The New Guy.

 The New Guy.

A new guy has taken up residence in our street these last few months. He’s also in the drinking game. He sits in the small square near the library. I pass him each day on my way to the newsagents. He drinks beer from cans and lines up the empties as if it’s some kind of competition, and he’s counting. 

His clothes are clean but ruffled. His face is tanned; he could be a teacher or even a writer; each time I see him, he gets older. 

Now and then, a woman sits beside him; she looks like the social worker type. Usually, she’s talking while he stares into the distance, drinking. 

Once, I saw her give him a packed sandwich from the local bakery; when I returned, she was gone, and the sandwich lay untouched on the bench next to him, the following morning, birds were fighting over it.

The High and Low Street.

 Our street. #1

Sitting on a bench across the street from where his local Bar used to be before its recent closure, the place where he used to be 'first in' and 'last out'. In the Bar, he felt at home. There he was somebody. He got to talk to people - at least before the alcohol kicked in. In the Bar, people would get worried about him if he didn't show up for a day or two. He was part of the colourful fauna of folk there, part of the family, and then it closed.

The locals have long since found other places to sit, drink and argue about the world and what it all means. He remains on the bench across the street as if he still believes it will return, the time when he was part of something. Now he sits here and drinks from a can (more are in the bag). People pass him by, nobody stops to talk, and the Bar becomes a distant memory; one day, he won't be around and fade as if he hadn't existed.

November 1st 2023.

 I write. Therefore, I write.

Whatever the thoughts on this, at least I'm off the mark, doing this writing exercise, writing even though I have nothing to say. I need to put in the effort. 

At least writing can be done working from home, something stand-up comedy could never be. I like writing but have never found anything that interests me so much I want to write about it. Even comedy, even the gigs, and especially the people who come to watch me. The people, I love them and love them a little less simultaneously. They are comedy's lifeblood and the vampire that sucks it out of you all rolled into one. When they are into what I do on stage, I feel like I'm surfing; words come easy, and jokes appear out of nowhere. When they aren't into my act, it's hell; every minute is like an hour, and the mind stutters and, in the worst case, stops functioning. The mind races and opens all the drawers, trying to find jokes and anecdotes of years gone by to help retrieve the situation; sometimes, defeat has to be accepted. Then comes the inquest: was it my material? The delivery? Timing? Something I said? The way I look? my clothes? The inquest usually goes on all night in my mind as I foolishly try and find sleep.

Why do I still perform comedy at my age? I have no answer to that. Is it because I've been doing it for so many years that it has become an addiction? It would be much easier if I stopped, gave up, and started something new, so why don't I? I hate to admit it, but I would miss the attention. However low in the ratings, there is always a tiny form of celebrity. 

At this moment, I envisage myself as an author, a writer, a columnist or whatever comes. Do I have the talent? I will only know once I try.

I do a daily podcast, so why not do daily writing as well. Fear the criticism and do it anyway.

So here it begins.

The flag of hypocrisy.

 Why I don't 'do' flags anymore.

Once again, we will be judged by our social media profile. Are we on the 'right' side? Do we have the flag of the oppressed posted so everyone can see how compassionate we are? At the moment, the Palestinian flag is the 'go-to flag' to cover the cracks of hypocrisy we here in the West are so keen to hide. 

Don't get me wrong, Palestinians need our support. The only hope for future peace in the region is a two-state solution, and one day, let us hope both sides will agree on it and get around the table to accomplish it. Meanwhile, thousands are dying, and protest is needed.

But let us remember there are not just two sides involved in this conflict.

For example, I have noticed that a lot of people who vehemently oppose Israel seem very quiet when it comes to Iran - and their involvement with Hamas, and also their treatment of women within Iran. We 'progressives' like to think we are always on the right side, but are we? It's not the people or issues we support that reveal our hypocrisy, but the ones we are silent about, and posting flags on our social media profiles won't change that. We can shout and scream about the role the U.S. and other allies play in the conflict, rightly so, but what about the bigger picture? 

We (progressives) seem to be stuck in some 'Cold War' nostalgia. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' logic. Iran hates Israel, so we keep quiet about the lack of democracy and human rights in Iran. Is it that simple? Maybe the enemy of my enemy is an even bigger asshole.

That is why I don't post flags on my Profile because there isn't enough room for nuance. 

To put it more comedically, while wearing clothes probably made by slave labour, using an iPhone (which in itself is a threat to all our privacy and freedoms), marching for the right to wear a headscarf while ignoring the women who die in other countries because they want the choice not to wear it, and so on and so on, because of the hypocrisy inherent in my own life I don't feel that I should be waving flags. 

Stop the war on the Palestinian people, free the hostages, stop Hamas.

 Let it go. Saturday 21 October '23.

I take the advice of my meditation teacher and let my mind go where it wants without thinking about it too much. This page is the result: me just rambling on a keyboard (not really a keyboard, is it? There are no keys on it), just letters, numbers and little things that I don't know anything about or what they do. 

Let your head go where it wants, he told me.

I have watched so many Netflix docus on serial killers that I could pull off the perfect murder if I had the guts. I can't even murder a spider. Most of the time, when I see a spider at home, I ignore it and hope it goes away unless my wife has seen it and wants me to get rid of it - sounding like she means it 'Maffia style' - but usually it ends up me sliding a piece of paper under an upturned Tupperware box where the bewildered spider is trapped, I chuck it out in the garden, and try and run back in before the spider overtakes me - it's warm inside, I do wonder what spiders think of us, do they find us ungrateful? I mean, they do Lots of good work for us, eating horrible little dust mites and things. 

Meditation is going well, but I'm afraid it might spill over into my real life, and I'll sleep at the wheel of my car. 'Concentrate on the breath', they say… these last couple of days, I have had some ear infection, and when I lie down with my head on a pillow, I can hear the sound of blood whooshing around very rhythmically. Is this the heart pumping around? It's a reality check listening to blood being whooshed around the body. What if it stops? it makes you think about how easily it could all suddenly end, how easy it is for us to stop being, and be dead. So I've been sleeping with earplugs to lessen the whooshing, but now the earplugs annoy me and keep me awake.

Where were we? 

I was in the flow of this writing when the doorbell ding donged; it was my neighbour. He needed help getting his trailer into the garage, and I'm always willing to help him. After all, he's a lovely bloke and my landlord, and he owns my house. I like living in this tiny house we started to rent about four years ago. It's big enough for my wife and me yet not big enough to invite people around for dinner, so that suits my anti-social behaviour. I just don't see the point of eating for eating sake, asking people around, all the stress of what they eat and don't eat, the stress of cleaning the best cutlery and plates, hoping the cooking will be successful and all the bla bla that goes with it, I mean what are we trying to prove to each other? That we're all some Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson. Watching Nigella making a Bread pudding while in her nightgown? oh! fuck off, it isn't that easy! I usually end up having to spend four days cleaning the kitchen after I've finished cooking, she's rich and has people cleaning up after her; she's not on her hands and knees after the show scrubbing the Floor. (I never imagined her as a scrubber btw). 

FOOD! In most countries, it's a worry if there will be any. In our rich little areas of the planet it's a worry that a fucking souffle won't rise or that our soft boiled egg is hard. 

Tune out...

 Tuesday 26th of September 2023

It’s not so much that I’m tired of people telling me what they think and how I should be, what really pisses me off is that I listen to them and try to change myself.

I Think I’m spending too much time surfing all these ‘self-help’ podcasts, youtube tutorials, and memes. They aren’t self-help, they are people you don’t know telling you how you should be, what you should eat, how you should exercise, and especially what you are doing wrong. Why should you even listen to these people? They don’t know you, or your situation or your expectations, or your capabilities. 

So I weigh a few pounds over my ‘so say’ ideal weight, so what? I’m not happy and friendly all day and every day? So what, I’m human that’s how we operate. I’ve come to the conclusion that we all should search deep within ourselves, get to know ourselves better, work out what we want and want to be and then find the tools to make it happen, and if it doesn’t make us happy? Re-think the whole thing. 

These people are on the internet earning money through people's lack of self-esteem, they are not in it to make you feel better, they want you hooked on to their site/page/or profile so they earn more, and if they give what you are looking for you ain’t gonna come back so they’ll give you unachievable goals which leave you thinking that you are a loser. Fuck ‘em. 

Tune in to yourself, be you, and not what some money-earning meme tells you to be. 

I firmly believe that we all have the inner knowledge to work it out for ourselves, if we are given the rest and the peace and quiet we need to think straight. 

On-line lifestyle takes all your creativity and thoughtfulness away from you, it occupies our brains and takes charge of the whole operation. Creating new pathways that take you farther and farther away from your real self. 

Use it for what is necessary and trust yourself and your fully formed brain to do the rest. 

We have choices on how to spend our time and our how to invest our attention, make the right choices, every minute you spend listening to how this or that should be done, you’re not doing it. 

By the way, this is more of a ‘to do’ text for myself, I need to become more of a self-help helper, than relying on Strangers on the internet, I mean who the fuck are they? If their lives are so perfect why do they need to earn cash by telling others what to do. 

So, Tune in (to yourself) Turn on (the internal microphone) and drop out of the internet life style. Go your own way, there will be good and bad decisions along the way but at least you would have given it your best shot. 

A sense of being.

 Sunday the 27th of August 2023.

When sitting alone, in the quiet of my own small corner of this house, I like to think about this thing called ‘me’. What makes me ‘me’? Nowadays, with the ‘takeover’ that social media has acted out on our collective consciousness, it’s hard to know if that original thought I had this morning, was actually real, actually original, and not just some seed that was planted by AI.

Would it really matter? I think what I think, that’s it, end of the story, although to be honest I rarely identify actual ‘thoughts’  it seems. 

It’s all very tiring. 

Generally, I like the peaceful life, a life of few complications, that’s one reason why I don’t have many friends, and nobody that I would actually count as a ‘soul mate’ or as they say these days a brother from another mother. Friends complicate things, I have never really worked out what to do with them, the stress of having to fit them into my schedule for starters.

I have my job and my family life, the rest of the time I like to lose myself in thoughts or daydreams and especially this, sitting here writing, random unplanned thoughts, getting them down on paper (on screen), and filing them away on some blog or hard disc never to be read again, although you never know, maybe, someday after my death, a relative will think he/she is getting to know me by reading through all this trollop, the poor bastard.

These moments are what make me tick, they make me happy for some reason, It’s not like I am writing a book or poetry, it is just the satisfaction of being able to sit here, alone, and formulate some sense of what is going on in my head at any given time. 

I used to be in a continual state of anger or frustration about politics, the state of the world, etc, but now I can honestly say I do not give a flying fuck about any of it anymore. I still feel bad for the downtrodden and the exploited, but I no longer have the energy to pretend to do something about it. Years I spent being an activist, going on demonstrations, organizing strikes, and on the streets with one petition after the other but I lost the feeling that ‘we’ were actually getting anywhere. It seemed like every time the enemy was unmasked, the exploited and downtrodden would go and vote for them at the next election, and then I lost ‘it’. I no longer believe that the masses will someday rise up and overthrow the tyranny of those in charge, and if they do they’ll probably put a bigger bastard in charge. 

I now look at our world as this comedy of errors, we humans evolved against all odds and are just one big accident (and I'm one of them), always just one step away from destroying all that is naturally beautiful on this rock in space. So I try to enjoy the time I am allotted on this earth and to hell with the futility of politics and struggle. I’ll sit back and watch the show, not take it too seriously and mock the obvious. This is me, now, although I must warn you, it might not be how I feel tomorrow, so don’t take it too seriously.

 

Social (mentally ill) Media

 Social media health guide.

Social media is lots of things but it’s also a continual stream of people telling you ‘how to live healthier’, ‘how to live without stress’, ‘how to get a good nights sleep’, ‘how to meditate’, ‘why not to meditate’, ‘how to exercise’, ‘how coffee helps you’, ‘how coffee destroys your health’ in short, how to do everything and anything… It’s the best way to feel bad about yourself watching some - white painted teeth - always upbeat - influencer tell you how to get out of bed refreshed every morning at 6 am go for a 5 mile hike, then come back home write a fucking book have a nutritional breakfast to activate your brain, and the day hasn’t really started yet… Meanwhile it’s 8 am and you’re still contemplating whether you need a shit or a pee, and realise there is no bread or milk and you feel tired because you didn’t sleep well. 

The reason these ‘always happy’ nut jobs are so smiley all the time is because every time you click on their madness they get richer, so fuck them and the dentist that gave them the false smile, because that would make us mortals happy! 

Be human stay human, with all the ups and downs that come with that.

Pass the coffee!

Ball of Confusion.

 Stuff my phone tells me to do.

Eat better, find yourself, try this miracle weight loss programme, do these exercises, try this green stuff, eat more bananas - eat less bananas, Avocados do it, upload more content, be happy, relax with this special cushion, watch this endless series, like this, like me, give a like, follow me, follow him , follow her, check your gender pronouns, watch your age, switch your phone off, buy crypto currency, sell it sell it sell it, hate this bloke - cos he’s a man, love this woman-because she’s a woman, retweet, repost rewind, buy this new podcast studio, listen to this 56 hour podcast by this macho Neanderthal, use generalisations to fight discrimination, hate old people (just because they made it) , hate young people because they have a longer future, scroll, scroll, watch ads, order on line now! Order on line now! 

Use this celebrity’s death to get more likes, pretend to be sad, look at me! Look at me! Look at me!… press the button turn it off. 

Stuff I tell myself to do.

Exercise more, read more, write more, ignore memes, ignore ego tripping psychos, scroll less, act like everything is ok, head up - shoulders back,

Eat healthy, try not to be a tosser, act like you know what you’re doing, listen to happy music, don’t listen to doomsday prophets, save the planet (if you have time), have fun (remember that?) , live your life, live your life, smile at strangers… try and get through the day. 

What the government tells me to do.

Pay your taxes, obey the law, respect the police, don’t take drugs, vote, don’t litter, recycle, spend money, work, work, work, don’t think, don’t ask questions, stay healthy, shop local, believe what we tell you, pay us, keep your dog on a lead, turn the music down unless it’s sponsored, invest in concrete, love war, hate climate activists, news is like a blow job, don’t spit it out swallow it… homemade poison… don’t vote, drop out. 

What my brain tells me…

Social media is poison, stop scrolling, don’t try to compete do what makes you happy, write more like nobody is going to read it anyway, stop believing all the ‘on-line Gurus tell you, follow your own truth, follow your own beliefs, don’t eat meat, play the music that makes you happy, make people laugh, don’t take yourself too seriously, remember we all die in the end, life isn’t a race make it a stroll, ‘winners and losers’ is terminology that causes stress, it’s used to enhance the rat race. Life is about life, with all the ups and downs, disappointments and succeses, take them all with the same grains of salt. Relax more, sleep well, stop thinking something special will happen, it’s already happening. Don’t follow hypes, 

What makes me laugh.

Adults watching the Barbie film while wearing pink, sheeple. 

Us thinking we can turn climate change around. 

Listening to people who think race makes us different. 

People who trust God but still pay insurance. 

Me trying to follow a diet. 

Holiday makers complaining about forest fires. 

People who call themselves ‘animal lovers’ having a BBQ. 

Me trying to organise my life. 

Me thinking anybody will ever read all this. 

A hard rain...

 Good Days with bad edges.

I was up and out of bed this morning before the alarm clock could wake me, the alarm was set for 6:30 at 6:15 I was wide awake and just led there with my hand above the alarm clock ready to slam down on the ‘stop alarm’ button as soon as the bastard screamed its noise.

I had slept really well, the new pillow from Ikea done the job, at last I seem to have found the perfect pillow after years of searching, although to be honest those were the thoughts I had when I bought the last one - also at Ikea. 

Lack of a comfy pillow is the main cause of my frequent insomnia, I have always had problems with finding the right pillow, is it my head? Is it too heavy for the average pillow? When I was young my Mother used to tell me how ‘huge’ my head was, even at birth, she would tell me in gory detail about how my head ‘tore her open’, my head has been a constant worry. Not being ‘head confident’ has formed a part of my being, I never let my hair grow too long because I think it will accentuate the problem, when people look at me longer than a nano-second I think automatically that they have noticed my head size in relation to my smallish stature. 

Anyway getting back to today, the reason I was up so early was because I had to take the car to the garage for a check over, we’re going to France in it in two weeks time so I want to be sure everything is ok, especially the airco now we are living in these oven temperature times. 

I looked through the window it was absolutely peeing down with rain, the rest of Europe is melting or burning to the ground, here in good old ‘boring Belgium’ it’s raining, not even a storm or some other spectacular weather, just a steady drizzle, typical. 

The rain would mean me cycling back home from the garage probably getting soaked, so I wasn’t in the best of moods as I tucked into my muesli and soy milk breakfast -with freshly pressed orange juice and sliced banana, I take breakfast seriously, it’s what gets the engine up and running. Bloody rain! I sipped my coffee and looked through the window the sky looked like it would only be getting worse, damn it, this bloody rain, this bloody fucking rain, shit weather, shitty shitty shit fuckpig rain , bollocks! 

I thought ‘ok let’s do this, drive the 8 km to the garage drop the car off and cycle back, rain or no rain this warrior of the ‘day to day’ will get things done, still not happy though. 

I listened to the news on the radio before I left, I heard that Sinead O’Connor had died, not even 60, what a shame, the news report didn’t say how she had died, they talked of her depressions and mental health issues, I was never a great fan, although I did appreciate her art and a few of her songs, poor her I thought, there are so many people out there struggling to cope with this day to day hectic lifestyle we have talked ourselves into. 

Cycling back from the garage rain in my face, jeans soaked, feet soaked feeling the rain run down my neck I started to laugh, this is life, real life - me, moaning about a bit of fucking rain, after all I’m a gardener , we need this rain… despite the drenching I was getting, the last kilometer was the rain the bike and me smiling and singing ‘nothing compares to rain’.

 Child of Confusion.

Sometimes one of my Comedy shows will get a review written by one or other journalist with one or other sense of humor, or even by journalists without a sense of humor but a sense of duty, this being to warn their readers of any form of humor which doesn’t coincide with the definition humor that they had searched for on google specially for this occasion.

One such journalist once described me as a ‘Confused Comedian’, ‘jumping from topic to topic, only to return to the main topic where he started out’. He obviously meant ‘Confusing’ instead of ‘Confused’, a difference which would say more about him than me, but I digress.

To be honest, I am confused, there, I said it. I have always been confused, confused about most things, I think my birth sign was a question mark followed by an exclamation mark or just a confused emoji. 

It all started more or less at the beginning, when I first realised that not all families are constructed like ours. The awakening to the confusion surrounding me was the day in primary school when we were asked to draw our family tree as homework, the Teacher said ‘keep it simple, just include your Grandparents, your parents and your siblings’. 

That evening I sat at the kitchen table with a sheet of paper, the corners of which were held down with a bottle of ketchup, a tin of beans, a can of cider and my Mothers copy of ‘Lady Chatterly’s Lover’. It was the first time that Mum and Dad actually helped me with my homework, it was also the last, in retrospect I think they just wanted to make sure that I got their side of the confusing story which was about to unfold. 

It turned out that not all of my brothers and sisters were my brothers and sisters, some were just half brothers and half sisters, some were half- on my Mothers side, some on my Dads. There were also three sisters who were actual fully blown sisters, I was the first full child of both mum and Dad, and yet I was number 10 on the scale of madness which was the Williams family who lived at nr 31. 

So there were more grandparents and siblings on my Family tree than on any other Family tree in my class at primary school. In fact the whole thing looked more like a hedge than a tree,  a hedge overgrown with weeds, and full of empty beer cans, unused condoms and broken dreams.

And so the confusion begun, and since then it has been a companion on life’s road, and the reason I approach everything life throws at me with a bag of salt and an ounce or two of disbelief. 

‘Welcome to my world’ (Jim Reeves, my Mums favourite singer).

'Old' The Hague 25/2/23

Climate, don't ask me my brain is in meltdown.

 Climate, now here’s my take.

What do I think about climate change? What do you think? I left school when I was 15, I worked in factories and had my own bar that went bankrupt and you’re asking me about climate change? What the flipflop do I know? I can’t even get the central heating working properly. Climate change, yeah it’s getting hotter and hotter and the weather generally seems to be a bit fucked up, more than that and you’ll have to ask an expert and that isn’t me. 

In most walks of life, I have to depend on the consensus of common sense and hope experts are getting it right, I wear a seat belt not just because it’s the law but also because going through a windshield at 70km an hour doesn’t sound like a thing I’ll enjoy, so I belt up. 

Same with the climate, I’ll recycle, wear a sweater indoors and turn the heating off or lower, I’ll take a shower once every two days and not spend long doing it, I’ll even start eating less and saving energy by turning off gadgets and lights when possible, I don’t have a problem if that will help, but those things are all people like me can do. If that’s the deal to get us back to living on a ‘humankind-sustainable planet’ I’m up for it, let’s go! Just as long as the billionaire class and the corporate giants are doing their bit as well, if not then the deal is off. Off, as in I will sit watching hours of TV in my underwear with the heating full on, shower twice a day eat strawberries at Christmas, wear t-shirts from Primark and not give a flying fuck. I’ll wait until we all float down the last remaining iceberg into a steaming sea of dead fish and human waste, by then I’ll be obese and will float for a while before starting to get gently cooked by the boiling water of what used to be the North Sea. As I melt I will leave the planet with a smile on my deformed face as I see Elon Musk and Richard Branson broiling alongside of me. ‘All for one and one for oil’. 

All I’m trying to say here is that with regard to climate change, it’s either serious or it’s not, if it is serious then we should by now all be a bit panicked into taking action, big steps to turn the clock back in our favour. Half-arsed measures of me not washing regularly and peeing in a bucket aren’t going to stop the rot. We either go at it or we settle in and wait for the end. So here I am waiting to hear what is expected and how we’re going to handle it, all I can do is live sparingly and wait, wait for that small percentage of people to realise that money doesn’t mean shit when there’s nowhere to go. 

Right?