My Life Story

It doesn't get much cooler than this



This is the life. I am spending my days lazing around and writing my life story. It's a dull life I've had but why would anyone want to read about an exciting life? They'd only get jealous.

I've done 10,000 words so far and I've got to my mid-teens. So 30,000 words to go and 35 years. Can I write that much? I'm going to need an awful lot of padding, going off on tangents, making up lots of dialogue. But now I've got a bit of time to myself I actually believe I can do it.

And where I used to think whatever I'd written in the past had been the finished product, I know this is only the first draft, to be played around with, fiddled with until I've got something to show the world.

Of course next week I'll probably be rolling on the floor in despair.

The Power Of Positive Thinking

So there we have it. 25 years in the same office, many happy years, though recently unhappy, I've been luckier than most.

25 years ago we had six full-time staff in our department. Now, we get a lot more work done with one full-timer and two part-timers. From next week, apparently, optimistically, that full-timer will be replaced by a part-timer. And that's me gone.

Computerisation is great. I wouldn't be able to do this without it, find new friends and show off in front of them. But it's replaced so many jobs over the years. Good, honest hard work is out and creativity is in. I don't mean traditional creativity like making music or art or literature, a much more modern kind of creativity, a knowing look, a bright spark in the eye, a brain trained in business becomes a brain that is so open to so many opportunities it can hardly contain itself within the brittle skull surrounding it. Why don't we do it this way? Have you thought of doing it this way? What about this, what about this, what about this? So many creative ideas flooding from the business brain, spreading over the boardroom table it's difficult to keep them apart. But do you want to? Maybe the ideas all interlink and organically grow into one big idea and we can see the big picture and we look up to the sky and look and look and realise just what a gigantic wonderful world this is and we're so lucky to be a part of it especially in this day and age when creative people are at the hub of a future that can only be sunshine and flowers and positive thinking is going to make it that way and this PowerPoint presentation is going to prove it, you bet it will.

Here Comes The Summer

Now I've got some time at home, thinking what I want from a holiday, a nice walk by the sea and, er, whatever else people do on holidays, so I go to the travel agents and say I want to go somewhere where you can have a nice walk by the sea, thinking somewhere with a long prom like Brighton. She says she likes Puerto Pollensa in Majorca, yes it's very nice there, or maybe Benalmadena on the Costa Del Sol from where you can walk by the sea all the way to Torremolinos if you so wish and I'm thinking do I really want to walk by the sea seven days in a row and I'm thinking, no, I don't really.

And I've seen my fill of cathedrals and ruins and mounds and ancient drawings and mosaics and fuck me, do I really want to go to a monastery at my time of life and I don't really want to taste alcohol I want to guzzle it down with gusto.

But I do want to walk by the sea and I will, on a nice day, get the train to Brighton and walk along the prom to Hove, turn around and walk back again and get the train back home in time to have something nice to eat and to guzzle down some alcohol and watch the bleeding telly cos that's what I like to do, OK?

Climbing Up on Hampton Hill

I have been feeling a little heavy recently, too much comfort eating, possibly comfort drinking, too.

So I was at my mum's last Sunday and I mentioned this to her.

"There's some scales in the bathroom, underneath the thing. You're better off bringing them downstairs and putting them on a hard surface. The kitchen's best."

So I went to the bathroom and got the scales from under the thing, took them into the kitchen and stepped on them. Thirteen stone!

"I'm a couple of stone overweight, too," said my mum.

So I've cut out a lot of wheat. Two slices of bread a day in my lunchtime sandwich. Then I started on the Ryvita. Ryvita, Ryvita, Ryvita. I mentioned my new health kick on Twitter. Beverley replied to me. Bev's alright...

@RyvitaCrunch Beverley at Ryvita @geoffwetblanket have you had a look at our website? Might help inspire you x www.ryvita.co.uk :-)

I suppose if I were a musician or an artist, inspiration would be easy to find. But being a dieter, looking at pictures of cardboard with white stuff on them doesn't get my creative juices flowing.

A week into my diet and I'm off the Ryvita and into Oatibix. The view from the top of Hampton Hill is superb.

1066 Country

Yesterday we took the train to the coast. I used to drive to the coast but I get too tired nowadays on longer journeys than a few miles.

The train to Hastings was air conditioned. The air conditioning smelt of sweat but what do you expect in standard class?

Our nostrils were not given a rest all day. Toilets, fish, chips, fish 'n' chips, fish 'n' piss, barbecued meat, the wonderful smells of our seaside resorts.

As usual in Hastings, I decided to head for the cliffs. Except this time I couldn't find the way up. My memory's not what it was. So we turned back from the full car park and headed for St Leonards.

Past the burnt down pier, the people's pier, we walked along the prom prom prom, past sunbathers, lone young men with guitars, a group of people singing Tainted Love, big men cooking meat on barbecues and many lager drinkers. It was St George's Day and your racist little Englander would have been disgusted by the ethnic diversity on show, families from differing backgrounds brazenly enjoying themselves on a beautiful day on a relaxed not-too-crowded beach. Of course the pictures in the papers always show young blondes on Brighton or Bournemouth beaches on work days with unseasonally hot weather or a sea of bodies on the same two beaches on weekends or bank holidays.

Brighton and Bournemouth, young blondes splashing with joy.

What's wrong with a tattooed drunk with 9% lager and a pitbull snarling at the camera, UK Subs and The Vibrators at the local pub and chips gorged in their thousands?

Show us as we are.

1976

1976 was a pivotal year in the history of pop music. Top of the Pops didn't speak to the kids, it was full of acts yer gran liked. Our Kid! The Old Grey Whistle Test was all West Coast hippy nonsense. Noodle noodle noodle. The kids' older brothers' music. There was nothing for the kids. Nothing I tell you.

Britain was ready for an explosion, a revolution, a movement the kids could really get excited by. It was about getting back to basics, the roots of rock 'n' roll, "here's a chord, here's another chord, now go and form a band."

Punk took the nation by storm. The kids were united and they would never be divided. They spat, they pogoed, they took drugs that made them spit and pogo, they called Bill Grundy a dirty old man, the kids were public enemy numbers one to a million and adults didn't know what to do, they were running scared, they were holed up with their James Last and Judge Dread albums, throwing their car keys into the middle of the room, hoping to God for some middle aged thrills with Brenda from number 7 as Brenda's children played their Damned single and threw up out of their bedroom window.

So a time of adult promiscuity and teenage anarchy was raging as Brotherhood of Man took the number one spot with a song about snogging a three year old and God you felt your whole world was on a knife edge as you taped Yes off the radio and snuggled in the corner of the room, big headphones hiding your waxy ears and your dad said "Have you heard about this thing called Punk? Apparently they can't play their instruments."

And you thought what a big deal it all wasn't and 35 years later you can't believe just what a load of shit the media comes out with about nineteen bloody seventy-six.


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The Wisdom of Kirsty Young

"Public spending is being cut by £81bn (nearly 6% of total national income) within 4 years, pushing up unemployment by half a million in the public sector plus adding nearly a further half million in the private sector whose jobs depend on public expenditure." Michael Meacher yesterday (thank you Vicus for alerting me to the existence of his blog, ooh ages ago now).

The Kirsty Young presented series The British At Work has been a load of union-kicking nonsense. The unions were "on top" till the 80s when employers got "on top", did they Kirsty? If by "on top" you mean protecting jobs and working conditions I suppose they were "on top" but that all went out the window in the 80s.

Kirsty proved she knew fuck all about what was going on in her own generation with her take on the lyrics to the single Wham Rap! and the image of the band Heaven 17 on the cover of their album Penthouse and Pavement.

In Kirsty's world, Wham Rap! was about finding a job you like in Thatcher's land of opportunity. Of course the song is really about the impossibility of anything but a dead-end low-paid soul-destroying job or the possibility of rejecting this and having some self-respect on the dole. Better to be out of work than doing long hours of shit for peanuts.

In Kirsty's world the "message they are giving..." on the cover of Penthouse and Pavement "...is very clear: BUSINESS IS NOW COOL AND SEXY."



Fucking hell, woman. You really don't get irony, do you?

Music and Me

I used to think I was going to be a musician, a writer of songs and a star. No I didn't, I was fooling myself. I haven't picked up that ol' geetar for nigh on 25 years.

But recently, what with all this new technology and whatnot, I have begun to have dreams that maybe there's something there, maybe I've got the music in me. I've downloaded an app for this thing which has three synthesisers, sequencer, etc. The manual's fifty pages long!

Then I think who am I trying to kid? Whenever I hear somebody's music, somebody who blogs or who tweets, I think, yeah, well, you're alright and I'm glad you've got a hobby and all that, but you're a better blogger or tweeter.

It's so easy to expose any old shit on Twitter, not much harder to do any old cock on your blog, but when you say to the world "This is my music" you really are laying yourself open to comparisons with stuff that actually sells. I know I haven't got a hope in Hell of selling any of my music because I just haven't got that star quality, the gift of writing a catchy tune, so I'm sorry but you'll just have to put up with my bollocking words for the next however many years. I'm not going to be the next Mungo Jerry whoever he is, so this is it, this is all you're getting.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

New App

I've got this new app, you see, which means I can blog from my iPhone. This is the future, man, using the one finger I use to point accusingly at animals.

"Did you do that, you naughty boy? You're going to be in trouble."

I don't know how this is going to turn out or what to touch next - it's either "Done" "" or the little camera symbol. I'm guessing it's "Done". Any ideas what happens if I press the other two?


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A Hairy Escape

Last night I had a bad-trip dream.

I walked into some kind of market and was accosted by a woman standing outside a building. I seemed to be on a promise but she asked me to do something before I could go inside with her. She was a kind of hippy woman but not too smelly. I said OK I'd do whatever she wanted.

She went inside and came out again with people I could only describe as her sisters. Her older sisters, hairy and more smelly. Men appeared around me who looked like this...



They smelled to high heaven, too. They were chewing heavy wholemeal bread which I could see was what the commune were selling at the market as the bread was stacked high on a stall.

My new girlfriend handed me a false beard. She said I was to wear it before I could get access. The beard was made from hairy pubes, earth-mother minge hair presumably donated by the ladies present. Don't ask me how I know none of it was from the men but I just did, OK?

Then the eldest woman present brought a bowl containing a placenta to the proceedings. Don't ask me how I knew it was a placenta, I just did, OK?

I put on the minge beard and the placenta was handed to me to cuddle. Meanwhile, the men (see above) were watching me intently, chewing their bread. And the women looked at me with maternal pride.

So the dream ended.

But in real life, here's my latest film. Don't all rush at once.

Who Am I?

True Grit is an excellent film. I can't remember the John Wayne version and I've never read the book but it's just the sort of film that young teenagers should love rather than all that Harry Potter and Twilight nonsense but they won't of course because they've been brainwashed by the media.

We only go to the cinema once a year or so now. So it's good to see the trailers for forthcoming films.

A constant theme in these films seems to be identity. Something changes in the male protagonist's brain and he can't remember who he is or he can remember who he is but can't remember what happened to him or his identity has been stolen by another man or he has become another man with only his name remaining.

You can see his moronic face looking into space and hear his moronic brain whispering "Who am I?" to itself.

If only his mum hadn't forgotten to wash his PE kit with his name sewn into it.

Club Mellow

My latest film is here. I've given up trying to embed them and I can't upload this one to YouTube for some reason.

And as an extra bonus I've been sifting through the thousands of films on the site and actually found a funny one here! Xtranormal is not a social networking site so it's difficult to find stuff you'd want to see. But there have got to be some gems amongst the dross and I'm making it my life's work to find them.

The Olympic Stadium Fascination

One news item we Londoners can't get enough of is the battle for the Olympic Stadium. It's on the local news almost every evening and the selflessness of the owners of the two clubs involved brings a tear to the eye.

Here is my take on the ridiculous saga, including another appearance by my favourite actor, the sexy topless French footballer.

Designer Cake

That's it. I've definitely had it with football. I cancelled my Sky Sports subscription last week but I had to give a month's notice. Today's match was so fucking awful I would rather have been watching the Superbowl cheering on the New York Dolls or whoever's playing this year.

Anyway, my latest video is here. I'm not going to stop doing them just because you don't like them, you know!

Michael Rodd's Screen Test

Two new films for your watching delectation.

Here

And here.

One of them's even topical.

Sorry.

Hamlet Unchained

And here's another one.

The same actor as in the last one but this time with an Australian accent. Last week Steven Spielberg described him as the new greatest living actor now that Pete Postlethwaite has passed away. And who am I to argue?

Where There's A Will

This past week has been about wills. Betty's aunt died last Saturday and as with my dad and Betty's dad, no will is immediately forthcoming. She wanted to be buried in a dress which has mysteriously disappeared. And the man who helped her for most of the past eleven years wants his expenses repaying. This is all happening 170 miles away and really we just want to brush the problems under the carpet. Let's just hope social services aren't too overworked to sort things out.

So today I broached the subject of wills with my mum and stepdad. Yes, their wills are with the solicitor's. But which solicitor's? Good question!

I'm not letting you off lightly with will talk, though. No, I have another film uploaded to YouTube. It can be found here. I'd dim the lights first if I were you.

World Cup Willie

Hello! It's me again. The annoying tit who keeps posting shit animated scripts on the internet.

Still, at least I'm enjoying myself. It reminds me of when I did a serious scriptwriting evening class in the early 90s and I just brought in loads of short, crappy sketches. "Like Reeves & Mortimer," someone kindly said, but I like to think I was more influenced by absurdist theatre. Ian S Coe, that sort of thing.

Anyway, my latest "piece" is here. I've given up trying to embed them.

Happy New Year to one and all.

His Old Man

Tissues at the ready as I present my latest tear-jerking cartoon. I've even worked out how to upload to YouTube!

I promise I won't go mad and do one of these a week, but you know us boys and our new toys!



p.s. Sorry a third of it is hidden. Probably best to go to the link after all.

Boxing Day Blues

Christmas is a time for families to get together at the feet of the matriarch, even if you're feeling like shit, as I was.

We spent Boxing Day eating a mixture of salad, jacket potatoes, cold turkey and ham, pickles, quiches, pigs in blankets, apricot cheese, stuffing balls, mince pies, trifle, Quality Street, nuts, crisps and our own bile.

"I always enjoy this more than Christmas Dinner," is said every year without fail.

After dinner, the tv recorders are put to work. There's one downstairs and one upstairs.

"BBC1: 6.30, Countryfile. 7.30 Antiques Roadshow. 9.00 Upstairs Downstairs."

"I'll go upstairs and record Benidorm and Deal Or No Deal".

"What about Harry Hill?"

"No, I'm not bothered about Harry Hill."

They have 150 hours of unwatched tv on the recorder. They're going to spend the rest of the week catching up.

We, however, have caught up. Our Sky Plus box is free for the first time in years.

You can judge a Christmas by the quality of its telly. This has not been a good one.