When you travel to the USA, it used to be that you filled out what they called a ‘Visa Waiver’ green form, and, assuming everything was OK, you were granted what I thought was a very generous 90-day stay anywhere in the country visa-free.

Not only that, but if you left the country, you didn’t have to be away from there for too long before you were allowed back in for a further 90 days.  Indeed, my dear wife and I travelled to the USA in October 2006, stayed there for around 60 days, including four days in Hawaii, and then moved on to travel to Australia and New Zealand for about seven weeks, before returning to the USA for 90 more days.  We returned to the UK, via a stopover in New York, in April 2007.

In February of this year, 2018, we were fortunate enough to be asked to return to California to take part in a symposium on film music at Long Beach University.  We made all the preparations for the trip, but we discovered that the USA’s Visa Waiver program does not involve little green forms anymore, but a huge online form written and operated by ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization).  They want to know practically your entire life history before they let you into their country.

Now, whether you believe that 9/11 was an inside job or not, there’s no doubting the fact that America was caught off-guard by the events of that awful day in 2001.  At least, that is the impression they want to give you.

Since this post is not intended to be about any of the conspiracy theories, I’ll put all that aside for the time being.  Instead, I just want to focus on the event’s effect on the American authorities’ paranoia about who they let in.

They decided that the terrorists should win, and, instead of remaining the Land of the Free, the USA would use it as an excuse to stop anyone and everyone entering the country freely, for whatever reason, and make them jump through fiery hoops before allowing them to continue on their journey.  Remember, the USA was built on immigration, the only true natives being the Native Americans who were displaced in the first instance.  Imagine them holding every immigrant to account for the treatment they received during the 17th and 18th Centuries.

My wife and I took a second trip to the USA in March 2008, and this time we decided we would use the full 90 days allowed to us.  At that time they still used green forms, and on the form I wrote that I had been denied a visa on our first trip, which they duly collected when we arrived at Los Angeles International Airport.

We were hustled into a room with about twenty others – including pensioners – and left there, without any word of explanation whatsoever.  I was already in a wheelchair by then, having received preferential treatment on the plane because it was Air France’s inaugural trip from London to Los Angeles, and the Chairman or CEO of the company was on the flight.  He had helped me find a wheelchair in London.  But, after we departed the plane, tried to get through customs and then silently herded into this room, there was nothing Air France could do anymore.

There were about four, maybe six, TSA agents wandering around, doing whatever it is they do, and generally making a big deal out of ignoring us.  I always say you can pretty much try and insult me with whatever name you like, and it won’t bother me so much as if you ignore me.  I don’t like that; I don’t care who you are.

Something like three hours passed by without one word from these clowns about why we were there, and what was going to happen to us.  I was desperate for my medication; California is eight hours behind the UK and because of that, we had a 32-hour day that day, and because of that, I needed at least one lot of pain medication extra to my normal dose.  But my medication was locked up in my baggage which, for whatever reason, was not with me.  I was getting more and more frustrated.

After about four hours or so, I was extremely agitated and making something of a scene which my dear wife was doing all she could to calm.  The scene suddenly stepped up a gear when I threw an empty water bottle at a TSA agent who refused once again to give me any sort of an explanation regarding our situation.

Before I could blink, I was surrounded by four more agents who had their hands placed above their holsters; ready, just ready, to pull their guns out and discharge their weapons on a suspected disabled terrorist with a small puppet called Liam.

Eventually, at around 1 am local time, we were taken by some kindly agents who had recently changed shifts, taken through the customs procedure and eventually allowed in.  We were told, however, that flights home had already been reserved for us and it would have taken only one more cross word from me for those reservations to turn into bookings.

Oh, and the reason we were denied a visa in the first place?  Because we did not own property in the UK and they could not guarantee that we would return.  That was it.  That was the reason for all the trouble described above.  And even then, when we travelled to the US Embassy (the old one now) in London’s Mayfair, the visa application process ended without explanation, just a form slapped on the table, after which the agent walked off.

So, all of that occurred when we were still using the green forms, what would it be like today?  We filled the online ESTA forms, one each for the two of us, with some trepidation.  As I recall it, it took several days to complete.  But one question stuck out as possibly The Most Stupid Question Ever Asked on Any Form About Any Subject Whatsoever.  The question read:

“Do you seek to engage in or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities, espionage, sabotage or genocide?“

Now that, we thought, was the most stupid, almost crazy question ever submitted on a form.  Who the hell is going to answer ‘Yes’ to that question?  Imagine an application by a Mr. O. Bin Laden or Mr. Kim J-U.  Perhaps members of ISIS would like to travel to the USA to see family.  Are they going to write, well yes, we are going to engage in some light terrorism while we’re there if that’s OK, and then perhaps visit the Griffith Park Observatory?

The reason I bring this up today is because a lady has found herself in the news because somehow, as she completed her form, her finger slipped as she was checking the form and without her noticing she submitted it with her answer having changed from ‘No’ to ‘Yes.’  She was using a tablet to fill out the form.  As a result, this lady has had a far worse experience than I had: she had to spend £320 to go to London, to that hideous new embassy in Nine Elms, go through two interviews after which she was given her visa, and then told that she would have to change her holiday because the visa might not arrive on time.

That’s bad enough, but when you factor in that this 29-year-old woman was dying of terminal cancer, and was travelling to New York as a sort of a ‘bucket list’ holiday, to be told that she must delay her trip was completely ill-advised and insensitive of her situation.  However, her trip is still scheduled to go ahead as of today, thank God.

I reproduce a link to the story below.  Read for yourselves how this story of epic stupidity unfolded.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45678517

x

Debt.  What is it?  It’s when the ordinary man or woman on the street owes someone else money.  Now, if you buy something, you should expect to pay for it, as long as it works properly and does what it says on the packaging.  I understand that.  But certain types of debt rub me up the wrong way.  One of those debts was the subject of a story ran by the BBC on their web site the other day.

The story concerned a man aged around 56 or so, with two beautiful daughters in their twenties, and he was divorced from the girls’ mother, but he still lived in the home which was bought after he and his wife first got married.  In other words, the house was the only one that the man’s children knew.  All their childhood memories were there.

This man had survived kidney cancer and a divorce which cost him £36,000, not to mention £200 a month each for his daughters.  He had got through those things.

But what he could not surmount emotionally was a debt he got into after he missed a council tax payment.  One month.  Probably between £100 and £150.  That’s all.  Because of that missed payment, the local authority, South Lakeland District Council in Cumbria, decided to bill him for the entire year, which was £1,473.  Through various means, the debt spiralled up to £9,332 – an extraordinary amount given the initial ‘offence.’  The council, in 2014, decided to have him declared bankrupt.

The council were successful in their petition, which enabled them to sling thousands of pounds more debt at him, until it had risen up to over £15,000.  Trustees were appointed to collect this debt, and the man almost paid all of it off – but the trustees themselves then billed him a heart-stopping £72,000!!!  An extraordinary amount considering his initial missed payment was around £150.

The man killed himself in October 2017, and it is now left to his estate – basically, his two daughters – to clear the ‘debt.’  They managed to haggle it down to around £25,000.  But still, considering the initial sin…

What gets me is that there were other options the council could have considered, but they chose the bankruptcy route, sending bailiffs round, changing locks, cutting off the utilities, etc.  They chose a route that would make everybody else money at his expense.  He would have to pay for their profits.

But there was one problem.

The man never once replied to any of the letters the council or their representatives sent him.  If he had, they would have found some other way to settle the debt.  Even the council realised there was no way this debt would ever practically be recovered, but to pursue a bankruptcy so aggressively was a mistake and they knew it.  Nevertheless, the man buried his head in the sand, hoped it would go away and that too was a mistake.  So, there were mistakes equally so severe on both sides.

The council have since stated that had they known about the man’s situation, had he communicated with them in the first instance, they would not have pursued bankruptcy proceedings.  It is an important lesson, one which makes it obvious why the BBC covered it as a story.  It is a big lesson for us all; that local authorities will literally pursue you to the grave if you miss so much as one council tax payment and not tell them why.

Whether you get your money’s worth from your council tax is open to debate.  But that is not the point, is it?  The point is that the financial and economic system in the UK, and in most countries of the world, even the ones that are not, in theory at least, corrupt, is geared towards the big guy, and not the little one.  And the banks jump in as the middle person because there’s money to be made in interest payments.  It’s appalling, really, to think that a £150 debt can quickly rise to £1,500 and then to almost £9,500.  That’s over £9,000 profit for someone right there.  How can someone who cannot afford the initial £150 afford the £9,000 interest on the amount?

The man had a rational head on his shoulders.  When he decided to kill himself, it wasn’t a snap, mad decision he could have come to regret in five minutes; it was calm, collected and planned meticulously.  He left notes for the bailiff as to where he would be found, and he left notes for his daughters telling them not to blame themselves.  He knew what he was doing, he knew the impact that it would have on his loved ones, and he tried his best to accommodate that.  Then he went off and did himself in.

This, in itself, is a window into the world of someone who is suicidal.  I have felt that way many times, but have always stopped short because I couldn’t have left the impact on people’s lives that this man did.  But who knows?  You cannot judge the mental state of someone whose every possession is taken from them to settle alleged debts.  Financial rape.

I feel angry that the system is geared towards ‘them’ and not ‘us.’  We have to settle any small debt immediately, or it becomes a very big debt almost overnight.  But if ‘they’ were to owe ‘us’ money; well, that’s a whole other story.  Try to get money out of a bank if they owe it to you.  That seems to be OK, though, doesn’t it?

The system has got to be a level playing field.  If the banks, councils, corporations owe you £150, try compounding the interest to £9,000 and see what they do.  Try threatening them with bankruptcy and find out what you get for your money.  It would probably cost about nine grand a week in legal fees, and they won’t be paying that for you.  If someone owes £150, what about leaving it at that amount for the period of the debt?

They say, we can’t do that because in that case nobody would ever pay off their debts, would they?  Well, that’s an absolutely valid point and does demonstrate a clear malfunction of human nature.  If there’s no penalty, people do tend to think, ‘well, if they’re not going to chase the debt, I’ll not bother paying it.’  Is it not possible to cease providing a service to the tune of that amount?  There must be a way to make it fair for everyone, because to drive people to suicide leaves South Lakeland District Council at least in part responsible for this man’s death.  Not entirely; the man’s family do accept that he would bear some of the responsibility.

x

…continuing on from yesterday’s rant, I just want to make the clear point that Guns Are Bad.  They say guns don’t kill people; people kill people.  This is bulls***.   People with guns kill people.  How do you like them apples?

There is this common misinterpretation among conservatives of the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, which they think gives them the right to prance around their communities going, look at me, I’ve got a gun, so don’t mess with me.  Human beings, eh?

It’s true, the Constitution’s Second Amendment does contain the phrase, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”  Those who know what this phrase really means will still fling it at ‘liberals’ and go, See?  It says so here!  They hope that by blowing smoke in front of them, they won’t notice.

Those who don’t know what it means will fling it at liberals and go, See?  It says so here!  They split the sentence quoted above from the sentences before and after it, and they hope that the ‘libtards’ won’t notice that they don’t have a clue what it means.  But, to be fair, it is partly the fault of the writers of the Amendment, i.e. Congress, for phrasing it in the language with which it was used.  But then, this was back in 1791.

OK, it’s time to give you the Second Amendment in full:

“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

–ratified by Thomas Jefferson

Now, we could pick this sentence apart until the cows come home.  What it basically is telling us through the window of time is that because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state [I don’t agree with that, but let us for argument’s sake assume that it is], then the right of the people to keep and bear arms in the context of that militia shall not be infringed.  So, we need an army, and we need people who know how to use arms, so people should be allowed to keep those arms so that, when called upon, they can use them in anger.

What the Amendment does not tell us:

• That those arms are necessarily firearms
• Even if they are, that those arms are only the kind of weapons that were available at that time.  They do not relate to AK-47s and other assault rifles that are able to fire off over 100 rounds a minute and kill half a restaurant or a club in that short time.
• Even if you accept the common conservative interpretation of the Amendment, while you may have the right to keep and bear arms, there is no provision there for you to be able to use them.  Ever.  Ever.  Not outside the context of a militia, anyway.  The use of guns is for that militia or army only.  And even if you use your weapons in your militia, you may only use them in the process of securing yourself a free state.

So, people are robbing your home and killing your family.  You will probably use your weapons, I can’t stop you doing that, but expect the full punishment of the law.

Another popular argument is: If guns were “taken away from us,” (an almost child-like, weeping argument), then what happens if someone comes and robs your house, rapes your wife and kills your children?  Well, if no-one had guns, they couldn’t do that, could they?

As I said yesterday, all guns should be jettisoned into space, with a note attached for any alien civilisation to read: “This is what human beings do to each other.”  

Human beings are not the only great apes who kill their own species in land disputes or power disputes.  Chimpanzees do it, too.   But humans do have the added intelligence that it seems chimps do not, the power to make decisions based on conscience.

And finally, remember the fact that the Second Amendment was written in 1791. The kind of weaponry used today – even by civilians – simply was not taken into account 230 years ago because they were outside the bounds of human concept at the time.  No assault rifles, no machine guns, bombs or the like.  Then, you used to have to put powder and a lead ball in your guns.  The US patent for the revolver was not given until 1836.

We human beings do not have the power to change the past.  I wish I could, but it’s not possible.  But we do have the power to change the future.  We have the power to limit war, to eradicate it altogether, even if the Second Amendment said, “Come on, let’s f*** each other up!”  I would still argue against it.  But it doesn’t, if you read the sentence correctly, does it?

x

Well… maybe not exactly, but the events of 1918 were, perhaps, some of the most significant game-changers in human history, even up there with The Black Death.  Just as one disaster ended, so another one began.

Accurate estimates for the death toll of the disaster that ended in 1918, the First World War, are difficult to come by.  Various sources give the figure as between 11 and 50 million people – the deadliest conflict in human history.  And, as the soldiers came home in November of that year, they brought with them an infection that became known as the Spanish Flu which, through a kind of perfect storm that only epidemiologists understand, turned into the kind of pandemic that spread to every corner on the globe.  Even people on paradise islands of the South Pacific became infected.  The pandemic killed (again an estimate) anywhere between 50 to 100 million people worldwide.  That’s almost one in five of the infections.  And the germ infected one in three of the world’s population at that time.

Therefore, just to be dramatic like the BBC or Sly News or any of them, the events of that five-year period – 1914-1919 – killed anywhere between 60-150 million people, or between 5 and 10% of the population of the world.  That would equate to about 700 million of today’s population.  That’s a prime example of the power that Mother Nature has to use the human race against itself.  They say that 99% of species that ever walked the Earth are already extinct, and what makes us so special that we expect to stay on this planet forever?  The events of history show us that the human race is no more exempt from Nature’s wrecking ball than any other, down to the smallest insect and up to the largest dinosaur.

Who’s to say that some other catastrophic event – a meteor, say – or self-inflicted nuclear explosion, wouldn’t finish us off for good?  Because let me tell you, the human race has not learned one single lesson from the events of 1914-1919.  No, there is some inbuilt intent on the part of us as a race to kill each other.  And animals.  Kill anything that’s weaker and feel good about it.  Furthermore, there is no telling if some external force will kill us all, because we are, after all, just another species.

I don’t wish to get too astrophysical, but the Universe is huge.  So huge that there could be anything up to (there’s that phrase again) two hundred billion times two hundred billion stars out there organised into various galaxies.  I don’t know what that number equates to, but I suspect a lot.  Are we so arrogant as to assume that around that vast number of stars, there isn’t another planet which, through a series of miraculous coincidences, is not supporting life that, if not identical, is at least very similar to our own?  If you look up at the night sky and you could see, say, one million stars, that would equate to about 0.00005% of the number of stars estimated to be in this galaxy, the Milky Way, alone.

I’m a firm believer that there must be something life-like out there.  I have no scientific evidence to back that up, I just believe it.  And I hope one day, thousands upon thousands of years into the future, there may be a way that communication can be established between this disparate worlds.  For that to happen, a number of things must be true that, for the time being at least, there is no evidence to guarantee possibility; like travelling faster than the speed of light, for example.  It is said that, even if we could travel at light speed and try to reach another galaxy, they would be travelling so fast that we wouldn’t be able to reach them anyway.  Don’t ask me how that works, it’s all to do with Hubble’s Law and stuff.

In the one hundred years since we lost around five percent of humanity in five years, the human race has made seismic leaps in technological advancements.  Who would have thought a century ago we would have 3-D printers that can knock out almost anything?  But all this technology is a smokescreen.  The computer that I am typing this on is merely a smokescreen to allow humans to believe they have made large advances in technology, and therefore our purpose as the dominant race is justified.

But, as human beings, as people, we have made little, if any, advances at all.  It’s like your Dad going out into the shed to fiddle with his motorbike instead of dealing with some emotional crisis in the family – his daughter’s first relationship break-up, or similar.  That’s all the human race has ever done – gone out into its shed to fiddle with its motorbike while Mother Nature takes care of the hard stuff.  They come back into the house for their tea, proud that the motorbike now runs great but completely oblivious to the fact that they are still capable of killing each other but now in far larger numbers, because their motorbike now works.

As November 11, the centenary of the end of the First World War, approaches, I would like to think that we will remember how horrific it must have been for those who fought in that and every other war since; how young men barely 18 years of age went ‘over the top’ in their tens of thousands only to be mown down by the opposition and have all that potential, all their lives, snuffed out in an instant.

And even today, as the USA suffers a mass shooting almost every day now, the centenary of World War I might prick the consciences of the politicians who insist on keeping the gun laws intact despite a misinterpretation of the Second Amendment of the Constitution; of the millions of ‘conservative’ Americans who blame the ‘left’ for trying to ‘take their guns away from us’ – when, if it is a ‘left’ versus ‘right’ issue, then all the left is trying to do is preserve life, even conservative life.

There are wars, insurgencies, violent outbursts going on in all parts of the world.  South America, Asia – there’s got to be a way to say, come on, enough now already!

Why do I bring such depressing figures to my blog? Because those deaths were all, in my view, attributable either directly or indirectly to the war. We don’t know how much the Spanish flu pandemic would have spread without the war, it’s true, it might have been the same, but I believe the real lesson in that five year period as we do approach the centenary of the end of that war, is not to take our political differences to the battlefield. You would have thought that terrible conflict would have seen the end of legalised murder forever, but no, since 1918 there have been more than 220 separate wars, conflicts and uprisings including World War Two, which was much more deadly than the first. Not to mention civilian mass shootings and bombings, which happen almost on a daily basis now in the USA in particular.

Yes, I’m one of those noisy ‘liberals’ who wants all guns to be collected up and jettisoned into space. With a note attached, saying “This is what human beings do to each other.”

x

Writing about the Hitchens brothers is to write about the gulf that can exist between siblings who ultimately love each other but cannot seem to co-exist in the same room, but it is also to write about something far more important, far more sinister, and far more divisive than anything else in human history: the conflict between religion and atheism.

Let me say this outright: both Hitchens brothers are heroes of mine, within the context of writing and journalism, and not necessarily because I agree with what they have written during the course of their careers.  That’s an important distinction to make because the brothers were polar opposites when it came to almost all matters that they debated – either with each other or, as I said, during the course of their careers.

If you haven’t guessed by now, the brothers to whom I refer are the late Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011), and Peter Hitchens (1951-    ).  They were the sons of a naval officer; Christopher being born in Portsmouth, England, while Peter was born in Malta.  It appears that they never got along, even as children.  Christopher developed into a democratic socialist, even Marxist, anti-totalitarian whose belief in any form of deity was entirely nonexistent; Peter’s politics were very much on the right.  He joined and left the Conservative Party, opposed New Labour and campaigned for far stricter laws governing drug use, especially cannabis.  Peter was critical of the Conservative Party for not being conservative enough.  He, like his brother, was at one-time an atheist, but converted to Christianity and is now a devout member of the Church of England and a strong advocate for the traditional family role in modern society.

The one thing that the brothers had in common was the one thing that made them both famous: both became journalists and writers, and both were extremely forthright in the expression of their views which were totally irreconcilable.  Both wrote a number of books each, and of course, their contributions to various journalistic periodicals are too numerous to mention.  Christopher was a long-time contributor to The Washington Post, and indeed became an American citizen (he died in that country).  Peter’s ‘home’ newspaper was – and still is – you guessed it, The Mail on Sunday.

Christopher had an immensely likeable personal charm – he could disarm political opponents in a debate with a witty remark and an almost devilish smile.  Debates and speeches were peppered with humour and marked by a charisma that kept audiences enraptured.  Peter, on the other hand, displayed far less wit, seemed far less likeable, but at the same time was still able to keep audiences rapt, and readers captivated.  And of course the most watchable debates that either participated in were the ones in which they debated each other which, sadly for humankind, happened all too rare; indeed, I remember that, in 2007, the BBC managed to convince both brothers to appear on the same edition of Question Time, which manifested the predicted result: complete disagreement between them on almost everything.

Unfortunately, in 2010, Christopher was diagnosed with oesophagal cancer, the disease that eventually killed him (along with a side order of pneumonia) on December 15, 2011.  One wonders why it is that a man who had been so critical of a number of American presidents, its politicians and political system, not to mention a number of totalitarian religions, should die at the relatively young age of 62, but as he said in the months leading up to his death: he smoked heavily, drank heavily, took drugs heavily – it was more or less expected that he would develop that disease.  I don’t think that there should be anything conspiratorial or even sinister about his death.

Peter has not been immensely forthcoming about his feelings concerning his brother’s death.  He did speak at Christopher’s memorial in New York, quoting a passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, which the elder brother might have found ironic; Christopher himself had read that passage at their father’s funeral in 1987.

Religion: the cornerstone of the brothers’ disagreement.  I have to tell you, I side very much on the side of Christopher on this issue.  I loathe and despise organised religion and its ability to prey upon the weak and the vulnerable, and people’s willingness to believe it so readily, despite its empty threats that you will be met with eternal damnation if you do not follow what they tell you to do.  I don’t care what religion you are – Christian or any of its demon – sorry, denominations, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jedi, any of ’em.

But Christopher was an all-out, dyed-in-the-wool atheist.  An atheist, in case you are wondering, is someone who believes that there is no god.  But Christopher attached a small caveat to that definition that no one, to my knowledge, ever picked up on:  he said that rather than believe in the non-existence of any supernatural deity, he believed that he had no reason to believe that there was a god of any sort.  So, he wasn’t saying that there categorically is no god, merely stating that he had no evidence to support the existence of one.  Fair enough, I thought.  I’ll go along with that.

Both Christopher and Peter succumbed to the unfortunate irony of the very nature and actuality of religion; both used their belief as a response to the question of what happens when you die.  And both stated their beliefs as fact.  Christopher: when you die, there is complete nothingness, your body rots and thats it.  There is no god offering you the chance that when you die you can have eternal happiness if you follow my rules, but if you don’t then there is everlasting hell and damnation.  Peter:  There is a God, you can’t deny it, and if you’re really good you will get eternal happiness – oh, and you’ve got to join a traditional church, not one of these happy-clappy cults that pop up on a regular basis calling themselves Christian but in truth insulting his name as propagated by all this gold and landowning.

In my life, I have been on something of a spiritual quest.  I looked for a church, and thought I had found one at the North Tyneside Memorial Church in North Shields, Tyne & Wear.  It was about 1984 or so, and the church’s pastor was Frank Wappat, a local radio personality.  At the time, the church was packed with about 1,000 people every Sunday, and it satisfied my love of gospel music (which exists to this day), and I eventually got to know Wappat very well, becoming a part of his inner circle for a while.

This church was a cult.  Not one that kept its believers behind locked doors but certainly one that did not always practice what it preached.  I remember Wappat going on huge long rants peppered with f***ing this or b****** that, over some minor slight, and I remember – and this is not something about which I have written much publicly – he had a bunker in the church, which was painted floor to ceiling in black, had a bar at one end, and those close to Wappat were able to drink themselves silly after a Sunday service.  I was there each Sunday for about three years.  Sometimes I would walk the three miles from North Shields to my home in Whitley Bay at 2 or 3 in the morning after a Sunday drinking session.  And there was something else…

Oh yes: all around the bunker’s walls were framed photographs of Adolf Hitler.

Wappat was a huge admirer of Hitler, his ideology and his methods.  Of course, his public face was all smiles and happy times, but underneath was a dark character who once told me: ‘With friends like you, who needs enemies?’ and furthermore threatened me with a curse if I ever left the church.  I left the church.  Now I look back and wonder how the hell I managed to succumb to such a ridiculous lie, but in truth, it was merely because I was looking for a leader and for an answer to that question, or those questions: why are we here, and what happens when you die.

And, although I spent five years at Southfields Baptist Church in London when I first started going out with my wife Jane, I knew I had already had enough with God, and especially Jesus, and especially the churches that profit from his name.  You may wonder why it is that I would spend so long at a church whose beliefs I had nothing in common with.  My answer is, it’s a bit like being in a band with people you don’t like very much; you’re doing it for the money.

In 1994, finally, I turned my back on religion for good and have, to this day, never had any desire to go back.  I don’t go as far as to say there is no supernatural creator as Christopher Hitchens did; I say there could well be, it’s as plausible as The Big Bang, but I agree there has been no evidence of that thus far.

Religion expects you to give in to a supernatural deity based upon pure faith alone; with the caveat that if you don’t, there is an eternity of some very unpleasant things waiting for you on the other side.  Imagine the effect that that would have had on uneducated farmers in the Middle East a few thousand years ago.  Could they Google it and find out for themselves?  Of course not.  They had to take these spiritual leaders, these charlatans, at their word.  And these religions could do whatever they wanted over the millennia: they could take your money, your possessions, your soul, while sexually abusing your children and filling their heads with the most appalling nonsense that God will punish them if they tell anyone.  That, and I refer specifically of course to the scandals of Catholic priests abusing young boys and girls, is the most heinous of crimes for which those priests should have received life sentences.

Adolf Hitler, mentioned earlier, was a Catholic and, while the Nazi Party could not in any way be considered religious, they certainly followed a number of religious methods of controlling large numbers of people, and making them believe in a God-like leader, who was committing unspeakable acts on the quiet.  However, one of the strange coincidences that Christopher Hitchens noted in 2007 was that the then anti-Nazi pope, Pius XI, died suddenly on February 10, 1939 and was replaced by God with a pro-Nazi pope, Pius XII, on March 2, just before the start of World War II.  How’s that for a coincidence, as Christopher would say.

I absolutely refuse to bow down to the notion that there is a god who will do nice things for you if you spend the rest of your life worshipping him, telling him how great you think he art, and how wonderful life is because of him.  Christopher Hitchens once discussed the idea that the passengers of the planes that were used for those horrific events on 9/11 would have been profusely praying for God to spare them of their iminent deaths, while at the same time the hijackers were praying to Allah that their missions would be successful, and that they would spend an eternity being pleasured by 72 virgins, or whatever it is (all the virgins knew what to do, apparently, despite being virgins.).  Islam has the audacity to convince its followers not only that it is the superior religion (all religions to that), but that it can, through the misinterpreted method of jihad, kill all nonbelievers and/or enemies.  What a treat awaits them in Heaven if, in the process of that, they die themselves.

These days it is common to criticise Islam for standing by and allowing extremists to blacken the name of their religion; but, in truth, all religions have at one time or another given themselves carte blanche to murder, rape and otherwise abuse those who do not wish to – or cannot – follow or abide by their decrees.  It is common knowledge, but it is worth repeating in Bold Italic:  More wars have been fought, and more people have been injured and murdered, in the name of religion than for any other cause in human history.  Christopher Hitchens said that on numerous occasions, Peter Hitchens denied it most likely on as many occasions.  So, as far as I’m concerned, all organised religion can take a running jump.  It is simply an excuse to become rich and live a privileged lifestyle while at the same time capturing and abusing your fellow human beings and subjecting them to a lifetime of control and abuse.  Worse than that, you make them believe that they are willing to do so!  Every successful business looks for a gap in the market in which people are looking for a product to occupy a void in their lives.  One of the earliest corporate giants on Earth was Religion.  Christian, Islam, Buddhist, Hindu, different products for different regions, but religion was one big corporate giant.  And perhaps it was that aspect of it too, as well as some of the others mentioned, that so appalled Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher wrote a book called God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything in 2007.  British publishers were too frightened to publish under that title; their subtitle for this book was The Argument Against Religion.  How soft is that?  And all because they were frightened of – guess who? – religious zealots.

I would go a stage further and state that God is a predator who, in all its forms and manifestations, has turned out to be evil, and a Nazi to boot.  The idea of Heaven if you behave is anathema to me.  The idea that God ignores the prayers of hundreds of people being flown into the side of a steel building but helps you find your car keys if you’re late for work is insulting.  The first religion was basically taking a product – people’s need to believe in a superior supernatural power that would explain that they’re not going to turn to nothing when they die – and turning it into a massively successful global industry.  The idea of a god, the Jewish, Christian, Islam, Buddhist one or others, was made up, folks (sorry, Peter) as a highly effective method to control people and keep them in line – far more successful, incidentally, than other despotic regimes such as National Socialism or Communism.  I not only do not believe in any religion but I actively reject it as it took my spiritual quest and tried to twist it into taking money from me and my soul from me.

I do not deny that there could be something out there that is a divine creator of some sort, but I don’t say definitively that there is or there isn’t.  And I certainly do not believe it as presented by organised crime – sorry, organised religion, a theism backed and enforced by violence, theft, rape and murder.  If you choose to follow it, that’s up to you, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

So, I have long been an admirer of the writings and speakings of both Hitchens brothers, impossible as it may seem, though enjoyable it has been.  Sad that Christopher is gone, but he left behind a large amount of literature and video material to enjoy.  The two brothers were, at one time, the Oasis* of journalism.  I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do believe you can read the writings of both of these two brothers (who, as Peter once said, if they weren’t siblings they would never have known each other), and decide for yourself.

x

*If you don’t know who Oasis were, look them up on Wikipedia here:

Oasis

The Labour Party, the party of the workers.  It was founded around 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement.  It voted to sponsor political candidates for election to the British Parliament at Westminster, and almost immediately there was an election (in October 1900) at which two of the trade union-sponsored candidates found themselves elected; one of those was Kier Hardie.

Let’s face it, at its founding, the Labour Party was pure ‘leftie.’  Socialist, union-financed, even verging on Marxism is how left it was.  It took almost a quarter of a century, but the UK got its first Labour Government in 1924.  It’s Prime Minister?  Ramsay MacDonald.  Admittedly, there was a lot of political jiggery-pokery going on to give Labour this power, because in fact the Tories had a bigger share of the seats and the Liberals decided to give Labour a go.  Nevertheless, Labour was in.  Sadly, that government lasted a mere nine months before the Conservatives won a landslide election after the collapse of the Liberal Party (not for the last time, either).

More or less after that, Labour became the Opposition, and from then on governments were either Conservative or Labour or coalitions.  However. after Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister in 1979, a job she held for 11 years, Labour’s left-wing stance seemed to fall out of favour with the public, and it turned out that the party were willing to do anything, anything, to win re-election.

Step up, Tony Blair.  This man essentially ruined the Labour Party but made them extremely electable.  Indeed, he remained PM for ten years himself, followed by three miserable years with his puppet Gordon Brown at the helm.  You didn’t hear Labour complaining about that, did you?

(*Gordon Brown projected the image of a Labour Prime Minister in the true Harold Wilson fashion, but he didn’t listen to people and the now infamous recording of him berating a potential voter was the end of his political career and the end of Labour.  Ed Miliband took over; he couldn’t get them elected.

Step up, Jeremy Corbyn.  Nobody, not even Corbyn himself, believed he would win the election for the Labour Leadership within the party, who wanted to continue the ‘centre-left’ policy that had worked so well for the Blairites.  Astoundingly, Corbyn not only won the election but won it a second time when the Party didn’t seem to believe what had happened.

Corbyn, a true left-wing politician, looked set to shake up the party and return it to its ‘labour’ roots.  This he has found especially difficult, since the ‘centre-left’ are still trying to destroy the party’s founding roots and turn it into a sort of a pink Conservative party.

Step up, Chuka Ummuna.  He has just made a speech in which he accuses Jeremy Corbyn of driving the centre-left out of the party, as though he has some sort of expectation that the centre-left has a right to be there.  Ummuna is a privately-educated law graduate who plays the cello; I feel certain that he has never worked a day down the mines or sweated in the heat of a steelworks in his life!

Part of Ummuna’s beef with Corbyn stems from the fact that they briefly stood against each other in the 2015 election that Corbyn won.  Ummuna withdrew from the race, citing the fact that he could not cope with the additional scrutiny that a leadership candidate must endure – meaning he must have had an affair, or otherwise has something to hide.

Rumours have begun to circulate that Ummuna, and others, are contemplating the formation of another party, although they have all denied this.  Quite frankly, I wish him good luck.  Go form your party, you sure as heckadoodle are not Labour.  Although I suspect that the party name he would want to choose has already been taken – The Conservative Party.

x

The front page of this morning’s Guardian carries the startling headline: ‘Four million UK children too poor to have a healthy diet.’  The reason why this headline startled me?  Because, for goodness’ sake, this is not news!  It should be not only patently obvious but engrained into our culture that those below a certain income cannot afford to buy the foods necessary to give kids – and adults, for that matter – what the food fascists call a ‘healthy diet.’

The headline comes after a study revealed that these children live in households that cannot afford to buy the requisite fruit, vegetables, fish, etc. that are necessary to meet the demands of those invisible ‘national guidelines.’  Oh, and I must stress that this study was done in, and refers to, the United Kingdom.

It took the efforts of the Food Foundation, paid for by God knows who, presumably the Government, to come to the realisation that the inability of these households to buy the above foods is generally consigning these kids to those rarely-heard of conditions that can affect the odd person or two: obesity and diabetes.  Heard of those?  I must admit I had never heard of them before reading this article.*

(*I’m being ironic.)

They say that it would take anything up to 40% of these households’ total weekly income to buy these foods, and satisfy the requirements of this thing they call the Eatwell Guide.

The ‘average family’ of two adults and two children, according to this study, having listed the types of foods they are talking about, would need to spend over one hundred pounds a week to meet these targets.  The article goes on to state that forty-seven percent of all households do not spend enough on food each week to meet the targets.  That’s regardless of income.  I don’t know any of the study’s further findings because it was on page thirteen of the paper and I only read the front page off the BBC’s ‘Newspaper Headlines’ page.

Now, one of you reading this might be saying, well, why doesn’t he read the rest of it before ranting, while the other one might be saying, I knew all of this back in 1975, why all the research being done now?

I’ll address the first point first: too much to do, mate, to go sourcing independent studies on food consumed by children when I’ve got an album to finish and a book to write.

As to the second point: I wholeheartedly agree with you.  I’ll say it loud, and I’ll say it proud: this study is a complete fucking waste of money.  Number one, you’ve only got to browse the shelves at your local supermarket of choice to work out that good quality food, that’s been grown properly, not sprayed with chemicals to keep the bugs off, or pumped with ‘water’ to make it look bigger, or grown in radiated soil, costs more.  Just stick the word ‘organic’ on to a packet of carrots and watch the price shoot up, ho ho ho.*

(* Placing the words ‘ho ho ho,’ or similar, at the end of a sentence means I have written something that I have found extremely funny.  You might like to comment whether you agree or not.)

There is no set rule put in place by the Government about how much extra, in terms of a percentage, should be put onto organic goods, if indeed its value was to be determined by the way it was grown.  The Government’s rules and regulations regarding the sale of organic foods just don’t cover how the pricing of an organic carrot should be compared to that of a non-organic one.  And, by the way, to be classified as ‘organic,’ that carrot doesn’t have to be 100% so, but only 95% needs to contain organic ingredients, leaving five percent, which is quite a lot really, that can be anything they damn well please, but they can still charge you as though it were an organic item.  This is more true of, for example, an organic biscuit, which must be made of at least 95% organic ingredients.  The rest can be plaster of Paris and cigarette filters, for all they care.

Here’s why the Government pays private companies millions upon millions of pounds to undertake countless pointless surveys and studies: it makes them look like they’re tackling a problem that affects everyone, but really they are simply procrastinating and skirting around an issue that they have no intention of ever doing anything realistic or concrete about.

Now that’s the shocker*  It’s got to be readily obvious to anyone who can recognise themselves in a mirror that low-income families do not have the extra financial resources available to them to spend on organic foods, expensive fish, extravagant and exotic spreads and sauces, not to mention the organic fruits and vegetables detailed above.

(*It’s not for most people, just those who vapidly read newspapers on the train to avoid looking people in the eye and not really taking any of the information in whatsoever.)

And that’s because anything of quality costs more.  Duh!  I’m not suggesting that can ever change, but this survey is a real Yes, Minister moment; in which some vacuous civil servant approaches the Government minister with a brilliant idea to waste money, time and peoples lives in order to undertake another survey on a topic that there have been a number of surveys done in the past, and at the same time give the public the impression that Government is tackling the issue of obesity in kids from low-income families.  Believe me, both of you, they are not!  And of course, the focus is on children because, as you both well know, children are sacrosanct in this society and we must protect ‘them’ at all times* because they cannot protect themselves.

(*Using children is a relatively recent tactic; If you say, there’s too much violence on TV, it’s not good for the … children!, what that really means is, there’s too much violence on TV, I don’t like it because I’m a prude and I want it taken off the air.  Plus, I’m scared a Muslim will see it, be converted into a Jihadist, and blow me up in a shopping centre or some other place I, er, wouldn’t be seen dead in.)

What makes me angry and want to rant is this:  The Government well knows that four million kids’ families cannot afford decent food for them.  I know this first hand.  I grew up on burger, mash and beans and salad cream sandwiches for school not because my mother was lazy or ill-equipped for parenthood – far from it – it was because money was extremely tight and there was no way to afford anything exotic.  Until the day she died, she tried her best to keep stuff that would worry us to herself, but I remember one day when she sat me down and said, ‘We’ve got fourteen pounds between us and the workhouse,’ which meant fourteen pounds to last a fortnight.

Indeed, after my mother passed away in 2015, my dear wife was unable to work for three weeks while she helped me get things done, and we had to go to a food bank here in the Forest of Dean to get some food that would last us until my wife could earn some money again.  And food bank fare is not organic, prepared in factories that don’t use nuts or anything remotely approaching healthy.  Tesco Value baked beans, at nine pence a tin, gives you a ready idea of the level we are talking about here.  It was the most humiliating, degrading experience I think we have ever been through.

It also makes me angry that this Government, like many before it and most likely many more to come, have wasted public money on a survey that proves nothing, achieves nothing but avoids everything.  We’ve known about the poverty crisis in the UK for many decades, just as they have in many other ‘wealthy’ nations, but still they exist, and in large numbers.  Why?  Because it suits governmetns to have them, like lab mice, dogs or chimpanzees.  Divide and conquer.  They don’t address the issue, they just gloss over it, like you would paint over a crack in your wall.  It is that effective.

Incumbent governments are scared of the likes of Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister because they know he would put the needs of the poorest first, thereby dismantling all the procedures that previous Conservative and Labour governments have put in place to make sure that the poor stay poor, the rich stay rich, and profits are creamed off by ministers and their friends to pocket for themselves while at the same time making it look as though they are doing something constructive about it.*

(*I have rammed the same points home multiple times in this rant on purpose; to demonstrate how little effect repeating something actually has, as though every sentence reveals something new and fascinating about this topic, but in fact just repeats the old, pointless stuff and never really achieves anything new.)

x

Yesterday, delightfully trumpeted by the BBC, came the news that a serious row had broken out on the daily lunchtime talk show Loose Women between one of its regular presenters, Coleen Nolan, and a deliberately antagonistic and quite disturbed guest, Kim Woodburn.

It turned out that there was a beef between these two; both had appeared on the 2017 edition of Celebrity Big Brother, and had fallen out at that time over something likely quite trivial.  Furthermore, it also transpires upon further investigation that Ms. Woodburn had not only fallen out with Ms. Nolan, but she had additionally fallen out with almost every other guest on that particular show.

One way of putting it is that Ms. Woodburn loves a row.  I saw a number of videos on YouTube in which Woodburn called her fellow housemates names that were, even to my hardened ears, vile.  She shouted, swore and spat her way through 21 days, or however long it was, on the show.  If the producers knew that including her would lead to fireworks on a show where everyone is couped up together for three weeks, they hit paydirt with Kim Woodburn.

Another way of putting it is that Ms. Woodburn is suffering from a number of issues.  For the most part, it was obvious that she was acting like a cornered animal; nowhere to go, nowhere to run, so all that was left was to spit verbally at her perceived ‘attacker,’ and to try to fight back.

During her ‘interview’ on Loose Women the other day, a tearful Kim Woodburn detailed a great deal of sexual abuse that she had suffered as a child, and when fellow presenter Linda Robson tried to comfort her, she violently pushed her arm away and told her to leave her alone.  This was a classic reaction, I thought: leave me alone, get off me, I feel ashamed and I don’t want your ‘comfort.’  No doubt about it.

It would appear that Ms. Woodburn has fought and fought her entire life.  She has been angry at the world for what she suffered as a child, and she is making everyone she comes into contact with pay.  The sad thing is that, when she was offered counselling after the show, she refused it, saying she didn’t need it.  I think the world and his dog could see that it was very much needed, as would other forms of therapy.

Unfortunately, the regular ‘Loose Women’ of the show rather let their anger get the better of them, one of them shouted out that Ms. Woodburn had ‘no talent’ whatsoever; which, whatever the case may be, was extremely inappropriate to shout at anyone on live TV, let alone in a heated argument.  Janet Street-Porter, sitting in the middle of them all and clearly enjoying every moment of it, was asking all the ‘provocative’ questions, knowing it would push Ms. Woodburn’s buttons.  She was absolutely aware of the media attention this would get, being the most experienced broadcaster on the panel, and wanted to nab some of it for herself.

In the end, I felt very sorry for Ms. Woodburn.  In shouting her rage at Ms. Nolan, and indeed the world, in crying over the abuse she suffered as a child, she cut a very sad figure indeed, and it was clear she needed help.  She needs help.  But the fact that she refused it shows that she is not in full possession of her faculties, she believes she doesn’t need it, and she is going to continue to make the lives of those she comes into contact with much poorer as a result, and that is her responsibility to do something about.  She is a fighter, and a lone fighter at that; she doesn’t want any help or even comfort from anyone.  God only knows how her husband of 39 years copes with it; unless she is entirely different at home.  Perhaps she is.  Maybe this is all an act; her schtick for the cameras and the newspapers.

But maybe it isn’t.  Maybe, at 76 years old, Kim Woodburn really is in a deep emotional crisis for which I believe it is her duty to seek help, her age should not be an obstacle in the way of that.

Putting all of that aside, the fact that she appeared on Loose Women, the fact that the producers of the programme lied to both Ms. Nolan and Ms. Woodburn (they said to each of them that the other wanted to apologise and draw a line in the sand to get them to agree to appear on the show together), and the fact that it was clearly a staged media event knowing Kim Woodburn’s emotional state, gives you a large clue as to the first reason why I do not watch television anymore.  I hate it.  It’s all loud noise and shows like this – cheaply made reality TV shows with some tenuous hook, mostly nicked from American television at that.  In the U.S., there is a talk show called The View, which began on ABC in 1997, while Loose Women began two years later in 1999.

I haven’t watched regular television in maybe seven years; we have a TV, we pay a licence, but the TV is not connected up to the aerial or satellite dish, or cable.  We don’t watch Netflix or Amazon or any of thoe online delivery services either.  We do occasionally watch BBC’s iPlayer for drama or comedy, and I watched some of the World Cup games online in June, but telly?  Nah, it’s all smelly. x

People admire a prodigy.  As a musician, clearly I have more knowledge of prodigy within the discipline, but of course, they can come in any field, in any part of life.  So, as a musician, first of all, let me mention the name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born in 1756 to a musical father in Salzburg, Austria.  Now, there was a prodigious talent.  He was already composing simple melodies at three; at five, he composed his first published work, an ‘Andante in C major’ for the piano, or harpsichord at the time.  It is just ten bars long, and although a very simple composition it demonstrates stuff that a five-year-old should not know – an understanding of phrasing, harmony and of the Baroque style, not to mention other stuff like how to finish a piece of music, cadencing and so forth.  It is short, it is simple, he was five.

Mozart lived a very short life; he was dead before his thirty-sixth birthday.  Yet his musical career lasted for thirty-one of those years.  He was that rare creature; a child prodigy with enough musical ability to take his fame into adulthood.  Many prodigies today cannot do that.  We’ve all seen those videos on YouTube, uploaded by proud parents, of little Johnny, aged just two, who can play all the Rachmaninoff ‘Preludes’ backwards and from memory.  Great stuff, but what have they got to offer going forward?  Cellist Yo-Yo Ma is an exception, as was Yehudi Menuhin.  Generally speaking, though, nada.

Amazing.  Pre-school kids who can play the piano better than I’ll ever hope to play.  I can’t even imagine playing the piano that good.

But what about the ‘slow release’ talent; the kind of talent that takes decades to develop properly, and might flower later on in life?  This could be for any number of reasons; ability and circumstance are most likely the two major factors that can cause or contribute to the ‘slow release’ talent, just as they can the prodigy.

I’m not suggesting for one moment that I can or could ever be able to play as well as some of these pre-schoolers.  But my own musical ability – and indeed, abilities and interests in other areas outside of music – are now developing so quickly that I can barely contain them.  And I’m 51, almost 52.  Jesus, when you write it down, it’s almost as though you are writing about someone else.

In the last, oh, ten years or so – let’s say since I turned 40 – I have written almost 2 1/2 books, a movie screenplay, a lecture, part of a sitcom, countless (well over 1,500) songs and song ideas, maybe a huge variety of ideas concerning books, plays, screenplays, songs, more books, data and, of course, countless rants on Facebook.  That’s in addition to having recorded 26 albums’ worth of music, and I’m just about finishing off my 27th.  In twelve years.  That’s in addition to having spent almost a year in California and Utah, researching the life and work of the Hollywood composer Max Steiner, composer of the music of Gone With the Wind, King Kong, The Informer and about 250 others.

So, I think I am well justified in claiming that mine is a ‘slow release’ talent; to some, it may not appear that much or any of it that good, but as I turned forty it just began to pour out of me.  I couldn’t stop it.  Perhaps it was my way of letting the ‘mid-life crisis’ express itself.  Who cares what the reason is, it just happened.

That’s in addition to the fact that, in 2007, while living with my mother in Cornwall, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, (or Fobromyalgia, because it kind of ‘fobs off’ itself as many other conditions), a chronic and debilitating condition that, while it doesn’t kill you, it makes your life pretty miserable most of the time.  I’m on almost 30 painkillers a day, which turn my head into a dulled, dopey mush, and I’m barely mobile.  Pain is an accepted part of my life, of our lives (myself and my dear, patient and loving wife Jane).

That’s in addition to the fact that, over the last ten years or so, my dear wife Jane and I have set up Musiclusive, a non-profit organisation that tries to give a voice to the voiceless; to enable communication through music and F.C. (Facilitated Communication).  This is a subject which I plan to write about sometime in the future, too.  Meanwhile, you can learn more about them here, and join their Facebook group here.  My dear wife works all the hours God sends and then borrows some from who knows where, to give a voice to those who, for one reason or another, are silent; or who find it difficult to express themselves in such a way that their true feelings can be identified and understood.  I have to say that I admire her tremendously for this; it could well be her greatest achievement, one which she must be careful to maintain according to the vision that she has.  But she is working towards it, and I am so proud to be her ‘Technical Advisor,’ and I suppose a ‘Musical Advisor’ of sorts – I can usually figure out what key songs are in – and just to be there for her every step of the way.  Good for you, Mrs. B!

I don’t think I’ve done too badly, under the circumstances.  And yes, I blow my own trumpet a little bit because nobody else is going to do it for you, especially if you’re not that good.  I believe I have an ego the size of Milton Keynes, but not the talent to match.  An ego that wants to be massaged, but not the talent to give back.  So, I want to be the Voice of the Talentless; the Spokesman of the Mediocre.

There’s still plenty of stuff that I want to do: I have ideas for all sorts of things – YouTube channels, channels on other video and audio sites, blogs like this one, and more music.  I write down as many ideas as I can, good or bad; I can sift out which is which later.  I’ve written about 250 songs since April.  I sometimes have dozens of browsers, programs and apps open at the same time; I’m sure my dear wife can testify to that.  My mind is complete chaos most of the time.

I guess I’m just trying to justify why it is that I can be such a darn fool sometimes.  Perhaps, that, too, is slow release.  No, I’d say that was ‘fast release,’ especially since I turned forty.  Idiocy has poured from me for a decade and a half, almost.

You know, I look at these blogs as songs, poems, albums.  Sometimes they have a lot of ‘verses’, sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes they are about me, sometimes not.  Sometimes they are a proper rant, at other times not so much.  But what they are is a demonstration that the sleeping giant that is my creative desire (I try not to use the words ‘ability’ or ‘talent’ too much, more a desire) is very slowly beginning to awaken.

That’s in addition to the fact that I continue to develop interests in areas that I thought would never happen: astrophysics, cosmology, theoretical physics are the big surprises for me; I enjoy them very much, and I continue to learn about what is a very complicated set of subjects.  Mathematics is not a strong point of mine, and given that so much theoretical physics is based on maths, you can imagine that this particular discipline is super slow for me, so I am forced to give it extra time when necessary.  What surprises me is that I am happy to do so.  I guess the mid-life crisis makes you take up these weird and wonderful topics – at least, weird and wonderful from my perspective as a musician.

But, being a musician, I should have a sound (ho, ho, ho…zzzz) knowledge of certain aspects of maths and physics, and sometimes the two subjects combined.  The music itself is very solidly based on mathematics.  In a four-beat bar, you cannot have five notes unless you begin to manipulate the lengths of notes in order to fit them in.  If you end up with sixteen notes in the bar, and you want them the same length, you must make sure they are the correct length notes (semi-quavers, and not quavers, for example).

I’m going to write further rants – sorry, blog posts – on the subject of YouTube, but let’s just say for the moment that it is a wonderful resource for any subject you care to mention.  That, and Wikipedia; Wikipedia has gained a bad rap because it is freely editable by almost anyone in the world.  It is a good idea, when using Wikipedia, to make sure that any reference you are using can be verified elsewhere, and to double-check that source at first-hand.  But as a general rule, it is fabulous and I must admit that I have contributed my own data and corrections to it.

I watch a lot of YouTube because my mobility has, in the past, been very limited and, although pain and anxiety and depression and everything seem to get worse before they get better, there is that slight point of light at the end of a very dark tunnel; the light of hope.  I watch videos about people who watch a lot of videos.  Documentaries on every subject you can imagine.  Idiots uploading videos of their cat licking their six-month-old child; I’ve watched them all.  Why?  I’ve explained above.

But I cannot just sit and do nothing.  After all, something is better than nothing.  I plan as I said earlier, to write about YouTube, Wikipedia, and the rest.  As I always say: so many rants, so little time. x

How sadly ironic that yesterday of all days, as we discussed the anniversary (or not) of the death of Elvis Presley, that date should also claim the life of another Memphian, the incomparable Aretha Franklin.

How does one even begin to discuss her legacy?  How can one even understand the measure of the impact that she had on the world?  It’s not easy.  There is no way, for example, that average joes like you and me could get inside her head and know the feeling of having such a massive impact upon the world.  And it was enormous.

In terms of chart success, one could argue that there was, certainly in the 1960s, a disparity between the races in terms of chart success: Ms. Franklin had 20 US Number One hits, but they were all on the R&B chart, not on the mainstream pop chart.  Elvis, although part Cherokee considered a “white” artist, had 18 mainstream Number One hits during his lifetime (Elvis’ “lifetime,” for the purposes of chart accreditation, continued on through the final release that Presley knew about during the planning stages, ‘Unchained Melody’ in February 1978).  Ms. Franklin never topped the pop charts as a solo artist.

It took her until 1987 before she could top the pop charts, a duet with George Michael ‘I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)’.  In those 21 years since her first hit, had she broken down racial barriers sufficiently to give her that chart-topping success?  Or was it simply down to the fact that she ‘crossed over’ by enlisting the help of George Michael to gain that elusive chart-topper?

In truth, that debate doesn’t really matter to me, these things are for journalists with nothing better to write.  For me, she was a great, great artist like few others that have ever walked this Earth.  A singer whose voice was instantly recognisable, whose artistry manifested itself in every note that she sang; indeed, her voice was truly an instrument, her mind a truly musical one.

Great performers are always several steps ahead in their minds to the notes that you are hearing from them.  Aretha Franklin was such a performer, and she knew it.  You will be hard pressed to think of many in her league; Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby – let’s face it, she was up there with the all-time greats.  In terms of the entire history of recorded music, from 1900 on, Aretha Franklin would most likely make the top five.  What a voice that was silenced yesterday – coincidentally, as I said, on the anniversary of the death of another all-time great, Elvis Presley.  At least, when she reaches the great recording studio in the sky, they will have something to talk about. x