I often think.

Advent looms, its head a bobbing, So down from the loft comes Xmas tat, In that is a fake feather Robin Which is pounced on by the naughty cat. Whilst shoppers in scrummages, Angry jibes and jabs do resist,  At home children of all ages Compile Santa's secret list The xmas tree is now chopped down, The Turkey has been growing fat, Whilst Dad needs a new dressing gown, Aunty and Uncle both need a new bobble hat! This ideal I on all I do wish, That the poor and disaffected could also enjoy, As the divided, class ridden, British, Become more like Cameron's vast, Thatcherite toy.

I don't remember any of the good times,  They were few and far between, Only the bad times, The three week sulks, The temper tantrums,  The silence of meal times, The brooding menace of each waking day, The not knowing how each innocent word, Would fall on those temper attuned ears, The rare smile, The rare laughter. Above all,  The silence.

The season of Goodwill must be on us, For piles of pavement pizza abound, As drunken office clerks Lurch dazedly around. They have been unleashed, released, From the devilish-dark denizens Of Messrs Pulpitt and Pugh plc. or A N Other. So off they stagger; heading homeward bound, Depositing their bloated loads on cold, hard ground The puke always contains carrots, though none could be found On a sparsely spread buffet Bought that day by Rita from accounts, From M&S via an office whip round, Of course the boss dug deeply, And proudly produced a solitary pound. Then off they go by tube, bus or train To suburbia and their home ground; There to be verbally beaten by a punctilious partner With that immortal phrase: "You're drunk! Have you eaten?"

As our new found poverty creeps faster towards us it is taking us down with it ; we both feel defeated, tearful and smaller , both in intellect and the power to do anything about the rapid slow creep. My wife admits as much to me. The rest of this blog is how I feel. Poverty takes away, diminishes, reduces, your clarity on life; the ability to see things for what they are rather than what you see them as. I have lost my ability to be critical and feel that if I argue I question whether I would have the intellect to argue back. Nowdays I am not so sure that I will have. I have lost my interest in anything that involves spending, purely because I know that the the money to do so is simply not there. I have become sniping and hypercritical of the new. For instance I laid into the new James Bond film, I don't like Bond as a franchise but I have been overly critical and sniping about those that have seen it. It is their prerogative to do so. Every job application my wife makes is a

I have often mulled over in my head what the word 'family' means to me. I have come to the conclusion that it means very little . To me it is a vague concept of what should be, not what was for me as I grew up. I am the second youngest of 6 children . Four of us now survive , two brothers died early in life; in 1970 and one in 1999.                                         Not a family photo..... I struggle when people talk of their 'family' like it is something scared, something that is sacrosanct and untouchable . I have never felt that way about 'family'. I suppose I feel that I never grew up in one. 'We', to me, seemed to be seven people living under the same roof with the same genes and the same Mother and Father but little else. My Mum was left a single parent in 1960 by the death of my Dad. I never really knew him. As a 4 year old I took him toast as he lay dying, that is my only memory. This event shattered the family and I think sh

I wrote this Obituary piece for The Guardian about Stanley Green while I was an undergraduate at Goldsmiths' College.  I contacted The Guardian and asked them if I could submit it for publication. It was sent off to them and I waited in eager anticipation for their reply. It was published on Wednesday January 26th 1994,   the Editor  made no changes or additions except by adding some photographs (the photographs used here are later additions by me): "A Consuming Passion.... Stanley Owen Green who has died aged aged 78, was that tall thin man with steel-rimmed glasses who marched it seemed for an eternity up and down London's Oxford Street. It was his banner that made him famous, held high above his head and proclaiming "LESS LUST FROM PROTEIN" in large white letters. Underneath the banner he endured the taunts of sticky schoolchildren and the spittle of office workers alike, to bring his unique, indeed puzzling message to the people of London. He later wate

It was a strange feeling being confronted with the photograph of the man who sexually abused me over 40 years ago. Very strange. My seeing of his nasty image came about by the tweets that suggested that I was about to take my life: I did walk out of my house and plan just such a thing. Later that day my friend in London 'phoned me and chatted to try and calm my suicidal thoughts. W had Googled the name of my abuser thinking that this might be the cause of my depression. W is one of the few people that told early on in our friendship about my early life. Twitter wasn't even a glimmer in anybody's eyes then. W sent me the link on my email and I opened it and was confronted by the person who in essence was about to again remove my sexual naivety my 'virginity'. I had also been sexually abused by a relative. My abuser, was a Woodwork teacher at my school. He took advantage of any of the children in his care who displayed any acumen for woodwork. I was one of them.

Some of you will be reading this after my tweets that alerted some kind souls to the fact that I was unstable again. It also scared them, for which I am sorry. Why have I chose to write this now? Because I am on the high that detachs me from sanity. A mental high that composes silly horoscopes and tweets mad jokes and sometimes gets me into arguments on Twitter. I don't believe that I have a suicide trigger point. The ideations often come after a period of being 'high': as relatively high as I can be. I am lugubrious by nature, an agelast. I am rarely drunk, if ever at all, when I plan to die. Which is odd for someone who battles against alcoholism. It, the idea, seems to occur by itself; the thought that I need, want to, have to, leave this life just happens. Like it did recently: I started to tweet that things were shitty and that things were getting hard in our lives. We, my wife and I, had just been with an Aunty a s she died in the last week, a day after our weddi

For the past few months we, Ruth and I, have been battling with the DWP to get our benefits to which we are entitled.  They have so far refused every application.  The DWP will not carry forward an application so we have to fill out a new application form every time. This was to be our fourth application for Income Related ESA. We are told that we have to fill out a new application in case we manage to get vast amounts of money in between applications.  At one point we were refused because R had three jobs! They were all voluntary , all three.  They had not read the form. What a surprise. This misreading put us into a void of bureaucracy and kafkaesque stupidity. We appealed and made a formal complaint when they failed to tell us that they had refused our last application. I only found out when I 'phoned to check on its progress! Eventually they conceded and the other week backdated our benefits to  June the 15th, the day we first applied for them. The DWP also made a compens

The Leo Gentleman:  A jumper knitted by a parent or relative blights your weekend attire and wardrobe. Day time TV influences your sex life. A work colleague buys you a subscription to a man’s magazine. Increasingly your left hand will not know what the right hand is doing. Your right hand becomes tired very quickly: This might be due to stress or the subscription.  New shoes might be the answer to your mumbled prayers.  If you are on benefits, a new calculation by the DWP will set you back and possibly result in Court action.  For the Leo worker a tidy income can be gained by using your expenses claim wisely. A curry with your Scrabble team ends in arrest for one or more of the team.  Your Findus frozen TV Dinner meal collection will bring big rewards on e-bay.  A friend of the family hints that you are a fool at at a Silver Wedding celebration.  Genital warts blight your illicit sexual liaisons.  A dog will look at you sideways soon. The music of Adele lifts your sp

It is an odd feeling slowly being strangulated by poverty.  Our savings have run out, the Nationwide refused to negotiate with us to reduce the amount of mortgage payment we made. They insisted on taking the full amount every month. We begged them to reduce it to interest only; they eventually did, but far too late. Our savings evaporated pretty quickly. They now receive payment from the government via the SMI, Support For Mortgage Interest scheme; you the taxpayer are picking up 'our' bill now. Had they negotiated earlier and been less aggressive we would still be paying the mortgage with our money and not yours. Their refusal has meant that you all help us with our repayments now. Slowly we had to economise on food. Going out stopped. Newspapers are to stop soon. £4 a week is a lot on money now.  Buying music stopped early on. I did without things to buy my last cd; PiLs new one. Theatre and cinema died very early on; as did our views on them. Now we only use the ca

I would love to have had the privelege of having a child.  When I was growing up peole used to say idiot things like 'You wait until you get kids of yer own' and bollocks like that. The 16 year old me used to dread the responsibility of having a child to look after. The older me clung to that belief too. Then MrsD and I  looked at each other and realised what was missing in our life, a child. Then came the tests. The bloody tests. We were sat in a Maternity Clinic, this was 1988/9, with all the ladies sitting, doing the rubbing their bump thing that pregnant ladies do and still do.  MrsD and I were treated like lepers. The nurses who staffed the unit treated us shoddily; like it was our fault that we needed their help, rather than just 'falling pregnant' like the women around us had: According to the stories that we overheard. The humiliation of producing a sperm sample followed. This was duly sent off for analysis. We were called in for the result. The nur

Having just been to God's Waiting Room, aka Eastbourne, recently to visit my partner's elderly Aunt I overheard the following conversation in a Poundshop: 'Oooh Eddie have a feel of these' the elderly Gent gingerly squeezes the innersole through the aptly titled 'Squeeze Me' cutout hole in the shelf hanger... 'aren't they soft? Eddie squeezes the said innersoles with finger an thumb 'Oooh they are soft....only a pound too, they are soft!...." Eddie turns to around "Ted have a feel of these....' Ted comes over and pinches innersoles with finger and thumb, 'Oh they're soft, feel really comfortable....' 'Gladys, Glad come 'ere, feel these....they're really soft ain't they?' Glad comes over and pinches the innersoles between thumb and finger, 'Aww err, they're soft....lovely in yer shoes.....' Glad ponders, then calls out 'Else, come and have a feel of these...'  Else comes

This column has been superseded by the 'Weekender' column/feature. In effect the same pretentious twattery exhibited by the Shoreditch set for your delectation and delight. In other words another puke inducing accumulation of smug pretensions by the moneyed privileged idiots that often read The Guardian. This week it is a Fashion Journo with silly glasses who lives in a maple forest in Canada. She makes pizza for the children, looks at the lake, watches bald Eagles and enjoys a Martini and knitting. How local to the UK. How relevant to their readership. Anyway here is the original piece: Have any of you read the 'What you like' column in The Guardian? If you have, you know it's just the middle classes being pretentious twats about things they have bought or services they use. If you haven't read it then it is essentially middle class twats foisting their John Lewis world and mentality upon a readership of cosy middle classes.  I loathe it. I am amongst

Phone rings. MrsD looks at the name identifier and picks up the 'phone, 'Hello Mum' 'How did you know it was me?' 'It says so on the 'phone. Remember?' 'Oh that's clever, wish ours did that....' 'It does.....' 'Never mind that.....I've got my carer now!' 'That's good.....What are they like?' 'Oh, he's lovely, looks a bit like that detective off the telly...' 'What detective off the telly? The Midsomer Murders bloke?' 'No, the bald one....you know him..... the bald one....' 'Don't know any bald detectives....' MrsD says, not thinking the reference might be years old, 'The bald one with the lollipop....Kodiak.... Kodiak, you know him.... with the lollipop.Greek man, Kodiak' 'Kodiak? You mean Kojak...?' MrsD says, The 'phone is put down but still online and MrsD can hear Mum shout, 'Alf, what's the name of the bald

Deep Dark I too have known those deep-dark distressing days Where life and love never gel ‘though who can really tell Whether Fate and Being Are playing games of trickery and damned deceit and what would be the point Of seizing on the day If all your dreams and illusions Are but founded on feet of clay?

Hushed Silence I have heard the hushed silence The familiar dawn-dreading isolation Of non-existence The isolate emptiness Of Day and Night Drawn overlong Becoming too familiar with passing minutes Then passing hours Every one passing with in an unfriendly rapid beat Dying in a heart crushing silence

Cat and Clock I am caught between Clock and cat Cooker and clock Cat and cooker Cooker and catering Catering and clock Writing and reading Reading and staring Hoping for a divine inspiration That rarely comes

Hope that this isn't too bleak.....Fell free to comment on here or on Twitter. All Mankind All mankind to the lie subscribes Which once told contains That prolix mendacity, That slimy unattractive altar      At which Faith, Fidelity And Trust does lie, Saving marriages by disallowing Trust, Faith and Fidelity let to fly. However in some the temptation Is too great to deny, They see beauty in another, and in The ensuing hue and cry Lust, which will always outweigh Love In any Philosophical debate Then sinks to a debase love-hate Oft times this then becomes ruinous and irate. A sexual attraction to which, they, The protagonists Forswear to which they cannot relate Both will then deny the hurt Foisted and Inflicted on partner or lover They, the guilty, remain sedate Luxuriant in their lustful gratification For in Truth, honesty is resistant to the lie.