2017 draws to a close. Good.
So what have we learned from lame duck of a year? Basically the years key message is that stupidity rules the planet on an industrial scale. Whether that be Brexit, the United States, Football, work or just my life the stupid have risen to the top.
Now before every one loses their minds I’m not calling you stupid if you voted for Brexit. I know very few stupid people and the ones I do know are very stupid indeed.
If you voted Brexit then that is your right. That is democracy even though most people now see democracy as utter bollocks and I mean even those that spout it on a daily basis and insist it is essential… except when it doesn’t suit them. I’m not happy to leave Europe but I’m happy with the vote and disagree completely with the notion of another vote just to get the result some of us want. Blame Camrobot and not voters.
The problem I have is that no Brexiteer I know can give me a real reason as to why they wanted it. I’ve asked the question a number of times to colleagues who were leavers and I get the tremendous replies of:
“Why not?”
“Something different”
“Fuck Europe”
“Sick of being told what to do by faceless bureaucrats”
That last one is particularly good as we are told what to do on a daily basis by those very types.
Luckily no one I know has said directly to me in a face to face scenario “too many immigrants” which would cause an issue.
I was listening to the radio a while back and some jub explained that he voted leave because there were too many brown faces working in Harrow hospital.
This caller was then asked if he could point out what European country was predominantly filled with brown faces to which, or course, he had no answer. Basically for a lot of people this is purely a race issue showing the complete lack of understanding of the referendum question. These plums have been hoodwinked by a prick like Farage himself married to an immigrant, of immigrant stock and loaded to the point of stupidity with £80k a year wage, €132k a year pension, £2m house and £2.2m in an offshore account… a true Englishman.
Brexit is being dealt with by the inept with the more inept waiting in the wings to step in when it goes wrong inevitably claiming they would have done it differently.
Comrade Corbyn is as big an ponce as any Tory. At least the Tories stick to the lust for power at any cost and the right wing agenda whereas Corbyn says nothing of note while personally disagreeing with his own parties actual position on Brexit and a number of other issues… he’s the ultimate for the few (himself and momentum) and not actually the many at all.
My personal view is that we’ll end up worse off, isolated and struggling to find anyone happy to say they voted to leave but we will have a lovely blue passport that we can hold on to in the endless queues in foreign lands after we alight from our holiday airplanes. It might have been cheaper to issue everyone with a lovely blue passport holder and a book on shouting arrogantly in European destinations rather than actually triggering article 50.
If you think it’s bad here think of our associates over the pond who appear to be under the spell of possibly the most stupid individual ever to have the money to take over a country.
Trump.
Even the name is comical. A true idiot, a born and bred dimwit. In reality he should be praised for simply not pissing or shitting his pants on an hourly basis.
His first year in power has been both hilarious and terrifying due to the massive arrogance and the truly incredible levels of stupidity. The most recent example of this was his inability to distinguish between climate and general weather in a tweet the other night when it was cold in a city in America.
All this though isn’t his fault. He’s just a Fuckwit with the cash and the nodding entourage basking in the shadow of his cash swollen hard-on. The problem is the system in America which enabled this prick to rise up with no experience in a political arena he cannot possibly survive in. Land of the Free where nothing is Free…
Partially to blame is the robotic ex model wife who happily let’s this oaf bounce on top of her with his rigid acorn for the money as it would be fuckin’ hard to accept that there is any real love or affection in there other than knowing you had access to rooms full of cash on an hourly basis.
This is the third plastic wife to have stroked his fragile ego. Perhaps if they hadn’t he might be weeping in a lonely hotel room contemplating stringing himself up by his belt while crashing one out over a pile of hundred dollar bills rather than cutting taxes for himself and his the super rich ‘friends’.
The other problem of course is the stupidity of the voters backing him who believe that because he is successful he must know what he is doing.
They also believe that if he says it it must be true… his stupidity means he believes this also, in fact this very morning he claimed that he only uses social media as only he can deliver the facts due to press lies and fake news… brilliant.
Hopefully at some point soon the lack of action and benefit for the plums who voted for him and the investigation surrounding him will see him dispatched to history in disgrace but I’m slightly losing my belief in this as it’s a dangerous game to play slowly… every day he is capable of disaster and so it’s a risk not bringing him down as quickly as possible. This is my fear… it appears a slow game because there is no game.
What about me eh? How was my year?… meh… 5 out of 10 on the back of a 1 out of 10.
It was the year of the blood letting where I had multiple pints removed due to genetics.
All rather routine but for some reason it affected my head more than my body. I suddenly became painfully aware of my own mortality and had a sort of mini breakdown. Luckily this didn’t involve a thousand quids worth of tattoos, some kind of motorcycle or a new, younger model but went more along the lines of darkened rooms and meditation apps. I’m not like this so I bit the bullet and had a few sessions in the chair… all fixed now… back to being a hard, nasty fucker.
We holidayed in Portugal as constant readers would know, but much of the year revolved around watching the kids get to the point beyond my control…. the ‘smalls’ are no longer ‘small’… they move on and all you are left with is video footage of squeaky voiced cherubs. It’s heartbreaking but inevitable and the worst part of parenting to date… the loss of the innocent.
There were some highlights.
I relived my youth with a series of rock gigs. The Queens of the Stone Age delivered the goods for the Boy’s first concert experience (including witnesseing a punch up) and Royal Blood and the Darkness were suitably heavy. The best experience however, if not performance, was Hawkwind at the Roundhouse with the Eternal Champion and Lady Lynn where I have never seen so many hippies in one place in my life. Camden was swimming in patchouli, feathers and the bra less. Men were grizzled and heads were bald but the gig was excellent.
It didn’t start that way though. When the lights went down and a bloke in a straw hat and the head of a scarecrow shuffled on to launch into a ballad I thought the exit seemed appealing. It was reminicent of a Simple Minds gig in 1993 when they did similar and I was fully prepared to breach the stage in order to punch drummer Mel Gaynor full in the mouth for taking away the adrenalising opening salvo of any rock gig worth my attendance.
Luckily this was the calm before the hippy storm and the band then kicked in with the necessary yoof in the band to deliver a great trippy experience which I’m glad I was at.
The following day the Eternal Champion and I went up a local hostelry with similar low expectations that I had the night before to see if the Arsenal could somehow stumble their way to a cup final victory. Bizarrely the team turned up and delivered the goods with a rare display of fight making it the best complete weekend of the year.
Work plodded on. Not the best year by far with some proper mercenaries joining the team with selfish greedy attitudes bringing it to a grinding halt and the public pulling out some extremely odd decisions in the name of apparent justice but as usual there were moments of mass hilarity.
Over the years I’ve seen a lot in this job. I’m like Roy Batty in ‘Blade Runner’ without the penchant for poking out eyeballs. It has been top fun but over the last couple of years I’ve not enjoyed it so much through a number of reasons. I’ve decided to hurl myself back into it headlong next year as if I have to turn up regular, and I do if I want to eat, then I best enjoy it.
It was always my intention to blog a memoir of the fun in my job. I could never go down that route of slagging it off in a serious way as it is almost impossible to stay serious within it even in the most complex and serious moments it throws up.
There have been some great stories over the years. ‘The Readybrek’, ‘House of a thousand cats’, ‘Assualt on Kensington Tower’, ‘The Buckingham Loafer’, ‘The Sleeping Gardener’, ‘Charlie the Grass’, ‘The difficult question’, ‘The Minstrel of Catford’, ‘The Long arm of the Yard’, ‘Bad News in Hoxton’ and many more which I’ll drop in over this years blogs as and when I write them rather than in one massive story.
To kick us off though here’s a tale from being in other people’s houses looking for stuff. Clearly there will be no specifics or names but it should give you a flavour of what these eyes have seen and why it’s the funniest and grubbiest job in the world.
There was a time when I did a lot of looking for stuff in other people’s houses. As a team we were doing this 2 or 3 times a week and so we quickly became expert at it. The main thing you notice in these scenarios is the filth a lot of people live in. To be fair they tend to be caught cold and if you are anything like me you’d be frantically tidying up prior to any visit in order to maintain the charade that your house is a palace at all times.
The other thing noticeable when in other people’s houses is the amount of sex toys present. They are everywhere. Everyone seems to have them and age is not a barrier….all sizes, genders and colours are catered for. Never seen so much plastic and rubber and it would make you consider purchasing shares in Duracell.
About a decade ago I was involved in a very big operation involving multiple bad guys and lots of money. The job resulted in lots of mini jobs and so one day we find ourselves in a North London street looking through two properties that were linked by love, crime and Mother Russia.
Property number was a pit. This was the focus of the day. It’s clear that chummy is caught cold as he is in a worse state than the flat and he’s left solid underwear strewn around a dingy bedroom…proper nutella turnout and in some cases with extra chunk. He gets carted off and we move on.
Property number two is tidier. We enter with the owner and do the necessary initial sweep.
I enter the kitchen which is surprisingly tidy but notice multiple dots and splashes of liquid all over the tiled floor. On closer inspection it’s clear that its multiple blood splashes. I walk off and inform the bloke in charge who comes in with this Russian princess.
“.. ‘ello, ‘ello, ‘ello.. .what’s all this then?.. says my associate. (to be fair he didn’t actually say this but I’m paraphrasing for comedic effect).. he points at the blood like Sherlock Holmes seconds before the big reveal….
…the Russian pauses and eyes up the haemoglobin…
“…tis dog….it is bitch…” she says…”…it bleed….from Vaginé..”
She points to the corner where we have failed to see a small horse sized menstruating Rottweiler called ‘Kong’ or ‘Titania’ or something lapping at its own, swollen “Vaginé”.
The dogs looks at us, we look at the dog and then at the owner who is on her knees attempting to mop up the ooze with a white tea towel however she is only managing to move it about in a smear, a bit like wiping your arse with that toilet paper at school that had the consistency of tracing paper… your not dealing with it so much as moving it about…
She stands after the attempted clean up and faces us with a blood soaked tea towel in her hands. She places the rag on the worktop next to the kettle and says:
“..you have tea?..”
Six men in unison decline politely….
The public…never to be trusted. More stories in future blogs.
And so we reach the last day of the year. A bit of a “meh” year following the sadness of last year. That sadness never goes, it’s engrained in the core now but the memories linger in the background rather than at the front so much. The small inexplicable triggers exist in the form of a sound or a song or a place or a taste but you just have to deal with that and remember the good bits and not the end moments. To all those friends of mine who have lost this year I raise my glass to them…. the are only gone in the physical… be strong.
I’ve had some fantastic times in the murk this year with the greatest friends.
An afternoon in a back street in Holborn was particularly memorable for the international turnout of Northern Ireland, Spain, Hong Kong and South London (wherever the fuck that is). My cheeks hurt with laughing that day especially when threatening our man in Hong Kong with imminent death if he couldn’t find the pub sharpish..
I met some new people this year, reaquainted myself with some old ones and lost a couple… Sadly I wasn’t raised by the Monster to accept being called a ‘cunt’ by anyone who meant it in any way other than affectionate… a sad end to a good friendship but I’m a stubborn old fucker and insist on a certain way of behaviour within mates. Friends are all and they don’t do that to each other…
So after 23 pints of blood out, 22 books read, 4 gigs attended, 24 Arsenal matches, 2 death wishes, 5 blogs, a realisation that I detest earnestness but love honesty and sleeping and multiple gallons of Guinness and fine wine tonight I say goodbye to 2017….
Enjoy your night and next year let’s put the stupid back in the box where it belongs.
More adventures to come…
Hugs x
The Freak Box 