Royalty

 Why should an accident of birth make one person better than another? At the end of the day, we are all the same.  We all have hearts and brains and skin and lungs. What we choose to do with our lives may define us but I do not believe that anyone is innately superior just because of their parents.

I live in a kingdom. One internet definition of this is 'a politically organized community or major territorial unit having a monarchical form of government headed by a king or queen'. My country is packed into a unit with other countries because of the existence of a monarchy.  We are united and ruled by someone who has a job because of an accident of birth. A lucky sperm.

I realise it is not all wine and roses.  Prince Harry certainly feels that he has been the unlucky sperm and outlines his feelings in his ghostwritten autobiography Spare.  The book has sold exceptionally well, much to the annoyance of the press and news media in the UK who did their best to curtail sales whilst boosting their own by publishing all the juicy bits before it hit the shops.

France, America and Russia have all been sensible in going down the rebuild route.  I am not saying that these are model societies or any more equal but at least they have made an effort to get rid of the pseudo-mystical royalty bullshit.

My ancestors have been farmers and servants and shop keepers and nurses.  Many of them lived their lives in challenging environments and some of them did well for themselves.  To me, they are more valuable than kings but I realise that most of the world doesn't give a shit about them.  But at least, as far as I am aware, they never started any wars or invaded any countries.

My son will make his own way in life with whatever help I can give him.  It won't be much and he will need to work for what he wants in life.  He will be luckier than some. 

I wish every kid in the world was as lucky as my son.

COVID nutters

 The reality of the pandemic is clearly hard for some to accept.  It was always one of those existential fears that I had, having read lots of science fiction and studied biology and then medicine at university.  I'd read a lot about pandemics in the past.  I knew they were bad and that we were due one.  I knew it would probably happen.  It's just a bit of a shitter that it actually happened.

COVID has happened.  It's almost everywhere and it kills tons of people.  Accept it and deal with it.

Some people can't or won't accept it.  Some reach for a comfortable conspiracy theory to protect them from the brutal truth that humanity is sometimes insignificant in the face of nature and a wee virus could wipe us all out.  COVID-19 isn't going to eliminate the human race but it's still nasty.  We need to do what we can to reduce and avoid infections.  Vaccines, washing our hands, social distancing, wearing masks - all small personal sacrifices to reduce infection rates and reduce deaths.  Some people can't so this.  Idiots like Ian Brown of the Stone Roses and various quack doctors post mad shit on the internet and people believe them and that has consequences.

The UK government haven't helped.  Initial standard Eton arrogance quickly followed by bewildered blind  panic bolstered by exceptionalism from Dominic Cummings and standard avarice has muddied the water creating a fertile breeding ground for the conspiracy theory nutters.  We need a government of adults and the UK does not have this.  

We will be living with COVID forever.  We will probably need yearly COVID vaccines for some time and normality will take some time to return.

The big lesson is don't eat random wild animals.

Dystopian reality

 Over the years I've read a lot of dystopian science fiction, I've watched the movies and I've read the comics.  I never dreamt that I would be living the reality in 2021.  This morning I was out in the freezing cold queuing to get my first shot of the COVID vaccine, wearing a face mask.  I got on buses that were near empty and saw crazy people hanging around central station.

It's fucked.  On top of this, Donald fucking Trump continues to be the president of the united states of america, at least for the next couple of weeks and he basically incited an attempted coup that involved the storming of the capitol building in Washington D.C. by a bunch of freaks including fucking Ariel Pink.  In the UK we have an evil Tory government with Boris Johnston as out prime minister and cunts like Jacob Rees Mogg causing as much badshit as they can.

10,000 people in the UK have died with COVID-19 since Christmas leading to a grand total of 80,000 deaths related to a new disease in under a year.  Shit is majorly fucked up.

I miss my dad and some of my friends who are dead but in a way I'm glad they don't have to live through this shit.  I'm ok, I have a comfortable middle class existence but Scotland right now is fifty shades of bleak thanks to idiots voting for things like Brexit and the Tory party.

I hope the vaccine works at least a bit.  Not sure if anything will fix the damage to the UK after Brexit and COVID.  Hoping for Scottish independence but suspect that is unlikely.

Life under lockdown

Because of my job I still have to go to work every  day.  I use public transport and for a while it was frightening.  It's probably a bit less frightening now as I've become numb to it, to a certain extent but there is still dread.  It's important not to become complacent.  This virus is bad and it can fuck you right up.

One person that I knew, our old neighbour, has died.  She was a great lady and it's sad.  Other than that a couple of my patients have been seriously unwell with it.  The virus has a multi-system effect, messing up coagulation, causing blood clots everywhere as well as a cytokine storm type effect as well as the lung problems.  It can fuck you up bad.

I've read a lot of dystopian fiction and we aren't quite there yet but we have witnessed a failure of Johnson-led UK Tory government.  The current projection is ov 50,000 excess deaths.  Many of these are in the elderly and disabled which will give the austerity driven Tory party their jollies. The virus is ripping through care homes, killing old people..  The pseudo-clown our English compatriots elected as Prime Minister was ignoble enough to catch the virus himself after shaking hands with everyone on a COVID ward.  What a fuck nugget.

The reason for his short stay in iTU has been a source of much speculation but Johnson has lost weight and he doesn't have the fortitude for method acting so I suspect the fucker was actually sick.  However, in the face of 50 thousand deaths that were potentially avoidable my sympathy for this devil is limited.

There is little that I can write that has not already been written about this shit show.  Brexit will proceed like a runaway locomotive and the UK will hit a wall and pretty soon we will be the 53rd state of the USA.  Eating chlorinated chicken, steroid filled steak and paying through the nose for health insurance while the disaster capitalists in the Tory party are laughing all the way to their offshore banks.

Newspapers saying that teachers should be heroes.  Why should a teacher risk death to teach maths to a bunch of disinterested secondary school kids?  Why should a care worker die due to a lack of PPE?

Alexander Boris Johnson fiddles with himself while the UK drowns in its own stupidity.

our unelected Prime Minister

Prime Minister Alexander B Johnson.  Expensive Eton education, plays the clown, pretends to be a man of the people, known to be fairly devious and self-serving when away from scrutiny.

It has been suggested that he doesn't always tell the truth.  In the past, I am led to believe that he has been caught mixing up facts with fiction.  Not really someone you would choose to trust.

He has a reputation for infidelity.  Not nice, infidelity.

He's smart but probably not as smart as he believes himself to be.  He is not someone who I would trust to run the country well and at present he doesn't really seem to be leading anything at all.  He has lost his majority in the House of Commons.  He has lost his first 4 votes as PM.  He has lost his temper when people have asked him difficult questions.

I did respect some members of the Tory party and I was sad to see these people treated with disrespect by our unelected PM.

Shit often floats but it is difficult to polish a turd.  Even with a very expensive education at Eton.

The lunatics have taken over the asylum

The UK is in a sad place.  Our country is being run into the ground by warring factions of the elite Tory party claiming they represent the 'will of the people', egged on by an incompetent Labour party. This time, next year we will have been stripped of our european citizenship, making us poorer both financially and culturally.  We are going to lose a lot because of some posh arseholes playing games with democracy.

The rest of the world is laughing at Britain.  Fintan O'Toole has just written a great book about it.  Watching from the sidelines, the ego-death of a faded imperial empire is pretty funny.  Much was made of the British stiff-upper-lip and the 'keep calm and carry on' meme and this has all been exposed as patent bullshit.  Britain flaps around like a headless chicken or a dying animal, demented and brain damaged, just wanting to be put out of it's misery.  The country is full of angry, angry red faced people, shouting, unhappy with their lot, looking with someone to blame and settling on the EU which they can't quite conceptualise.  They just know it is foreign and stopping Britannia from ruling the waves.

The EU has protected many of us from unfair employment practices, protected us from working too many hours and giving us benefits like maternity or paternity leave.  In America, you get fuck all in terms of holidays or maternity benefits.  Or health care.

The NHS will go after Brexit, another unintended consequence of the will of the people.  If we want a trade deal with the USA, the health care monopoly of the NHS will have to go.  I fear for the future some times.

In recent days the government have started putting out adverts about the need to apply for settled status in the UK.  This even affects children born here to European parents.  This will hurt some of my friends and colleagues.  It's a jingoistic disgrace, bringing to mind Germany in the 1930s.

Fuck me, our country is in a mess.  All we can do is vote but in Scotland your vote and your voice mean little.  Scotland is impotent in the UK.

I'm lucky in so many ways and hopefully I will be cushioned from much of what happens over the next few years but I meet many people who will be directly impacted.  I'm sad for them.

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall

This book is fascinating.  We often arrogantly think that human beings shape the history of the world but this book argues that geography shapes human history.  Throughout (and before) recorded history people have been shaped by the land they live in.  Nations have been separated by mountains, trade has developed in flat lands with deep rivers, wars have been fought to protect key approaches to nations.

Geography and geology have guided human behaviour.  When people have tried to create nations by drawing lines on maps they have caused problems by forcing together groups who would prefer separate lives.

After reading this book I felt I had a better understanding of geopolitics and why some countries make some decisions.  I feel I understand the world a wee bit better.  Interesting and an easy read.

Narconomics: How To Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright

I enjoy popular economics books and economics is one of many things that I wish I had a greater understanding of.  Much of economics is witchcraft and pretension papering over bullshit but it is useful to use different models to try to understand the world.  As part of my holiday week reading I decided to delve into the economics of drug dealing.

Wainwright is a British editor for the Economist and he writes well.  He decided to study the economics of the narcotics industry and he follows the journey of illegal drugs from farming to end user.  I've read a lot of this before in books like Freakonomics or the Undercover Economist but Wainwright does add some additional colour and detail to the scenarios.

Of particular interest to modern readers are sections on the use of legal highs in New Zealand, the legalisation of cannabis in Colorado and the impact of internet retailers (on the dark web) on the distribution and sale of drugs in the modern world.

The extent of the black economy and the massive potential gains in tax suggest that legalisation of narcotics may be a good way forward although the damage done by these substances cannot be underestimated.  It is also important to note that there is no such thing as 'fair trade' cocaine.  People who buy and use cocaine are partially paying for murder.

Legalisation, taxation and careful regulation are surely the way forward.

Will the NHS still exist in 10 year time?

The NHS is a great British achievement, possibly one of our greatest ever.  It's a noble attempt to help everyone in the country, a socialist dream, treating each as they need and through tax/national insurance, taking from each of us what we can give.  The ideals of the NHS are what life should be about.

Sadly, I think it's fucked.  And I think it's being fucked on purpose.

International health care providers having been eyeing up the NHS and the UK as a potential place to make a profit for a long time.  The UK is a rich country with a fairly low spend on healthcare per head of population.  We, the UK, as a nation, could afford to spend more on healthcare.  We just choose not to.  We spend money on shiny things like Brexit and nuclear weapons instead, as our elected representatives choose to fulfil the masturbatory fantasies of our right wing lunatic fringe instead of looking after the health of the nation properly.

New and better treatments for previously untreatable diseases are becoming available.  The BBC news today carried a story about a potential good treatment for Huntington's Disease, one of the most horrific neurodegenerative conditions in existence.  This will not be cheap.  We now have several good treatments for melanoma and multiple sclerosis.  We exist in a health utopia but it is an expensive health utopia.  Rightly or wrongly, the pharmaceutical companies who help develop these drugs want to make a profit and the NHS has to pay.  But the NHS does not have enough money.

The public expects more from the NHS and healthcare than it did in the past.  The NHS is a monopoly provider in the UK.  For 99% of the population there is no good alternative to an NHS hospital in the UK if you have a medical emergency.  Out population is living longer, partly because of the NHS, and our older people are more frail with advanced age.  Frailty results in more hospital admissions and more costs.  The NHS is challenged by it's own success.  Without more money it is doomed.

Brexit has fucked the pound so European doctors and nurses who work here now earn less money.  The jingoistic shite involved with Brexit is deterring European doctors and nurses from coming to work here.  The UK does not train enough doctors or nurses to properly staff the NHS and Jeremy Hunt has done a lot (in terms of Junior Doctor contracts and removing bursaries from nursing students) to deter people from wanting to work in healthcare.  At the end of the day, who wants to do a 12 hour nightshift in A&E where drunk people swear at you and try and punch you if you are being paid fuck all for it.

The NHS is being defunded into the ground by a bunch of right wing money heads.  Artificial targets are being used to punish hospitals and cost more money.  There are multiple layers of useless managers, almost like onion skins in their ability to make you cry.  And yet we can waste money on Brexit and nuclear weapons we can never use.

For the NHS to survive it needs more money or rationing.  We will probably end up with a co-payment system or some sort of multi-tier service that will divide the rich and poor.  Out ancestors, who fought world war 2 will be spinning in their graves.

If you voted Tory or Brexit, pat yourself on your back.

Podcasts

Over the past few years I've started listening to a lot of Podcasts.  I always liked listening to the radio although I didn't always find the broadcast shows to be very exciting.  Podcasts are homemade radio shows that you can download and listen to at a time that suits you.  They also often cover more offbeat or esoteric subjects that appeal to me.

Mostly I listen to real life mystery podcasts, American political podcasts (mainly ones about Trump), Twin Peaks related podcasts and comic book podcasts.  And the Private Eye podcasts.

One of the first mystery style I started to listen to was Thinking Sideways - in this podcast three presenters take turns to present a mystery every week and discuss various theories on what went on.  The first episode that I listened to was on the 'Glasgow effect'.

Another slightly more fantastical podcast that I enjoy is Astonishing Legends - this podcast goes into strange tales in a great degree of detail.  They exude an X-Files type vibe and they are often rather credulous but the production values are good and I enjoy the shows.

From a comic book point of view Fatman on Batman produced by Clerks director Kevin Smith as part of his Smodcast empire is a good starting point (if you like Batman).  The early episodes in the archive are great, often focusing on individual comic book writers or artists and Batman related stuff. More recently the podcast has developed into a general forum for discussion of sic-fi, superheroes and anything Smith wants to talk about.

The Stuff You Should Know network has several good podcasts including Stuff They Don't Want You To Know and Stuff to Blow Your Mind (both of which have a sort of counterculture vibe) as well as the more mainstream, flagship Stuff You Should Know series.  All of these are fairly interesting.

In terms of Trump bashing Trumpcast is fairly funny and a good place to start.  The Pod Save America team have more White House connections and often have serious guests on to interview although they are often pretty funny too.

No Such Thing As A Fish  was one of the first podcasts I listened to, a spin off from the BBC QI series, where strange facts are discussed in an amusing manner every week.  It's good for a smile every now and again.

There are many more podcasts to check out - a few more are below
Page 94 - The Private Eye Podcast
The 2000AD Progcast - some great 2000AD chat
The Politico Nerdcast
A Twin Peaks Podcast

Enjoy

UK politics

What a mess.  I've spent most of the weekend laughing at the hung parliament that Theresa May created.  Political arrogance has resulted in egg on her face and much less of a mandate for the 'hard Brexit' nonsense she was demanding.

May is now trying to run a minority government with the DUP after spending a lot of time talking about the alleged 'terrorist links' of Jeremy Corbyn.  The hypocrisy is blatant.  Tories will do anything to stay in power and because of that they will soon betray May and replace her with their next new hope.

Unfortunately we are stuck in the Brexit process.  A sensible government would try to delay or cancel the process but I fear that the Tory party under May is not sensible.  Time will tell.

art classes

learned how to paint over a photo in art class today.  much politically motivated fun ensued

Human frailty and failings in health care

People don't last for ever.  Parts of our body fail and break.  We can survive without much of our bodies but eventually we die.  This is life.

It's difficult to watch a family member when they are sick.  In the UK we pride ourselves on the NHS but care is often poor.  There are failings in the health service that can worsen the failings of our bodies.  Most of us want the NHS to be better but right now the county has no money and the government are not interested in the health of the masses.

A bit shit really.

The state of the nation

The UK is looking a bit sad now.  The government wants businesses to list foreign employees.  People worry that they will be made to leave the country when the UK relinquishes membership of the European Union.  There is financial uncertainty and many of the things that have made the UK great, like the NHS, are in trouble.

How have we got here?

I have a few ideas but you will have heard them all before.  As a nation we need to think about where we are going.  The future looks grim at times and we need to avoid that.  We should strive to be good and to do our best but we have to take the poorest, the weakest and the most disadvantaged with us to be really great.  I don't see the government doing that just now.

When things are good

Sometimes things are good in life.  It's probably just for a while but sometimes, for a bit, the road gets easier.  It's important to realise that you are in a good time because if you don't you only realise when it's gone.

I'm in a good bit now.  I'm doing a new job that feels worthwhile.  I'm in a good relationship.  I have money in my pocket.  I am fortunate.

At this point I look around me.  I'm doing well but that's not true for everyone.  One of my school friends is very sick at the moment.  He's a young man with a young family who's normally healthy and he has been critically ill in a hospital ITU for over a week.  The doctors are doing their best and he is almost stable,  In that situation, almost stable is a victory.  Bad things can happen with no warning so when things are good, enjoy them.

More generally, our current government are doing their best to fuck the country up.  I will never understand the Tory 'rich obnoxious idiot' mindset.  I will never understand why they have contempt for people less well off than themselves.  I guess humanity is a variable thing.

Anyway, right now, life is internally and locally good for me so I'm going to enjoy it

Is medicine in the UK fucked?

Why would a smart school kid want to be a doctor?

I didn't work hard at school.  I wasn't interested.  I was more interested in music and comic books and having fun.  Eventually I grew up, decided I wanted to do something worthwhile for society and my community and decided I wanted to be a doctor.  I wanted to help people.  So, at the age of 23, more than 15 years ago, I went to medical school.

Unfortunately I never had rich parents.  Both my parents had jobs.  Jobs working for the state where they worked hard but they were never paid very much.  Now I probably earn more than my parents did when their salaries were combined.  However at medical school I had no money.  My parents didn't have much spare to give me although they gave me what they could.  I got bank loans, overdrafts, hardship loans and hardship fund awards.  I managed to pay my rent and eat and get through medical school and become a doctor.  When I graduated at the age of 26 I was about £40,000 in debt.  It took me seven years to pay that back.

Being a doctor isn't cheap.  You give the GMC money, you give the BMA money (if you want), you pay to sit expensive exams (sometimes more than £1000), you pay your Royal College money (to train and to be a member), you pay your medical insurance and finally you pay a big chunk of money to be on the GP register or the consultant register.  Also, you get a small study leave budget so you pay a fuck load of cash to attend course, buy textbooks, buy equipment and make yourself good enough to do the job.

Also, you damage your personal life.  You travel about.  I've lived and worked in lots of cities and towns.  I've spent 3 and a half years as a doctor mainly living in hospital rooms.  I've slept on the floor at work when I'm meant to be oncall for emergency work (from home) but I don't have a car and I don't trust a taxi to get me into hospital quickly enough for a patient who needs me.  You miss time with family and friends.  You don't spend enough time on relationships.  You blink and you're nearly fucking 40.

So why do you do it?  You do it to help someone.  You might stop them dying.  You might get them out of ITU.  You might stop them becoming disabled.  You might help control their pain or their inconvenient chronic disease.  You might help.  Because you want to help people.  Because you are a doctor.

You are a doctor 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the rest of your fucking life until you get to stop being a doctor.  You realise that life is precious and wafer thin.  You know that sometimes you can help and sometimes you can't.  You always hope that you won't be the only doctor on a plane (and that the other doctor is an anaesthetist and not a public health consultant).

So being a doctor is tough but you do it because it's a part of you.  The NHS is a useless monolith sometimes but it helps everyone without asking questions.  It is a privilege to be able to treat every patient without worrying about costs so I guess the monolith is worthwhile.

All this is fine and good but it's becoming more and more unpleasant being a doctor in the UK.  The current rich kid clown show of neoliberal Tory twats that is molesting this country has decided to fuck with the medical profession.  They have picked notorious fud-nugget Jeremy Hunt as their frontman for this project and he is trolling the doctors in England in a massive way.  He is aiming at a reduction in take home, spendable pay for junior doctors of approximately a third.  He is claiming that this is a pay rise and that doctors need to work seven days a week.  He's like a Bizzaro version of a health secretary from a Superman comic. Backwards and fucked up.

Nowadays medical students often have debts of about £70,000 when they graduate.  If they get paid less they won't break even till they are in their 40s.  Hard work and no money makes you miserable.  Why would a smart school kid want to be a doctor in the UK?

We won't have the best and the brightest as doctors if there is no obvious reward.  The job is horrible. It will only be worse if you don't get a comfortable wage.  Smart kids will do something easier that pays more.  They'll work in finance.  Talent will be lost.

Medicine in the UK is probably fucked.  The NHS will probably be dragged down with the medical profession.  Jeremy Hunt will laugh all the way to the bank.

Happy happy, joy joy.

I think journalism may be dying but it may also be coming back to life

As a child I wanted to be a writer.  I wanted to write comic books and science fiction novels.  Later on, I wanted to be a journalist, telling the truth on behalf of the people.  I wanted to fight censorship and do good stuff for people.  I wanted to catch all those lying politicians and shine a bright light on their bad deeds.

Hopelessly naive.

I used to respect the media.  I would read 2 or 3 newspapers a day.  I saw the BBC as a bastion of truth, noble, erect and trustworthy, standing tall against injustice, serving our proud British nation and   helping out oppressed people around the world.  I bought every single bit of the beautiful lie.

The old newspapers were always partial, depending on the whims of Lord Beaverbrook or whoever held the purse strings.  Over time, watching the Murdoch empire and the Daily Record, I realised that newsprint was often grubby.  The hands of tabloid journalists are often stained red with the ink of their gutter journalism.  No matter how hard they scrubbed, sometimes that spot of ink would inconveniently stay there as they were made to account for their writings years later.  Sales have fallen and the stature of British print journalism has diminished.

I still held the BBC in high regard.  Friends from other countries tell me that they have never trusted the BBC, that they call the BBC the British Brainwashing Corporation. That's pretty sad.  It is now clear that the BBC are partial, especially in the recent debate surrounding the Scottish independence referendum.  The BBC seems to be actively campaigning against Scottish independence.  One suspects that this may be to protect 10% of licence fee income.  It does feel like a step away from impartial comment.

The BBC has also been damaged by the horrific realisation that prominent members of the on-screen BBC staff were apparently rather unpleasant in real life.  These nasty realities seem to have been common knowledge around the BBC.  Nothing was done.  A strong institutional reputation was tarnished.

So the media of my childhood has betrayed me.  Betrayal is perhaps not the correct way to frame the situation.  It is perhaps fairer to say that I have come to see the media in it's true light.  My expectations of the BBC and Fleet Street were higher than they could reach.  It's not the fault of the media, it was my youthful innocence that was to blame.

In the future I guess the media will be different.  The bell has been tolling for newspapers for a while.  Print newspapers may not exist in 20 years time.  I think we will continue to have good quality written journalism on websites.  There will be a lot of dross out there but there will be some pearls too.  Unfortunately there is no editor online and you can always find some evidence to back up your maddest prejudices.  You must become an editor and you must filter things carefully and avoid becoming a member of the 'tin foil hat' brigade.

The decline of old media will hopefully lead to a maturation of the reader and the development of critical skills.  Hopefully with time we will begin to evaluate things and make our own decisions.  Sadly, the world is full of conspiracy nuts with poor filters.  We may need to rely on our paternalistic media overlords for some time.

That should be OK as long as they don't try to tell us how to vote........

......oh.

living in a science fiction present

My grandfather didn't have a television until 1980.  My father grew up in a house without electricity, heated by coal fires, in a remote costal area in Scotland.  They lived 200 metres from the sea and they saw seals every day.  They didn't always see other people on a daily basis.  A lot of time was spent reading books or out living a rural life.  And shooting stuff.

My grandfather died in 1987/1988.  I don't think he ever saw a computer (although I'm not entirely sure).  He was born in a croft in 1903.  I'm writing this on a fancy laptop.  I'm streaming music onto my iPad beside me.  Technology like this only existed on Star Trek and in the science fiction novels and comics my father read.

My grandfather left the UK twice (as far as I know).  In the late '70s/early '80s my parents brought him to Lanzarote and Malta with us for family holidays.  Until then he had never been in a plane.  He did live in London where he worked as a servant in the 1920's and 30's so I guess it is possible that he may have travelled abroad at that time.  I don't know and I guess I never will.

As a kid I never imagined that I would at some point own something like an iPad or a smartphone.  I could could conceptualise a mobile phone as I had seen walkie talkies.  Early chunky mobile phones were available in the '80s but only for the very rich.

Possibly the most amazing thing now is the internet.  Vast amounts of knowledge, science, music, media and art are available free, instantly at the touch of a button.  I did my first degree before scientific papers existed as PDFs.  I had not used the internet or sent an email before I went to university.  I spent years looking for books, comics and music.  Now it's all there.

Our ability to communicate has improved too.  I play scrabble and chat with someone in Hong Kong every day.  I know and care about someone in Hong Kong.  As a child in the West of Scotland I would never have imagined such a thing.  I dreamt of America in movies and comic books and later in records.  I was lucky enough to visit Europe and I knew about World War 2.  Beyond that I knew that other cultures existed but I didn't really believe that I would ever interact with these distant places in any meaningful way.

When I was a kid for a while I wanted to be a spaceman.  When I was very young I wanted to be a soldier but thankfully I got over that idea very early.  Most of the time I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write comics and novels.  As a teenager I wanted to be a rock star or a journalist.  I had a vague childhood idea of being a scientist but only in a sort of very vague science fiction/spaceman way.

I never thought I would be a doctor.  Doctors were the people my mother worked for, a class apart. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty years later, here I am.  How the fuck did this happen?

I sit in a posh flat in Glasgow living in a science fiction present, parts of which echo the William Gibson books I read when I was 10.  Parts of this are so much better than I ever thought would be possible.  When I watch the television news and hear borderline racist, anti-immigration political beasts from UKIP talk, I hear echoes of Mosely and Enoch Powell and it's all gone a bit dystopian.

What would my grandad think if he was alive today?  His generation fought the nazi's and gave us the Scotland we have today.

sometimes it's nice to meet your heroes - End of an Era 2, the final ATP holiday camp festival and Mike Watt

The ATP festival concept was brilliant but sadly it has now run it's course.  This weekend I attended the ATP chalet festival at Camber Sands in Rye.  For work and financial reasons I never made it to the early festivals but I always looked at the line-ups with awe.  A good friend of mine plays in Mogwai and actually curated the first ATP festival but the first one I made it to was curated by Jeff Mangum in 2012.  I loved that experience and went back to the Deerhunter event this summer.

I was sad to hear that the festivals were ending.  I am not privy to the reasons for this but running a big festival has to be difficult in harsh financial climates.  Pontins certainly did not roll out the red carpet for guests this time, requiring us to bring our own linen.

The line-up for this festival was brilliant and contained many personal favourites. Slint, Shellac, Loop, Girls Against Boys, Michael Rother, Mike Watt and of course Mogwai.  Attendance was required despite my fears about the notoriously unpredictable late November weather.  In the end I made it to Camber Sands without any snow having made a stop at the British Museum on the way.

Pontins is not scenic and reminds me of my home town of East Kilbride.  I guess it provides an appropriate back drop for alternative rock but I wouldn't want to spend an actual holiday here.

On the first night I saw Thought Forms, a band I was unfamiliar with.  They made some cool Sonic Youth-y noises and jumped about.  I liked what I heard so I bought up their back catalogue.  I'll look out for them in the future.

Thought Forms

After Thought Forms I caught Om and the Fuck Buttons set.  Om were intense with a great Sabbath/stoner rock sound.  I have a few records by Sleep, the band that Om developed from and they were just as good.  After that the Fuck Buttons hit the stage.  They made some great noises.  I don't have any of their records but I enjoyed seeing them.  Finishing off Friday night was a one-two whammy of Shellac and Slint. 

I saw Shellac in Glasgow last weekend and this was the 5th time that I have seen them since 1994.  I bought the first Shellac singles as they came out back in 1993 and they have always been one of my favourite bands.  They played a great set although they were oddly quiet (dodgy PA).  They even played 'wingwalker'.

Shellac wearing their evening suits

Slint too had a quiet PA but it was great to see them again.  They played most of Spiderland as well as a track from Tweez and a track from their EP.  I had hoped that we might have seen more of the mythical Slint documentary film but there was no joy.  After the concert I ended up in the Mogwai party chalet and in a drunken haze I met David Pajo.  He seems like a nice guy, even when confronted with an intoxicated Scottish Danzig fan.

The next morning was a bit of a red wine haze.  I woke up early and went to Camber Sands beach to contemplate infinity.  Camber is probably fairly nice in the summer but it's a really small town.  I wouldn't want to live there.  The locals were nice but the holiday camp is certainly grim.  This time we brought food with us so we didn't have to buy overpriced rubbish in the Nisa store or toxic waste from the onsite food outlets.

The beach itself is beautiful.  I took a few photos before my hangover really kicked in.  I was able to watch the Dismemberment Plan play a set that drew heavily from 'emergency & I' but after that I had to lie down for a bit to prepare myself for the evenings festivities.  After my much needed beauty sleep I caught a bit of 23 Skidoo and the Pop Group.  Neither band really set my world on fire but it was nice to see 'we are all prostitutes' played live.

Comets on Fire were a different thing altogether.  They took to the smaller downstairs stage and tore the place apart.  I've been listening to a couple of their albums which are enjoyable enough.  The recordings did not prepare me for the rock fury of the band on stage.  Blending Mudhoney, the Stooges and Sabbath they sent an electric shock through the crowd.  Rocktastic.

Comets on Fire

I had been listening to Loop stuff in an attempt to prepare myself for this concert.  I sort of missed Loop as a teenager spending more time listening to Spacemen 3.  In recent months I have taken a bit of a crash course in their stuff but it didn't really click until I saw them live.  They managed to make an immense noise with the hitherto 'polite' upstairs PA system.  Their repetitive drones drove the crowd mad and a plague of crowd surfing spread though the room.  To ice the cake they encored with 'mother sky' by Can.  I was grinning from ear to ear.  Once more I retired to the Mogwai party chalet where I had a close encounter with some rather nice 15 year old Glenlivet.  I stumbled back to my chalet at around 3am with a smile on my face.

My hangover was a bit worse on Sunday.  I managed to reconstitute myself in time for the Michael Rother set at 3:30pm.  It was pretty good but I preferred the Neu heavy set that I caught in Primavera a few years before.  My recovery was complete in time for the Mike Watt set.  He was playing ll Sogno Del Marinaio, a sort of opera about sailors.  It was nice, instrumental passages with intermittent vocal flourishes. He finished his set with a cover of Funhouse by the Stooges (i think).  Watt is a great hero of mine but I'll return to this topic in due course.

Mike Watt

After Watt came Girls Against Boys.  I've been listening to Girls against Boys for many, many years. I saw them 2 or 3 times in the mid nineties but I haven't seen them for a long long time.  I was rather excited to see them again and I wasn't disappointed.  The sound was slightly ropey during the first song but they managed to shine anyway.  They kicked off with 'tucked in' before playing an action packed set.  The strength of the Girls Against Boys back catalogue was highlighted by the fact that they managed to play a great show despite missing out classics like 'I don't got a place' and 'sexy sam'.  The new songs that they played held their own against the old material.  It's a shame that GVSB never had the success they deserved.

Girls Against Boys

The next big discovery of the weekend was Goat.  Goat are a Swedish band that wear masks and play intoxicating rhythms.  They make you want to dance.  I suspect them to be the Knife in disguise but I am told that this is not the case.

Goat going bongo crazy

Finally the last ever ATP festival was closed by one of the best bands on earth. Mogwai.  I cannot write an objective word about mogwai, especially when they got me drunk all weekend and gave me a stage access pass for their set.  However, I will honestly say that they played a brilliant set.  The new material is amazing (especially 'remurdered' and 'blues hour').  I remember first hearing them play Helicon 1 about 18 years ago in a very small room and seeing them playing it again in a very big room in front of some very excited fans was great.  Mogwai curated the first ATP festival and it was fitting that they closed the last one.

Mogwai playing mexican grand prix

After they finished the DJ played 'Teenage Riot' by Sonic Youth and it was all over.  The crowd went mad.  I was able to nip on stage and take some photos of the departing crowd.  Somehow I had found the 'make everything look drunk' button on my camera.  I ended up in the surprise party for Barry Hogan at 2:30am.  I shouldn't really have been there (although I was again abducted by the 'gwai) but it was nice to hear his words on a series of events that have meant a lot to people with good taste.  I don't know what he'll do next but I'm sure it'll be good.

As a coda to an amazing festival I had an amazing experience on the train from Rye to Ashford.  I met Mike Watt on the platform and I spent about 30 minutes talking to him.  SST punk was a big thing for me and I remember first hearing the Minutemen after buying the Post-Mersh volume 3 CD from Tower Records one boxing day (maybe 1991?).  Watt is one of the nicest men alive and when he heard my accent he asked me if I knew Dep from Monorail Records.  When I told him that Dep had advised me on Minutemen records over the years he smiled.  I think he regards Dep as a sort of missionary.

Watt spoke about his need to constantly tour.  He sees life on the road as being like that of a sailor, like his father who was in the navy and served in Vietnam.  Watt told me that he saw little of his father growing up and that he feels he only got to know him in his thirties by which point he was dying of cancer.  Watt himself said that he had decided not to have children as he felt family life was incompatible with life on the road.

He suffers from arthritis and needs to have a knee operation next year.  He'll need to to take 6 months off from touring to do that.  He says that this will be difficult as he doesn't know what to do when he isn't touring.

He told me a bit about how he recorded some of his records, how they got free studio time to record one song but managed to record all of the first side of 'buzz or howl under the influence of heat' by pretending it was one song.  He told me that he originally wanted to use images from the magazine Scientific American for the cover (indeed the title came from Scientific American) but the photo cost too much so Joe Baiza drew a sketch of him and D Boon instead.

Watt is an inspirational musician and his life and words have meant a lot to me over the years.  After I finished talking to him, changing trains at Ashford International I listened to all 175 minutemen tracks on my iPod back to back.  They took me most of the way back to Glasgow.  I thought about the life of Mike Watt and how he has given so much to me.  I don't think he's a rich man but he is a good man.  Like most American musicians he won't have free health care and nobody buys records now so musicians have to tour to make money.  If anyone reads this think about buying a mike watt record (fIREHOSE/minutemen/anything) or go to a mike watt gig.  He's a good bloke.

With the ATP concept, Barry Hogan did a good thing and has given me some amazing experiences.  I hope he does something new, similar and brilliant again.  Maybe even in Scotland?

Thatcher is dead

An old lady who suffered from dementia and stroke died last week. She lived in luxury in the Ritz hotel. She did not believe in society and her modern disciples have made things more difficult for the worst off in society. She is lucky she was rich.

Thatcher stamped on our country and the word. She dominated my childhood and gave many of us a target to shout at. We are Thatcher's children but we don't need to like our parents.