The Freak Box

The inevitable end of year blog, a summary and rant about things which have raised my pulses a bit.

I should have written another blog about my great time in Devon this summer with another boat trip into hell but I never got around to it.  I will deliver it at some point perhaps when I hibernate in January and February.

Well..2024 eh? Another Shit Show but probably mainly in my head as I’m older and assume that it all gets worse in your swead as you hurtle towards beige elasticated trousers and Golf club membership….More on that later.

…So off we go with Political turmoil, Wars, two-bob right wingers, Death, Kids and Dad Shoes…

In the Summer I started a political blog based on a quote by Rich Tea Sun Hat the then leader of the Tory Party.  The quote was delivered directly after he left a D-Day ceremony early for no apparent reason, and it read:

“Deeply regrettable”

I now realise with great joy that this could be the double breasted blazer badge motto of the entire Conservative Party although the filth running it would require it in Latin… So here you are…

“Penitus dolendum”

Tremendous…. You can get the words ‘Moulded Penis’ from that Latin translation which also describes most of the membership.

So let us start with the demise of the nasty party in a spectacular collapse which had less to do with nations love for the Labour party and more to do with their dislike of the Tories. 

Don’t get me wrong I’m still revelling in it but we need to be careful.  Most of this rock is dim and could easily become a national Clacton where some jub in a suit can con an entire area into believing they give a fuck about their flat roofed boozer over feathering their own nest.  I’m aware it’s not this simple and the good people of Clacton aren’t all stupid and have genuine concerns but they were cynically targeted to employ the Rat and sadly they obliged. 

You would think that the removal of a party which brought misery to a nation through division, austerity and leaving the largest trading group in the world making us all skint would be cause for celebration but just like good islanders it didn’t. Instead we thought that the previous 14 years of struggle was all the fault of the new bloke with an awkward style and the party who inherited a problem.  Classic Britain, Classic media spin.

I recently watched that crooked mouthed nut job Kuenssberg claiming that Labour binning the Rwanda deal on day one in office was a mistake as they never actually saw the scheme fail.  This is much like suggesting that a premptive nuclear strike on Moscow might just work so let’s give it a go, I mean, you never know we might catch them out.

Over on Sky News we have the once Oaf hating Beth Rigby now focussing her rage on ‘Starmer’, as she calls him rather than the Prime Minister, with a face or disgust every time she appears near him.  I’d never really noticed the MSM bias before or perhaps wouldn’t accept it was real but since Labour got voted in I can’t not see it.

The disdain the BBC have for Starmer and anyone associated to him is blatant.  It’s as if the last 14 years of mismanagement of a country by a shower employing such spanners as Rees-Jub, Truss, Kwasi and the Oaf have been forgotten. 

Starmer is far from everyone’s cup of tea but is he that lot?  Of course he isn’t, he has an element of humanity whether he’s dull or not or whether you agree with his version of Labour.  

We have a minimum of 5 years of this Government and in reality given the mess a Badenoch Tory party will be, a decade before we have to suffer another right wing fuck fest in charge of this island.  It won’t be easy and we should all expect some misery but we really need to look beyond the first 5 months and always remember the old management most of whom were rendered unemployed for a reason by the populous.

Also this year we saw the return of a couple of major oxygen thieves in the shape of that Grifter Farage and the fake bullet dodger Trump. 

It is truly incredible how easily the thick can be manipulated by what appear to be successful  ‘businessmen’.  If you really analyse these two they have decades of failure masked by bluff but ‘the little people’ get sucked in and sign up as if they will be assited to succeed by them.  Greed is Good until you work out that you were never likely to benefit from the greed and were merely the device enabling it.

Assisting Trump this time are a series of businessmen and TV hosts tasked with running the most powerful country in the world.  Great stuff.  The world is now a gameshow where Trump thinks he can buy Greenland and absorb Canada as a 51st state and is working directly with Bond villian Hank Scorpio (formerly known as Elon Musk) a man who thinks the far right is Germany’s ‘last hope’.  

We are not doomed though…or I don’t believe so..

Trump, who looks increasingly more ill by the day, will inevitably fall out with all his ‘staff’ as he did the last time and Farage has never seen a job out in his life.  He gets bored and bins stuff before returning in a different format and the right wing masses he claims to have galvanised are a fantasy puffed up as they make good copy for the press.  Keep the faith, we will survive.  I will do this by ignoring US news and hoping Mr Keith Farmer, Prime Minstrel of this once glorious island will protect my lower middle class life from armed invasion and huge poverty.

Lots of War this year but I’ll avoid giving an opinion on the main one as I want to remain verbally active rather than cancelled. 

What I will say about the other one is that if you have spent three years fighting a planned 10-day ‘special operation’ losing hundreds of thousands of men and drafting in North Koreans in order to have your own country invaded then in aint going great. Not really rocket science is it?  

Let’s aim for less death this year yeah?  Maybe get some jub to show some bollocks and intervene in a chatty way perhaps. Wars only end around tables regardless of how dull that seems…Anyway what do I know?  I’m currently writing this rubbish while drinking a can of Heineken watching ‘Pointless’.

As I’ve mentioned tea-time TV what the fuck has happened to that?  Quiz shows now seem to revolve completely around the idiots participating and because of this my delicate eyeballs and earholes are subjected to anecdotes by non important people who clearly fancy a future in shite TV.  If it isn’t ‘Charlie Farley Joe Public’ banging on it’s some B-list Celebrity like Carole Malone (Red Top Hack) who has shoulders bigger than rugby legend Ben Cohen also on the same episode I’m watching.  Not sure in what world I would give two fucks about a story spewing from her pie hole about meeting some cunt somewhere I will never be.

….phew….back on track from a moment of optimism on the state of the country and Wars….Sorry about that, not sure what came over me.

There was a point in late Summer this year where I realised that the ghost that has haunted this house for a good six to seven years had finally been exorcised.  I realised this when I entered the kitchen one morning and as usual I instantly went to the sink to extract the butter smeared knife from the bowl that wasn’t there when I went to bed.

Weird…. There was no sign of this reappearing piece of cutlery on this particular morning.  Worse still was the completely clean chopping board which for several years now has obtained a smattering of bread crumbs between the hours of 2300 and 0600 with no apparent explanation.

Confused I retraced my steps and realised that I hadn’t tripped over a number of shoes left lying at the bottom of the stairs like some kind of Indiana Jones Amazonian tribe rudimentary trap specifically designed to kill me and only me.

Very odd… The Poltergoost appears to have left this dwelling without so much as a slamming door, overflowing salt cellar or a chair and table tower….gone…

But it wasn’t an Ghost.  It was simply that both my offspring were at University leaving this house kid free for the first time since 8th December 2003. 

I now have the deep joy of no buttered spoon in the sink, no crumbs everywhere, no shoe traps, no sullen looks as  I’ve suggest leaving bed at 1400 hours might be a good idea, no moody dinners as they haven’t heard from their other halves and no moaning because the dog they insisted on having might need walking as it is attempting to use the downstairs kharzi itself…. it’s just a dog….an innocent dog.

The house is at maximum peace because as every parent knows most tension between the adults is triggered by the kids and our differering opinions on child management.  No kids, No brain damage Babe!!

After about a month of no kids,  silence, tidiness, a distinct lack of tension, packed fridges and surplus beer I sat in the living room with Jen and asked her:

“…Do you miss the kids?…”

She paused and thought for no longer than five seconds before saying:

“…No, not really….”

After an uncomfortable silence we both pissed ourselves. This revelation was only partially true and not a solid fact.  You get more from kids than they take but when you eliminate the bollocks they bring in their teenage years, when the cuteness has gone and the limbo of near adulthood looms you realise that the peace of just the two of you is a joy, a joy you recall from pre kids… The Glory Days.  You can suddenly walk downstairs in the morning in your pants simply because you can. You can eat what you want because you don’t have four multiple menus… You can shop at Waitrose and send them photos of the elite treats you have purchased which you wouldn’t normally entertain… It’s fuckin great…

With the kids away at Uni i found myself with literally nothing to moan about.  Jen picked up on this fairly sharpish and as she likes to do her own thing without me wandering into the midst of her solace she encouraged me into a world of mind numbing pettiness, industrial level moaning and beige ill fitting trousers through the medium of Golf Club Membership.

So after years of denial and let’s face, pure unbridled hostility to the existence of golf clubs on my part, I started the process of walking through the doors of such an establishment not only as a drinker but as an actual golfsman.

I should clarify that I have never played Golf in the 55 years I have enhanced this planet however when I commit to something I am fully engaged.  Football, Darts, Fatherhood, Guinness, Financial Crime, brutal bluntness and honesty have all been easily conquered so why will golf be any different.  I have no sticks at this point but will seek to acquire some soon once I have consulted with an experienced golf monkey I know ..

In late Summer I triggered the process by filling in an application form with two club ‘proposers’ and writing an incredibly formal e-mail begging for entry. I felt like Bob Cratchit asking for another lump of coal on his knees before Ebeneezer.  I sickened meself but it was necessary for Jen’s sanity.

After a couple of months I get invited to meet with the Club Captain in a formal setting where I must where a suit.   Gawd.  You’d think the interview process in the 21st Century would merely mean walking in with your credit card stuck to your forehead but no, I have to have a face-to-face meeting with someone in a blazer.  So be it.

I arrive early,  I’m always early… ‘on time is late’ as it were.  I mince around in the foyer suited and booted (the most uncomfortable clothing in my limited repertoire) just in case I inadvertently stray into a members area and end up getting ‘hands on’ with some jub asking me what I’m doing there.  Keep conflict to a minimum until membership is secured… That’s my mantra..

I am soon appraoched by the Club Captain who is resplendent in her red blazer and pocket badge like a female Alan Partridge.  She is very polite and professional and informs me that we await the arrival of a second interrogator in the form of the Vice Captain.  In for a penny, in for a pound… Bring. It. On.

Eventually this process gathers pace and I sit before the full might of the Captain and Vice Captain who grill me for 15 minutes about the club and the reason for my application.

“…bizarrely I’d like to play golf you couple of pricks…”

….I didn’t quite put it like that but that was the truth.  A few people have subsequently said to me that I’ve only joined it for the bar which would be lunancy on a level delivered only by my old man..luckily I aint him and I genuinely wish to learn how to use the sticks on the pitch.

The rest of the conversation revolves around me dropping as many names as I can and constantly informing them about every guest appearance I have made at the club since 1990.  Finally they tell me thay have no more questions and I reach into my jacket to release the credit card which will soon be white hot with payment and entry to the hallowed players lounge…

But wait!!  A final announcement….the final twist of the knife, the fresh turd in the water pipe!!  They will let me know if my interview has been successful in a month.  Blimey Charlie, It wasn’t like this at ‘PureGym’, they happily took my wedge without a single word being exchange between humans.

A month later and with the lure of my filthy lucre too great to resist they open up the doors and too much fanfare I stroll through the door in the treacherous white soled Dad shoes favoured by Sky Sports pundits, a shirt and v-neck knitwear where I order a Fosters for £4.03 and kiss my youth away. 

The next thing I know I’m online purchasing Polyester quarter zip clothing and trousers I wouldn’t normally be seen dead in.  I’m all in now even though I was told by a member that I shouldn’t wear golf clothing as I hadn’t hit a ball yet.  Curious…I have a Berghaus Choktoi Snowboarding fleece yet have never seen a slope, plank, been ‘gnarly’ or ‘maxed the envelope’… I didn’t realise how technical golf clothing could be I simply thought it would make the struct dress code easier.

In reality I have a long term plan for the golf club where I do actually learn how to play and enjoy myself in the process.  I’ll probably be skipper in a year….Then I’ll table a motion to shut the club down. 

A more accessable hobby I have taken up this year, one which I have experience in is Snooker. 

Myself and The Philosopher joined a club back in August and have been involved in a titanic struggle since once a week in what can only be described as the classic seedy Snooker hall. We both love it.  The people are friendly and the atmosphere is perfect but we are both brilliantly mediocre with the standing joke being that our surnames are “one”.

Its all hobbies now…low impact hobbies and comfortable clothing… nappies next now doubt.

Those are my thoughts on 2024. 

A mostly decent effort on a personal level but with two tragic late deaths of people I really liked shockingly going too soon with literally no warning. Both still exist on my Facebook.  I will raise my glass to them both tonight. 

I went to two fantastic weddings which is odd at my age and met some new people along the way.   There was genuine love at those events which was fantastic.

As usual I nigh on killed myself over late November and December in an attempt to see everyone and I almost acheived it.  Remember fuckers, If I didn’t see you it was your fault and not mine…

In summary:  Two kids at Uni,  100’s of dog walks, 11 Gigs attended (a few were toilet), 17 Audiobooks dispatched, 271km run, 76 frames of snooker played (mostly victorious )and 25 golf balls partially hit and missed and some work completed…. onwards to 2025..

Next Time:  “The Peanut Butter Machine – Devon 2024”