Sick!

I AM ILL, RUN-DOWN, DEPRESSED... my head spinning, I can hardly face getting out of bed. And there I was yesterday ranting about the greatness of Maggie Thatcher. Perhaps I have finally cracked. May I say in mitigation: I only fessed up to having thought HER marvellous. Not her policies. I am that entity political parties value the most: the floating voter (or non-voter ~ I don't bother any more). My beliefs occupy a centre-ground covered by all three major parties: Liberal, Labour, Conservative ~ so I could vote for any one of them. When I did vote I tended to cast protest votes for the Greens because I think it would be nice if we still had trees etc in the future. Most of their policies, in actual fact, I disagree with... If we'd only had Monster Raving Loony or Whiplash candidates in my bourgeois boroughs I'd have cast my Xs there.

Well as I said I am temporarily indisposed. It is not even a common cold, just a cobwebby smoker's throat. And I feel ill all the time. Depressed all the time. Despair has crashed all over me in a breaking tsunami.

For months now I have had the itch to put pen to paper and scribble out a pageturning record-breaking international bestselling novel. I had the theme (nothing at all to do with drugs) and a sketchy outline of a story but hadn't resolved how to tell it (nor indeed how exactly it ended). As I did say before (convincing myself more than preaching to you) I know what works for me as a writer: that is I like to know where I'm going. I plan out the entire plot as a sketchy list in my head. If I do write it down, it would occupy one or two sides of A4. I always know where I'm going at least three chapters in advance in some detail. The one I'm working on I plan out shopping-list style almost paragraph by paragraph. This is my "mould". I pour in the words ~ these come usually fairly easy. It's not knowing what to say that gets me stuck. And page by page a book is born...

The opening I sketched out last year (and it was a rushed sketch ~ it never engaged me, my heart was never in it) I have dumped and started again. I've only done maybe three printed pages (at most) but it's a start. This time I feel the magic. I know how the story should be told. This at least gives some hope for the future.

Now they do they "feed a cold; starve a fever" and being as my malady is more like a common cold I've indulged in this advice enthusiastically nibbling my way through the chavtastic new ranges at Iceland. "Chav" is a relatively new word in this country and means something like "white trash". Yesterday I had roast beef dinner for £1.75. The kind of platter you might expect from a pretty bargainacious pub with industrially crisped roast potatoes and thin-sliced meat. Not bad: though a rugby-player could easily have eaten two.

Now I'd better go. I'm too exhausted from my literary efforts. Last night I did 2 entire paragraphs! Yes! More than enough to fill the back of a fag packet. Talking of fags I've only had one today so my body's still in semi nicotine depletion. Plus hot sweet tea is calling me, along with the vulgar delights of morning TV. Righty-ho I must dash. Take care everyone.

While I'm on a fond nostalgia tip, here's two "songs" from my formative years I still find entertaining.

THE SHAMEN: EBENEEZER GOODE
This shameful drug song topped the charts in 1991 and believe it or not this is the best quality video I could get...



THE KLF FT TAMMY WYNETTE: JUSTIFIED AND ANCIENT
... "all bound for mu-mu-land..." ~ think that's where I'm going

Two Ladies in my Life

YESTERDAY I was catching up on lost sleep and, when the time came to post it was already too late. So here I am tomorrow morning!

What I did start to doodle on a piece of paper was some of the story of my life which began, as far as my public consciousness was concerned, with the Queen's Silver Jubilee in the summer of 1977 when I was 5.

I don't remember the street parties (though surely we had them) but I do remember the silver commemorative double decker bus I kept in near-mint condition. My brother (younger by 2 years) bashed his one up!

But I remember as a 5 year-old seizing on this anniversary year and wondering what and where I would be when the next royal jubilee came round ~ this being the Golden Jubilee in 2002 when I would be 30 years old. That 21st century date coupled to such a milestone age seemed impossibly futuristic.

When the biggest day came six years ago I was on the street begging money for my gear. It passed me by in such a haze I could barely remark on it, for it made almost no impression on my inner consciousness.

Had I been able to feel anything I suppose I would have wept for all the opportunities missed, the promise lost ... but I was far too lost then to indulge in tears.

The next woman to dent my public consciousness was Margaret Thatcher. She came into power in 1979 when I was 7 and was thus the first Prime Minister I remember. And she stayed so very long, till I was 19 that when she was eventually shoved out of office by snakes in her own Conservative ("Tory") party, I felt vaguely frightened. She was the only Prime Minister I had ever known.

How I loved Mrs Thatcher as she reigned over us! Before her appearance Britain had been a dusty, sluggish grey place marked by terminal decline (hey I'm nearly quoting her memoirs...) What Britain needed, so she believed, was a good kick up the backside. Get rid of the unions' stranglehold over British industry by eliminating practices like public ballots by show of hands. In the future only "proper" secret ballots into the box or by post would be allowed. Thatcher struck a crushing blow against union dominance when she smashed the longstanding miners' strike over pit closures. Unprofitable mines ought to be dispensed with. And so they were.

For all her faults, Mrs Thatcher did "get Britain working" again. And she made this country a businesslike place to be.

She started an international trend by privatizing national utilities: telephones, oil and gas, water, electricity and railways. Looking back I see this as national theft. Of course it's one of the most classic cons in the book to steal something off somebody and hoodwink him into buying it back and that's what she did with all her share offers. With the possible exception of telecommunications, there isn't real competition and choice in any of these businesses. Privatized electricity does not mean competing companies offering to wire your house. It just means they buy huge bulk blocks of the national supply and offer to sell dribs of electricity on to you cheaper (hopefully) than the competitors. This is a nonsense. Why not sell straight to US the public at the discount wholesale rate ~ THAT would be true democracy.

The great flaw in Thatcher's policy, which DID get a revived, modernized Britain moving again was that she seemed to view everything in the model of a business. Make a profit out of something and it's inherently worthwhile. But anything that just costs money is a "loss" and should be eliminated.

If she'd had her way, Thatcher would have got rid of the BBC ~ one of the jewels in our cultural crown. I think she was at heart a republican. The talk was always of how insufferable the Queen found her and "who does she think she is?"!

Now before Gledwood gets too boringly political here's some video entertainment from the magic era when my political sensibilities burst into life:



THATCHER UND DIE DEUTSCHEN

THIS IS TYPICAL entertainment from the best policial TV show of the 1980s: SPITTING IMAGE. See how lifelike those dummies are...




THE POLITICAL ASSASSINATION OF MARGARET THATCHER