Tag Archives: massive rant

15 Jul 2023 · 12:23 pm

Modern life is rubbish!

This is a blog post I wrote a couple of days ago. I’ve wrestled with my conscience as to whether I should actually post it. Mainly because it’s only going to worry people. I promise we’re all OK, but I do need to vent sometimes. This, being my blog, seems as good a place as any to do that. So it comes with a <rant mode> warning. Naturally, it’s written with a mental voice I use specifically for ranting which sounds like John Cleese doing Basil Fawlty going off on one. If any of it makes you laugh, that is the correct reaction. It is meant, foremost to amuse, but also to inform a bit in that it does genuinely feel like that sometimes.

Since the entire tirade genuinely reflects the way I felt at the time I wrote it, I think that, in the interests of full transparency, I should publish it. And also because I haven’t written anything else, so here it is.

[Rant mode] Modern life is rubbish!

A famous Blur album from the 1990s but also, sadly, very true for me. Or perhaps if I’m honest I should say, I am rubbish at modern life.

Aroogah! Aroogah! Whinge warning!

OK so I’m going to go on a teeny bit of a rant here, because in many respects, I’ve had a pretty rough time of it lately, and since this is my blog, I can sodding well do what I like. But I have a burning question right now and it’s this.

Why am I so unsuited to modern life? Because despite having been invited to sit the mensa test, it counts for zilch since I’m as thick as pigshit when it comes to certain, more mathematical strains of logic. I write numbers back to front and upside down (and add them up that way too) I often mange to look up completely the wrong hymn in church—because I read the number back to front—and my organisational skills are negligible. I couldn’t organise a fart in bed but the most galling thing is that despite knowing this, I still haven’t hit on a way to learn how to be organised. It just … doesn’t.

Then there’s the Mum stuff. The perfect storm of every single thing at which I am shit. I have skills. Are they any use to me for this? Of course they’re fucking not, I need the jot tittle and iota of formfilling and box ticking down pat and frankly, I suspect I’ve more chance of getting to the moon by putting car springs on my feet and trying to jump than I do of bossing that sort of stuff.

Mum’s mortgage money is dwindling astonishingly fast so I am trying to get some help from the NHS with her care costs. Yes, I know, I’m in the UK and the NHS is supposed to provide healthcare free to all at the point of need and yes, it does … except that some aspects of healthcare are more free than others. When you have dementia, it’s classed as a ‘social’ illness and dealt with by social services and presumably mental health services. It is a mental illness but at the same time, it isn’t because the causes of dementia are physical; strokes, bleeds to the brain, or neural diseases like Alzheimer’s, Lewy bodies, Motor Neurone etc which are all caused by physical factors, even if medical science doesn’t always understand why they happen, it’s a physical factor, not a mental one, which causes these outcomes.

Unfortunately, the NHS changed its classification of dementia back in the late 90s and for a whole swathe of people it was too late to plan for any healthcare costs, they just had to hope they wouldn’t need them. Worse, if those people did try to offload some cash after diagnosis, they stood the chance of being had up for avoiding care fees which is called deprivation of assets and is considered to be a criminal offence.

Some folks were lucky and they didn’t get dementia or they died fairly soon into the journey. My parents weren’t. One of the diffiiculties is that, for example, Mum has a house and the logical thing to do, from the point of view of death duties, would be for her to make over the house to us but continue to live there but even if she does this in a way that is compliant with UK tax law, then, since her dementia diagnosis, it would be a criminal offence because that would be trying to leave something to her children rather than spend the last of her and Dad’s assets on the healthcare she was promised for free until it was too late for her to do anything about it. Oh, and because the fact she and Dad have spent around £900k on care fees, to date—that’s right, close to ONE MILLION QUID—one million quid I didn’t even know they had, it still isn’t enough because the bastards want to make sure they strip those assets thoroughly, family antiques, pictures, the house, it’s all got to be sold to pay for care costs, or you have to make over the house to the authorities if they are going to pay (there may or may not be a cap on how much they can take for this. I think it depends where you are).

Yep, if you want to be tax efficient with your will, or try to avoid paying every last penny you have in care costs and give something to your kids … well … if you’re dying of cancer that’s OK. If you have a benign front temporal lobe brain tumour that presents very similar symptoms to the ones Dad endured, that’s OK, but if your affliction is associated with dementia then no. I’m sorry. If you try to do it, then, it’s a crime. Remember people, the D in dementia stands for destitute, and as far as the state is concerned, if you’re not destitute by the end of it, they’ve done something wrong. You’re supposed to surrender everything to pay for your care fees, suddenly, it becomes an actual crime to leave anything for your children or grandchildren.

Because we’re lovely compassionate people here in the UK and when our government screws over our citizens it likes to do it properly. Dementia isn’t a long grinding and hard enough road on its own, oh no, the government and the NHS like to ensure they make it as shitty for everyone concerned as possible. Why help one dementia patient when with a few deft tweaks to the care system, you can ensure there are more and double the assets you strip from the afflicted. Twice the money. Chancellor rubs hands together. Excellent.

As you can see, I’m not bitter or angry about this. Not at all.

Seriously, though. I genuinely don’t give a shit about my inheritance, that’s gone, although I do care about my brother’s half and that he gets nothing as well. What does make me angry is that it’s cost me pretty much everything; the never ending, grinding awfulness of it all has sapped me of any meaningful ability to write books and with that my purpose. It’s cost me being a decent mother, it’s cost me being an attentive wife, it’s cost me keeping in touch with my friends and wider family because it’s such a massive drag on my mental energy that I can only just keep in touch with a few folks. I guess we could just stop with, it’s cost me my happiness in many respects, or perhaps my contentment because in terms of stress, time, sadness, love, pain and god knows what else, it’s blown away any semblance of concentration and mental capacity I had (yes! Stress gives you brain fog, who’d have thunk it). It’s cost my husband and son because they feel it too, and they’ve seen me cry, many times and in my son’s case, at far too young an age. It’s cost my brother and his wife and my nephews and niece just as much.

I fucking resent the price we, and thousands like us, have paid because the illness our parents have endured has the wrong name. It does, indeed boil my piss. Mwahahahargh! I try not to think about it too much.

And fair due, when I say they take ‘every last penny’ they do generously leave you the last 23k. Except they don’t—and it’s not—because there’s a sliding scale of help beyond that and the full package doesn’t kick in until you are at £14k … which, to put this in perspective, is about 9 weeks of care fees.

Anyway, the amount of form filling! As you know, I am always a tower of strength when it comes to form filling, says she, with deep sarcasm. Did I mention that looking after Mum’s finances, healthcare and general wellbeing is a perfect storm of every single thing at which I am shit? And so was Dad’s. And it’s been going on for years and years, and years. And I am so, so fucking tired of my entire life being about trying to boss an enormous collection of all the things I am emotionally, physically and mentally least equipped to do. And Oh Lordy I took McMini to a consultation with a counsellor today and we fleetingly touched on the whole dementia dementor that is sucking away my life and I actually nearly wept. It caught me completely broadside because I thought I was through all that.

Not quite. Clearly.

The other day, I was listening to a programme on BBC sounds about dementia and they were so fucking upbeat.

‘Do you know carers everywhere save the government over £11bn a year?’ they said (or something along those lines). ‘Aren’t you all marvellous?’

Yeh the same way clapping people is so much better than giving them a pay rise and we don’t save them the money, they take it from us.

And I was sat there in the car, bundling along the M25 (it was flowing well that day) shouting,

‘No! We’re not fucking marvellous you absolute pus wangle! We’re fucking desperate, and lost and we have NOTHING left to give and NOTHING left to fight with! And no-one fucking gives a shit! And while I’m shouting at the windscreen like this, worrying the person in the car next to me,’ MTM turns, gives the nervous looking woman in the nissan micra a thumbs up and waves. ‘Can I just mention what it costs US? Everything. Fucking everything. Let me repeat that! It costs us every. fucking. thing. Our social lives, our hobbies, our capacity for coherent thought, our health and in some cases our sanity or our actual fucking lives.’

OK so I appreciate that sounds melodramatic but sadly, it’s true. One demented relative, and you are surrendering to years of sleepless nights and brain fog. Think new baby for years, and years, and YEARS until the lack of sleep kills you.

In a horrible irony, do you know what the result of that level of stress, for 15 years, was for Mum? That’s right. Dementia for her too. What a kindly joy! Thanks God you absolute get. The woman who said, ‘I don’t really care what happens to me when I get old, so long as I don’t lose my marbles.’ is losing her marbles.

Thank you, you to whichever clusterfuck of cucking funts made that decision back in the 1990s because thanks to your intervention she has, indeed, lost her fucking marbles.

Bastards.

Yes! I’m sure I’m entitled to all sorts of benefits and help and Mum gets it, what there is, but I’m too exhausted to look into it. And when I do, it’s for people spending 36 hours a week on care. If you have a part-time job that you can no longer do because of the strain of looking after your demented relative, that means you’re not eligible. If you worked during the school day, you’re not eligible because that’s not 36 hours. It’s a fucking shower! And I’m just running a house, a care team and a life from afar. I’m not even one of the poor bastards at home doing it 24/7 with no let up, no relief and no fucking hope. Waking up every hour all through the night and trying to persuade their demented relative to sleep because they are so … fucking … tired. People with dementia can live a full and happy life but it costs their loved ones everything. And nobody gives a fucking toss.

Then there’s … ugh … other stuff. Other stuff is a bit patchy to be honest. Everyone has a Draco Malfoy (look it up if you don’t know) and McMini is no exception. There’s a kid picking on him at school and for a while a lad who was a friend at one point was joining in, which made it extra specially hurtful. The ex friend has stopped now, thank goodness, but the other lad has continued. Luckily McMini, who was bullet proof on that score, and then very suddenly, not bullet proof, seems to have rediscovered his armour and ceased to care about the Draco Malloy in his life. Long may that continue.

Though the school is being brilliant it’s been tough for him. Hence the counsellor (psychotherapist who does counselling) and I arranged for us to meet to see if a few sessions would help. Things are a great deal better but I still want rule in or our whether or not Mc(not so)Mini might need a few handy coping strategies. Mainly because I doubt I’d be here now, in quite the same form, had I not had a lot of CBT at the beginning of this fucking dementia nightmare. And while he’s coping fine now, the kid who picks on him is still picking on him. So I set up an initial session to meet and see if the counsellor could help.

The first session was on Tuesday.

I forgot.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and their fluffy donkey. Fuck me but I’m a fucking dickwad.

You know what. A few years ago I did an intelligence test, the result was a bit like a spider with 8 zones of intelligence and scores for each. Basically, I scored a solid top 80%-90% in seven of the eight areas. However, in one area—numeracy and certain mathematical logic—I scored below 20%. In an IQ test I scored one point off genius level (on paper, I’m well thick on screen) yet for everything that matters in wrangling my and my mother’s day-to-day existence my fucking enormous teflon-head brain is of absolutely fuck all use. The only thing my intelligence achieves is a keen awareness of how lacking I am in the one single form of fucking intellect I actually need. There are people out there with such severe cognitive disabilities that they are unable to live independently who are smarter than I am in the only area that anyone counts.

All my life I’ve railed against the stupid fucking bigots who say that the only intelligence that counts is mathematical intelligence and discount everyone else whose abilities aren’t a carbon copy of their own as ‘stupid’ because they’re too unimaginative to see the worth in any other kind of intelligence. I heartily loathe those people who aver that only one kind of intelligence is the arbiter of all intelligence and that without it you are thick, much as I heartily loathe the way the morning people have managed to fit the entire world to the way they function and have convinced us all that being a night owl (a logical evolutionary step to ensure some of the tribe was always awake to keep watch) makes you some kind of morally bankrupt deviant.

Sadly, modern life and educational standards are set up for mathematical logic, and nothing else, and it’s amazing the number of people who, when I suggest that it’s possible to be intelligent without being mathematically intelligent, will agree but then basically say, no. Engineering and construction and most stuff runs on maths or is designed using maths they argue. Therefore our world is built on maths and it is the apogee of all intelligence. I completely get that. I get that it’s important.

But we don’t all need ALL the maths to just … you know … live. I mean, for starters, if everyone in the village has one kind of intelligence and is brilliant at building the bridges, who’s going to do the fucking cooking? Rishi’s barking plan about maths until people are 18 … well … it depends what they teach. But trying to get people like me to understand advanced trigonometry isn’t going to happen, no matter how many times you try and drum it into me. It’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

Nobody insists we all play an instrument to grade 8 level and shames anyone who can’t as an inferior or a second grade person. Some people aren’t musical. Nobody gives them any grief. Some people aren’t mathematical. Newsflash. That isn’t a fucking crime. Why this ridiculous insistence that mathematical intelligence is the only thing that matters? It’s bullshit! Surely, unless they want to be a theoretical physicist then, so long as a person can manage their finances, or parse a spreadsheet/find an expert they trust to do it for them that’s all they need.

Yes, we need to understand certain mathematical basics to get by but the way they go on. It’s like saying that only one colour matters or that only one musical note is important. And what will making people who are useless at something keep trying—and failing at it—do for their confidence.

‘You have so much to give, and so much talent but that counts as nothing because this one tiny facet of intelligence (that you’re shit at) is the only thing that matters.’

Is that a healthy message to send to our kids? From one who received it loud and clear at school throughout their entire fucking childhood let me assure you that it’s very much not.

The other day, when I forgot that session with the counsellor for McMini, I hated myself: truly fucking hated myself in a way I’ve managed to avoid since the CBT I did to deal with just this kind of negativity when I was first trying to look after my parents and navigate the absolute craptonne of admin they seemed to generate. Fact is though, I’m just a massive fucking white elephant. I know I am. Normally, I can look away and carry on living the lie that there is some actual fucking point to my existence but yesterday. No.

It’s so hard to be bright, really bright, in a whole arena of disciplines which, while perfectly valid, are discounted by modern culture as worthless, it’s even more frustrating to be smart, but, at the same time utterly, crushingly, mind-numbingly thick at the only subject by which the world gauges intellectual worth … and filling in forms … and admin. Oh I know it’s a them problem (and the fact that I care is a me problem) but it’s fucking galling. It’s not that maths isn’t important, it’s that not everyone is going to use it to an advanced level, not everyone will need to and more to the point, not everyone can. Making them try for years is just going to make them feel shit about themselves and as we all know, miserable people beget misery.

Actually if you want to appreciate what trying to force people to study something beyond their ceiling does just read this. Read this to see just how shaming people who are bad at maths makes them feel. Read this to see how giving people the impression they are stupid or somehow morally lacking, because they are less able at something you can do easily makes people feel.

It’s this idea that because some people are engineers or scientists and are using maths to define space and time, or build bridges, we should all be doing it. It’s like saying that every single person in existence should be made to write a book. It’s like saying, ‘oh we’re having a bit of trouble with the new covid vaccine, MTM why don’t you have a go?’ and being surprised and upset when I can’t crack it. It’s saying that we should all be carbon-copy geniuses (geniai?). It is, quite frankly, a bit fucking mental.

Most of us need to do a tax return, manage a budget and possibly manage a business. Yes, it’s important to know that. We all need to. But just as important is showing people who are less gifted at maths useful stuff like the kind of logic required to parse a spreadsheet that’ll do that maths for them.

It seems a trifle unfair that the zone of intelligence, out of those eight, around which my entire chuffing life revolves is the one in which I sit in the bottom 20% of the population; remembering things, administrating financial matters, filling in government forms correctly, dotting every I and crossing every T as stipulated, and in a timely manner, not being able to see how my situation fits a standard box, sitting waiting on hold because I’m over thinking it.

On top of that, my startling lack of smarts—in the one area which dominates my existence—makes life such an uphill struggle that I have nothing left for anything else after I’ve finished with it all. That’s really where this whole sticking eyes on things cropped up. Because I wanted to write. NEEDED to write, but after dealing with all the shite, getting it wrong, doing it again, missing bits off and cocking it up, all while watching my father and then my mother slowly disappearing in front of my eyes; all while taking their hands and walking beside them as we made our way together into the dark … after that I had nothing left in the tank. But an eyebomb takes a few minutes, little or no energy. I still get to be creative and it cheers me up.

Hence the marked absence of any new writing so far this year. Or last year to be honest. Of course, that’s also the reason I’ve been concentrating on the eyebombing book. Because it’s a different kind of creativity and an easy win … except I did an event on Saturday and there was very little interest in it live … so to speak which was rather worrying after it looking like people were interested online.

This is the first book I’ve talked about on social media where people have demonstrably shown an interest but … The price was definitely too high. Nobody was countenancing paying £18 for the hardback and £10 was clearly too steep for the paperback too. I might try a smaller size and see if I can produce it more cheaply and charge £7 for the paperback and £10 for the hardback. I guess the trouble is that it’s still too expensive to produce a colour photobook for a price that anyone’ll pay. It may be that I need to aim it at a more deluxe audience … gulp … but then the photos should probably have been better. Yeek!

Bummer. It looks like I might have produced yet another turkey.

Never mind. I guess you can’t win ’em all… or any of them, it seems. I should give up already, but that would be easy, and I NEED to create things … and I’m pig-headed. Onwards and upwards.

[/rant mode]

Here’s something a little lighter …

Something for that person who has everything: Eyebomb, Therefore I Am

Picture of books about eyebombing displayed artfully

Step into a realm where inanimate objects come to life and a simple pair of googly eyes holds the power to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. This book invites you to immerse yourself in the whimsical and hilarious world of eyebombing; that art of sticking googly eyes on unsuspecting inanimate objects to unleash the joy within.

As you turn each page, you’ll find yourself smiling at the quirky personalities that emerge from everyday objects ranging from lampposts and traffic signs to automatic hand dryers and even dinner. The juxtaposition of the ordinary and the unusual challenges societal norms, reminding us to embrace new or different things, and look for humour in the unlikeliest of places.

Whether you’re a fan of street art, a lover of comedy, or simply seeking a joyous escape from the mundane, this photo book is sure to leave you grinning from ear to ear. You might even end up stashing a pack of googly eyes in our own pockets and having a go at eyebombing yourself.

To find out more and be informed when it goes on sale, join my eyebombing mailing list by clicking on this link:

https://www.hamgee.co.uk/ebl

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Tagged as author blog, author blogs, author parent, book marketing, dementia, dementia emotional cost, dementia fiscal cost, full time mum writing, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, massive rant, rant, trying to be a writer

5 Mar 2023 · 6:02 pm

The chaos fairies … just for a smecking change

Holy shizz, this has been a hell of a week. But there have been successes among the rampant chaos. As you know, if you read this regularly, the chaos fairies frequently play havoc with my life. They’re dogged little bastards and their latest escapades have been more than a little annoying. Yes, it’s time for the Insurance Story.

OK, so I insure my car because if I don’t then, in this country, it’s illegal. I am under no illusions that it will be easy wresting any cash from the most compliant and efficient insurance company should anything happen. I drive a completely stupid car. I admit it. It’s this car.

The thing about this car is that it has a tiny, teeny little 1.6 toyota yaris engine. It does 40mpg. But it goes from 0-60 in an excitingly short length of time, even if it’s 6 seconds rather than 4. It also goes from 60 to quite a lot more in a similarly short, blink-of-an-eye type of time. That makes it fun to drive but reasonably straightforward to insure. Cos … small engine. You know …

Another one of its advantages is that it’s mostly made of aluminium, carbon fibre and fibreglass. This is great from the point of view of it not rusting and many bits of it degrading more slowly than normal cars. On the downside, if you prang the fibreglass it is an absolute bastard to fix. That means that, ideally, you need a fibreglass specialist rather than the lowest bidding contractor.

A few weeks ago, somebody backed into me at Tesco’s filling station (it’s always bloody Tesco’s filling station). I’m pretty sure this is not news to anyone, I think I mentioned it. The result is a couple of cracks in the wheel arch. The chap wanted to pay for it himself but I explained that it would be expensive and when I showed him the quote he did, indeed, have conniptions so I contacted my insurance company.

The insurers are a bunch called Geoffrey. The main call centre I am dealing with there is the most lovely bunch of folks up in the North East somewhere. So far I’ve spoken mostly to people with Geordie, Middlesbrough, County Durham or Northumberland accents and one Scottish lady. They are uber helpful and respond magnificently to humour, which is fairly essential when someone’s backed into your car. I cannot praise them highly enough. I always try to be decent to call centre staff, even if I’ve been waiting a while, because they’re just people and often, if you’re even remotely decent to them, they will respond warmly and make that extra effort to help you.

OK, so, like most companies these days, Geoffrey, itself, is really a sales and marketing company, they contract out the hire car side to Enterprise Rental Car, the nitty gritty of organising the work to be done is contracted out to a bunch called Incident Management Solutions, and the policy is underwritten by a company called Markerstudy. This is how capitalism works. Indeed, having worked for National Express, which contracts the nitty gritty of running many, many routes to other operators, this sort of thing is pretty standard. I understand that.

Fibreglass is an absolute bastard to repair.

I think I mentioned that.

This being the case, I usually ask if I can use my own repairer. I did have to use the insurance company’s repair service once. They were a decent lot. They did the bodywork on some of the vehicles at the coach company I worked for at the time. However, they didn’t get the paint curing right on the fibreglass and the first time I passed a gritter the newly re sprayed front of my previous car ended up pitted with white holes.

Most insurers are more than happy for me to use a local Lotus specialist. Geoffrey, and then Enterprise, said they were fine with it. They just had to agree terms with the mechanic. The guy who fixes my car is extremely competitively priced. Furthermore, he knew he could fix this without replacing the whole front of the car. He also knows that many companies will automatically say they’re going to replace the entire front, but often end up not doing so. The difference being a quote for the work without changing the front is about £800 and it’s about £1,500 for the parts from anyone else.

Gerald, that’s his name, is the most honest person you could happen to meet, likewise his colleague Neil. These guys are not ones to charge more than the price of gold for the oil used in an oil change. Small bolts and washers do not miraculously become £10 on their bills unless they’ve had to buy them for that from Lotus. They are also really, and I mean really good at fixing weird niggles. It’s a Lotus and it gets lots of weird niggles. And if there are two options and one is cheaper, they will advise you to take the cheaper one if it’ll work just as well.

As a result, GST, that’s the company name, is well in demand so I rang them and provisionally booked a slot for the work while I was on holiday. Then I broke the back of my car, which I am not claiming for because the work would cost about the same as my excess and we agreed they’d fix that at the same time.

Someone rang GST to negotiate but they couldn’t get hold of them. When they called back it rang out or a message said the call handlers were all busy. GST have better things to do with their time so I rang Geoffrey, who put me through to Incident Management Solutions. I waited for … quite a long time … and got hold of someone who was able to give me a direct line for GST to call which I passed on and all was well …

Except it wasn’t. Because GST’s hourly labour rates were too high. I’m not sure how because their labour rates are, quite frankly, lower than pretty much anyone’s. Also, the time they were doing the work meant that there was no need for a hire car, so no cost there, and of course, they hadn’t said it would need a new nose cone so that was a few grand off the ticket right there, too.

Yes, but the labour rates were too high. They needed to reduce another 8% before VAT and pay a £20 admin fee to be in with a shout …

So basically, as I understood it, if GST had committed fraud, by quoting for a new nose cone to up the price, but not fitting one, so they could then reduce their labour rates to £25 an hour, or whatever it was that was stipulated in the rules, they’d have got the job even though it would have cost the insurance company more money.

That’s fucking bats. This might be the world of capitalism but that’s Nationalised Industry levels of mental, pointless, hoops, rules and inefficiency right there.

Yes I was fucked off.

Anyway, I rang Incident Management Solutions and asked what I could do to get GST in with a shout and they explained that basically, nothing. I’d have to go with their approved repairer. I knew from the bumpf I’d received that Markerstudy, who underwrote my policy, were prepared to allow me to use my own repairer. I was advised that I should go back to the insurer, which I did and they, in turn, advised me that now I would have to go direct to the underwriter.

My first call to Markerstudy, I was put through directly from Geoffrey (the insurers) to the new claims department, because they weren’t sure Markerstudy would have all the paperwork yet. I spoke to a lady who had an accent like Gina Ahluwalia when she’s doing an impression of her mum. She explained that they had the paperwork and that she’d put me onto the existing claims department. Markerstudy don’t tell you where you are in the queue so after 45 minutes I reckoned something must have gone wrong and hung up.

I tried again but this time I got a menu and chose existing claims, I then got another menu of items, none of which applied to my situation, so I chose 7 ‘anything else’. I’m not sure if it was a bad line or the guy at the other end didn’t seem to speak much English and certainly couldn’t understand mine. I explained what had happened.

‘So you had an accident that was your fault?’

‘No, it was the other guy’s fault.’

‘So you want to use our approved repairers?’

‘No. I don’t. I want to use my own.’

‘I will put you through to the existing claims department.’

‘Hang on, you are the existing claims department. I chose existing claims from the menu.’

‘No this is not existing claims.’

‘It should be. Honest. I picked existing claims. Then I got a menu of seven options, none of which applied to me so I chose number 7 for “anything else”. Please can you tell me what item on the menu I should choose to get put through to the existing claims department straight away.’

‘What were the menu options?’

‘I can’t remember them all but there definitely wasn’t one for using my own repairer.’

‘Then ma’am may I suggest that next time you listen to the menu carefully, then you can select the right department.’

‘Why thank you for your advice, which wasn’t condescending at all,’ I told him sweetly.

‘No problem ma’am,’ oh. I made a mental note that, clearly he’s immune to sarcasm. ‘I will put you through to the existing claims department now, yes? I am putting you through now?’

‘Yes, you may as well.’

Another heaven knows how long on hold. I started this at 10.00 am and it was getting on for 12.00 now. I was due out to lunch with a friend in 20 minutes. I decided I’d try again because no-one’s answering and knowing my luck it’d go back to the beginning and I’d end up talking to this bloke again. This time I wrote down all the menu options and chose number 3, ‘I wish to use our approved repairer.’

I got through to another man with an equally strong Nigerian accent.

‘I will put you through to the right department,’ he said after I’d explained my predicament.

‘But … I chose “existing claims” and then “I wish to use our approved repairer” how can I be at the wrong department?’

After a long conversation like those ones you have on holiday when they only speak a few words of English and you only speak a few words of their language, except I didn’t speak any of his language at all, he basically told me that he was in a kind of triage area where they answered the phone and then put people into the queue for the relevant department. In short the menu was an irrelevant and pointless waste of time. So that was grand.

I thanked him, and as it was 12.20, and I was due to meet my friend at half past, I told him I’d ring back later.

Later that day at 4.30, I arrived home. I googled Markerstudy reviews. I invite you to do the same. There are some 5 star ones, from people who are chuffed their insurance is so cheap and there are the others, which are all 1 star, from people trying to make a claim. A big red flag for me was how many people in non-fault accidents had ended up paying their excess anyway and how many people had to involve the ombudsmen, or lawyers, to get the faintest sniff of their money. Others; more people than I was comfortable with, ranted at what a shower the approved repairers were and how comprehensively they cocked it up.

Shit. I needed something between these people and me. Also, my excess is just shy of £300. It was definitely worth paying the difference.

I rang Geoffrey Insurance and explained that I really didn’t want to go direct to Markerstudy. They spoke to Enterprise and managed to get them to agree to reopen my case if I promised to go with their own insurers. Then I rang Gerald at GST and told him to agree to whatever they asked and that I’d pay the difference. Then it was supper time.

The next morning, bright and early, I rang Geoffrey and asked for advice. Had anyone ever paid part of the claim? The lovely geordie I spoke to said I could but ask although he’d never heard of it happening and that I’d been very lucky that they’d agreed to take my claim back after closing the file.

Back to Incident Management Solutions. Number 9 in the queue this time and only fifteen minutes or so on hold. I got a lady who sounded really bored and pissed off, but she thawed considerably over our conversation and turned out to have a wonderful droll sense of humour and the bored sounding delivery transpired to be mis diagnosed laconic. She was great. I explained that I was going to pay the difference. She said that was unfair because the accident wasn’t my fault. I explained about the reviews of Markerstudy online and that I thought it was probably cheaper in the long run. She therefore made it all official by ringing GST while I was on the phone, and then confirmed that yes, they would be doing the work. Halle-fucking-luja!

This also means that they can fix some other niggles on my car for that tiny bit less because they already have it for the insurance claim, and since I’ll be on holiday at the time they’ll have it for two weeks so there won’t be the same time constraint.

I can’t help thinking that this experience represents a kind of Livy’s circle of capitalism. These days, the customer is no longer king, it’s the shareholder. Doubtless Markersure is worth billions and doing really well on the stock market because they are buying everything that moves. At ground level, that rapid expansion, which, most likely means buying a company, firing the staff routing the calls to their own call centre and piling the load for their sales advisors, rather than employing any more, results in absolutely shit customer service, but that doesn’t matter, because it’s expanding, so the shareholders still get a bonus, and it’s still a ‘successful’ company even if it’s running at a loss. (Did you know that Spotify has never made a profit?)

The cumbersome nature of behemoths, generally, coupled with all the petty, box-ticking dos and don’ts by which decisions are made within them is so very similar to the aspects of nationalised industries in the 1970s that were crap. It’s all about box ticking, rather than any form of logic or business acumen at ground level. Stuff I read about British Leyland in the 1970s and 80s and other examples of the worst inefficiencies of Britain’s nationalised industries in the that period echoes through all my experiences with modern help desks and call centres. Not to mention our government bodies now.

Take the NHS, everything contracted out, nobody has agency … remember the problem I had getting them to deliver Mum home? The transport people box ticking, no tick, no delivery; Mum is taken home to her house and then back to hospital again. The ward administrator is livid but can do nothing because the drivers don’t answer to her and in the long run, neither does the transport company. They’re the lowest bidder so however shit the service, they’ll always get the job. All those double journeys and mistakes … is it any cheaper than organising it in house? Probably not.

So we have this weird situation where, as far as the customer is concerned, the down-to-earth, nitty-gritty of dealing with capitalism is exactly the same as dealing with a government department or everything that was shit about nationalised companies. Because it turns out that one behemoth—be it the passport office, the NHS, Google, Audible or Markersure—is very like another. Just as governments are often, flabby, inflexible and inefficient because they’re massive and complicated; so companies, when they reach the same size as a small country, seem to become the same. Full of illogical conflicting rules and guidelines that hinder rather than help. A culture of box ticking and back covering rather than actual action or customer service. But what do they care? They own their markets andtheir consumers have no choice, right? Except no. We do. It’s more difficult sometimes but we have to think about it.

There we go then.

Caveat emptor.

Check who underwrites your insurance. If it’s Markersure steer well clear.

Which leads me onto this … A few days ago someone on Facebook shared this quote from Ursula LeGuin.

‘We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art – the art of words.’

What interested me was people’s reactions. They got all democrat and republican about it. The internet is rather Little America, after all. Lots of people saying yah boo you leftie twat! You think communism (that’s what the Americans call socialism) is better do you? You think shitty inefficient communism crushing our freedoms is better do you? etc.

But it strikes me that shitty inefficient communism was exactly like the events I’ve just described. I have Mondays and Fridays, along with some Thursdays to write. The simple job of getting my insurance claim sorted out took me all my spare time on all three of those days. Obviously, the post of Ursula LeGuin’s words being on Facebook, and having seen it once, I’ll never find it again. Facebook doesn’t want you thinking about stuff before going back to make a measured response. But that’s the whole point isn’t it? Keep the customers busy doing pointless shit and they won’t notice how shit you are. They’ll be too busy concentrating on the pebbles on the path to look up and see just how shit the view has become.

Except some of us do look up. We see their shite. We so, so do.

Everything right now, at every level of life, is about box ticking, arse-covering, bureaucratic pissyness. Nothing is about what might work, what is logical, what is sensible and certainly, never, never, ever about about what is right. That’s why my parents have paid three quarters of a million quid in care fees and we will be pursued to the ends of the earth if Mum is deemed to have tried to give anything away to us—you know, so we have something to inherit the way she and Dad would have wanted, for example—rather than paying it all on care fees the government promised them it would pay, before pulling the rug from under them and a whole generation of people when it was too late for them to act.

I don’t know what the answer is but it might be in here. If you haven’t read this book, read it right now. It makes so much sense of the way modern business and modern life runs.

Is religion such a bad thing done the right way, you know, so it gives people principles? If today’s help-yourself-and-bollocks-to-the-rest-of-them society is anything to go by, some kind of belief system — other than ‘I want it all’ might be worth having.

And finally … once again, here’s a chance to grab 12 hours of fabulous audiophonic joy for 99p (or 99c)

Yes. If you like cheap audio books, Few Are Chosen is on sale for all of March. After that the price goes up again. As always, I’m cutting my own throat here. It’s 99c on Apple, Kobo and my own website. For anyone in the States, it’s also 99c on Barnes & Noble and Chirp (which is USA and Canada). If you want to grab it while it’s mega cheap you can find store links and a bit more info here

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Tagged as I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, markerstudy, Mary Fails at Modern Life, massive rant, MTM gets stroppy, rant, writers

20 Aug 2022 · 1:34 pm

The dementia life sentence …

For some time now, I’ve been putting off writing anything here. Mainly because I need to write about Mum but I’m just so burned out with the whole dementia circus that when I sit down to do it, I can’t. I know I’m in trouble, but there’s nothing I can do, no way out, and for the next ten years, I know it’s just going to be more and more of the same grinding awfulness. Wednesday’s visit to Mum was lovely and she was in great form, so it’s not like there aren’t good days. It’s just that I’m in the kind of bad place, mentally, where I’m having trouble seeing them. I think this is because there is too much Mum stuff and it’s time sensitive so I can’t spread it out.

Settling this next stage for Mum is dragging on, and on, and on, and on, and on. And I can see no end. And it’s taking everything, so I’ve nothing left for writing. I’ve hardly written anything in six months and that is not a recipe for happy me. There has to be writing, and right now, until the next year of the Plan is settled for Mum. There’s not.

Which means I’m as miserable as sin.

‘Last night, I dreamt that Mum had died, peacefully, in her sleep. My overwhelming sense was one of gladness and relief. When I woke, and realised it was all a dream, I was absolutely miserable.

How the fuck does that even happen?’

OK, so I’m putting it in quotes but it’s not really a quote, it’s what I said when I woke up on Tuesday.

A lot of looking after someone with dementia is wishing them dead before the grim bit starts and then feeling really guilty about it.

It’s not that I don’t love Mum. I love her utterly. It’s not even that I find her difficult to love the way she is now. Far from it! It’s not that I can’t enjoy her company the way she is now, again, far from it. We have really good fun some visits. It’s just that I miss real Mum so much and I want her back. And I know she’s frightened and I don’t want her to go through the scary last bit.

‘Please God spare her that,’ I beg.

‘Fuck off and do one, Mary,’ says God.

Mum’s been petrified of getting dementia all her life. Scared enough to mention it to me on numerous occasions. And now … I wish her a gentle death while she can still be in denial. I want her to die before I have to mortgage her house from under her, or move her somewhere else because we can’t afford the care anymore and there’s nothing else left to sell. And who knows, she might be find if she goes and lives with my bruv. It might be fantastic and we might end up wondering why on God’s green earth we didn’t do it sooner. But her family are her carers now and leaving them would definitely be a wrench. And I can’t write this stuff without crying, and I just can’t cry right now or I’ll be undone. And I can’t be undone. And I’ve cried so much already. I’m so bored of being sad and crying.

That, right there, people is my baggage.

Let’s unpack it!

Let’s not, I hear you cry. Unlucky. This is my blog and I can do what I fucking well like. Also, I’ve had vertigo for seven days so I’m not in the mood to be tactful, gentle, accommodating or, in fact, to be pleasant in any way. You have been warned.

Right then. MT pauses to put her rant goggles on. I’m going to rail at the system here. It’ll do fuck all good but it makes me feel better. Off we go.

What kind of person does that statement in the big letters up there make me? Probably a git, but mostly, just an exhausted one. If you are diagnosed with any form of dementia and you are unlucky enough to live in the UK you are absolutely fucked. You see, we have a national health service, but it’s chronically underfunded and has been by successive governments. Case in point, Doctors have had static pay or tiny pay rises for so long that, in real terms, looking at what they earn versus cost of living increases, they claim their pay has dropped by 30% in real terms. I can believe it.

The NHS is full of agencies employing other agencies, ‘to save money’. But agencies are a false economy. For example, say you need help after an operation. In the area where I’m familiar with the rates of car fees, the NHS is paying £25 an hour for the people who pop in twice a day to and help you dress and undress. A self employed carer will cost you £15. Agencies do the admin, so basically, the NHS is paying £10 an hour for admin for each patient. That’s because it looks cheaper on paper than employing a bunch of people to do the care and others to administer it all in-house.

Since it’s as cash-strapped as the rest of us, the NHS is always on the look out for ways to save money. One way is to discriminate against people with illnesses which are expensive or lengthy to treat. Come in Dementia, your time is up.

You see, there wasn’t much to do at the end of World War 2 except shag and have babies. There was a huge population explosion. Now all those kids are reaching the age where they are getting dementia. That’s a lot of people at once and that’s expensive.

What is the NHS response to this? Well, since Dementia patients are expensive to care for and successive Governments were refusing to find it properly, the NHS dumped its dementia patients. They now refuse to provide ongoing care to the majority of dementia sufferers. Occasionally people take them to the High Court and they are forced to provide ‘free healthcare at the point of demand’ for a dementia sufferer the way their charter says they’re supposed to. But it takes many years (1998 – 2011 in the case of the lady I know) and more energy than most people who are trying to look after someone demented have to spare. The only people with access to dementia care from the outset are the lucky ones who have no savings, and even then it’s a post code lottery.

Drugs? Yes, they’ll give you drugs (much good may it do because did I mention that THERE’S NO FUCKING CURE!) Stuff you really need, ie support and care? No.

Dementia is the long slow death of a thousand tiny cuts. It takes years to die of dementia. Bit by bit, little tiny piece by little tiny piece, you fade away. Worse, because the NHS made this decision not to deliver ongoing dementia care relatively recently, the current generation of dementia sufferers with more than £14k to their name have not taken out insurance, or planned for treatment. So we have this broken, semi-American system where half of it is free but there’s only nascent insurance to cover the other half. Indeed, if you have dementia, and savings, you will need a craptonne of money and there is NO financial advice about managing this. There are millions of people in the UK facing this every day and you cannot find financial advice for love nor … well … yes … money. All you can do is find folks who will help you with the various aspects, mortgages, care annuities etc.

Unless a person with dementia has less than £14,000 in the bank, the only available care for them is what they can pay for, or family members. Bear in mind, I have admitted that I’m struggling to cope with Mum’s admin, being a mum and trying to write the occasional book. But I am not trying to look after a spouse with a profound cognitive disability at the same time. Mum was.

If you look at guidelines for carers, what their hours should be, their rest breaks etc, you will see that there are laws about this. The tacit implication of that is that Government acknowledges that being a carer is not a job one person can do alone 24/7 year in, year out with no respite. Ever. Except that they clearly think that if you have a family member with dementia you have some magical bionic transformation because that’s what the family of every single dementia sufferer in the UK with more than 14k in the bank is expected to do, until the money runs out.

If ever there is a group of people who need help facing their illness it’s dementia sufferers and their loved ones. Dementia ravages everyone involved. It’s horrific.

If ever there was a group of people with less help available facing their illness, it’s dementia sufferers and their loved ones. Ha fucking ha.

Except that looking after a demented spouse with the risible amount of help available can and does kill some people.

I guess what I’m saying here is that Mum’s dementia was almost certainly brought on by the stress of looking after Dad, with his. Old people are proud and they won’t accept help. In the case of Mum and Dad, at the beginning, I suspect they also knew what ‘helping’ would do to me and my brother, and as loving parents, they tried to protect us from that for as long as they possibly could, which turned out to be until Mum’s health broke down in 2015. We finally managed to get her and Dad live-in care in the Spring of 2016.

Right now, this seems to be the story with anything in the NHS. Once again, it’s a false economy. Like their bizarre insistence that I could not have a knee replacement until I was 60, meaning that I now have arthritis in my other knee and both hips from walking awkwardly due to the pain. Even if they can fob me off about the other limbs when the time comes, they’ll still have to provide me with a wheelchair, painkillers, crutches, someone to help me wash and dress every day … I doubt a couple of years of that are cheaper than a 12 grand knee replacement, yet the whoever is in charge of this stuff at the NHS is clearly convinced they are.

Going back to dementia. You might ask why I think this is unjust. Why I believe people deserve to keep their life savings.

Well, first of all, while I know and understand the fact that by the time I’m elderly, any kind of healthcare will be a luxury for the rich these people don’t. They were led to believe they would pay taxes and that those taxes would buy them free health care and security in their old age. They were led to believe, all their lives, that Britain was a welfare state and would remain one. I think one of the cruellest things about dementia is that, unless you’re lucky enough to die of something else first, it takes years and years to die of it. A dementia diagnosis in the UK is a fast-track to slow-motion destitution and death.

If we really have to punish people for saving and putting money aside for a rainy day, then, for the love of god, can’t they keep their house? It’s the saddest thing that, from the Hippocratic Oath/compassionate medicine side of the equation, it’s well known that a dementia sufferer will do better in familiar surroundings. The nature of the disease is such that usually, they have to go into a home at some point, but in the initial and middle stages, a change of surroundings will confuse them more and accelerate their condition.

As I understand it, this is a known medical fact.

Her knowledge of this is the reason why Mum didn’t downsize when Dad was ill — because it would confuse him — and of course, by the time Dad finally died she was too demented, herself, for us to do it. This being the case, you’d think that there would be a mechanism for a person with dementia to stay in their own home, wouldn’t you? But oh no. If a dementia sufferer is living alone then, once their money is gone, they must sell their house and everything else they possess to fund their care fees. They might have paid taxes and worked all their lives but they must now surrender the money they’ve saved. The money they’ve already paid tax on so that they could have free healthcare.

Obviously having dementia isn’t shitty enough, oh no, the NHS the Government the local authority or whoever the fuck it is sure as hell isn’t going to look after any demented person until they’ve been stripped of everything.

How is that humane? Every step of dementia care in the UK right now seems to be along the lines of, ‘How can we make it worse for them? What will make them suffer more? Hey look! This one lets us shit on their families as well! Good-oh! We’ll do that.’

Worse, it’s not just cruel, it’s dangerous. Because dementia care is a social services ‘problem’ and down to your local authority, it means that whether or not there’s a place in a secure home for you is very much a post code lottery. Here in Suffolk, there are people who have to travel 60 miles to Peterborough to visit loved ones because that’s where the nearest secure dementia home with a place was situated when their loved one needed it. There are other people who regularly pick up demented wandering parents from the police station after they’ve been found wandering at night … because there isn’t even a secure place for them 60 miles away in Peterborough.

Luckily for Mum and Dad, Sussex contains the south coast and towns like Worthing which are still home to large numbers of elderly people who appear to have gone to them to die and then forgotten what they went there for. Despite being a bit more hip and nascent Brighton spill-over, Worthing is still well supplied with elderly people and care homes. Even so, it took three weeks to find a place in a secure dementia home for Dad while he was in hospital, and that was only because we had already started the process with Social Services and they were already looking to place him. We were incredibly lucky.

People with dementia need secure care, or an adult living in with them because otherwise they do weird things; they go walking along the A14 at four in the morning in their pyjamas because they think it’s day time, they drive down streets on the wrong side of the road, they go ‘home’ to someone else’s house in the middle of the night because they used to live there and they’ve forgotten they don’t any more, they get confused at road junctions and end up driving the wrong way down a dual carriageway (these are all things demented people have done and in all but one case, they are the demented loved ones of people I know). And sometimes, when they do these things, especially in cars, other people get hurt or killed. It’s not just the carers who are broken apart.

Cutting out dementia care isn’t only ruining the lives of those who suffer from it and their families, it’s harming a whole host of invisible others.

I wish I could say that government or anyone anywhere gave a flying fuck about any of this, or us, but it isn’t true. I’m just railing into the wind. I know that … but it makes me feel better.

Thank you for listening.

On a completely different note …

If you want something to take the taste away from my insane rantings, there’s always a free book.

Yes, Small Beginnings, K’Barthan Extras, Hamgeean Misfit: No 1 is free to download in ebook format from all the major retailers and you can also get the audiobook for free from my web store.

If you think that sounds interesting and would like to take a look, just go here.

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25 Jun 2022 · 5:18 pm

And his mummy cried …

This week, I was thinking about discussing world events but looking at them … for fuck’s sake. I can’t bring myself to do it. Let’s look at the fact America has passed its first gun legislation since 1994! Bloody well done America, we’ll ignore your apparent descent into the abyss on the women’s rights front because let’s face it, nothing’s more important than life, including a life worth living.

Seriously though, we need to relearn the art of deep thought—or, indeed, any thought. Fast.

We have to learn that not everyone who is different from us is a monster.

There is a standard branding technique that is supremely effective it’s this: make people feel they are part of a group, part of a tribe. Make them feel they have found their home with us (the brand). It speaks to our most primal instincts. The trouble starts when politicians get hold of it.

First up, the most motivating thing to a primal critter such as a human is fear, so they aim to use that. At the same time, as politicians, they also want a certain amount of control because what they want is your vote. They want you to feel that by joining their cause you are part of a warm fuzzy loving community that is fighting against a dangerous and unseen enemy. They want you to feel the blitz spirit of WW2, except over things that are not nearly as serious a threat. But to get that motivation, that solid Dunkirk spirit, they have to scare you enough for you to feel as if they, you and the people with whom you stand are, literally, holding back the forces of chaos. They use strong NLP trigger words like ‘war’ to validate the importance of your fight and write robust and forthright articles showing you that you need to press your cause, for the public good and those who oppose you must be ignored or walked over, for their own good.

Example: We are at war with litter louts, the war on noise pollution, etc. It’s all bollocks and actually trivialises issues which, while not on a war footing, are still important.

Stupid twats.

Once they’ve got you scared enough to think you’re fighting a ‘war on …’ whatever it is, ~~rape or incest victims~~ I mean sorry, people who asked for it as we’re probably meant to call them from now on, or possibly dissolute women who can’t say no*, whatever it is this week, they want you to feel self congratulatory and smug. How do they do that? By pointing at other tribes and saying stuff like,

‘Look at these folks. They’re not like you. They’re scary. They’re threatening us. They’re taking our jobs. They’re not on the run from extremist states, they’re just here to sponge off our welfare system. We’re not undermining your human rights so we can take over. We are taking difficult but necessary steps because they are planning a bloodless coup. They have control of the mainstream media. We need to stick together and fight them, No is still the best form of contraceptive if they didn’t listen and screwed you anyway it’s your fault.’ etc.

* Yes that was inflammatory but I’m fucking angry.

This is, as one of the historical masters at the art put it, ‘persuading one group of people that another group of people is less than human.’ These days. There’s a lot of it about. Big business owns most things. The richest individuals own everything, including many politicians and the newspapers. Democracy and a fair society is not in their interest. Nothing must stand in the way of them accruing more wealth because the billions they already have aren’t enough.

On a side note though, have you ever wondered why, in the UK, people on the political fringes attempt to undermine the BBC? It’s because for all it’s flaws and Oxbridge elitism, it’s the nearest thing to an impartial press we have … oh, along with Private Eye.

I have friends from a wide range of social and political backgrounds as our common ground is often a hobby, such as detecting, writing, foraging, wine, music … whatever. I know seemingly benign and friendly folk who will turn round and tell me they believe stuff that is pretty fucking appalling. The thing is though, sometimes, not always, but often, they are people I get on with in the context in which I see them. Because we’re not talking about their offensive views, we’re discussing book marketing, or foraging, or some other topic upon which we completely agree. Sometimes I take the piss out of them for being very right wing, or out of myself for being the token bleeding-heart liberal in their life/club/forum whatever.

The way I see it, if I suddenly discover an author friend holds views that puts them close to being Marxist or something equally moronic, they are usually completely brainwashed into thinking that people of a different political persuasion are bad and that they shouldn’t mix with them. If all I can do is show them, by being the official bleeding-heart liberal of the group, that actually nothing is quite that black and white, then maybe I’ve done something good.

Sometimes, I continue to talk to people for the simple reason that, if they see that we agree on many things, there is a chance that they will understand that not everyone to the political left or right of them (depending where they are on the scale compared to me) is a threat to society, since I’m not.

Take away that ability to mix and people are sitting in an echo chamber and see nothing but their own views. Over time they find it increasingly difficult to mix with people who don’t believe the same things as them. After spending a lot of time on the internet, I, myself am finding this. Although I think our right wing, here in the UK, has moved a long, long way to the right of what ‘conservatism’ actually stood for when I was a kid. Either that or its PR has—presumably it’s gloating far right voters they are looking to steal, rather than centrists, like myself.

It’s important to be able to mix; I like to discuss stuff, you know, without evangelising or trying to win anyone over, but just because I’m really interested in what other people think and how they’ve come to their conclusions. I think, as human beings, it’s part of our nature to want to share our views so it’s important to be able to do so without getting too emotional, even if it’s hard. Take away this ability to share views and before you know where you are, you’ve got groups of feckless idiots smashing up synagogues and … the rest is history.

I’m not shitting you here, ceasing to engage, ghettoising ourselves or others … this is how wars start.

When you start to make people feel part of a tribe by playing on their fears of people or things they don’t know, pointing out the ‘threats’ posed by others, or as normal humans would call it, the ‘differences’ you get polarisation. The fact there are churches which will tell their congregations not to speak to, or mix with. non-christians … hmm, where in Christ’s teachings do we see that. Oh wait! I know. NOWHERE! That’s where.

Why are some people so bloody poisonous? But more to the point, why can’t they see? It’s like people are too scared to think. Too scared to face the grey areas between thou shalt and thou shalt not. It’s like a lot of people mull something over once and then decide what they’ll believe about it for the rest of their lives. Then, no matter how circumstances may change or what new facts may come to light they never revisit their opinion. How can people live like that? I mean sure, it’s nice and simple but it must be so empty.

Seriously, I am constantly revising my opinions on things. Is that weird? I think Brexit was a terrible idea but I’m interested as to why other folks disagree and actually, in many cases I totally get why they voted how they did.

Is it about confidence? Could it be? You see, I fuck up a lot, so I am not in any way afraid to admit to getting things wrong. You can only be carpeted by the headmaster so many times before you start to give a bit less of a shit about how other people see you and a bit more of a shite about how you, personally, see yourself and what you are actually like.

Maybe people perceive changing their minds as a sign of weakness which they’re too afraid to show. Certainly I know there are people who mistake my tendency to be accommodating with being a push over. But surely, if someone perceives changing their mind — or compromising — as a sign of weakness and failure, they’ll never be able to revise their opinions about anything. Whereas, if a person is genuinely strong, they will have the confidence to change their mind over things when new facts emerge or their experience alters. Let’s face it, no-one’s ever going to be afraid of people thinking that they’re weak if they know, in their hearts, that they aren’t.

Often, I wonder if a lot of these people who hold very fixed or hard opinions simply do so because they don’t have the strength of character to cope with a world where nothing is certain. It is difficult, I know but sometimes, there is grey. Sometimes it’s a case of ‘Usually, thou shalt not but in this case, if thou art just, thou shalt …’

On other topics …

Yes! I am still reading through what I have of the current book and yes, it’s going OK, indeed, I’m enjoying reading what I’ve written, which is a bit of a turn up! I am also continuing to make accompanying notes to be sure I smooth out the bits I’ve cocked up.

There’s a terrible lull which I need to fix but essentially, it zips along. I just need to figure out the end; simple or complicated, that’s my choice. Simple may still make it very, very long so I might do complicated as that will be two books. Once I have finished I’ll decide where to split it and then I’ll send it out to beta readers, get it edited and do a kickstarter instead of a preorder.

Also the cosplay … I looked for cloaks online and I found this … it’s velvet but it’s very cool and you can stipulate what colours you want. Oh yes.

And on a lighter note …

My audiobook sale is still on and (woot) the odd person has even bought one here and there.

Not nearly enough to pay for the cost of the advertising but hey, you can’t win ’em all. If you want one, grab them while you can. Or if you want to encourage your friends to have a listen feel free to do so by clicking or sharing this link: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/cmot

Last but not least …

I think this song is pertinent today. Personally, I think procreation isn’t the answer without some promise of a life worth living afterwards. Could I have an abortion, no I couldn’t. But if someone else needs to for their mental or medical health, it’s not my business to stop them. The original name for this song was The Vicious Circle. It’s also worth reading this article.

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27 Feb 2022 · 6:05 pm

Oh shit … warning: venting ahead.

Gardening tips from Vladimir Putin

Holy fucking fuck.

Well, this has been an bit of a grim week hasn’t it? If you’d asked me the kind of future I envisaged for my son a few years ago, I’d have said, ‘whatever he wants to make of it.’ I confess that the idea that, in a couple of year’s time, he might be called up to fight in a third world war wasn’t exactly uppermost in my mind. I suppose it depends on a lot of factors but there are uncanny parallels between current events and some of the darker parts of 20th century history.

What worries me, specifically, is that, putting my Lord Vernon hat on for a moment, if I was the average dictator-in-the-street, with one of the largest conventional armies at my disposal, I’d be thinking like this:

Nobody wants to use nuclear weapons. Why? Because a nuclear war would poison the entire planet. We’d all die except for about 0.0001% of the population; the social or political elite who have access to/own a nuclear bunker. Everyone else would either be vaporised in the succession of blasts, or would die of radiation poising in the aftermath.

Obviously as a dictator, I don’t give a shit about killing people but a nuclear conflict does raise problems:

1. If I want to bestride the earth like a colossus with every creature doing my bidding, I need … well … an actual earth to bestride. If I’ve nuked it so that no-one can ever go outside again then, frankly, my chances of doing any seriously satisfying bestriding are a bit shit aren’t they?

2. There’ll be a staff problem. I mean, I’m a dictator. I have an ego. I believe in my own indomitability. There have to be enough people in the underclass to lord it over. There won’t be enough little people to crush under my mighty feet as I do the colossus thing if they’re all dead and there won’t be enough of them to see it. Unfortunately, today’s underclass- no scratch that, pretty much the entire population of the world, today, lacks access to a nuclear shelter. If I nuke my enemies and they nuke back then all the little people will die in the attack. I will be left with a very small group of similarly mighty egos to my own, and the kind of people who’ve never got their hands dirty.

3. If I’m a proper dictator and worth my salt, I like money and a broken and shattered world economy isn’t going to earn me shit. Unless I just want all the stuff. Maybe I just want a palace full of looted art and jewellery all stacked up. The art. All of it from every single museum in the countries I’ve destroyed. I dunno, but I suspect if I’m properly dictator-level greedy I’m going to want an economy to subjugate that’s a bit more than dead on the table.

No sireee! I’m pretty sure that if I was a dictator, a world comprising me and my special few, plus a couple of thousand people from every other country that could afford a shelter system—with a sprinkling of the kind of insanely rich and paranoid bell-ends who have their own nuclear bunkers, Auric Goldfinger, come on down—would not float my boat world-dominance-wise.

Yes, lording it over the survivors of a nuclear war will be child’s play, but as I mentioned, there’ll be only a handful of them. It might be alright, but I’m guessing the average Dictator-in-the-street will consider this to be small-time shite and not the big cock-waving fest they’re after.

Unless Putin’s decided he’ll rise from the ruins with a few thousand privileged survivors and start a master race. I do hope not. I wonder how that would work though. Especially if, for months, no-one can go outside for more than half an hour without getting radiation sickness, and when they do, nothing will work because the EMP in the blast has done for the infrastructure. I’m hoping he’ll decide that poisoning the entire planet is a really bad idea because it will make it much harder to subjugate.

OK so that sounds good so far, but it’s not, because if I’m a properly power crazed nutjob, the inability to nuke isn’t going to stop me wanting a massive fuck off war. If I was the average Dictator-in-the-street and I knew that I had a bigger army than most of my enemies put together, and being a dictator, I didn’t give a rat’s arse about the people I govern because they are there to serve me and add to my wealth, nothing more. I might be tempted to sacrifice a few million of them in a conventional war.

After all, if I start a conflict that wipes out 60 million people like the second world war did, I still have way, way more individuals to screw for cash and lord it over afterwards, if I win, and there’s still the remnants of an infrastructure for me to milk for my own ends. If I’m just another of the rich white men who wants to run the world but am being a bit more obvious about it (by din’t of being a meat-packing dictator) war without nukes will suit me.

Let’s face it, half the western world believes Putin’s the good guy anyway. Yes. Russian sources are painting the Ukraine as the aggressor and because Putin and his ex KGB mates have so successfully undermined our faith in mainstream media there are normal people in the west who actually believe it. There are, educated, sensible people who genuinely think that Biden and Trudeau are part of a communist conspiracy to seize power.

Well, I guess they kind of are, because Putin would probably call himself a ‘communist’ I suppose. If it happens, though, I can’t help thinking that the power seizing is going to go very differently to the way our conspiracy theorist friends expect. The fact is, as I understand it, a lot of the folks who are in charge in Russia are also very rich. I can’t help wondering if a lot of the very rich and very right wing people in the west have looked on and thought, ‘hmm, we want a piece of that.’

Do we think our Dictator-in-the-street has sown enough internal discord in the West’s main players to ensure they stand divided, crumble under pressure or even stay home? Possibly.

All I can hope is that financial necessity and greed will save us. That the parties controlling the propaganda in this will appreciate that any war will destabilise economies and detract from their ability to line their own pockets long-term, and they will put away their guns and lure Mr P back to the negotiating table.

The only thing we can guarantee is that average dictator in the street doesn’t give a shit about, is his people and the death toll. Yep, we know that he won’t be having any thoughts about that.

So rock on greed, I guess. Unless it’s about ideology. In which case, I suspect we’re screwed. Nobody believes their ideology as hard as a your average extremist nutbar.

I sincerely hope we are not standing on the brink of world war three, but looking at our apparent inability to learn from the mistakes of history, I can’t help wondering if we are. I keep seeing the parallels; the undermined press, the persecuted minorities the whole thing, right down to everyone sticking their heads in the sand and going, ‘La, la, la, it’s not happening!’

But what do I know? I’m just a mother with a young son who may end up being the wrong age at the wrong time. One of millions who stands to lose someone they hold very dear over the antics of some vainglorous dickhead with an over-inflated ego.

Just like last time then.

That’s a bit of a pisser.

It’s not often I agree with Sting, but here he is articulating my fervent hope. Yeh. Maybe I should have just ditched the rant and posted this …

On a happier note …

If you want to forget about this shit, you can always download my free ‘winter’ story.

The Last Word, A Christmas K’Barthan Extra

The Last Word

Yes! It’s dark, it’s mid winter and in K’Barth that means only one thing. It’s Arnold The Prophet’s Birthday! The biggest holiday in the Nimmist year. As usual, the Grongles have banned any celebrations and worse, this year, to add insult to injury, they’re going to have a book burning on the Sacred Day but that’s not going to stop Gladys and Ada. Oh no. Here’s the blurb:

When Mrs Ormaloo brings the terrible news to the Turnadot Street Businesswomen’s Association that the Grongles are going to burn some more banned books on the night of Arnold, The Prophet’s Birthday Gladys and Ada decide to take steps. They even enrol some of the punters from their pub to help out.

The books are in a warehouse being kept under guard. Gladys, Ada, Their Trev and the rest of the group embark on a plan of devilish cunning to rescue as many banned books from the flames as they can.

Corporal Crundy is determined not to mess up his first assignment since his promotion. It should be easy. All he has to do is guard some books. Yeh. It should be a piece of cake but somehow that’s not the way it turns out.

This story is about the same length as Night Swimming and available in PDF, Mobi and Epub from Bookfunnel. Which reminds me, I must pester Gareth about doing the audio version.

Later on I will probably add a second half to it and release it as a short story with a proper cover and t’ing rather than this slightly dodgy one what I done! Phnark. Aaaaanyhoo …

To download your copy, click here

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31 Jul 2021 · 1:45 pm

Dreams, weirdness and …

WTF? I can see I’m going to be using this picture a lot.

Yes, this week I am going to talk about dreams and then I’m going to have a massive rant. Run with me, there is a kind of connection between the two.

A few days ago, I had a dream about Lord Vernon. In case you are unaware, Lord Vernon is the bad guy in my first series of books. He is a gargantuan shit. I went for love-to-hate with this guy. Kate, who edited the books, loved his vileness. For some people, he’s a bit much.

The dream went like this. I was outside at Mum’s and someone gave me a laser pistol and said, ‘see that bloke there, that’s Lord Vernon. We’ve captured him and we’re just off to get the Black Maria,’ (prison van) ‘Don’t let him out of your sight.’ Then they bugger off, leaving me alone to guard an invincible green bastard who makes Hitler at his worst look like your cuddly uncle.

Lord Vernon is sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall of the house, apparently unperturbed.

I look at him.

He looks at me, his expression one of sneering condescension, with a dash of mocking amusement thrown in. Jeez. A few seconds in and already I want to punch the smecking bastard. Nothing is said. I throw a clod of earth at him. I have no idea why. I mean I have a laser pistol as far as I recall. The logical move is to stun him so the idiot who left me guarding him can just chuck his limp, unconscious form in the van upon their return. But this is a dream so logic is not an abundant factor here.

The clod of earth I’ve thrown falls short because throwing in a dream is like running in a dream, natch. He laughs and asks if I really think I can keep him there. I say, ‘yes,’ obviously and try to sound as if I’m convinced. I fail. He just shoots me his best ‘as if’ smile, folds his arms, leans back against the wall and relaxes. Except he’s also staring at me.

‘I will kill you,’ that stare says. Smug smecker.

So we’re sitting there, and every now and again I lob a clod of earth at him, which does fuck all except prove even more conclusively how weak an opponent I am each time I do it. Arnold knows why but it still hasn’t occurred to me to use the chuffing gun. I’m really pissed off now because a) he’s quite clearly not taking me seriously and because b) he’s going to kill me any minute … hang on. While my mind has been wandering, Lord Vernon has quietly stood up and made off without my noticing.

Shit! Civilisation as we know it is relying on me to keep that bastard where he is. I leap up and run round the corner of the house only to realise that Lord Vernon has got inside, into the drawing room and has leaned out through the window and grabbed one of Mum’s carers by the neck. I know seems a bit convoluted doesn’t it?

But wait.

It’s OK because I’m armed, right?

Wrong. By this point, the laser pistol seems to have completely slipped my mind because when my mind turns to a weapon it turns, not to the pistol, but the penknife in my pocket. It has a two inch blade … like this one.

The pathetic knife in question, the pen is to give a reference for size.

I take it out and start stabbing him in the arm so he will let go of the carer, who is not appreciating being strangled and is now saying, ‘grk’ a lot and pointing to the arm round her neck in the universal sign language for, ‘can you get this off me?’ the world over.

My efforts are a partial success. Clearly I’m doing some damage in that my hands are now covered in blood which appears to be Lord Vernon’s rather than mine or, heaven forbid, the carer’s. I suppose that’s progress. There are also a lot of rips in his uniform through which I can see that I’ve made some holes in his actual arm. On the downside he appears completely unaffected by the experience. Not much progress then. Indeed, now he’s just laughing at me. Laughing and bleeding at me. A lot. I renew my efforts to get stabby on him. I have to. I must maim him enough, not only to let go of the carer but also, so that he can’t hurt Mum either.

At this point, I woke up, greatly relieved that I didn’t have to dream the bit where Lord Vernon killed us all and the incompetent buffoon who left him in my charge came back and discovered our lifeless bodies.

Obviously, I awoke, sat up and thought, ‘what the fuck was that about?’ But actually, in this case, I think I know.

At the moment, I feel as if I’m living in the version of the world in Back to The Future where Biff has nicked the sports almanack, made loads of money at the bookies and taken charge. It’s like everything that is fuckwitted, moronic, and morally bankrupt is in control. Where reason and science are ignored. Where the Far Right; Steve Bannon and his friends have successfully eroded people’s confidence in researched news and are winning the war of hearts and minds hands down.

A video popped up on my Facebook feed the other day. I can’t remember where from but I think the gist of it was supposed to be that sometimes when we let people settle in Britain, they turn out to be rum’uns. Well no shit Sherlock. That will happen because humans are not perfect and the administrative process of the state should be as blind as justice. If someone has the right criteria and ticks the right boxes they are chosen. Sometimes that doesn’t work out or they aren’t as they are painted.

However, the tone of the vid was a bit, these foreign bastards are all the same, we are letting everyone in (which isn’t true, it’s chuffing difficult to get into Britain these days and ever more so as we abandon our British sense of fair play and move to a more American, winner-takes-all, losers-lose-because-they-were-weak-and-deserve-to attitude). It was a similar argument to the one Farage posited over Brexit; vote leave to get rid of the brown people, a sentiment to which, as a direct descendent of one of the brown people, I take great exception.

In this video though, it was very clear that the narrator despised immigrants, asylum seekers, victims of torture, migrants and any others who seek refuge in Britain. There was a lot of effing and blinding about this, while film footage played of a Spitfire flying over Beachy Head. I dunno how that has more credibility than thoughtful researched journalism but apparently it does. And how dare they appropriate another icon like the Spitfire. They’ve already taken our flag. That’ll be fair few downed RAF pilots spinning in their graves then. Bravo.

When the aliens come, or Lord Vernon and his Grongolian hoards invade from a parallel reality, our donkey leaders will be too stupid to defend us. At the moment, if you’re looking at the news the way I do, and I must really try harder not to, it’s as if natural selection has decided the human race has had it’s day and it will seal our fate by ensuring that only the most gargantuan tossers end up in charge of anything. Who thought it was a good idea to put the dumbest fucks who shout the loudest in control?

Then there’s all this ‘real news’. Real my arse. Some struck off doctor in Alabama or somewhere says it’s dangerous to wear masks. It probably is for some people, and they have exemptions but for the rest of us, well… if wearing a mask stops me spreading Covid to others, that’s grand. When I see some information about the criminally high numbers of surgeons, doctors and nurses who died in their droves, before the pandemic, from the PPE they wore? That’s when I’ll worry. Or when I see articles about the huge death rate among the thousands of people in South East Asia who have been wearing masks in cities for years, yeh, when I see that those are higher than, or equal to, pollution related deaths, I’ll be concerned.

At least smokers got that when they exercise their freedom to smoke indoors, the rest of us in there with them have to smoke, too. If you don’t want to wear a mask, stay home, you know, like the vulnerable people are doing, the ones who have to stay home because you won’t wear a mask.

Meanwhile the idiots in charge set an example by wearing masks when they feel like it and then expect us to do as we’re told ie wear them all the time. I do see that side of the conspiracy theorists’ beef.

All this batshit crazy shit, flat earth and the rest of it, science is WRONG because it’s the establishment. Jeez who thinks humans are that malleable. I mean we are but to pick one at random, how could they have faked the moon landings. Seriously did they kill every single person involved? Because they would have to. Because that’s the only way they could get everyone to shut up. It just looks, to me, like the far right – as in the Putin influenced ones – flexing at the democratic world.

‘Hey world leaders! Look how fucking stupid we can make your people be. We own you, weaklings and we will destroy you.’ And I look at the apparently rational-minded and sensible people falling for this shit and I think, ‘yes, Mr P, it looks as if you will.’

Meanwhile they think I’m the sheep because science is part of the establishment and therefore part of the conspiracy. Oh yeh and don’t forget, if you take a knee you’re following in the footsteps of that famous Marxist, Martin Luther King and that’s bad. Oh and if you do anything kind or wear a t-shirt supporting a cause that’s not endorsed by the far right, I dunno something principled and an obviously good like comic relief, you’re virtue signalling. If you say, ‘hey, let’s be kind to one another,’ that’s also virtue signalling. Let’s stop people from doing anything pleasant. Let’s make it shameful to own up to a sympathetic or kindly action. We don’t want it catching on. Way to fucking go you absolute spunk buckets. I’m sure that’ll really help make the world a nicer place and hasten on your utopia! Arnold’s socks! Stop already, Mary.

This isn’t true. I know that, but I’m feeling it. And I guess part of the reason I’m feeling it is because good people will keep dying.

This week, a lovely lady who goes to my church died of many and varied cancers. She hadn’t been to the doctor, she wasn’t well but had celiac’s disease so the symptoms were very similar.

I was talking to her just four weeks ago. She always sat in the same place and throughout the Pandemic I’ve walked past her after communion most times and we would exchange conspiratorial winks, grins, waves etc. If something funny happened, she was one of the people whose eye I’d catch.

She was one of those people of quiet, unassuming, steadfast integrity who just got on with things. If it looked like there was tea to be made and I cottoned on, I’d go to the kitchen area to sort it and she’d already be there, putting out the cups, urn plugged in and well on the way to boiling. She was just one of those rock steady people who is utterly solid in a crisis. I went round to tea at hers just before lockdown and was looking forward to inviting her back but then … Covid. We never will have that cup of tea now and it’s a pisser. But I think one of the biggest pissers is that every decent, balanced, kindly disposed person who checks out means there are less of us and more of them.

And I guess my dream was about this; how a couple of good people have left this world and I feel more than ever that it’s down to me to throw my increasingly ineffective clods of ~~logic, facts, kindness, decent behaviour~~ earth in a desperate attempt to hold back the ~~tsunami of stupid and/or evil~~ completely invincible Lord Vernon as it he laughs in my face. I think I’m probably having a bit of a bleak one at the moment, or perhaps that’s how I’m processing my grief at my friends’ deaths. I dunno.

Goebbels, I think it was Gobbels, said once that, ‘the art of propaganda is to convince one group of people, that another group of people is less than human.’

Maybe it’s time we looked or behaved more like the Chuckle brothers, not the comedy duo, the other ones (look it up) because where the far right do have a point, even if they are being disingenuous in making it, is that prejudice does go two ways. It’s hard not to be prejudiced against them the way they are against … well … pretty much everyone who isn’t a white, straight man. It’s hard not to despise pointless bigotry and hatred (it takes a lot of effort though, Arnold’s socks where do they get the energy for all bile and vitriol) but actually that’s just being like them and doing what they do. The rest of us have to be better than that. Because if a person believes they stand for what is good and right, they have to be as good and right as they can. The thing that makes us good and them bad is that we don’t torture prisoners and- oh hang on. Less of the Vernon then and more of the Vimes, perhaps.

Crikey but it’s hard work sometimes, though, isn’t it?

</rantmode>

Well … I definitely went off on one there and now I feel a lot better. If you need to go off on one too, please help yourself and have a rant in the comments about anything you like! Get it off your chest the way I’ve just done.

Now then, shall we all relax with a lovely free audiobook? Yes. I think that would be a good idea.

Small Beginnings, K’Barthan Extras, Hamgeean Misfit: Part 1

Destiny called and everyone else was out.

When your very existence is treason, employment opportunities are thin on the ground. But when one of the biggest crime lords in the city makes The Pan of Hamgee a job offer he can’t refuse, it’s hard to tell what the dumbest move is; accepting the offer or saying, no to Big Merv. Neither will do much for The Pan’s life expectancy.

This is free to download from most of the major ebook retailers for August and also in audio from my store, the exception is Amazon, I changed some keywords last night and now they’re dicking me about. Also, I can’t make it free from the book vendors in audio so if you’re after that one, it has to be just from my store, you can get it from my store if you normally buy from Amazon too.

If you’re interested in the ebook, click here.
If you’d like to give the audiobook a go, click here.

If you aren’t interested but you want to help, feel free to copy and paste either of these links into the social media thingy of your choice and share away:

Audiobook: https://payhip.com/b/ubYs
Ebook – free from all the main vendors: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/infosb.html

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3 Oct 2020 · 12:28 pm

I am a luddite. It’s official.

Gah! Excuse me if everything is a little off today but … ugh something weird has happened.

For those of you who don’t know, this site is hosted by WordPress. A while ago, WordPress updated their main user interface from this …

Nice isn’t it? Everything’s there at a glance.

To this:

Although, if you increase the screen resolution you do get this:

which is slightly better.

For a while now, I’ve had the control panel rolled back from the new one to the original because it’s just so much easier on the eye and all the data is right there where you want it.

Recently, going along similar lines, WordPress decided to ‘simplify’ their editor – this is marketing speak for ‘make it impossible to find anything at a glance’. Everything is now buried under layers of menus, like the phone app only, in my case, on a pc. They’ve been banging on about something called the ‘block editor’ for months but I’ve just ignored it and hoped it would go away. Basically, as far as I can see, this is just a way of making your posts take longer to write.

You see, the way I do stuff is I barf the words onto the page and then when I’m done, I format them. Blocks mean you have to keep choosing your formatting before you write which is a gargantuan ball ache because it really interrupts the flow.

WordPress says that,

‘Retiring an entire editor — the place where you publish posts and pages on WordPress.com — is not something we would ever do on a whim. What inspired us to take this decision is the positive experience site owners have had with the newer WordPress editor.’

Which, of course, is marketingese for, ‘we can’t explain to you why we did it because it would take too long.’ I’ve worked in customer service and marketing a long time and like, seriously are they for real? ‘I love the new interface!’ said no software customer, EVER. They have changed the interface from this:

So simple, so straightforward, so why can’t they leave it alone!

To this:

Here’s the new editor where are all the widgets? I have no clue, the editing tool bar is part of the ‘classic’ block. The actual tool bar is those four icons at the top I think. I dunno.

They’ve made it ‘simpler’ ie they’ve designed it so there are fewer things on your screen; just acres of glary white and big writing with the features you need all jumbled up in sub menus and moved around. Because heaven forfend that any of us poor bastards using the thing should have the remotest fucking clue where they are.

They’ve added ‘new features’ ie a ton of pointless bells and whistles that slow down your creative flow. No more ctrl+A to select the entire post. Oh no. Now, if you want to copy and paste your post you have to do it from the front end or you have to copy it paragraph by paragraph – one of the most notable features of block editors which has been useful since never in the entire fucking history of human existence.

I don’t have time to learn that it’s x button, third down, I just look and see, ah yes, I need to click there. This new interface is as Lou might say to Andy … a bit of a kerfuffle.

Blocks are so crap. Why can’t I just type shit and do the formatting afterwards? Why this complete fucking obsession with formatting it all first, with presentation over content, with extra ‘features’ over and above the ones we require ie, things to stretch out the length of the task so we feel busy.

Newsflash! I am busy. I’m so busy I’m disappearing up my own smecking arse! I don’t need to feel it. I don’t. have. fucking. time. And when stuff is pointlessly added to my busyness it’s not going to make me feel important, it’s going to make me fucking irritated.

And if they have to do blocks can they not, at the least, do drag and drop blocks so I can just pick the bastard things out of side bar and bung them in? I spent ages ferreting about to find the ‘classic editor’ block and even longer trying to work out how make it stick so that I was writing my blog post in it. Thank heavens they seem to have given me the option to switch back to the usual interface to edit this. So I’m now typing this in the understated, elegant peace of the wp-admin and classic editor setting, instead of the shouty in-yer-face, giant-writing, glary, retinal burn-inducing horror that is the new one. So much white … it burns … it burns!

OK so this isn’t the end of the world or anything, I am joke ranting here. The poor buggers at WordPress can’t be expected to keep three editing interfaces going and I know I’m completely at odds with the zeitgeist on this. My blog is about what I write, the content, the words, and I am beginning to understand that priorities for the myriad of other users outside my small circle are different. Everything else is about photos and videos so I guess blogs are no different these days. The salient thing is; text is yesterday. You have a photo and if you want to say something you post a video. Me? Frankly, if I can type at about the same speed I speak and I can edit my writing so it reads more fluently, why would I bumble and stutter at a camera instead?

How many people can touch type though? Not many. I mean, there’s text to speech now. I am pretty much a dinosaur. Touch typing is not a skill developers for places like WordPress are going to be factoring in is it? Not really. Which makes me wonder if a big part of the shift towards video and images is because typing in a phone is such hard work.

A while back, I remember downloading the WordPress app onto my phone. The interface wasn’t as intuitive because it’s a phone. It’s a small screen and there’s less room to work. However, any vague understanding I have of the new interface and where to find stuff is based on my use of WordPress on my phone. Basically, what they’ve done is shut down the desktop site and made the phone app the interface. Why? Well, I suspect what it comes down to is this one word.

Change.

I’ve been writing some sort of blog or other, week in, week out since 2006. All here, on WordPress. The first was called Babychaos and then, from about 2009, I switched to this one. The ‘classic’ editor – the one that is going away, because it’s already only used by a few legacy customers such as myself – that classic editor, is the one I’ve used since then. It’s straightforward, powerful and everything you need to use is easy to see as you look at the screen.

That’s how I work in real life. I lay stuff out on the desk in front of me and I pick the things I need as I work. I don’t work with a completely clear desk and run to the cupboard and get out each tool I need, using it and putting it back back only to have to run back to the cupboard a few minutes later, get the same thing out, use it and put it back again. But that’s how the interface on your phone works. And because that’s what they are used to, I believe this is how a lot of people now do work.

In 2006 phones didn’t do much. The main, online interface of pretty much anything was the web page designed for a desktop computer. The phone versions of web portals were very limited. Then smartphones began to take off. Gradually programmes and interactive web portals became apps, and phones and tablets became as powerful as some computers. The idea of a desktop site has become redundant in many respects.

Add to this that there were parts of the world where computers were never used in earnest, instead people skipped straight past all that and paid one lump sum for one thing that did everything – even if it wasn’t always that easy to do it with – a smartphone. Because if you are living in an developing nation you can’t necessarily afford a separate computer, phone, music player, camera and tablet. Furthermore, you may possibly live in a place where you don’t have electric power to your home, or where, if you do, it’s sporadic. You are going to buy the thing that runs longest off a battery, that does the most stuff, that’s with you all the time, and which will be the easiest to carry. That’s going to be your phone and you’re going to use it for everything. And people did. They started using their phone to play music, watch telly, talk to people, and yes, build their websites, write books, configure online shops. The whole shebang. And because the phone’s memory wasn’t big enough in those early years, they started using streaming services for many of these things and the (shudder) subscription model was born.

Software production shifted from emulating the way human beings naturally work to the way phones work – or at least to the closest version of how a human being works that a phone is able to deliver.

I know people who write books on their phones. I cannot imagine why anyone would voluntarily put themselves though such a profoundly horrific experience as trying to type text, in volume, on a phone but there you go. Folks do it. Perhaps they have less arthritic thumbs than I do. More likely they don’t touch type at 90 words a minute plus, so typing on their phone doesn’t feel like they are working at about the same speed as continental drift. Or they use speech to text and they have an American accent so it actually understands what they say and produces something vaguely similar to the original. Or their slidey keyboard works rather than guessing just about any word in existence if it can avoid using the one they’ve typed. Or maybe their spelling and autocorrect tailors itself to them personally, rather than using an algorithm that condenses information from all users, rendering three quarters of the vocabulary the person uses unknown to it. I dunno. But I digress …

The thing is, even with all this capability behind it, the screen on a phone is still tiny, so you still couldn’t have the same kind of information packed interface in the app as you would on a larger screen. It has to be built around the phone. Me, I like the larger screen and detailed interface you get on the desk top version of a site. But that’s because I read information best when it’s laid out. Some people – most people it seems – stack their info. They file stuff in drawers, they see their information in towers. Me, if I were to file things my ideal way, everything would be spread out around me on a huge long table. Seeing stuff is an important part of the way I interact and process information. I think I may be unusual in this respect, but I doubt I’m unique.

That’s why I always use the desktop site if there is one, either on my lap top or, if I’m on the road, on my iPad. I can easily see how the phone interface of anything can only function with about five items, maximum, on each menu. And that is specifically why I avoid using my phone, except when I need to or I want to comment or in an emergency but … not for the day-to-day important stuff. To me, having experienced the joy of desktop sites where everything is laid out clearly, the phone-friendly versions are hugely counter intuitive. Things are hidden at the top of lengthy menu trees and going off down a rabbit hole to find each function is a pain in the arse. I get distracted, I get lost. I lose my way back. But that’s because I’ve grown up with the pre-smartphone technological experience. On my phone the text on desk top sites is tiny, I have to zoom in to read it or format it. I totally get why things have to be simplified even if, yes, I still find it easier to browse the miniscule desk top sites on my phone than the stark phone-friendly versions.

I can do all this stuff on my phone, but it’s like viewing the world through a tiny crack in a wall while a bigger screen allows me to out there in the open and gaze at my surroundings.

The nub of the problem for people like Microsoft and WordPress is that two different versions of a thing are expensive to run. So what do they do? They, build their interface to suit the majority of their users. And these days, if you are a world-wide operation, the majority of your users are phone users. That’s why Windows 10 feels like it’s, basically, the Windows Phone interface. There aren’t as many options, it’s hard to get underneath things unless you use legacy stuff like the control panel. It’s probably why you can’t choose what up-dates you download. With the pursuit of ‘simplicity’ comes less and less flexibility and it’s … weird. The richness of the desktop experience is going to disappear because the majority of modern internet users have never experienced it. The only exception to this is the Apple interface, which has always been a bit more like that, as far as I can tell, which might be why it’s never come as naturally to me. Maybe these transitions are easier to make for Apple aficionados.

But … that’s why I find the new WordPress interface hard work. Because it’s the same as the phone app. It looks weird and huge on a large screen and the stuff they’ve prioritised: the stuff that other people use, is not the stuff I use. Because hardly anyone values the large screen experience anymore, just a few luddites and writers like me. Hopefully, one day, they’ll get the folding or holographic phone screen down pat. And when they do, maybe, when screens are bigger, some of the richness and complexity of the desktop interface will return to the software and websites we use. Maybe … I can hope.

Right, I’d better go and write something. I have two old ladies, a bunch of n’er do wells and a parrot stuck in a warehouse … they need my help to get out.

________________________________

Talking of luddites … does anyone fancy a 12 hour audiobook?

Yes, word up. Right now I am looking into ways I can deliver audiobooks direct to users: they buy from me and they can listen to the book in an app or on their computer. If you’d like to give it a go, you’ll need to download the bookfunnel app or join bookfunnel. If you’re happy doing that feel free to help yourself – the link is below.

It’s in beta, yes you are testing. That’s why you get a 13 hour audiobook for free read by one of the most distinguished actors you’ve never heard of: Gareth Davies. The man who made Roy Hudd laugh … and laugh enough to be asked back to do it again.

Once you click on the link, below, you’ll end up on a download page for the book. When you click listen/play it will ask you to download the bookfunnel app and enter this code … which is some letters on mine. Write down the code then when you’ve done all the installing malarkey and you click to play and it asks you for the code, you have it right there to put in. I don’t know if the code is case sensitive but I’d presume it is!

This is a brand new app and brand new audio player, and Bookfunnel appreciate any and all feedback. If you get into trouble, or can’t get anything to work, contact their help address – which is given on their site, I’m not 100% sure I should give it here – with a header: ATTN: Julie.

Here’s the link: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/fxd6bnoy7k

If you decide to listen to the book. I hope you enjoy it.

This is to stop all my bog posts being illustrated by the picture of the book at the bottom! Mwahahahrgh!

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Tagged as advice from writers, an author with children, audio publishing, author blog, author parent, comedy fantasy fiction, endless whinging, fantasy fiction, full time mum writing, humour, I fucked this up so you don't have to, insane rage, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, It seems I FEAR change, K'Barthan Series, K’barthan audio, luddite, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, M T McGuire audiobooks, M T McGuire new releases, massive rant, McMini, off topic, Other Creatives, rage against the machine, raging over inconsequentialities, rant, writers

27 Jun 2020 · 12:16 pm

Down, down, down in a burning ring of fire … a ring of fire …

Yep. That’s where I’m going this week. Flame throwers at the ready. You see, for a while I’ve been wanting to say something about Black Lives Matter but I haven’t really known how. This week … well … it’s hot and I’m fed up. The Kessel Run to Sussex took a fuck of a lot more than twelve Parsecs yesterday and some plonker got all aggressive and shitty with me because as a 52 year old bag I have the temerity to drive a sports car and worse, I overtook him. O.M.G. The horror! You’d have thought I’d peppered him with machine gun fire. If I drove a real snurd, I confess it would have been tempting.

Yeh, and to be frank, I probably listened to Never Mind the Bollocks too many times and that’s ANGRY political stuff. And you know me, never one to avoid getting flamed if I can. But yeh, Black Lives Matter (AS WELL) … Here is my incredibly simplistic take on it.

[Rant Mode]

It seems that a lot of us have huge difficulty with being open minded these days. When I meet people for the first time, I confess I find it as tough as anyone to avoid making snap judgements based on their choice of clothes, hair colour, voice and any amount of other irrelevant crap. I suspect we all do. I am beginning to wonder if there is some kind of instinctive tribal thing that makes us all judge by appearances and that humans can’t stop themselves from doing so in the first instance. Perhaps it’s a thing from way back, a pack thing. Maybe. The point is, the part where we become thinking, rational beings is where we set ourselves above that, where we ignore our instincts and broach the difficult task of talking to people we aren’t sure about or are uncomfortable with.

Perhaps it helps if we are not in a bubble. Where I live, people go abroad a lot, people visit from abroad and we walk from a to b to go to the shops, church, the library, etc etc. We are lucky enough to be exposed to many other cultures. If you walk everywhere, you meet people on the street, in shops and around town who are different from you. And when you get the opportunity to talk to them you realise that other people are not black, white, old, young, foreign, scary etc they are actually just … people … well except teenagers, they really are scary (joke sorry teenagers). In this country we are beginning to drive more and walk less and we are beginning to fragment a little into like minded groups.

That’s not bad in one sense, but in others it reinforces stereotypes.

One of the difficulties of all this is that for political parties, there is a great benefit to reinforcing our little bubbles and stereotypes. They want to engender a sense of belonging among their followers; a feeling that all members of party X or Y are PLU (people like us) and that we’re all in this together, working towards a common aim. The unfortunate side effect is the implication that other people following other parties are not like us and don’t belong. It also doesn’t help that some of them gloss over disagreements within their own ranks by pointing the finger at other groups or people who hold a different point of view and blaming everything on them.

This is probably alright in a situation where people are not taking politics too seriously and are still seeing it for what it is, ie, the machinery by which a nation governs itself, as best as it can. But increasingly here in Britain, we seem to be losing that detachment and cynicism for which we are famous.

Even I’m losing it. And I’ve been trying to work out why. After a lot of thinking, here’s my Anne Elk theory.

These days, there are far fewer people of faith. That’s not a problem in itself. However, humans seem to have an inherent need to believe fervently in … something. Without a religion to put our efforts into, it seems a lot of us pour that spiritual fervour into the most ridiculous things, which hair colour brand we use, whether we like tattoos or not, reality TV and, of course, our political affiliations. When you add that need to believe into the mix, suddenly the results of the PLU marketing start to become a bit grim.

Going out on a serious limb here – yeh I can feel the cross hairs lining up as I write – I am beginning to think that the difficulty with some aspects of modern politics is not that people’s political choices are driven by their religion but that their political affiliations ARE their religion. My religion affects everything I do, political choices as well. But my politics are NOT my religion. I think that if you are a Christian and you start believing that a single political party is … you know … God’s party, you are in trouble.

OK so perhaps it also depends where you are. In Britain, where I live, it’s absolutely OK to question authority, rules, politicians, the status quo and everything else, indeed to not do so is considered a bit naive. As a Christian that’s also OK because Jesus did it the whole chuffing time. In some countries it’s rather frowned upon to make fun of politicians, here in Britain, frankly, we think that’s what they’re for.

For me personally what that means is I vote for the party whose policies most closely align with my religious beliefs. My religious beliefs are about doing what I believe is the Right Thing – other people’s interpretation of Right may vary – mine are as follows:

Love your neighbour as yourself.
That which you do to the least of my bretheren, you do to me.
What would Jesus do? (Turning over tables, trashing the place and making a whip from cords and setting about people cannot be ruled out here).
No hatred – ‘if I say I love God and hate my neighbour I am a liar, for if I cannot love my neighbour, who I have seen, how can I love God who I have not seen?’
My job is not judgement, ‘Do not judge others lest you be judged’ and ‘leave judgement to God.’

This means I have chosen who to vote for based on how closely the follow my version of Christian philosophy. As a result I am the original floating voter. I’ve voted Liberal (which means a different thing in the UK to America, think Conservative with a small c). I have also voted, Labour (socialist – relax, my American friends, this is not the socialism in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, that’s communism. Socialism, proper is a different thing based, originally, on Christian love-thy-neighbour kinds of principles, help the poor, welfare state, that kind of stuff, funded by asking the rich to pay a little more tax to help it along). I think I may have voted Conservative once, and I’ve voted for the Green Party. It just depends which one is suggesting policies that most closely resemble ‘the right thing’ (as outlined in my points above) at the time.

This also means that I do not believe in ‘them’ and ‘us’ but ‘we’. This appears to get me in the shit with pretty much everyone, which is unfortunate, but there we go. What do I mean by that. I mean completely disregarding how people look and honing in on who they are.

I think the greatest example of that I’ve encountered recently is a lady called Irene.

Every weekday morning at roughly 9.15, on the radio show I listen to, they have this thing called, Pause for Thought. They have someone of faith on who gives a little pep talk. They are from all faiths, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Humanist etc and are usually brilliant. Last week, they had this lovely guy on from ooop north somewhere who is a vicar in the Church of England – that’s basically episcopalian for everyone everywhere else in the world. I can’t remember his name but he was talking about modern answers to the question, ‘who is my neighbour’. JC’s answer was the parable of the Good Samaritan, obviously. This guy told us about Irene.

Irene is a stalwart of his church. A lovely lady who is always on hand to help, listen, make cakes – and tea – and generally muck in. I think she may even have been a lay reader or church warden but I can’t remember. One Sunday, she said goodbye to everyone as they were all drinking coffee after the service and went off home. A few minutes later she was found lying on the pavement just outside in a state of disarray, her sticks beside her. Someone had hauled her out of her car onto the street and driven off in it.

The young gentleman concerned was apprehended by the police, convicted and went to gaol.

Irene would spell it neighbour but beggars can’t be choosers. 🙂

Irene knew his name from the trial so she did some research and when she discovered which prison he was in, she made enquiries as to whether she could contact him. When he said it was OK, she started writing to him. After a while, she started visiting him, too.

Long and the short, a few years later, the priest who was giving this talk turned up to a church event and there was Irene, behind the tea stall as ever, and there beside her, wielding a teapot, was a smiling young man who had originally thrown her onto the pavement and nicked her car. With her help and support he had completely turned his life around. He had a job, he was settled and he felt he also had a purpose. When she had every reason to be angry and vengeful, she, his victim, had the grace and compassion to see him simply as another human, to seek reconciliation with him and to help him become a good man.

So … We Christians can make judgements about whether or not George Floyd was a ‘good’ person and ‘deserved’ his fate. Yeh. We can do that if we like but that isn’t our job is it? CF Jesus Christ’s pretty fucking clear instructions ‘do not judge others lest you be judged’.

It’s also not the point.

Black Lives Matter (too) isn’t really about who George Floyd was, and whether he was a good person. It’s about a situation where someone has so lost sight of the humanity of another human being, because of their skin colour, that he can kneel on their neck for one and a half hours, while they repeatedly tell him they can’t breathe, and think that’s OK, possibly even deserved. And it’s the fact that this event can be played out daily, again and again along with other smaller pettier dehumanising things across the length and breadth of the world and nobody questions it. It’s the fact that even today, people are still a commodity. There are still slaves.

It’s about people, all over the world, who are victimised because of completely petty bollocks like their colour, what they wear, their gender or who they want to have a relationship with (who cares if it’s someone of the same gender they’re not asking you to shag someone you don’t want to are they so why do you have to force them to. Nothing spreads misery faster than unhappy people).

It’s about trying to persuade people to cast aside the petty stupid tribal trivia of the packaging; like colour, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, height, hair and eye colour and all that other totally irrelevant crap – and see only the person inside.

It’s not about whether George Soros funded demonstrations, or who has donated to Black Lives Matter (too) (because clearly, if he funds a political campaign and he’s left wing, that’s immoral but if someone right wing funds a political campaign – in the flack I’m getting – that’s fine. Newsflash, neither matters.). It’s probably greatly about the frustrations of lockdown, about people in poorer housing, smaller flats, poorer areas, with less garden, less space who have been climbing up the walls as they try to work out what a fronted adverbial is and explain it to their children while they work from home, or don’t work and watch their savings dwindling or their debts mount up.

How did it start all over the world at once? Could it be because everyone all over the world is going through the same thing right now; lock down, pandemic etc. Oh and world news services. The entire world saw it on the news.

Black lives matter is not saying black lives matter more than white lives. It’s saying black lives matter too. At the moment, it sounds as if black lives matter less than white lives. So yeh, all lives matter and at the moment those of our black friends are being counted cheaply so I’m happy to support them and help them redress the balance.

Are the riots bad? Of course they fucking are. Rioting is always bad but it tends to happen when people are angry and no-one is listening to them. They’ve been asking nicely for two hundred fucking years. When you tell someone, my life matters, you’re hurting. If someone dismisses that hurt with a trite, all lives matter, it’s unkind. As someone on reddit said, imagine you’re sitting at the dinner table. Your mum serves everyone except you. You say, ‘I want some too?’ and your Mum says, ‘we all want some,’ and doesn’t give you any. That’s what you’re doing when you say all lives matter. And that’s where Black Lives Matter really needs the Too on the end, I reckon.

Is defacing statues bad, yes but … look at it this way. If you were in Germany and there were a load of statues of Hitler and there were streets named after him and nobody minded, what would you think? I’m guessing you’d take a dim view. Yet all over the UK there are statues celebrating people who treated other human beings as possessions and assets, bought and sold them as if they were things. Thought of them as things, which, to quote the great Sir Terry, is where the trouble starts. Put them in a museum, explain what happened, explain that we are NOT like that anymore. We need to face up to our past and learn from it rather than destroy everything and try to pretend it never happened.

Is it so hard to imagine how another person from a different background or in a different situation might see our world? Is it so hard to to try and look through someone else’s eyes for a moment and ask how we could make it better, kinder for folks like them? Is it so wrong to wish the world was as pleasant for everyone as it is for us? Well as a woman, and a woman who often went to places with a person who had a severe mental disability, I know that yes, sadly yes, this small act of imagination is extremely hard for some people, but interestingly, far less so at a point of encounter. People who were lovely to my Dad would then make sweeping, generalist statements about the mentally ill and just totally fail to see the hypocrisy of that. Indeed, I see this again and again, people conflating all black people with criminals because they knew someone black who committed a crime or even because they read about it in the paper.

Even some of my friends conflate all economic migrants with freeloaders, but laud British people who emigrate elsewhere for the same fucking reason for having so much get up and go.

Some people are dicks. It’s not because they are Muslim, Foreign, Black or Women, it’s because they are dicks. They might use their faith to justify their dickishness but at the base of it all they’re just twats. I’m a Christian but I know some of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ can be monumental tossers. Jesus doesn’t need your money. He doesn’t even need your obedience. Jesus needs your love and your compassion. Jesus needs the difficult stuff. Jesus needs you to love your enemy. If you tell people they should turn the other cheek, Jesus sure as hell wants you to check that you aren’t the person hitting them first.

Christians are supposed to be Christlike. End of. Jesus didn’t tell people not to mix with the tax collectors, nope, it was the Pharisees who did that, when Jesus met a tax collector, he blagged dinner off him.

Do I think black lives matter?

You fucking bet I do.

And you know why?

Because when I grow up I want to be Irene.

[/Rant mode]

_________________________

And on a different note …

… if you need something to take your mind of my horrific left wingishness and your grinding teeth after reading this week’s blog post, maybe a nice relaxing audiobook would help.

Few Are Chosen is not just available on audio! It’s reduced until 30th June! If you do Kobo, Chirp or iBooks it’s a mere $5.99 (or £5.99 on Kobo and whatever $5.99 is in other currencies on Chirp and iBooks).

So if you want to find out why I think Gareth is brilliant, you can pick it up for a song, or at least … a snip.

If you think that might be your bag, click on the picture on on this link …

https://www.hamgee.co.uk/audiofac.html

Smashing K’Barthan Mug Competition

Perhaps you can ameliorate the impact of my utterly satanic left wing nature by making me give you a cup. You can do this by winning my competition. Then, when you win, you can do what you like … I dunno, voodoo, spit in it, smash it because I’m so awful. Or if you’re feeling outrageous, you could use it to hold your hot beverage of choice. Or cuppa soup if that’s your thing.

Because yes. That’s right! I’m giving away another mug like this one in the picture. Once again you have until the end of this month, 30th June 2020 to enter. Hint, you have an extremely good chance of winning. Put it like this, I’m giving one cup away and so far, all the entrants have won.

All you have to do is read Close Enough answer the easy question and fill in your email you can find out more here: https://forms.gle/6dDGpnQU23bdMpwT7.

Next week, I promise, I will try and go back to being funny.

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20 Jun 2020 · 6:58 pm

Well there’s a thing …

Grumpy bastards R us

This week has been a bit of an interesting mix. Is it just me or is everyone a bit grumpy coming out of lockdown? I live on one of the main drags into town so there’s a fair bit of traffic noise. The one thing I’ve noticed is how much more often people are hooting at other motorists at the moment.

It seems that what most people have decided, during lock down, is that they’re ‘not going to take any shit from anybody’ and what that appears to mean, in practise, is more firmly entrenched views, an even deeper aversion to keeping an open mind and an even more frequent recourse to knee jerk anger about insubstantial crap, like whether or not they should wear a mask (seriously? WTF people find a REAL issue to get upset about) rather than … you know actually not taking any shit. I suppose nothing makes people intolerant more quickly than when the economy goes down the shitter. And all the pundits are telling us it has – although how on God’s green earth they think they know is a mystery to me – but presumably folks are believing them.

Oh my Gaaaaaaaad! We’re going into a recession! The economy has gone tits up and it’s all (insert name of political party of choice or group of ‘them’ you don’t really like)’s fault. Britain’s economy has shrunk by 20%.

Okaayyy.

Yes it’s a chandelier, to illustrate my point.

Hang on though, we’re only coming out of lock down and for the major part of lock down the economy has been switched off. No-one expects their car to carry on running after they’ve turned off the ignition do they? … Well, OK some old cars chug on a bit before they stop but that’s about fuel mixture and not generally a THING so let’s rule it out at this point shall we?

Seriously though, things are still not back to normal and surely any figures obtained while the economy is switched off are pretty much moot.

Here’s an analogy. Say you have a chandelier. Like a healthy economy, it has many bulbs (different types of businesses) and they are all burning brightly. If you cut off the power to the chandelier, obviously, you’re going to end up in the dark. This is not a surprise is it? Likewise, the economic statistics for March and April can do nothing more than illustrate that the economy was switched off and the country was, as it were, in economic darkness. Because no-one was allowed out and three quarters of businesses were closed.

Here’s another chandelier …

My point is. We’re not going to have a fucking clue what’s happened to the economy until we turn the bastard thing back on are we? And we haven’t. So when the papers and news channels gloomily tell us that the economy shrunk 20% in March, and tell us this is bigger than any shrinkage in the entire history of fucking time, it means absolutely bugger all.

Sure it’s true but is it the truth about our economy? Yes it is, but only in so far as it indicates that the economy was switched off at that time, just the same way that things get pretty dark when you turn out the lights and the figures might show that there is NO power going through to the bulbs at this time.

I really should stop taking pictures of people’s chandeliers.

Taking the chandelier analogy further. Say you live in a house with an annoying safety feature on the ring main like ours has, which cuts the power when just about anything happens. You want to go into your darkened room, so you stop in the doorway to flick the light switch and, ‘POP!’ a bulb has gone and in doing so, it’s tripped the on off switch on your fuse box. You’re in the dark and you know that switching on the chandelier did it. You know that, most likely one of the bulbs on the chandelier has blown, possibly more. Obviously, you don’t know the exact number of bulbs that have blown until you go to the fuse box to reset the trip, go back to your darkened room and turn the chandelier back on. Then, and ONLY then, when it’s actually switched on, can you assess the damage and see how many bulbs you’ve lost, or if it was more than a bulb, that you’ve lost the entire chandelier. My point is, you’re not going to fucking know until you turn the bastard thing back on. Are you?

While the chandelier is off, we have a number of choices. We could start on all that doom and gloom about how we’re screwed and condemned to sit in darkness for evermore because it’s broken now. Or we could say, ‘hmm, let’s go reset the trip (thus restoring the electricity supply to the chandelier) switch it on, and see if any of the fucking bulbs light up before we panic, shall we?’

Money is all arbitrary and illusory. The economy is about ‘confidence’ and to be frank, the last time we had a recession, I felt that we were almost talked into it by people who were trying to give the Conservative government a hard ride … or was it a Labour government then I’ve no idea. How many small business owners are going to give up after hearing that 20% statistic? How many small businesses are going to go into administration because their customers have read that and are saving every penny and not buying that thrombdimulator or whatever it is our lovely small local business sells?

But if the economy is about confidence then we need confidence right now. And that need should come before the need for sensationalism to gain a news service more adherents. We believe and we achieve, or at least, do a sod of a lot better than we will with all this doom and gloom shit. No wonder everyone out there is fucking miserable and standing on their hooters so long that those unfortunate enough to live nearby are beginning to think the ruddy things are stuck on.

In the Jewish faith, every 50 years they have a Jubilee, yes that’s where we get the word. And at that time, all debts are written off. So you’re never going to get a situation where someone is so far in debt that even their grandchildren haven’t a hope in hell of sorting it out. Coz … jubilee.

Why don’t we do that? Seriously though, why can’t we just reset the entire god forsaken thing and start again. Just write off everything. Let’s face it, France and Britain are practically bankrupt, they’re billions and billions in debt and the only reason they aren’t bankrupt is because they’re France and Britain rather than say, Liberia or the Cameroon … or Greece.

If we can stop the fucking world, surely a post lock-down jubilee is a piece of cake. No of course it isn’t because the people least affected couldn’t possibly forego the chance of supplementing to their billions.

It’s just mental.

And of course, by pedalling this 20% bell endery – rather than just admitting that they don’t know what’s going to happen so we’ll have to sit tight – the credible news sources erode people’s belief in them, and that’s how your bog-standard person in the street starts believing the ludicrous shite pedalled by the far right and left who, big news here, are NO different from one another, each as fucking awful. Worse this reduction of everything to generalist sound bites, with lots of NLP trigger words like disastrous, terrible, wicked etc means that people actually believe this shit. It’s how normal, kindly every day souls start to actually believe the kind of cartoon, absolutist bollocks pedalled as ‘news’ in papers like The Sun and the Daily Mail.

I remember when, as a kid, the BBC news would be different to all others. They would report a disaster as dispassionately and un-emotively as possible. I remember watching the BBC newscasters describing ‘substantial damage’ and a ‘major incident’ while their counterparts on ITV were referring to ‘absolute carnage’ and an ‘unprecidented disaster’. ITV was all NLP trigger words, BBC was, on the whole, an effort to establish the facts. Now the BBC have joined the race to the bottom and sealed their own doom.

There is so much good stuff we will lose.

Speaking of which, has anyone seen the programme with Professor Brian Cox about the planets. It’s really interesting. Stuffed to the gunwales with fabulous effects, photography and facts. Loads and loads of facts. Not ten minutes about how you’re going to learn some facts, another fact strung out for five minutes, an ad break followed by another five minutes to recap the fact you’ve discovered in the first half and explain what you’ll learn in the second half, followed by a second fact and another five minutes to sum up what you’ve learned before the credits roll.

Anyway, if you get a chance, have a look because it’s wonderful and incredibly interesting. Plus the way that all the diverse planetary bodies in the solar system are actually linked is kind of magical, and the stuff of another science fiction novel I think.

Talking of which …

Knock me down with a feather but Audible finally got their fingers out of their arses and published Few Are Chosen. So now the whole K’Barthan Series, is live. That’s sixty three hours, eight minutes and fifty seven seconds of meaty K’Barthan goodness … narrated by Gareth – the voice of K’Barth – Davies. And with Unlucky dip on top that’s sixty three hours, forty one minutes and seven seconds of meaty K’Barthan goodness.

It took me three hours to upload the box set to Audible and the. Entire. Battery. Life. Of my lap top. Please God let there not be any errors.

If you’re interested, you can find information about my audiobooks here: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/audio.html.

Spikes … Robert Smith and that bloke out of the Alarm eat your heart out! Mwwahahahahrgh

Another joy this week, in a bid to try and help McMini come to terms with his chances of sustaining anything approaching a proper Mohican with his curly hair I treated him to a demonstration of how I used to make my hair stick up. A lot. Yep, no gel, straighteners or anything else required, not even back combing, you just rub it with a towel in a gentle circular motion.

The ideal length for hair, if you are doing this, is anywhere from four to six inches. Mine currently stands at about a foot. I only did the front because I didn’t have all day but I reckon this isn’t too shabby. Note to self, do not play with spiking hair, try to take selfie in bathroom mirror, fail and take a second photo in the bathroom while wearing a sun top. It does look startlingly as if I’m in the all together there doesn’t it? Oops.

And there we are that’s it from sunny Bury St Edmunds this week. More crap next week including, why I can’t understand how people get all het up about gayness and how I intend to mend my broken kindle … A bientot.

___________________________

If you feel like something to escape into …

There’s always my new book. A big thank you to everyone who ordered Close Enough. Apologies the paperback isn’t out yet. That’s a whole other story.

If these books aren’t your thing but you want to help any other way, feel free to share the information page in my website with your friends: link below.

https://www.hamgee.co.uk/infoce.html

Here’s the blurb again, just in case you need it …

As recently appointed delivery man for Big Merv, one of Ning Dang Po’s most powerful crime bosses, The Pan of Hamgee is ordered to deliver a gift to Big Merv’s current girlfriend. With a pair of bespoke-made, sapphire and diamond earrings on board, and a trip across the city in the offing, what could possibly go wrong? Everything.

While you’re at it, this and all my other books in paperback, audio and ebook format should be available from your public library. Just check your library app or ask your librarian.

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6 Jun 2020 · 4:13 pm

Handcart locked and loaded. Destination: Hell … mind the doors please.

This morning it is pissing down and rather cold. Bit of a bummer after it’s been so lovely, although the plants need the rain and I bet the blackbird is pleased not to have to be eternally dive bombing my cat. Politics has rather dominated this week despite my best efforts not to let it. There are a lot of things I could say but I’ll only go off on … OK all of them. Sorry.

(RANT MODE ON).

The trouble with having a nation where everyone is armed to the teeth is that, in an altercation, things seem to move from shouting and pointy sticks to bullets very quickly. Since Trump has followed Hitler’s playbook from the get go, I’m not going to be hugely surprised if he suddenly stands up and actually, you know, says that he’s a full on white supremacist.

After all, he is a man who would prefer to appear in public looking like an orange panda with a Brillo pad on his head than admit to being pale and bald. That’s impressive. Someone like that is always going to be full of interesting surprises. Although, I think I may possibly be starting to understand why he chose orange foundation over a more natural shade like say … brown.

Then again, he may be President but he’s also an American businessman and foremost, he’s going to act as such. If Henry Ford can have his workers shot for going on strike, I guess Donald Trump can send anonymous armed guards to shoot demonstrators. I was amused by the way that the actual city administration of Washington DC appears to have trolled him by painting Black Lives Matter on the streets near the Whitehouse. I probably shouldn’t be. I’m sure it makes me a bad person. But I can’t help thinking that DT going down to the bunker and the wire fences being put up around the Whitehouse might say as much about his private view of some Americans as it does about their intentions towards him.

Or to spell it out a bit. Is he getting worried the people he derides feel the way about him that he does about them? Or maybe it’s just precedent. I mean Americans do have a bit of a thing about shooting their presidents. No but hang on, aren’t the nutters with guns are mostly in his fan base? You can never be too careful I guess.

What does strike me is all the posts where young black lads in the USA are talking about the things they have to remember. Don’t go out after dark, avoid wearing certain clothes … I can empathise with them hugely since, while theirs go further, these kinds of dos and don’ts are still integral to any woman’s life, no matter what her age or colour. Fist bump. Welcome to my world darling.

Except times about one trillion.

This is something that upsets me. I totally get why people over there are angry and rioting.

My great to the power of … many … grandfather was black. This is something we’ve learned accidentally from blood analysis rather than tracing the family tree, we think he must have been Roman. The thing is, I look at this and think, there but for the quirks of genetics, go I. I once encountered someone on facebook who was banging on about how the BBC was crap because there should be only white people on it and that coloured people weren’t representative of ‘Britain’ – that they shouldn’t live in this country and should all be ‘sent home’. I told him coloured people had been settling in Britain for at least a thousand years and that I was living proof, explaining about my Great (however many it is) grandfather. Would I have to leave your utopian only Britain? I asked him. He told me that I didn’t count, because, ‘your skin is white.’ I’m not making this shit up. Racism is that arbitrary and pathetic.

As my 87 year old mother said the other day, ‘ it’s disgusting.’

‘Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, that you do to me.’

I wonder which bit of that the conservative ‘Christians’ in the USA fail to get.

Moving on.

Here in Britain, we’ve had the Dominic Cummings thing. Jeepers. So my first thought, on that one, was that if I was worried one of us had the Rona, and that McOther and I might end up in hospital with McMini here alone, I’d have been up the M6 to my brother’s with him like a rat up a drainpipe. But then Mr Cummings tried to explain his trip to Barnard Castle the following day.

What the actual fuck did he think he was doing? Seriously? Who advised him to come out with that utter tosh? There are so many explanations that are reasonable. ‘I was an idiot, I didn’t think, it’s a lovely place and I just took a run out there without thinking it through. I was foolish and I’m sorry.’ That would have done it.

But no. That would involve him admitting to a mistake. Can’t have that. For he is perfect. As I understand it, the explanation is that, worried the Rona might have left him a bit blind, despite having driven 200 miles up the A1 from London the day before without a second thought, he decided to test his eyesight. Rather than go outside and see if he could read a number plate from 30 yards away, like you do at the beginning of a driving test, he decided he’d do this by going for a thirty mile drive.

How did that work?

If I don’t crash the car and kill anyone. I’m not blind.

Yeh good call.

Seriously though.

What?

This is the kind of logic behind the ducking stool. I know our current batch of Conservatives is quite a lot further to the right than some of their predecessors have been but … really?

Surely you need to get your reasoning skills a bit further than that to advise the Prime Minister these days. Or maybe not. Hmm… strange that there’s a big Glaxo facility in Barney. Is that where he was going? Is Not Wanting To Talk About Glaxo why he was prepared to come out with the kind of excuse a three year old caught nicking biscuits would be ashamed of?

The point is, he went from having a reasonably valid excuse, or at least a reason for transgressing that any parent could understand, to looking like the biggest lying bastard ever. The Barnard Castle (northern euphemism for cobblers) he was talking about his visit to Barney immediately makes any sensible person wonder what the actual reason for going north in the first place might have been.

Seriously, McMini, bearded in the larder with a half eaten biscuit in one hand and the opened packet in the other could argue more cogently that he had not been pilfering biscuits than Mr Cummings argued a valid reason for his trip to Barnard Castle.

From feeling a certain amount of empathy with Cummings I now wonder about the veracity of all of it. He only stayed up there two days. Why? Sounds like he was just visiting the parents. Or was it something more sinister than that? Were he or his wife even ill?

Mr Cummings, if you’re reading this, do get in touch with me. I can put you in contact with my young son. I’m sure he’ll help you to come up with something a bit more plausible next time you’re caught being a naughty boy. Or thinking about it, your own lad’s four so doubtless you can sort your next excuse in house. Yeh, cut out your advisors and talk to the four year old next time you want to think of an excuse because I assure you, he’ll come up with quality compared to this last effort.

Then there’s Boris’ knee jerk reaction. Nothing sensible like,

‘OK, I can’t make any constructive comment on this until I’ve spoken to my colleague and found out what’s going on, I will do so and make a statement as soon as I am able.’

Nope it’s ‘He was here all the time, honest guv!’ So now he just looks like an almighty liar who will put his loyalty to his friends ahead of both his loyalty to the nation and his integrity. A kind of reverse Thomas a Becket. And as Prime Minister, his loyaltay to his nation is important. This is not what you do when you work for governments. If you work for MI6 and you are tasked with spying on your best friend, you do it. That’s why working for MI6 is not a pleasant job. Likewise politics. Not an easy job. Not really. That’s why it now comes with a good wage. Because if you do it properly and you make it about helping others, rather than stepping over them and helping yourself, it’s actually a very tough gig. And like Thomas a Becket, if you do it properly, you’re going to make a lot of enemies out of folks who might, once, have been your friends.

It’s as much a non-story as that thing about Gordon Brown was when he called that woman a racist. To be honest, while I got what she was saying, it did come over as a bit, ‘send the brown people home,’ so I could see his point.

But all these non-stories are about smearing others. Groups of people or political parties who don’t like someone looking for a reason to destroy them. They haven’t the wit to wait for something really good. They use the first piece of dubious shit they can find, with no substance to back it up. They undermine their own integrity, not to mention the credibility of any genuinely pertinent information they might discover at a later date. Which is one of the reasons why the far right’s supporters don’t believe anyone except their own mouth pieces anymore (sure the other is brainwashing but that’s one).

On that ‘outrage’, I sympathised with Gordon Brown. I felt that no journalist of integrity should have printed/released a throw away remark made in private. And however much of a get Mr Brown may or may not have been, the place where he should be tried and tested for his actions was not the newspapers. It was within government, parliament, the law – possibly – and his own party? Through whatever the official channels were, anyway, not on telly.

Likewise, I actually sympathised with Dominic Cummings – until his laughable attempts to explain himself. But I do still have some sympathy, in that the whole thing does come over as another nothing whipped up into something by his political enemies. There are a lot of very unpleasant people in politics but some are reasonably proficient at the things they are there to do. I guess it’s balancing that. If someone is unctuous, condescending and rude but a brilliant chancellor, maybe that’s OK.

Yes, politicians need to be held accountable and, yes, that’s what the press is there to do. But it needs to be done with integrity. If the press prints something to hold people in power accountable, they need to do it because making their actions public is the right thing to do. Not to make news. The nub is that the news making is a by product. The story has to serve some other purpose. There has to be some vague nod at a quest for truth or a point to it all. It’s very subtle but there’s a difference in there and I wonder if we are losing sight of it.

It’s like there’s nothing interesting happening so politicians and press alike have to whip some piece of mundane crap up into this gargantuan pseudo scandal. And then when, in the 1980s, there was some very compelling evidence that a cabinet minister was abusing children. Politicians and press, alike, hushed it up.

The notable thing that struck me was the lack of statesmanlike behaviour on all sides. Clearly a lot of people in Whitehall and Parliament have got where they are today by going round in big groups, overwhelming and shouting down the opposition rather than winning debates. Perhaps that’s why Mr Cummings was incapable of mustering any humility or making a genuine apology and a reasonable explanation. Perhaps he’s never had to acknowledge a mistake before and doesn’t understand how to. Perhaps he lacks the humility to acknowledge his failings. Perhaps that’s why Boris just blustered defensively instead of admitting that he didn’t know the facts and would look into them and report back. Or could it be that the truth of that trip really is something so deeply insidious that it must be buried. It probably isn’t, but after their behaviour, I suspect a lot of people are going to think it is, whether or not that’s true.

(/RANT MODE)

____________________________

If current politics is doing your head in, world wide or at home, why not lose yourself in a good book, or alternatively, one of mine. There are several options.

1. Few Are Chosen, K’Barthan Series: Part 1 on AUDIO wooooot

This should be reduced to £5.99 or $5.99 AU/CA/US/NZ and €5.99 on Kobo, from now until 28th June.

In addition, it’ll be available for the same price on Chirp and iBooks from 13th – 28th June.

Links to those sites can be found here:

In other audio news, hopefully the new shorts will be available over the coming year. After a bit of thought, I’ve decided it will also including the free mailing list exclusive, Night Swimming. One of the joys of this is that, with any luck, these will be a bit shorter so I will be able to sell them direct from my site.

2. Close Enough, K’Barthan Shorts, Hamgeean Misfit: No 3

Close Enough cover

This is out on 18th June.

It’s also available for preorder in most places, except possibly Apple because it’s the first time I’ve uploaded there direct and it’s taking me a fair while to understand how their store works.

If you’re interested, here’s the blurb.

If you like the sound of that, click here

If you’ve got all the way down here, congratulations and thanks for reading. A bientot!

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Filed under General Wittering

Tagged as an author with children, audio publishing, author blog, author interviews, author parent, blacklivesmatter, cheap quality books, comedy fantasy fiction, fantasy fiction, humour, interviews, K'Barth, K'Barthan Series, K’barthan audio, M T McGuire, M T McGuire audiobooks, M T McGuire new releases, massive rant, McMini, new books, politics, rant, writer mom, writer parent, writers