Michele and I have just returned from a bizarre but entertaining evening.

Earlier today I got a call from an old friend: Tina. She’s back in London after living in France for the past few years and we agreed to meet up in Eltham, our home town, partly to catch up and partly so I could go round and help sort out her Dad’s PC…it was great to see her again and gave me the perfect opportunity to go to the Eltham grill 🙂

By all rights her dad and I shouldn’t get on, but we seem to – and he rewarded my work on his PC by sharing some of his 12 year old scotch with me and Tina, together with a bowl of bombay mix. We’d arranged to meet up with Michele in Lewisham for a meal at Hunkarim.

Now, Michele and I have been to that place many times, but never on a saturday. Initially it seemed like a busy version of the weekday experience except that the music, Dread Zone, was playing louder than usual. As we chatted, drank and ordered our food the music got louder and louder and the place started to get more and more busy. Tina pointed out that that the patrons were almost exclusively women but we just assumed it was a bunch of hen nights.

Then the turn came on: a keyboard player and singer. They cranked up the amp and played ear-drum-burstingly loud middle-eastern style music on a synth, while the singer sang a medley of dire pop tunes. Every now and then they gave our eardrums a break and played some CDs with no concessions toward subtle mixing. The CDs started off with some friendly ragga pop; Chaka Demus and Pliers etc, and moved up to some full-on dancehall crutch-rubbing ragga. The hen parties were in a frothy frenzy by this stage and we just sat there open mouthed. A 16 year old blonde girl at the next table was doing her best to “wine her body”, and when she noticed Michele grooving, obviously felt she had met a kindred spirit and invited her up to dance, which she did.

The evening went on and the place was rocking. By now we realised that despite the high quality of the food, Hunkarim on a Saturday was not a place for a quiet meal out. And then the belly dancer appeared. Instead of the flabster we were expecting, it was a young slinky woman who moved in a way I wouldn’t have thought was possible. All of the women in the place stopped screaming and everyone was transfixed. As she danced she invited other women to come up and dance with her – the first that accepted was Michele, who really knows how to move her hips.

To cut a long story short, it was a bizarre but spectacularly enjoyable evening and not at all like we’d planned. As we left, just about everyone in the place was up and dancing. It took us a while to sus that a large proportion of the all-female groups there were lesbians…I’d always wondered what sort of people were attracted to a place with a belly dancer.

Another wednesday off work after a party. This time we had two days of party. Both seemed a little lacklustre and routine…and all in all a bit sad. Monday was the christmas lunch. It all started off quite well with the starters, wine and christmas crackers. Everyone was jolly and relaxed. But the main course took over an hour to turn up. The only reason this bothered me was that I’d organised it and was aware of everyone’s impatience, albeit due to pre-arranged meetings etc.
Poor Margot, the landlady, was almost in tears about it and it really wasn’t her fault. She’d never done a meal for so many people. Overall most people enjoyed it but the next day I had to deal with lots of tedious comments from people about waiting for food…everyone had heard about it. I also lost out financially. Oh well.

The next day was the IS christmas party, which is generally pretty crap but made pleasurable by being an afternoon off work and involving many bottles of wine. This year, there were only 2 wine boxes and everyone fucked off by 2 o’clock…apart from the hard-core of people that usually stick around. In my role as the Dead-Horse-Flogger General, I literally had to go round and persuade people to come back. Jesus I’ve got to leave this job…

But today is another relaxing day of listening to nice music (I’d forgotten how good Bongwater is) and writing loads of old crap like this. The birds eeking, a new hard-disk installed in teapot, nice cup of tea…ahhh…

As last night was the LRC (language resources centre) christmas drink I booked today off. Fortunate because I had one of the worst nights sleep ever. It was eight hours of unpleasant, scary nightmares. Bizarre, but not really relatable.

Today I got up late and spent the morning with the feathered chaps. Both came out today and they seem to be bonding – they spent a while on top of Humphrey’s cage preening – Tim even lowered his head – a sure sign of submissiveness and an invitation for Humph to preen him…which he didn’t. Meanie.

Michele came back early from teaching because the water was off there and so it gave me an excuse to go out and buy a couple of christmas presents. For dull reasons I went to Eltham, but I bumped into my dad and so we nipped into the the Bankers Draft for a couple of pints of Winter Warmer type stuff. The landlord really looked like he needed some warming up – miserable sod. Even though the place was almost exclusively populated by big fat eltham geeeeezahs it was quite mellow. Oh hold on.. maybe I’m a big fat Eltham geeezah myself ? Damnit!

[I do not own a single keyboard where all the keys work – excuse missing letters. I’d buy a new one but hey – this is a Sun keyboard!]
For most of my twenties I was very cynical about..well..just about everything. I’d sneer at people going on demos, been there, done that, people still voted Tory. People trying to help the environment – wasting their time – no point trying to help the environment while the world is frothing with capitalism – a clean environment just isn’t cost effetive.

A couple of years ago, a good friend of mine bought me a copy of “Reasons to be cheerful” by Mark Steel and it really caused me to reconsider the cynicism – I can’t really explain why, you’ll have to read it, but one important point that comes out of it is that cynical is what they want you to be. And didn’t the FoE save Oxleas wood from distrution ? So I’ve been on a lot of demos recently, and I’ve been arguing with Sun readers…something I never used to bother with.

However, I’m currently experiencing what the god-botherers call a “crisis of faith”.
<digression>
We know someone who was clearly clinially depressed. He went to see his vicar who told him not to worry – Jesus was still there for him even though he was having a “crisis of faith”. Reassured and comforted by this helpful advice the guy went out got in his car, and shot himself in the head. As I’ve said before, God must be a bit of a bastard.
</digression>

750,000 people turned up in Central London on a monday, in the cold, to celebrate a few blokes who managed to move a leather ball into the correct part of a field more times than another bunch of blokes. St George’s crosses everywhere. The news was/is choc full of footage, anecdotes and whimsy about the event. How many times do we have to hear about the joy of simple, honest patriotism. How great it is that people can feel proud to be English again. Look up the word “pride” in the dictionary to see why I find the whole concept of pride in a nation utterly bizarre and offensive. Look back at what acts of genocide, torture and destruction were commited under the shadow of our glorious flag and then we can start arguing about why I am utterly opposed to all forms of nationalism, jingoism and patriotism: three words for the same thing.

So – which way now ? Cynical ? Cop out totally, wear a suit and earn a fortune. Let the proles eat cake. Give them football, drugs and a police state to keep them happy and obedient while we sip the red wine in comfort with the rest of the inner party ?

Or carry on, going on massive demos that get almost no press attention and rarely, if ever, change anything. Living on the edge of an overdraft while working really hard. Help.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it
–George Bernard Shaw

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
— Albert Einstein (1875-1955)

Last night we watched a ropey cam job of Love Actually complete with bad colour, audience noise and occasional fiddling with the camera. I know it got crap reviews but I’ve got this strange loyalty to Richard Curtis, the Vicar of Dibley notwithstanding. And as you’d expect it was a frothy, lighthearted tale of affluent middle class folk, including the prime minister, getting in dreadful pickles and awkward situations. Full to the brim with schmulz (sp?), cute kids who are wise beyond their years, and beautiful people, it should by rights have made me want to puke but, despite a couple of emetic scenes including a school nativity play, I loved it. There was a cynical undercurrent and a few really insightful ideas that I couldn’t possibly describe without risking an entry in pseuds corner. The opening scene is at Heathrow with a voiceover about how much love there is all around. OK, trite, but Michele and I have often talked about what emotional places airports are. In the back of both of our minds was the occasion when I had to wave good-bye to Michele when her visa was up, not knowing when or if I’d ever see her again. All around us were people overjoyed, or equally miserable with there own reasons for being there…and, of course, a load of blokes in suits looking round for their name on a bit of card so they can get driven to see another bunch of blokes in suits and smarm away while they burn lots of expenses on keeping the economy going…how this works I don’t know.
Bill Nighy was in it too – which is enough to make me go and see a film.

Friday evening we ended up in the SU chatting to a psychology student. He bestowed a few pieces of anecdotal information that, if true, indicate some serious problems in college infrastructure. Now, anyone that knows me will know that I can be ever so slightly cynical on the subect of contemporary Higher Eduction, but even I was amazed by some of this stuff. One thing that UBS has shown me is that the managerial problems in my particular workplace are not exclusive, in fact I doubt there’s an educational establishment in the country that isn’t permanently on the verge of ignoble collapse. But it’s obviously worse than I thought.

The postman rang the doorbell, woke us up and terrified the birds all at the same time this morning. Just before I woke up I was at a concert hosted by the little chipmunk looking one out of Hearsay. He introduced Kym Marsh who, after asking the audience how they were, decided not to sing and instead waved off her backing group, went over to some shelves and started filing books.

Madness on the radio this morning – I can’t remember all of the outrageous rubbish, but two stay in mind:

• Some barmy woman who thinks smoking should be a criminal offence. No matter how much of a smoker or anti-smoker you are, it should be blindingly obvious that this is the most useless idea since the cavemen formed their first “blue sky thinking” commitee. Ever heard of prohibition ? Even if you haven’t, the idea of removing the massive amount of tax generated by fags and spending even more on enforcing another pointless law and filling up our prisons with yet more harmless people should really sound like a bad idea.
• The Zimbabwe minister for foreign relations. It’s pure fascism.

But work was pretty nice so that’s alright then. Nice drink at lunchtime and a nice chat with a student called Alex who had all kinds of scandalous info about the college management. Humph went into Tim’s cage today….little meanie…

The Staff Ball^H^H^H^Hparty was early this year. Early by normal work standards, late by capitalist standards. The joyless misery of “so here it is merry christmas”, “simply having a wonderful christmas time” and “ho ho ho it’s a magical snowy christmas wonderland for charity” being played in the opressivly brightly lit warehouse stores, has been with us for about 6 months now. But this year’s ball^H^H^H^Hparty was the best for years. There was a lot of speculation about why this should have been the case but it seems pretty obvious to me; it can’t be a coincidence that this was the first christmas party for years where they gave everyone a glass of “champagne” at the door.

Anyway – good fun. Dan and I walked home and realised that the best plan would be to lie down in the mud in hilly fields for a while and call Rakesh. Luckily he was awake, otherwise our demented chatter would have been recorded by his voicemail, encoded as MP3 and distributed all over the Internet by now.

Ooh – Humph is on his way out of the cage. I suspect he wants to go over and hassle Tim. Earlier on he caused a right kerfuffle(tm) and I was a bit pissed off with him. But after an evening of Tim eek, eek, bloody eeeking, I’m tempted to stand on his cage and crap….

Also – the word “property” should be banned from television. I thought makeover shows were bad but fucking bloody fucking property bastard bloody Daily Mail property programmes DIE DIE DIE.

It’s been a turbulent 36 hours. The fact that our supply of anti-depressants ran out a week ago doesn’t help. Zap, a new recruit to the army of prescription-junkies, remarked on Friday that I had become more agressive and short tempered. This is an interesting state of affairs. Firstly, he was right, and I hadn’t even noticed. Secondly he only noticed because he has recently started to take his prescription pills and, as far as I and everyone that knows and cares about him is concerned, is a lot better for it. Less unhappy, less uptight and less agressive. It’s a shock when someone turns it round – especially when they’re right.
Thursday and Friday were particularly hard because several significant bugs in my coding of commercial web systems came to light, that I can’t deny are my fault. I’d fixed and patched everything by 5pm today – and it’s a weight off my mind…and my arse.

Anyway – last night, uptight, and in need of R & R, I went out for a delicious Thai meal with Michele, Syd, Rach, Ian and Mod. It was so nice to spend time with people I like. Sadly Michele had yet another recurrence of her gut rot and we had to leave. It irritates me but as it’s not her fault, I can’t find anyone to be angry at apart from her gut…and it doesn’t even react to anger. Pity.

When we got in I went straight to bed – 9pm with no shame. I was knackered. Several hours later I woke up, got up, took my clothes off, and went back to bed. Then at 2am the phone rang. Michele told me to answer it, so I did and passed it over to her; my brain was way too sleepy to deal with talking to people. It was a friend of ours. She was pissed, crying and generally very upset. She was also on the verge of suicide. Again. The story is a long one but at this point all you need to know is that she’d lost her mobile on the anniversay of her brother’s death – two weeks after her parents kicked her out of home…and got her arrested at the same time. To simplify matters I should say that her, Tim her parrot, Michele, Humphrey and I are all in our front room now, and she’s much, much happier than before. Tim the parrot is going to stay with us for a while until our friend finds somewhere to live. It’s quite nice actually because she understands our obsession with parrots. The only person/being who maybe slightly dischuffed with the situation is Humphrey; he is preening like a maniac to show us how much nicer he is than Tim. Sad, because Tim just wants to be friends.
Night folks.

It’s nice to see that even in the smallest, most insignificant, places, there are still great people to be found. Here are a few that have been in our house, via various media, in the past couple of hours:

• Margaret Cho
• Ben Zephaniah – for everything he’s ever said and done – especially turning down an OBE
• Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – for telling national television that Ben Zephaniah’s refusal to accept his OBE made her feel guilty for accepting her MBE.
• Tony Benn – ever watched him go up against Ali G ? I know it’s not very important, but it does demonstrate how committed he is to his ideals
• John Humphreys and Jim Naughtie – for being able to make minced-meat out of the most determined jaded political scumbag.
• Mark Thomas and Mark Steel – for remaining funny, clever and righteous for at least all the years that I’ve known you