You don't always get what you want,but maybe what you deserve.

Calling ‘Ms’ Clinton a feminist is like saying Michael Jackson was black; If she’s such a feminist why would she get her cheating husband in at the convention to endorse her candidacy. Shouldn’t she have spoken out against men that cheat on their women? While Bill was in the oral office getting his dick polished, where was her feminist rage? 

She uses all the glass ceiling and feminist bullshit to get votes, and it’ll probably work. Have black lives ‘mattered’ more now that Obama has been president? if they have then it hasn’t trickled down to the police yet. 

‘Ms’ Clinton is an establishment figure, a corrupt politician, an acceptable candidate for the establishment, Bernie Sanders was a threat to their supremacy that’s why he didn’t get the running mate status he deserved, there again this is the States, he’s lucky not to have been shot with all his ravings about a ‘fair society’ Bernie is a communist as far as rednecks are concerned, so he got off easy. 

Thus it’ll all come down to an election contest betwen a corrupt establishment politician and a ego maniac psychopathic bussinessman, way to go America! 

Some people say that the choice of candidates is dissapointing in the ‘land of the free’, but there again maybe Hillary and Donald are the perfect reflection of American society. 

The unsociable ape.

It’s not a case of being uninspired,it’s just that I have nothing more to say. Nothing, I don’t know how to solve muslim terror, just as I do not know how to stop corporate greed from making the planet unihabitable. I just do not have the answers to anything, and why should I ? I don’t run for any political office, I try to get likes on my facebook and twitter accounts that’s all, and to get likes you don’t need answers you just need random comments, knowledge of the given subject isn't necessary, and the less politically correct the better. 

I should stay away from social media, it makes me unsociable, but I can’t. I tell myself it’s part of my job, to be ‘out there’ and ‘in the mix’, but it’s not - I’m a comedian and it’s that what I am known for, not for my political stance or solutions -those I do not have. 

That’s why I write this blog, silly as it is, it’s just one more way of being ‘out there’ and ‘in the mix’ being part of the modern world and showing that I have something to say. Yeah baby. 

On holiday, in a remote part of Wales and walking 4 or 5 hours a day in the untouched beauty of nature puts all the ranting and raving on social media in the insanity bin where it belongs. Just to think that it goes on all day and night millions and millions of people, ranting and raving on line. Politics, menus, holiday photos, pictures of their cats-children and self, jokes,comments and news that is total nonsense to anybody but themselves, millions and millions of people screaming for attention. Just the thought that it is neverending and constant, a tickertape of where our evolution has taken us, it’s mindblowing and sad at the same time. 

We all seem to have become internet crack whores, addicted to being on line, we want to share our experiences with everyone as soon as we experience them, in fact we have no time to get the full experience bacause we are busy sharing it with others who are also sharing theirs, we’re not interested in theirs , they aren’t interested in ours but we share, it’s like a cry of “I might be on holiday, or out of town at the moment but I’m still alive, please don’t forget me”. This we send to people we don’t know or have never met. 

Sooner or later this will have an evolutionary effect on us, we will become a new sort of homo sapien, what? let’s wait and see - I’ll just stick to the old version,I don’t need an update. So remember when you read my posts, it’s just random thoughts, I have no solutions or answers all I have is a laptop and a connection and some hours to kill. 

I think, anyway.

 I sit here every morning and write three pages of ‘thought flow’ before breakfast, or coffee or even before any talk with my partner, it’s what I call ‘clearing the head’ . This is not that by the way, what I write in the mornings is strictly personal and will never be seen by anyone other than myself, it’s a privacy pact I have with myself,  knowing that it will never be read by anyone else makes it easier to be totally honest with the thoughts that rush through my brain. 

We humans, poor us, we have the ability to think, to form opinions and random thoughts, to be able to be abstract in our mind - it’s the base of our creativity , also the source of our turmoil and pain. 

I sit here in my little room that I pompously call ‘my office’ and stare out the window, every now and then my eye is caught by somebody walking , driving or cycling by. To me they are just people, others, unknown - they each have their own stories to tell. Our experience is always only our experience, we never really know what goes on around us, even when others tell us about their pain or joy, failures or successes we can only imagine how they must feel, we can only relate in terms of similar things that have happened to us on this journey called life. 

We empathize, and mean it, but we can never know the real turmoil behind the mask called face of the other. 

When watching other people go by I often wonder what they think at that moment. Millions upon millions of thoughts going on all around us and we know nothing about them. If we did it would maybe explain that one person who was rude to us at the bus stop. It might make us realize that the guy who was aggressive in traffic earlier, wasn’t so much aggressive as panicked by a situation at home. 

We can’t know what goes on in other peoples minds, that’s good, it keeps life surprising, though bewildering, it leaves us lonely with our thoughts- not knowing if we are alone in thinking what we think. People can agree with us, but do they? or do they agree with what they think we are saying, do they just agree with their own interpretation of what we say we are thinking. All interesting stuff. 

In the end we are alone, and that’s how we die, after which we become somebody else’s interpretation of who and what we really were. 

Grampy Williams

I only ever got to know one of my Grandparents, 'Grampy Williams' my fathers father, he lived on his 'small holding' with Aunty Peggy and Uncle Frank. I don't know how he got the small farm, must of been an inheritance, because Grampy Williams couldn't have worked for it, with his two 'clubbed feet'. He was well known and well liked in Oldbury on Severn, he used to be the local postman, when I arrived on the scene he had already been retired for some time.
Grampy Williams occupied one bedroom and the main living room downstairs, Peggy,Frank and the occasional guest -me for instance- shared the rest.
In the summer if it wasn't raining Grampy would sit outside watching us work in his garden always with his dog by his side, he never spoke a lot, just watched us working.
Grampy, never clean shaven, always wearing his flat cap and waistcoat, he smoked a pipe and would now and then inhale snuff, his snuff box always in the pocket of his waistcoat, stained from the brown powder.
In the winter Grampy stayed mostly in his living room ,seat pulled up near the log fire, it's there that he taught me to play crib and dominos I was his partner playing most Sunday afternoons, Aunty Peggy would sometimes join us (with cake and tea- of course),Frank never would, Sundays were his hangover days. 
Grampy Williams had a soft spot for me, he never said it but I knew, he was the only member of my family to show any interest when I passed my 11 plus exam- a feat that gave me entrance to grammar school. I remember him saying "Well, at least one of you buggers has brains" which coming from him was more or less a 'congratulations', he winked and gave me Ten Shillings -a lot of money then.
Grampy ate porridge every morning without fail, he liked it boiled on the stove with water, then drowned in evaporated milk and a layer of sugar over the top. Aunty Peggy taught me how to make it, and to her surprise Grampy let me make it for him. 
I used to long for bad weather on Sundays so I could sit inside with him, he would silently listen to world news on his radio, now and again he would spit in the fire, his way of voicing an opinion I guess. We would sometimes listen to the radio ,'Billy Cottons Bandshow', 'Around the Horn' and my favourite 'The Goon Show' it was hilarious although it never made Grampy laugh, but it stopped him spitting in the fire for a while. 
His dog -I forget its name -was ever present beside his chair, it was a sheep dog that had been impossible to train as a sheep dog according to the farmer he bought it from and it should have been shot, but Grampy bought him and saved its life. Grampy also taught the dog to go to the pub off licence in the village and get his tobacco, the dog wore a pouch around its neck with Grampys money and a note for theLandlord, it would scratch at the off licence door until the landlord opened it . 
Grampy loved to bet on the horses, but never on the greyhounds, as he said "never bet on the dogs, they can't be trusted". 
One Friday evening I arrived for the weekend, and Grampy didn't want to see me, Aunty Peggy told me that the dog had been killed, "some stupid bugger in a car run it over and left it to die". The next day it was me walking into the village for the tobacco.
The weeks that followed saw Grampy change, even more silent than before, and he looked ill. Sometimes he would drink a glass or two of port, never the cider that was brewed on his property. Two glasses of port would get him melancholic, he would sing very quietly "if you ever go across the sea to Ireland" a song I can't hear now without thinking of him. 
A year or so after the dogs passing, Grampy devolped a form of cancer, he had an open wound around the temple area of his face, it got bigger by the day, it was as if he was slowly being eaten away. A nurse would come daily to dress the wound, I watched when I was there, it looked painful, but he never flinched, just stared out in front of him. Spitting in the fire when she finished. 
Sometimes he would be staring into the fire and I heard him say as if to himself "bloody stupid animal". 
When I asked him about the wound on his face, he would wink and say "it's a painful bugger that one is" that's as close as he got to complaining. 
I remember coming home from school one day when I was about 14, Terry my sister Maureens husband, was at our house which was unusual on a week day. Dad was very quiet and mum was trying to act sober. Terry told me that Grampy had died, I cried for two solid days. From then on the trips to help Aunty Peggy and Uncle Frank stopped too, my escape route from our house to the sanity of the countryside was lost, I wanted so badly to be there at the weekend to get away from the overcrowded house, the drunken arguments my mum would have with my dad, and the endless streets of our council estate. 
For a few brief years when I was a "whipper snapper" (grampys words) Grampy Williams taught me that silence sometimes says more than a thousand words, through him I learnt to enjoy quiet times. I never once heard him complain about his lot- his handicap ,the loss of his wife or the cancer and his approaching end. 
I think Grampy Williams was the closest I have ever been to anybody in my family , and the nearest I have ever been to a 'real man'.
Here's to you Grampy! you old bugger, and just to finish your song,  once I actually 'went across the sea to Ireland' and I 'watched the sun go down in Galway Bay', you were with me in my thoughts. 

Frank and Peggy.

I'm always amazed when I hear people recalling their youth, in detail. I wonder how much is fact and how much is optimistic fiction. I try sometimes really hard to envisage how it was back then, before about age sixteen when everything seems just a blur, some moments stand out, but there are never any real details, just fleeting visions,my mind as it is now, interpreting the few memories I still have.
Sometimes the memory gets jogged, it can be a certain smell, a song, a random moment when I get thrown back to some distant past .
So it was this afternoon,I was gardening, a pastime I really love, even more so now in the age of constant deadlines and things not to miss, hypes, social media updates and two hundred mile an hour lifestyles. A garden, however small, is a retreat a place where we can regain some sense of being human, nature will not be rushed. So there I was, doing some weeding, a bit of trimming and replanting some plants that didn't seem 'happy' in the place I'd given them, it's not work but  therapy, there is no timetable or stopwatch saying when the work has to be done- I find it relaxing.
Out of nowhere I suddenly got some really clear memories of My Uncle Frank and his wife Aunty Peggy, both long gone, but a very important part of my young life. 
Aunty Peggy was my Fathers sister, one of his sisters, the other one being Aunty Freda, we hardly ever saw her, she had 'married money' and was living the other side of England in Leigh on Sea near Southend. Aunty Peggy and Uncle Frank lived in Oldbury -on Severn, near Thornbury, South Gloucester. They lived on the small farm that my Granddad had, my Fathers Father. It was paradise for me, Oldbury was a small village on the banks of the river Severn. Granddads place wasn't a real farm, but to me it was, I'd never seen his wife-my Grandmother- she'd died young. Aunty Peggy and Uncle Frank lived in with Granddad to take care of him, Granddad was well known and well liked in the village- for years he had been the postman there, delivering the mail on his bicycle rain ,snow or high water, even more remarkable because of his 'club feet' he could hardly walk  and needed two sticks,but he got around ok on his bicycle. On his 'small holding' granddad had a few hundred chickens, some geese , ducks, turkeys and an orchard where cider apples grew, and he had a huge garden. 
Keeping the place up and running was hard work, Uncle Frank had a daytime job in the local Power Station at Berkley, he was a cleaner, but would never admit it and always wore the safety boots that builders would wear. Uncle Frank was a brute, probably over compensating for the fact that he didn't get called up and enlisted in the army for the war, I seem to recall people saying it was because he had flat feet, but I can't confirm that.
Not being a war veteran and now being a cleaner, Frank had lost his pride and manhood and was determined to be 'the man of the house',  Aunty Peggy would cower in fear when he sat at the table for his evening meal, if he didn't like it he would shout abuse at her and use it as an excuse to storm off to the pub for a 'belly full of Cider', returning only long after Aunty Peggy was asleep.
I spent a lot of time between about age 8 and 14 at Granddads place, weekends and summer holidays. there were two reasons for me to be sent there, one was the fact that our house on the council estate in Patchway was too small for us all- there was a lot of us- more about that later, the second reason was that Aunty Peggy and Uncle Frank needed a helping hand looking after the garden, the orchards and the poultry, and everybody seemed to agree that "it would do Nigel good to learn what it was like to work for a living". Me? I loved it, getting away from the council estate was pure luxury, work or no work. When the work was done I could walk around the village, or go for long walks along the country lanes, I'd found an old Trilby hat of Granddads, so I used to wear that and always have a stick with me, walking around pretending I was a farmer, or a soldier guarding the village against an invisible enemy who were trying to take it over. Great times, I'd go fishing with the local farmers kids, catching eels. We used to hang around on the village green on the sunday afternoon when most of the grown ups were at one of the two local pubs. On the village green was a signpost it being a crossroads, people from nearby towns would slow their cars down to look at the sign for directions to the river Severn. By constantly pushing and pulling at the sign we had managed to loosen it, so we could turn it and send the cars the wrong way, a few times we had to run when irate drivers would return and chase us. Great times!
The work I had to do was sometimes backbreaking, I was usually on wheelbarrow duty , wheeling barrow loads of potatoes or apples to the store rooms, or cleaning up the chicken mess from the outhouse they were kept in. Sometimes I had to help catch and bag chickens, it meant locking ourselves in the outhouse with sacks, chasing the chickens and putting them in the sacks until we had the right amount the local butcher had ordered. Uncle Frank would then take the chickens one by one out of the sack, tie their legs up ,hang them on a sort of washing line and then one for one cut their throats and let them bleed to death, according to him this led to better meat. The chickens would flap around ,blood flying everywhere, when they were finally dead me and Aunty Peggy had to cut them down and pluck them. They tried to teach me how to gut them, but I wasn't up to it, they laughed at me because of it. 
The work in the garden was really hard at times, I remember how my back used to ache and that I was really thirsty, but the work had to be done before dark and uncle Frank was a slave driver. Sometimes he would sit in a chair at the side of the garden and tell me what to do, although he taught me a lot about gardening I used to hate him for it, a few times I had wished him dead. He would sit in his chair criticizing my work, while rolling a cigarette and drinking from his flagon of homemade cider, scrumpy as we call it. Aunty Peggy would stick up for me, but she wasn't allowed to help me, Frank said she was 'too soft' on me and that I had to be 'hardened up'. It was during those years at Oldbury that I learnt how to work and also how to hate, the way Frank treated Aunty Peggy was horrendous and I hated him for it, I sometimes took revenge by hiding his tobacco pouch or cigarette papers after he returned drunk from the pub. But I did learn how to work, and work on despite pain or humiliation. Later in life, a (few years ago now) it helped me get through my operations having prosthetic hip and knee, it helped me when I was working the conveyor belt in factories, it even helped me doing comedy, never (or hardly ever) canceling a gig due to illness or personal stress. Every time I have a weak moment there is Frank,in my minds eye, sitting on his chair in that garden, drinking ,smoking and telling me to 'put some back into it' and 'get on with it' and I would otherwise he would scowl and take it out on Aunty Peggy, and now as then I grin and bear it, whistle and laugh (which used to annoy him more) and pretend I was loving every minute of it. So here's to you Frank Olive, you drunken fart, cleaner and flat footed reject! Thanks for giving me that edge, thanks for giving me grit and stamina and a healthy loathing for Cider. 
I lost contact with Peggy and Frank when I stopped visiting after granddad died at age 92, I started work when I was 16, and never heard much more of them. When I was 18 I heard that Frank had died from 'liver problems' surprise sur-friggin' -prise. aunty Peggy I only ever saw a few times just before my Father died, I'd visit her when I returned to the UK to see my Dad, I'd go to her bungalow and there she was, same as ever, baking cakes and making tea, she was old, I offered to tidy up her garden for her, she said no, and gave me that look "you just sit down and have a cup of tea, you've done enough gardening" and she'd wink. Here's to you too Aunty Peggy, stalwart, champion cake and tea maker, thanks for the sense of humor and the 'grin and bear it' spirit. 

Getting the 'likes'.

It has come to the stage that a politician can do (almost) whatever they want, whatever policy or decision that effects us and is detrimental to the planet and all our lives, as long as they post a photo on social media with them lovingly holding a kitten ,or eating the newest food trend, or saying how much they love Adele's new album they will probably be elected. 
Politics has become the (less) popular arm of the entertainment industry, and we watch and dope ourselves up on a constant stream of other shit that hits us on all sorts of media and 'smart-phone' 'content' and in the end we can't tell reality from fiction and good from bad, it just all becomes a tickertape of nonsense,useful only as a means to get some 'likes' or 'followers' or an emoticon posted on our page by someone calling themselves 'friend' when we haven't even met them.
Welcome to our little 'Brave New World' now take the pill and shut the f*** up!

The psychopaths career opportunity.

So within the next couple of weeks the UK will be run by a woman (again) no problem with that most politicians are all sexless zombies- dick or no dick, gender doesn't come into it, it's all about policies.
It's just been such a helter-skelter couple of weeks, it's a good job there was football on TV to keep us calm and sedated while this non-violent political coup was taking place. We get what we deserve, more people watch football than they do news or politics, so don't come running and crying when the shit starts flying around.
Europe is deteriorating fast, but it's summer. In the summer we get back to more or less normality, the essence of being human, enjoyment and laziness! and  we don't give a shit about what politicians are doing.We just want to get away, lie on a beach, go for walks, paint the kitchen, tidy up the garage, bbq ourselves to early death ,anything but be involved.
That's us ,that's humans, we pay politicians to take care of everything-  we take no  responsibility ,but the politicians better do the job right or we'll de-select them at the next election. Who would ever want to be a politician? - psychopaths that's who!
Just look at politicians, even the fresh faced ones, after one term in office they look like shit, or have to have work done to look presentable,but they are psychopaths, they are the type of people that just hunger for power, adoration and being important. We get mad leaders because nobody in their right mind would do the job.
Trying to sort the mess out that generation upon generation have created, are you kidding me??? Why do they lie to us? because if they told the truth they wouldn't get elected ,that's why. If a politician said "I might need some help here, the situation is really fucked people, I can't handle it, it's too complicated, you might all need to listen up and help solve the problem" would he/she/it be elected? no they wouldn't and why? because we are lazy, we are Sapiens- still longing just to be left alone with enough food ,sex and entertainment, lie under our tree and lick our balls.
So go ahead, blame politicians, I'll be first to do that, because they do screw up, but remember they are the only ones who want to do the job, and because of that we should know that they are not right in their mind. So don't be surprised, just think, "this psychopath is past it's sell by date, we should elect the next one, they're usually 'ok' for the first couple of years, we'll get another one"

Did I miss something?

Did I miss something? Ok, the weather has been bad, we're all feeling a bit sorry for ourselves because the sun isn't doing the dance that we want it to do, there's a huge deflated feeling about our football teams- here in Belgium and England- I get all that .
But what has just happened ?
In England politics has suddenly become the new reality soap, with behaviour that would make a banana republic blush, it seems like the 'in -out' referendum had not a lot to do with EU membership after all and has just been 'used' as an excuse to start a bar-brawl in all the mainstream political parties. It's like a husband-wife scrap in a bar and everybody else just starts joining in.
Scotland thought that the EU would welcome them with open arms but they forgot that the Spanish (and lesser) France has independence issues of their own to deal with in Basque areas and Catalonia, so Scotland gets support in the form of "oh hi there, welcome you know where the fridge is ,we're just off out" - like an unwelcome relative.
Boris Johnson is like the spoilt kid who has just upturned all the furniture, messed up the house and refuses to help get it back together. Nigel Farage is -well- Nigel Farage which is worse. David Cameron has left the building and nobody knows anymore who is dong what, who wants what and if anybody is interested in running the country, in a week time England has had a national mental breakdown and the local Chemist has run out of anti depressants.
In the Labour party, there is the real threat that the party will split, so there would be two inefficient parties claiming to support the 'masses' who in turn don't believe in either of them so it seems.
So as the saying goes 'it's all gone tits up', and summer is yet to begin.
I can't help but have the feeling that we are witnessing history- no I don't mean Wales's historic win against Belgium- it's like Europe has had it's chance, had it's day at the races, and now is teetering on the edge of slipping into disorder and chaos, and we -the people- are watching,like it's a final episode of a really tacky soap, if Angela Merkel addresses the EU and starts playing a fiddle -run!
But there again, it might be ok, but not today, 'cos it's raining.