocking chair-ish sort of way.

My last fling was with ecstasy. I attended my first and last all-night rave, and danced so hard that both my big toenails blackened and fell off a few days later.

I was in my late thirties at that point, and it was time to call it quits. It's like alcohol. If you're twenty, and you're drunk, then you're pushing your bodies boundaries, you're using it to heighten and mask all sorts of emerging emotional realisations. When you're fifty though, you're just a sad old lush.

These days my only vices are tobacco, and caffeine. The latter's apparently quite good for you (prevents Altzheimers, is the latest research). And we all know about the dangers of the former. The alternative though is to spend life like Dunbar in Catch-22, prolonging boredom so that the days drag and life seems longer. Everything in moderation, including moderation, to paraphrase Horace Porter.

Via inbhirnis (I'd link to his profile, but the option appears to have temporarily disppeared from LJ):

For followers of Mad Men, here's your chance to become a character from the series: http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/madmenyourself/








The end result's not a bad likeness, though it does make me look about 20 years younger (I won't complain about that however)

It was the anniversary of our civil partnership yesterday: that's three years now. It's frightening how quickly the time has gone.

When we'd originally mooted the civil partnership idea, the idea had been to go somewhere further down south, get the most basic of ceremonies, and then return to Thurso as though nothing had happened. This was at the time when civil partnerships hadn't yet been made law, and we had horrible visions of being the headline news on our local paper (last weeks front page headline of "Handrail being installed at unused swimming pool" tells you how strapped they are for news sometimes). Thurso's a small town, and small events can make big waves in a place like this.

In the event, we weren't the first: that honour went to an older couple from the Mey area. I believe that they went in to the registrar's office, had the deed done, went to one of the local hotels for a cup of coffee, and then went home again. It was all very low-key, and Thurso didn't crumble to its foundations in shock.
Reassured, we changed our plans. Also, people wanted to come to the event. Many, many people. I imagine the novelty factor was an attraction if nothing else. Like most weddings, the plans began to spiral.

Working on the theory that if something's worth doing, it's worth doing properly, we eventually settled for around 50 people at the actual ceremony, and around 200 guests at the dance afterwards. We also wanted something that was as close to a traditional wedding ceremony as possible, resisting suggestions made by friends to be piped in to the airs of Dancing Queen (amusing though that would have been) or to have a Grecian themed wedding cake.

Guest lists, invitations, seating plans: I'm sure many of you know the routine. It takes over your life. Works falls by the wayside, social life becomes nonexistent. It's a monomania.

There was a real sense of excitement around the occasion, not only for ourselves and our friends, but in the town itself. We were the talk of the hairdressers, I believe, which is always a good indicator.

Two weeks before the ceremony, disaster struck: Douglas bashed his head against the beam at the bottom of the stairs, and shattered three of the vertebrae in his neck. He was hospitalised and then helicoptered off to Inverness for examination. At work, everyone was on standby, ready to cancel everything on my say-so. It's a long story (and believe me, these were long days) but he was eventually released, pending surgery, a week later. He's been quite badly debilitated by that accident, so the future that's we've walked into is quite different from the one we imagined.

Things went ahead as planned though. One good thing to come out of the accident was that all trace of nervousness had gone - something like that puts things into perspective.

The ceremony was in the conservatory area of the Weigh Inn, a popular choice for local weddings. It has fantastic views over to Orkney, and they also throw in an overnight stay in the bridal suite (with jacuzzi) which was the clincher. Douglas had hired a rather nifty 1947 Avlis car to take us to the ceremony, and we were piped in by one of our friends (the music was his choice: Marie's Wedding - a bit of an in-joke. Think about it). Our witnesses did a couple of readings - from Winnie the Pooh and Richard Bach, the vows were made and the register signed. An unexpected bonus was that the registrar performing the ceremony was an old ex work-colleague of mine, which gave the occasion a personal touch it may not have had otherwise.

After, there was the usual meet and greet, and photographs were taken. There was a meal. Speeches were given, toasts made.

There was a near disaster when pillars on the wedding cake suffered from subsidence and the whole thing nearly collapsed (it was apparently held up by a ball point pen - quick thinking on the hotel manager's part), and one of the guests made an arse of himself by attempting to get into the pants of virtually every male guest there, but those are the sort of things that give spice to the occasion - and make good stories afterwards.

Finally there was the dance. It was packed, the music was cheesy, and everyone agreed afterwards that it was one of the best nights they'd ever been to. I think lots of things conspired to make it happen that way - the fact that people were already on a high from various Children in Need events that had been taken place earlier in the day. The uncertainty of whether our civil partnership was going to be going ahead at all. The fact that it was the first large-scale civil partnership event in the area. The general good-will shown by everbody to the occasion.

Yeah, it was a special day. I remember remarkably little about the whole occasion, apart from being ecstatically happy and thoroughly exhausted for a good few days afterwards: thank goodness for photographs to jog the memory.

Question one: What's the names of the bird that wakes me up at five o clock every morning? It sounds like a cross between a donkey braying and a baby crying. Whatever it is, I may be putting my vegetarian principles aside to turn it into unknown-bird pie.

Question two: What can we buy for a lesbian couple for Christmas? It's their first Christmas together, though for various reasons they're not living together. We want to give them something they can keep (the first Christmas being a special occasion and all that) but the fact that they're not living together makes this a tad difficult. Any (clean!) suggestions gratefully received.

We went to an internment of ashes today, for the mother of one of our friends. At our friend's request Douglas was carrying out the service (he was a lay minister for many years, until he decided enough was enough) while I was there more for moral support, both for our friends but also for Douglas who was, frankly, cacking his pants at the prospects of performing a service after such a long time.

There are two types of funeral goers. Some people are almost professional funeral attendees, willing to shed a tear (and also
the post-service cup of tea and sandwich) for people that they barely even knew. Others avoid them at all costs, because they're cold, uncomfortable reminders of our own mortality. I'm firmly in the latter camp.

When you're young, you're invulnerable. By the time middle-age approaches, aches and pains seem like dire premonitions. Lines appear to remind you that youth really isn't an option any longer. Yes, those are white hairs that are starting to appear
around the temples. From here on in, the downhill slope really can't be dismissed as something distant on the horizon.

Yes, it's a losing battle. I always think of that great unintentional double-entendre of John Wayne's: "I've licked the big C once, and I'll lick it again"

This one was unavoidable though. We dressed in out suits, put on our black ties, and polished our shoes. Our friends drove us
through to the cemetery under progressively grey skies. It started to rain. By the time we arrived, a full scale gale was blowing, the rain was torrential, turning intermittently to hail. I don't have much recollection of the service apart from the fact that Douglas carried it out admirably, and that I watched with horrid fascination as the rain channeled down in a groove in his trousers down into his shoes. By the time it was finished we were all thoroughly jittered, with the hard pain that comes when the trigeminal nerve complains about being exposed to such pitiless conditions. The congregation scattered quickly, while we retreated to the car and I hauled out the hankies I'd brought to dry off our frozen, numbed faces.

Afterwards there was a meal. We joked about the most inappropriate songs that could be played at funerals: the big, stompy, camp whirl that is Burn Baby Burn) Disco Inferno. In the same vein would be Fire by Arthur Brown: the coffin bearers could wear those little burning halos with accompanying proto-Alice Cooper makeup. Or Christina's brittle, hilariously world-weary version of Is That All There Is? We made crude, barely double-entendres. We ate as though we didn't know when our next meal would be coming. Douglas got a little drunk (on one one glass on gin - the welcome or unwelcome effect of the painkillers he's on, depending upon your perspective)

Then it was over. We went home, turned the heating up full, curled up and slept, exhausted, sated, glad it was finished.

There's a fusillade of fireworks in the sky, more than there have been for years. This may not be entirely unconnected with the fact that this is the first time I can remember that the 5th of November hasn't also been accompanied by fearsome gales and torrential rain.

Our cats are most displeased, and have taken refuge under various items of furniture. There's the smell of cordite wafting indoors.

This must be one of the few celebratory days that we have that isn't built on the litter of older, pagan rituals. Perhaps that's why I've never had much time for it, even as a child. Or maybe it's the Scottish/English dichotomy - there's the sneaky suspicion that we'd have cheered on while the Houses of Parliament exploded in a display of pyrotechnics, even though it was a king of (partial) Scottish descent on the throne. There's long been the suspicion of course that the whole affair was turned into a brilliant PR exercise by James I, and in that case it must be one of the most successful PR exercises in history, which always favours the victors.

The strength of Guy Fawkes is in the image - those features that have so often been transformed into mass-produced masks, the concept of a plot so anarchical that it could have transformed our way of life forever. If nothing else, think of a life without the omnipresence of the King James Bible, that great contradiction that came from the life of a man who was gay, intensely superstitious and hugely profligate in his lifestyle.

These days you suspect that people's sympathy lie as much with Guy Fawkes as those he plotted against, even though it's his effigy that's hoisted on top of bonfires. Or maybe it's turned into an empty ritual, where people enjoy the noise and light, the camaraderie of being gathered around the heat of fire, while the event that the day celebrates is long forgotten, a template that's long lost its meaning.

I like the idea of Halloween, the concept that there's this thin film that separates the real and unreal, when things that only exist in your imagination might concievably take concrete form.

As a child, it was a festival which hadn't been Americanised (or commercialised) to the degree to which it has been today. We'd make lanterns out of turnips, and blacken our faces, or wear moulded, cuttingly sharp masks. We'd dress up in our parent's clothing or (every child's last resort) drape ourselves in sheets. We'd go guising from door to door, and sing a song, or recite a poem, and be rewarded with a handful of tooth-breakingly hard penny sweets. Either those or monkey nuts, which I always hated. I like that version of Halloween still, harking back as it does to the as it does to the festival's origins.

At the night's end we'd sit and gorge ourselves on the sugary feast, and feel thoroughly sick the whole day afterwards.

Things are a little different now. It's a day that's celebrated as much by adults as children. There are halloween decorations in houses, and elaborate Halloween displays in shop windows. In subtle cultural appropriation, turnips have been replaced by pumpkins, which appear on sale a good month before they're needed. Now the practice of going from door to door is called not guising but trick or treating. The children are accompanied by an adult, in a show of either caution or paranoia, depending upon your viewpoint. For adults, it's the opportunity to dress up in silly, sexy costumes and go to parties which disgorge their drunken participants onto the street at five in the morning. It's a day both more popular and less subtle than it was.

Yes, I like the idea of Halloween. I like the echoes that there are of earlier times. I like the celebration of the unknown, and of fear. I like the expectation of colder days drawing in. I like the whole mythology that's built itself around the day, emerging in books and films.

I like the idea. The reality was a sole visit by two expectant witches who timidly tapped on our door. We'd the curtains drawn and the lights tuned low, and ignored them. After a little while they went away empty handed to try their luck at our neighbours houses (also darkened,curtains drawn) before disappearing down the street, looking a little lost, swinging their almost-empty carrier bags with a few shop-bought treats hanging disappointingly at the bottom.

Last night I dreamed about Maslow's hierarchyof needs and also the flight/fight theory. Don't ask me why. Perhaps after a certain age these sort of things replace the recurrent anxiety dreams of being stuck on perilously high precipices, being swamped by tidal waves and lust-filled fantasies filled with writhing, naked flesh.

The hierarchy of needs has been criticised, I know, but it seems an eminently sensible theory. I've never been quite so convinced about the flight/fight theory. I reminds me of a course I was on, years ago. I was given the scenario of being a caveman who stumbles into a cave containing a sabre tooth tiger. What would I do? asked the instructor. "I'd be frozen to the spot", I said (quite truthfully). "And then what would you do?" said he, obviously trying to urge me on to the flight/fight scenario. "Ummm. then I'd probably shit myself."

Which just ruined his entire class, really.

*

The recession has claimed another victim up here, in the form or our cinema-cum-bar-cum-bowling alley. Not that this was a great surprise, as it was one of those things that everyone agreed from the outset that it was a really good idea, but few people ever actually visited. Still, it does feel as the town is being slowly chipped away, bit by bit, until all that's going to be left are charity shops and supermarkets. Consequently, our ritual Saturday trip around the town is becoming increasingly truncated. This is the first recession that, economically, the area has really felt: previously there's always been the guaranteed income from Dounreay, the nuclear power station that's been up here since the 1950s. Now it's gradually being dismantled, and the jobs are going with it. Everyone's hopes these days are pinned on the prospect of wave and wind generated power, both in abundance in this particular area. We'll see, but it does feel as though the area's running out of time, to a degree.

*

Ian Rankin's written a graphic novel, Dark Entries. I haven't read any of Rankin's novels, but curiosity drew me to have a look at this effort. It's...mediocre really, a supernatural parody of Big Brother that slightly misses the mark (Charlie Brooker did it so much better in his televisual series Dead Set). There are some amusingly cynical touches, but the general impression is that Rankin is unsure of the tone he's trying to set, and also doesn't fully understand the medium (there are potted summaries along the way, which may be necessary in his convoluted detective novels, but hardly in the graphic novel medium which can generally be read much more rapidly). It's not the worst attempt by a mainstream novelist to produce a graphic novel (that award must go a stupendously awful effort from the pen of Doris Lessing in the late mid-nineties) but I wouldn't be tempted to hunt it out either.

Still it served a distraction from the biography/autobiography kick that I'm on at the moment:  Ballard's Miracles of Life (illuminating, but sketchy, partially, I suspect, due to the fact that he was terminally ill when it was being written; On Some Faraway Beach, a vast and entertaining biography of Brian Eno that is worth reading if only to marvel at Eno's apparently unquenchable sex drive; and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Living to Tell the Tale, which I've only started reading, but I'm enjoying hugely. Marquez is one of my literary idols, especially his dense, convoluted works prior to Love in the Time of Cholera. Still to come: Ted Hughes' Collected Letters and Beautiful Dark, an encyclopedia-thick biography of David Lynch. By the time I've worked my way through all of those, I'll be glad to get back to reading fiction again.

*

Still no sgn of kittens from our now unfeasably-large pregnant pussy, despite this being officially being the big day. Lots of bum licking though, and the beasties are visibly roiling around her belly, so it can't be much longer now. It's quite exciting, really, at least when measured by the low levels of excitement that our sedate lives generate. I'll keep you all posted (as though you care in the slightest...)

It's nearly November. It's blowing a gale outside and raining hard enough to create minor floods on our roads. It's bleddy well freezing.

And I have hey fever??

I mean, WTF is going on here??

Would you kick a man when he's down?

I would, if that man was embodied in the form of the Daily Mail.

You’ve probably heard about this from a number of sources, but just in case you haven’t, here's the story so far:

The Daily Mail publishes a story after the death of Stephen Gately which mixes scurrilous rumour and homphobia in equal measure. You can read the story here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1220756/A-strange-lonely-troubling-death--.html

In the Guardian newspaper, Charlie Brooker publishes a scathing condemnation of said story, which you can read here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/16/stephen-gately-jan-moir

Twitter and Facebook campaigns are organised, which result in over 25 000 complaints made to the press commission. Their inffective response is to say that if the parties concerned don’t want to complain directly, “the PCC will in any case write to the Daily Mail for its response to the more general complaints from the public before considering whether there are any issues under the Code to pursue”.

Pretty feeble, when you think about it.

The story's actually fairly standard, hateful Daily mail fare: unless you're white, middle-class, living in the home counties and politically inclined to lick the Conservative party's quivering rectum, then you're on their hit list.

I think that the hope is that once Gately's death vanishes from the news, then the complaints will vanish with it.

To prevent this happening, invest 15 minutes to your time to complain to the press commission. http://www.pcc.org.uk/. Complain under sections  1 (accuracy), 5 (intrusion into grief or shock) and 12 (discrimination)

 Ideally what we'll get out of this is:

 1) Jan Moir and her editor's scalps.

 2) The withdrawal of the story

 3) A public apology both online, and in the print newspaper

 4) Compensation paid to a charity of the injured parties' choice

 5) Less willingness on the Mail's part to indulge in such hateful articles in the future

 Realistically the best we can probably hope for is 2) and 3) though we can hope.

And if you REALLY want to hurt the Daily Mail, complain to the companies whose products are advertised alongside the story. Demand that they withdraw their advertising support, or at the very least, move their advertisments to another section online, so that they're not associated with the story directly. A number of companies, such as Marks and Spenser, have already done this.

 It'll only take 15 minutes, and it's fifteen minutes well spent.

 

I'm back. Or actually, I've never been away but I fancied a break from the nightly blogging ritual.

I wish I could say that I've used the time to undertake a number of unique, exciting experiences, but in reality I've been sitting on my arse and working my way through a backlog of books, listening to music and staring mindlessly out of the window to watch the weather which has switched from summer to winter, as distinctly as if someone had thrown a switch. I like this time of year. It encourages introspection, and there's a cosiness in being curled up inside, warm, while the world outside chitters and shivers, and vegetation denudes itself in the space of a few days.

For those of you who voted yes in the Is She or Isn’t She poll, you were right. We now have a thoroughly pregnant pussy, waddling and mewing her way to impending motherhood. Douglas has built an intended refuge for her which he's emblazoned with the sign "St Kitts Maternity Hospital" and contrary to expectations she has been spending time in there, sticking her grey furred nose out occasionally to regard us with a blissfully affectionate expression. She'll still end up having her kittens under the bed or somesuch, mind you.

I've also (and how sad is this?) completed my Christmas shopping. A few nights investment browsing the internet avoids the stress of shops and indecision and inflated prices that come later on the year. Yes, I know that you really don’t want to be reminded of Christmas and that you, like me, look at the array of Christmas goods in the shops stacked alongside the Halloween decorations with something akin to horror, But I’m free of it. I can watch everyone else dashing around with the panic of bluebottles that have just discovered that the tasty morsel they ingested was in fact leftover double-strength phal, and sit back and chuckle my most  fiendish chuckle. I will, in fact, be reminding you of this on a regular basis between now and December. Take heed.

Now I’m off to catch up on a fortnight’s worth of friends’ entries, which will probably take a few days.  Be patent with me, I’ll get there eventually.

 

Poll #1461186 Is she or isn't she?
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6

Our cat is acting strangely, ever since she went on heat last month. She's both affectionate, and withdrawn. Her tummy seems a bit tender, and maybe a bit fuller than usual. She's sleeping more. She's eating (and shitting) for Britain, and letting off the most horrendous farts. So...are we about to be grandparents? Is she, in Douglas' parlance, kittling? Or is it something else?

At Christmas time as a child, when there was the excitement of opening your presents, there was always the guarantee that somewhere in there would be a Broons or Our Wullie annual.

Yes, while in the US, children thrilled to men and women in spandex, in the UK we had more pedestrian tastes. Our comics were filled with rebellious schoolchildren and anthropomorphisised animals (or, if you a girl, with tales of orphaned schoolchildren with strict and sadistic governesses).

Most of these were published by DC Thompson, a conservative, Dundee-based family-run business. One of their publications was the fantastically twee Sunday Post newspaper, which published a comic strip section in which Oor Wullie and The Broons would appear. I never cared much for Oor Wullie, which was the adventures of a young, mischievous boy, I always loved the Broons though, a large, typically Scottish familY who lived in a tenement flat in the fictional town of Auchentogle. Each year, there would be an annual collection of the newspaper strips, collecting either Oor Wullie or the Broons.

Both of these strips were drawn by Dudley D watkins, whose style was unmistakable. There's a strong argument that he, along with Leo Baxendale (his opposite in both style, and in politics) defined  how we perceive that era of British comics. Not that I understood that at the time.

In retrospect, they stories followed a fairly obvious pattern, often based around the generation gap, or special occasions going badly awry, or, the classic example, the one where the The Bairn (she never had a name, just The Bairn) misheard a conversation about her grandpaw and told the family. The whole family would become alarmed, traipse over to granpaw's house, and burst out laughing when they discovered the source of the misunderstanding.

(Viz, the the anarchic inheritor of the British comic tradition, once mercilessly parodied this formula. In their version the bairn overhears grandpaw saying he's going to have a fight. She tells the family, who all run over to his house, only to find him preparing to have a shite)

Dudley D watkins died in the late 60s, although the Sunday Post reprinted his strips for years after that. When they brought in a new artist, who appeared to have all the skills of a paraplegic chimpanzee drawing with its toes, I lost interest.

The annuals still appear each year, but now there's been a new addition to the market - hardcover books reprinting the Dudley D Watkins strips. These are firmly aimed at the adult, nostalgia market. And they've succeeded: each year, I've bought and read these books. It's a cosy, comforting feeling, curled up on the couch, reliving memories. It's not just  the memory of reading these strips in childhood, it's remembering the life we lived back then: a time when you'd still see rag and bone men in the street, and clothes would be boiled in a pot and wrung through a mangle, and some families still hauled out a large tin tub to bathe in. Yes, it's heavily romanticised, but at its heart it's a pretty accurate depiction of those years.

Here's typical example of a Broons strip:

Last of the India entries:

http://travelmemories.livejournal.com/7953.html

Concentrating on the travel enties for a few days: here's another

http://travelmemories.livejournal.com/7640.html

Call training at work on the new voice recording system. I usually try and make up stupid, outlandish names for customers, so that it keeps trainees at least semi-interested. Today's customer names:

Narleen Glittersnarl
Nobbie Wheeliebin
Hubert Masticate
Rastus Dangleberry
Gretchen Wimple
Magenta Sputum
Rhonda Fester
Pepper Lederhosen
Rasputin Donglesnitch
Candy Periwinkle
Fletcher Ringpull

*thinks* These posts really are getting more and more facile, aren't they?

...but hey, the postage is free so that's an incentive to rush out and buy a copy, isn't it?