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 de...

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...