In a Socialist Worker World...

PEOPLE LIKE YOU...!

Official Times warning when I went all Dave Spart on some ponce.

I must keep out of the Sunday Times comments section. It really is bad for my blood-pressure. Rabid Objectivists and Clarksonists railing against immigrants and the poor while fawning over Elon Musk and his far-right psychopathic brethren.

They write in this pretentious form of English, you can hear the plum in the voice when reading the vitriolic nonsense. 

I lost my shit at one particular wanker and he fled saying I'd bullied him.

Good.

Very hot; too hot.

Sleeping in a sheet. Wake up in the morning unable to move my arms, having rolled myself into a cigarette.

Wriggling around like a grub, I managed to free my wings - ARMS -  then broke free, and flew to the bathroom where I took my ablutions in a most pleasing manner.

Last night was the first time I wore long trousers in months. 

This weather is just not British!

Find Al Niño! He must be punished for this confounded heat!

What I is currently listening to, exclusively like

Pointer Sisters. Seriously. Not the 80s pop stuff mind, although you should check out their 1988 Caesar's Palace concert - it really is brilliant.

They went through several phases. Love the first stuff in the early to mid-seventies where they just perform the music they love - swing, blues, jazz, R&B, soul, even country. 

They were the first black act to perform at the Grand ole Opry in Nashville, having got into the country chart.

Every performance they can't help but give 100%. The music just flows through them. 

Just watch this:

Fine dining in mid-Somerset

Faggots. 

Give them a chance. They're awfully nice and they do grow on you. They come with gravy too. 

I like a faggot. Do you?

Somerset Apple Dappy

Saw them in a bakery once in Wells, or was it in the school canteen? I never tried one so I can't tell you anything more about it.

Chicken ding. 

My sister's favourite. We cook the chicken the night before, then put 'em in the microwave till 'em go ding!

That is the genius of chicken ding.

Just leave it

I become out of sync with  the world. I said things that fall flat and people started to ignore me. It's like the wit-circuits are offline, or fried, or something

I used to recognise this as a kid, and step back from socialising for a couple of weeks, or if I was in a social situation I would just say the bare minimum.

It's not exactly confidence-filling when you repeatedly say the wrong thing.

It's like I'd been traversing the edge of wit, then went right over the cliff. 

It's a long climb back up after that.

Not Drinking again

Yup. For all the reasons stated on my old blog, I'm not drinking as when I start I just can't stop. 

Rather like smoking. 

And breathing.

I always found social situations a little difficult and a drink would relax and disinhibit me. 

And that's when things could go wrong.

An undignified way to spend your latter years, pathetically trying to hang around some 20 somethings and letting yourself down in the process. 

Don't be that old twat. 

(Note to self)

It's Christmas!!!!

The gaming bit.

My favourite games publisher is Free League Publishing of Sweden. 

The games I've bought from them are quite rules-light, with an emphasis on the vividness of the landscape and visceral atmospheres - the actual role-playing as opposed to simply roll-playing.

2 are based on the work of artists.

Vaesen is based on the wonderful Arthur Rackham-like work of Johan Egerkrans. It takes place in the 19th century Mythic North, where a bunch of misfits who are born with the ability (AKA Thursday's Children) to see otherworldly creatures such as Trolls and Revenants.

Not all the monsters are bad and there is a guidebook called the Codex Occultum which the players use to deal with the matter in hand.

Tales from the Loop is a game based on the wonderfully eerie and evocative paintings of Simon Stålenhag's painting of children in familiar landscapes with unfamiliar rotting tech. 

It's Goonies meets countless 1970s sci fi, like The Tomorrow People, Timeslip, Doctor Who and Doomwatch.

It's a lost world where distant parents told you to come back when it gets dark, your school is a place of boredom and bullying, and your solace is to go exploring with your bunch of mates. 

It looks and feels wonderful.

Frontier Scum describes itself as Acid Western Roleplaying. Very rules-light again, you play the worst people in an alternate wild west, out to steal silver and do bad shit. 

Contains ghouls and magic items.

This has fully recharged my thrill-circuits!

Scrambled Brains

He's just a child really

I never read the Tin Drum but I did see the film. The story is about a boy who decides to stop growing up at the age of 11. It’s the kind of magical realism that appeals to me.

Feels like me in a way. I was full of confidence in the primary school, but when I got to the comprehensive I felt quite overwhelmed. The age range of 11-18 is too great in my opinion and in the opinion of many others. 

As a young 11 year old I was certainly not ready. I felt I had to stop with Lego and playing and things, and friends already were getting girlfriends when in fact we all knew girls were just silly.

They’re just trying to be like the older kids. 

I was always very uncomfortable at being cool and adult. It’s just not my thing. 

I’m a geek (nerds are academic geeks) and into fun things. Shit at sport (though I’d have given anything to have been good at football) so thank god Dungeons and Dragons was a thing when we were teenagers.

I like playing. I like music. I still like all the stuff I did when I was 13. 

It took some growing up for me to realise at 40 that I still did, and should rediscover them. 

This has happened top many of us and was one of the better things to come out of lockdown - rediscovering old hobbies that made us happy.

I still feel a bit conscious of the fact that if I go to a cafe or pub to prep a game that I’m being judged by the cover of the book I’m reading.

They did adult covers of the Harry Potter books for this reason.

Stonemasonry: it got him noticed!

When I was 22 and living in London, I gave up the yoke of trying to get a career in advertising and ended up applying for any job I could.

Degrees from art colleges are not particularly helpful in this regard.

It says here you're really methodical and ordered; you are good with personal admin and like be on top of it. But over here it says you went to art college, you like fine art and also role-playing games...?

You can't be this and that. It doesn't compute. No one will understand you. Do you see?

You need to pigeonhole yourself, so you can sell yourself as an understandable commodity.

But I'm a human being. We're contradictory. Complex. Why can't I be the two?

Looks at me funny. 

Does not compute...does not compute...

I ran out and heard a small explosion behind me.

Years later at a party I met a real Sloane Ranger (remember them) and she was a character. A head-hunter and a former seller of Socialist Worker. 

I loved the contradiction already.

She told me every CV she received was identical. Straight As at GCSE and A-level, Duke of Edinburgh Gold badge, Russell Group Uni - but nothing to mark out the individual. 

I gave my former step-sons experience with stonemasonry work. This proved to be a talking point when they were interviewed.

Sounds like the return of the individual is a thing, and definitely something to be celebrated.

Why so many gamers are neurodiverse

Tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) are my mind-expanding drugs of choice. I've thought recently why those of us who are different are so drawn to them.

• Fuels the child's imagination state education does its best to extinguish
• Establishes a world or worlds with rules that you are cognisant of, unlike the everyday world where social rules are often nuanced and baffling.
• Gives you an equal voice to everyone else - you are heard. And you have leverage.
• Where you are in collaboration with others for a common goal, as opposed to individually competitive,  Machiavellian, combatative, undermined.
• Feelings of achievement, highs and lows. Glory. 

My pink half of the drainpipe

Due to boundary issues, our lawn has ended up with a Brazilian.

I'll aim for the full Hollywood next time.

As you were.

I'm listening to my podcast and I don't want to talk to you

SHUT UP, YOU!

Difficult week this. Don't know why, but I was really very anxious and just wanted to not talk to anyone.

Everything was too loud and bright. I just wanted to retreat to my cocoon and close the lid.

Very tired; very difficult having to make small-talk with anyone. 

Stop trying to talk to me. I'm learning about Benjamin Franklin!!

You had to be on my neurological level (gamer) or a very pretty female for me to stand there and take it.

I am that shallow.

I'm still waiting for my pisspoor frontal lobe to get back online. I need a lobotomy so someone can hand-crank the fucker.

Brazil

I'm almost 90% listening purely to Brazilian music these days.

I love the vibrancy of it - the rhythms and the vivacity. It's music that contains all the flavours - spice, salt, sour, sweet, umami.

One good thing about the internet (of which there are fewer and fewer) is the discovery of music that hitherto in the analogue age we would never have encountered.

I've discovered through George Duke and Flora Purim: Airto Moreira, Gilberto Gil, Banda Black Rio, Deodato, Hermeto Pascuale and many more. 

Also a big shout out to Gilles Peterson on 6Music for the education in Brazilian and afrobeat music.

It keeps me going. 

What would life be without GOOD music?

Scumbag Parents, or why you should watch Idiocracy

Based on an  - allegedly - incorrect theory called dysgenics, Idiocracy is a comedy sci-fi film that shows a future world where only dumbest, most feckless have procreated - the rest of us having missed the boat by waiting too long for the markets or financial stability.

It leads to a world which is run by corporations, where Gatoraid is used to water crops, rubbish piles up as mountains, and you can become a government minister by winning a competition.

Trump has of course brought this forward by 400 plus years.

However, I witnessed their ancestors today in the pub when I was trying to search for inspiration.

Families effing and c-ing in front of their little kids, all the while they chugged back beer and wine and then the loudest of them all (and it was quite the effort to be at the top of this particular tree) was going on about 'if you don't vote for Farage next time this country's fucked..." with everyone agreeing.

I found the whole thing utterly depressing.

Don't get me wrong - this kind of thing is a very middle-classed pursuit as well. I've witnessed feral kids in a beer garden chucking apples into people's gardens while their parents get arseholed inside, and of course media types talking while their children run around busy restaurants in and out of the staff carrying hot food to people's tables.

I can't remember a time where parenting was so laissez-faire.

Old Whatsisface

One of the things I have is not being able to remember names like I used too - partly age, partly piccalilli, partly 2/3rds garlic. 

What was I saying again?

Spock, old Nimoy,  you know: Derek Nimoy!

No, no, no: that’s Derek Nimmo! 

Leonard Nimmo as The Reverend Spock

Perhaps a UK version of Star Trek with Bill Shankly as Captain James T Kirk, Derek Nimmo as Spock, Burt Kwouk as Sulu, and Bernie Winters as Bones?

That was them! Going planet to planet, introducing tweed, tea in mother's best china and association football with half time cigarettes and brandy.

Made the universe what it is today!

Recognise this supergroup?

Ginger Biscuit on Drums

Eric Cantona on lead 

Robert the Bruce on bass.

Marvellous beat combo. No one could bend the triangle like old Eric!

And old George Chisholm would trampoline in on the kung-fu trombone. 

Hai-ya!

Those were the days, back in the old music halls!

Fun and gayness for the whole family.

Disclaimer: Chat GPT was used shamelessly to create the pisspoor image embedded in this waffle.

Help! I'm not dying anymore!

Back when I was interesting

My old blog. All about me and my trials and tribulations of having an incurable disease; a death-sentence!

Oh, look at me! What an exotic condition to have! 

Love on me!

I am a martyr!

At last, I am interesting!!!

You cannot BUY publicity like this!

It's the kind of story that could get me somewhere! 

So I became a star in the Rare Dementia space (and it is a space too), being interviewed on radio stations and doing talks for - or rather at - uninterested NHS staff. 

I had sympathy, attention, and a reason for people to warm to me, which I certainly hadn’t had  to the same extent before. 

I had Frontotemporal dementia and it would lead to a horrible undignified death!

I could have gone to Dignitas in Switzerland and had a bolt-gun to the head, or whatever it is they do.

Get in!

Well get this: they’ve taken my crippling and undignified death away!

As of September 2025 I officially don’t have FTD!

I was - understandably - devastated.

Thing is, I wasn’t dying nearly as quickly as I should to merit this particular condition, and, like Donald Trump, I was acing my cognitive exams. (Although mine were a good deal more difficult than identifying giraffes from hamsters.)

Now, disowned by RDS and other dementia bodies, I found myself adrift in a sort of psycho-limbo.

I’ve since been advised to go down the mental-health route, but I don’t fancy having hundreds of hours of psychodynamic therapy. 

I’ve had 2 therapists before and found it to be an expensive, drawn-out process, rather like 2 blind men helping each other through a maze, leading to fuck all.

What I've actually got is probably boring old autism. Just like everyone else these days!

Or maybe even depression. 

I preferred the good old days of FTD. It gave me kudos, camaraderie, and was a bloody good excuse as to why I say weird shit and behave in sometimes odd, inexplicable ways. 

People ask how on earth I’m processing the news that I’m not dying: it must be revelatory!

Well it’s not. I’m on Sertraline and relatively unaware of most of my emotional states. 

Limbo is not as dramatic as people expect it to be. In fact it was never dramatic. It’s nothingness. 

I guess that’s why the Pope abolished it.

It's a difficult sell.

Teenage Armpits

I smelt them before I saw them. 3 geeky teenagers with multi-coloured hair, sat at the front of the pub. 

Stinking as teenagers often do.

Reeking, in fact.

That's yo mama, right there.

I went to the bar.

Wilbur. What have you got that’s…good?

I usually ask something inane like that because they know me here and they know what I like. Usually something with plenty of flavour that’s not too strong, like an 8lb sledgehammer made out of hops.

The teenagers giggled at me. 

Bastards.

I got my drink and went outside where I could sit in the shade and benefit from the cool breeze.

Then THEY came outside and sat near me. They’d obviously been drinking as they were drunk yet in good spirits.

I thought my DnD-themed t-shirt might have given me some kudos.  

No.

So there they are, smelling at me, laughing very loudly.

And then they leave 

And just as quickly they return, apologising for being loud, and giving the barman a £5 tip as an apology.

What lovely kids. 

Smelly, but lovely.

And what a judgmental bastard am I.