What makes Rudoplh so intelligent?... His well red nose...

I was generously furnished with a Marks & Spencer Christmas cracker the other day. In keeping with their insistence on remaining decidedly Anglican even here in Hong Kong, the rancid ‘joke’ contained within made absolutely no sense to the Jung-Gwoks with whom I was enjoying a delicious if experimentally butchered chicken…

The hardest outcome of the whole affair was attempting to explain the joke to my bewildered dining companions. Inasmuch as an explanation would have been easily provided, I found myself more embattled trying to overcome that ambivalent ‘Who gives a shit?” angle from which all British people approach Christmas cracker jokes.

This got me to thinking… Have the makers of Christmas crackers decided to simply parody themselves or is there a genuine scenario where meetings are held and hands are shaken to determine which rib ticklers will cheapen our Christmas dinners (and lives…) just a little on Commercial Day?

I can only deduce that the whole thing evolved from a time when Ben Elton was unwittingly employed to scribe hilarious gags. What could have been a disaster of course proved quite the opposite as the ‘jokes’ proved something of a hit with a populous already overstimulated by wrapping paper and Paxo.

This of course means that cracker companies no longer give a toss who writes the jokes. Auld Mary takes a break from dishing out Garibaldi and watery Latte’s in the central offices of Clinton’s to contribute jokes that Ken Dodd wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire. Racist Alan in accounts with the tattoos is pretty much the only person who doesn’t get the chance to stick his oar in.

As with all things evolutionary, this same phenomenon afflicts the Christmas card industry. What once may have been a heartfelt enduring message is now a collage of curls and swirls obscuring the more important matter of who sent it and whether they’ve got your house number right…

‘To all at number 7

Wishing you Christmas cheer

And warmest love for the new year

From all at number 4’

I get the feeling you could pretty much write anything in the ‘verse’ of a Christmas card and it would go largely undetected…

‘‘Dear Anne, Merry Christmas…

I’m having an affair with a woman at work called David. I’m leaving you.

Love, Dennis xx’’

Though I cannot deny it has been lovely receiving Christmas cards and gifts from home. Each one has been received and opened with a great deal of excitement and now they rest before me in my shoebox-zoo apartment reminding me that a snowy family Christmas lies over 6000 miles away.

However, we soldier on and Rachael and I are off to Thailand for a cosy and even more secular yuletide than even my God-denying family can provide. It’s just another day and nobody makes a fuss – a million milles away from being at home…

Easier to forget how good it would be to be there.

Merry Christmas everyone!

This Is... The Year That Will Be... 2011!

2010 has been a year of surprises which have rocked us to the core. It was the year we revelled in the reunion of John Nettles and his estranged son Sting. It was also the year I developed a tendency to brutally murder – cockroaches – and the Pope appeared to endorse the use of condoms by homosexuals as they “aren’t technically human anyway”. Oh wait, that one’s actually true. Anyway, it’s hard to believe that it’s almost time for the whole Gregorian farce to roll out again! So let’s stop and pre-empt the big surprises of 2011.

Possibly the most radical shift in the English language will come about in the early months of 2011 as, courtesy of a live phone in poll mix-up, the nation votes unanimously to exchange the use of the words ‘our’ and ‘fucking’. Fox UK will use its blanket coverage of the nation’s broadcast media to share Dame Judi Dench’s foul-mouthed ‘our’ outburst that ‘Fucking our stupid population brings us closer and closer to the seemingly terminal goal of intellectual extinction. The outraged nation will be flambéed to the core.

The nation will be scalded to the core by David Cameron’s new ‘shoot to kill’ policy on the unemployed. Having initially stated that no such measures will be forthcoming, Mr. Cameron will attempt to assuage his critics by outlining the social and economic necessity of such measures. Mr. Cameron, speaking whilst dropping two slugs into a now-deceased gymslip council estate parasite’s head, will be heard to remark: “Fucking people will just have to learn to accept living in fucking difficult times” whilst foaming from the mouth.

Arguably the most raping to the core moment of 2011 will be the revelation that Nick Clegg, apparent turncoat and superfluous nipple of the Conservative Party, is in fact grizzled suspected Thatcher-killer Michael Heseltine. Heseltine, who had last been seen taking potshots at the abandoned puppies of children orphaned by landmine victims with diseases, will revel publicly in his genial decision to infiltrate “Ashdown’s shower of socialist alcoholics” and his seemingly genial ability to harvest the votes of “fucking gormless students”.

Saturday evenings will be terrorist bombed to the core in 2011 as the National Lottery Live is ruthlessly replaced by Fox’s Rational Pottery Wives. Stunned viewers will have to rely on the internet for news of a rebate on their hope-tax as Fox-BBC delves into Maureen’s Pottery Barn. Viewers will become surprisingly entranced by its struggle to balance the books through streamlined clay production and the implementation of charitable schemes for children mutilated by newly incumbent Head of State, Emperor Heseltine. Viewers will subsequently vote Maureen’s catchphrase “It were all downhill after Driving School” as the most instantly recognizable between the hours of 8 and 8.15pm on Saturday June 18^th 2011.

The Wikileaks scandal will continue to petrol-bomb the nation to its core as it is revealed that the entire economy is being artificially inflated by the tears of war widows. Dark Lord Cameron will be forced into the humiliating concession on Keith Chegwin’s Naked Angle and will outline plans to wage war with every nation possessing greater military resources than Britain; Italy will be invited to engage too so they don’t feel left out.

Finally, as is traditional, we take a look forward at those who will come back from the dead this year. This follows on from our out-of-left-field prediction from 2006 that John Darwin would park up his canoe and claim to be mad as cat’s piss instead of dead. This year, it will be the turn of renowned former theme-park owner Michael Jackson to return from the murky depths of his ‘final’ resting place in the less familiar guise of his alter-ego Janet Jackson. ‘Janet’, who hasn’t performed publicly in donkeys ages recently announced a tour kicking off in Hong Kong in mid-2011.

You heard it here first… And as you would expect it’s all bollocks

A Positive & Sensible Approach to Today in Hong Kong...

This morning is one of the good mornings to be in Hong Kong. The niggling ‘homesickness’ has been all but eradicated thanks in no small part to the hard work of a very patient Holly Sharp. Also, I’m quite aware that I could well be falling in love and am hardly haunted by the prospect. What’s more, there will be no working and no commotion for me this weekend!

I rambled back towards the MTR at Sheung Wan (which aesthetically speaking is essentially the sky grasping equivalent of a European ‘Latin Quarter’ in Hong Kong) content in the coolness brought on by the northern monsoon.

On the train, I returned the occasional clandestine glance with a fleeting smile at those probably more interested in the seemingly radioactive beaker of fresh celery juice I was cradling than in my wearied but ebullient demeanour.

Arriving in Sham Shui Po, I noticed the dank humid frenzy had yet to realise itself and instead revelled a moment in the crisp dry morning and the sight of a metropolis slowly waking to another day of frantic existence. I’m barely stiffened by the sense of schadenfreude that envelops me knowing that I’ll be withdrawing from it completely…

Today, I will go cycling in my old stomping ground of Tin Shui Wai. Having been based right in the epicentre of this bustling commercial enterprise for the last couple of months it will be something of a gift to breathe and smell the freshness of the ‘country’ air.

The cycle route we will take imposes upon you an eclectic but settling collage of the sheer variety of experiences available in Hong Kong. For large parts of the ride, the grasping sprawl of the Kingswood Villas (my former and probably most memorable ever residence) keeps a watch over you as you progress along the river and out onto the Thai-like country roads. However, as you progress the behemoth structures become increasingly diminutive which adds to the illusion that you are truly leaving the city behind of an afternoon.

Ultimately, the relative ‘wilderness’ encourages complete ambivalence towards the occasional sight of the city in the distance. Rolling across the wetland park and out over the surrounding grasslands roots up memories of cycling free and uncaring out on the back roads towards Lunan as a wee boy but for the absence of the beautiful (if eternally frostbitten) beach at the end of the journey.

For of course, there naturally has to be a negating reminder that in fact you are never truly escaping the perpetual and brutal operation required to maintain a city of seven million people and incumbent aliens. Journeys end arrives at a water treatment plant on the fringes of Yuen Long and a stark reminder that the natural beauty you were so cruelly taken in by was almost entirely etched onto canvass by a decade or two of probably reluctant town planning.

Still, at least it is there and that’s good enough for me…

Later, we will visit the Thai restaurant which Simon and I formerly referred to as our kitchen. I know it will be as much of a comfort blanket as ever given that my visit after a two month absence in August stirred me to near euphoria!

“Ngoh yiu cheng ga-lay ow yok faan m goy!”

And It Makes Me Glad, That I'm A Man. For No-One Knows What Goes On Behind Closed Doors!

As a rapidly-aging terminally-single white male, I have decided to extend myself a generous license to be increasingly concerned with how excited I get about very ‘single’ things. As with most epiphanous realisations, this was made apparent to me when faced with the rapidly-aging terminally-single white male’s greatest friend…

Campbell’s Condensed Soup for One…

There comes a point as a rapidly-aging terminally-single white male when you are required to visit the supermarket. This may be because you cannot read the menus in the local restaurants and are afraid of ordering balls. Or it may be because you’ve decided to try making some delicious hors d’ouvres to devour as you weep yourself to a lonely sleep at night. Either way, one thing is certainly going to happen…

You’ll walk around the supermarket a few times, stopping maybe once or twice to glance at the chilled meats and convince yourself you might make a quick ‘spag-bol’. You might trawl the fruit and vegetables section and fancy harking back to the vegetarian days by manufacturing a wee lasagne. But we both know you’re wasting your time…

Even above the bastardised reconstituted Anglo-pop being spewed from the tannoy, a low-pitched voice – perfectly tuned to your degenerating ear canals – emanates out over the din. You can fight it all you want, but those persuasive calls saying ‘eat me you social pariah’ and ‘you’re never lonely when I’m with you’ will eventually draw you over to the tinned food section…

In the United Kingdom, the canned soup section of a supermarket is like a ‘Shaun of the Dead’ style meeting point for spaced out zombified single men analysing salt contents in case their lives should some day become worth extending. However, in Hong Kong all single men work 22 hours to prevent themselves from facing up to their worthless existence with a piece of rope and a high building. Therefore, the gargantuan display of red and white pots of gold appears before you undisturbed and untarnished as if a beautiful and entrancing wonder of the natural world.

So many flavours. So much variety... So much excitement!...

There’s no point in resisting! This will be the high point in your week assuming you’ve already become too apathetic to masturbate. That’s why once you’ve calmed yourself down and made a sensible choice of soup, you’ll insist upon complimenting it with the perfect long-life ‘bread for one’ from the GM bakery section. Of course, you can look all you want but your choice will be motivated by that four word beacon to the rapidly-aging terminally-single white male…

Suitable for Home Freezing!...

With all this variety, it is important not to succumb to over-stimulation and sensory overload. It is important at this point also to calm yourself and prepare for the most incongruous and disappointing aspect of shopping in Hong Kong when compared with the UK. Back home, you’d walk up and down surveying the checkouts trying to make an informed choice. You’re not looking for the pretty or the delicately figured, just the girl who looks like she might offer up a few bantering quips or pass you an uncaring but – to you – meaningful ‘everything will work out alright in the end’ smile…

However, in Hong Kong you already know that the only expressions you can share in either of your languages are ‘Do you have a loyalty card?’ or ‘Do you need a bag?’. There will be no smile forthcoming and you will only be able to drag out the ‘loyalty club’ banter for one or two stumbling words of Cantonese before you retire humbled…

But take heart oh rapidly-aging terminally-single white male. When you return to the private bliss of your ‘pad’, slip back the clothes of your delicious red and white houseguest and survey the welcoming beauty of the fruits of the Earth contained within, you can be sure of one thing…

Soup for two just takes too long in the microwave anyway…

(This post does not reflect my thoughts and feelings towards my present situation' I refuse to believe I could ever become too apathetic to masturbate...)

Hot Pot! Hong Kong's Food Porn...

In small Scottish towns, the only time people really gather together en masse is to daub graffiti on the walls of mosques saying ‘English Go Home’ (…?...) or to petrol bomb the family homes of suspected paedophiles and rumoured lottery winners. Moreover, it usually requires the death of an especially contemptible but wealthy relative and the promise of a free and luxurious wake banquet to encourage people to eat together in large numbers. Thankfully, this is not the case in Hong Kong.

The greatest opportunity for gluttony in Hong Kong presents itself in the many delectable ‘all you can eat hotpot’ restaurants generously splashed throughout the territory. These restaurants are essentially bruised retail units within irreversibly paralysed shopping malls but benefit quite remarkably form the delusional grandeur offered by a few rolls of chintz and a generous smattering of garish stereotypical Canton artworks…

The hotpot itself is essentially a boiling pot of stock which sits on a table-top cooker and bubbles busily into the night. The needlessly discerning customer then deliberates over which delicacies they would like to add to it and boil the bejaysus out of during the four hours of culinary insanity…

The food typically arrives as part of a sumptuously stacked mountain which is placed beside your table with the implied instruction to do whatever the hell you like with it. There are meatballs, strips of meat, meat on sticks, sticks on meat and even meat wrapped around meatballs. Oh yeah… There’s also a large array of vegetables and noodles on offer should you require some obstacles in your search for meat!

Meat, meatety, meat meat!

Hotpot is also a mightily educational experience. For example, I found out the other day that one of the worst deaths a prawn can have is to have a big stick ramned up through the arsehole region until it is poking through the scrambled brain before waiting an intolerable time for the apathetic gourmand to slop you mercilessly into the boiling bisque of doom. Worse still is the prolonged and agonising ascension to crustacean Nirvana should the stock be at a less than piping temperature!

Furthermore, it has taught me that if you are not careful, you could easily end up eating balls! Not the (arguably) harmless meatballs discussed earlier but actual ‘and this is where babies come from…’ balls! I’m confident the underlying sociology of my displeasure at the thought of indulging in balls is apparent enough to not require further discussion. But suffice to say, I just don’t want to be confronted with the realisation that something which personally brings me so much pleasure and potentially so much pain tastes ‘a little bit like beancurd’…

The very mention of beancurd inspires me to offer a warning that, if you are someone who believes appearance and taste must align when it comes to food then hotpot may not be for you. As mouth-watering as it all looks when it arrives at the table, almost everything comes out of the soup looking like old clothes being dredged from a murky muddied river. The prime example of this is beancurd sheet which at the best of times looks like old womanly forearm skin. It’s hard to salivate when this jaundiced mass is gingerly ladled from the soup and then carelessly flopped into your bowl like a mangled prostate in the hands of a keyhole-surgeon…

Of course, there is an additional element to the hotpot gathering which renders any interest in the appearance of your food irrelevant. And that joyous extra is ‘all you can drink’ beer! Admittedly, the beer is of questionable origin and may simply be the fermented piss of mainland alcoholics. However, I can guarantee that it really does the number on you when liberally consumed between portions of sheep meat and potentially dead crayfish.

But ultimately, the real jewel in the crown of the hotpot gathering is the opportunity to converge together in a civil but merry round table formation and get down to some seriously good nattering. The eclectic mix of western and local people I’m fortunate enough to enjoy these evenings with makes for some really good times and I find as I leave the ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ restaurants I’m already looking forward to my next hotpot experience…

But if you think I’ll be eating balls you can suck my beancurds!...

The One In Which Dad Bought An iPad!

My father recently purchased an Apple iPad. To the best of my knowledge, this means he can now reverse his vasectomy and obtain up to the minute information about the weather in Turkmenistan from the comfort of his vibrating armchair. If the overwhelming sycophancy being liberally spooned over this gadget is to be believed, then it seems likely that those who opt not to buy one will be survival-challenged or worse within a matter of months. However, I for one am willing to take that chance…

At present in Hong Kong it is the mid-Autumn festival. Essentially, this is an opportunity for Hong Kong people to eat somewhat unpalatable ‘Moon Cakes’ and suffer the horrors of an additional day of rest. Swarms of children roam the streets confused by this notion of a day off and struggling to come to terms with life out of uniform. Middle managers, like rampaging Scottish jaikies, conduct hastily convened meetings and rant at abandoned items of office furniture to satiate their chills at not being able to middle manage for the day…

For me, it is extremely important every once in a while to just switch off the mobile, shut down Facebook (imagine that…), abandon the emails and kick back in solitude and contemplation. And yet I still find myself in my sub-technological wilderness wondering whether anyone has updated their status on Facebook or pondering how many emails I have received offering to make my penis more presentable and penetrating to the opposite sex…

It simply seems to be the case that most of us find it incredibly difficult to accept either (a) our ability to be good company for ourselves or (b) the notion that life will go on even if we don’t get a Twitter notification from Karl from Neighbours lamenting to presence of a pube in his soup…

Possibly the greatest ally to this point is the existence and continued popularity of the Bluetooth earpiece. I find these things horrific! Last Chinese New Year, I encountered a father in a theme park bouncing his child along on his shoulders whilst conducting a minor-league business meeting. I found myself thinking: ‘Cant that wait?’…

But Bluetooth adds to this illusion that we must all be immediately available at all times to anyone who wishes to contact us. I heard a woman on the MTR berating someone for not answering her calls ‘yesterday’ and asking the person ‘where you be a?’ It turns out yesterday was a Sunday and thus both she and the caller were observing a day off and so the call could… nay should… have waited…

I knew a guy from Montrose who had a Bluetooth headset but was also famously antisocial. Factoring in the cost of the headset, the rental fees and the funeral costs, all he got for his £4500 investment was a haunting awareness that nobody wanted to be around him and a brain tumour the size of a Chechnyan landmine. But no matter how hard we tried to put it to him, he remained reticent to decry the Bluetooth headset as a redundant indulgence…

This brings me back to the iPad. My knowledge on the subject remains as hazy as my opening gambit might imply, but I believe the user subscribes to information in the form of ‘apps’. Now this to me sounds like an abridged term used by self-indulgent tossers to refer to some trendy holiday island as in ‘Yeah, me Mousey and Davie T. totally kicked the fuck of two arsehole bandits when we were in Apps last year. It was banging!’. But these ‘apps’ can be as curious as a ‘Magic Pen’ app where you can write the word ‘FUCK’ in Belgian on your iPad and only Sir Ian McKellen will be able to see it. Or there is one where Jeremy Clarkson will call out bingo numbers in inappropriately racist accents. Who couldn’t live without that?!

I for one will be sticking to my $289HKD mobile phone with no internet and a scratch in the shape of a wee boner on the top left of the screen. I don’t mean to sound self-congratulatory because I’m sure that I am missing out as a result of not being privy to the latest information at the touch of a button (or swerve of a swirling digit across a silken screen). However, when the bulk of that information is as erroneous as having Charlotte Church tweet that she ‘sicked all down herself lasr night’ I have to question whether I don’t deserve a little pat on the back…

On My First Couple of Weeks Being Mister Garr-Finn and Mister Gay-Fun!

Well it’s been one full week and half of another since I started my job as the one Western brother in two kindergartens in the north of Hong Kong – a lifetime away from the hustle and throng.

The worst part of work is I live in the city so must take the train and that sure is a pity for my patience unending is tested at length to the point where I really must beg for the strength. Who decided this city of ‘never-walk-straighters’ should be put in charge of free morning papers? And why is it so hard to look back in inspection before suddenly brutally changing direction?

But it’s nice to reach work and not have to cuss at the tangled position I’ve stood on the bus in this place where five foot ten is the norm where seats must be queued for the second you’re born.

I work nine ‘til two on three of my days and for about seven hours in the other place so it’s hardly a stress but NO… HANG ABOOT!... I’ve just been told that change is afoot. For two of those days I must now work ‘til three but for three times my wage which is alright by me! Before sharpening your knives in angst at the ease of my new working schedule take a moment and please consider the down sides to of the job that I do, believe me there’s many but here are a few…

My tip from the top if you’ve pricked up an ear and consider you might want to try this career is take all that’s sibilant, fricative too and cast it away from the lessons you do. The sea of saliva these sounds will create shall be cast from the mouths as the cherubs orate and you’ll startle with fricative sibilant hate as you lose all control and spit out a ‘FFFUCK SSSSAKE!’.

And when they request you be closely attending do not even think about crouching or bending for the moment you do the unknowing rotters explode from within with a volley of snotters. When posted far north I was told of the scenery, was this what they meant when they talked up the greenery?

A further lament concerns arriving in the morning and catching the sight of a child without warning whose outermost layers once brilliantly white are now caked in his meal from the previous night. This is a hazard of first week nerves and a sight to behold that no-one deserves. I feel for the auxiliary staff most I’d say for their job is to spirit the vomit away. I thought I’d be polite and buy them a cake but they were diabetic and made the mistake of cutting it up for some children aged four who gobbled it up and then threw up once more…

Then there’s the problem of going to the can which is awkward for me given I am a man. In a mainly female working space the ladies staff toilet is quite commonplace but for the occasional man who enters the fray he is not welcome there in any way. Imagine my horror imagine my gloom at being told I’d have use the little boys room! And so when I go to bog in one school I have to sit down for a piss or a stool for the walls of the booth are about four feet high which is more than two feet from the height of my eye. There’s one adult sized toilet that I’m grateful for as the ones for the kids are a foot from the floor!

But if that’s as bad as it gets who’s complaining? I’m still positive even though it is raining. I just went down to the convenience store where a man and a woman were on the shop floor and he seemed determined to garner her number but she seemed determined she wouldn’t cave under. She relented as I left and read her number off and reminded him squarely ‘This is business… not love!’…

Hong Kong is fucked up!...

An Ode To Sane Capitalist & His Contempt of Socialism

I awoke as I make love – quietly… from above - to see that all hallmarks of me as I’d been were lodged tentatively there in my spleen and were not at that moment being directed into the hands of someone unexpected or laundered by someone so reproduced copies can make millionaires just by dealing in poppies. What had turned a desultory toast to a meal so divine it spoke sound of our host into an evening of wine and rambunction, hangover heads and hepatic destruction?

I looked around for evidence and it was there, bottles of wine and bile everywhere. Something was tying knots in my meninges and tugging so hard on those fibrous fringes. I surveyed the room to distract me from thinking of working and sleeping and spewing and drinking. And there was diversion asleep on the floor, a folded up Metro from the morning before.

I barely perused the small ads and the sport and I paid little heed to the gardening report for I knew in my mind what deserved rumination and soon I arrived at my favourite location. The Your Letters page where treasures abound and where reasoned opinion can never be found. And there as if cued was a pearl of opinion presented herein without power of dominion…

“I see that another man has gone on the rampage in China, killing 11 people with his tractor. I can only imagine that years of oppressive socialism has worn his mind down until he eventually flipped. It’s obvious that socialism makes people neglect their responsibilities to others. That’s probably why we’re seeing such strange behaviour coming out of the People’s Republic of China”

Sane Capitalist, Glasgow

There was something amiss or something not right, I checked it again it was there black and white. Socialists neglect their duty to others so roam in their tractors and butcher their brothers? Surely the very definition of the word would render a viewpoint like this as absurd. But there in the print of the Metro it read, Sane Capitalist’s account for eleven all dead.

I travelled by train at a modest expense to the city of Glasgow in light of events. I wanted to source the source of this quote and understand why he’d plain missed the boat. Such sweeping rhetoric and such bold assumption led me to the equally flippant presumption that I must be dealing with some millionare or a cad of convenience too wealthy to care.

My initial inquiry presented two leads which I roundly dismissed as insane by degrees but as time whittled down and nothing presented I thought of these targets and quickly relented…

The first was a man who was one foot and four at least when I measured him drunk on the floor. He stirred as I knelt to the smell of the gin that I placed as an incentive under his chin. ‘I ain’t heard of this man’ he said with a start then laughed at graffiti mistaken as art. Apparently, he endeavoured to sleep at the GOMA but struggled to find it in drunken scotoma. I tossed him a fiver to soften his din and he paid me it back in pursuit of the gin.

The second a woman proclaimed only this, “The chap you pursue is as mad as cats piss”. I took it as read I should still check it out and that’s pretty much what I then set about. I waited and waited as she tried to recall where it was that she had seen him at all. And then in a flash she bore forth her knowledge and said she had slept with him once while at college. From a pram by her side she presented a child with hair like Karl Marx that was dressed like Kim Wilde. ‘This little girl is my wee Billie-Jayne and my only real tie to the one you call Sane’.

She made me a note of his last known address and I gave her a fiver that smelled of drunks piss. The fiver was tucked in her smoke damaged bra and she said in broad Scots ‘Da gijn near ‘im ava’. For those unrehearsed in this Doric and drawl that roughly means ‘Don’t go near him at all’.

But travel I did to the stated abode which carried a sign stating ‘Mortgage Foreclosed’. The neighbour came out, a nosy old bitch who was near apoplectically desperate to snitch. She called me inside where she poured up some tea and suddenly turned all Miss Marple on me…

“If you’re looking for John then you don’t yet know he hides in a cellar and edits the Metro. It started off really as a minor league joke but he got a real kick out of riling the folk so he submitted five made up letters a day each one being insane in a different way. Word on the street is that people felt grief at reading his letters that beggared belief. And so when they found out that house was his home they drove him away to his bunker alone. He told me he felt at times like he was Hitler but I’m not so sure as his dog is much littler”.

I decided from then on to take to my boots and leave Sane Capitalist to his nonsense pursuit. But now if you’re reading that old letters page try not to burden yourself with a rage. If something seems stupid or racist or lame then I know the face of the man and the name. Next time the letterhead cries in large font ‘Socialists to Blame for the Pope Looking Gaunt’, stay nice and calm and don’t lose lucidity think of Sane in his bunker and toast his stupidity!

The Rise & Fall Of The Vagina Monologues (Demo)

I Have A Great Idea! Let's Get Naked Yuen Long!

Whenever I head down onto Hong Kong island itself, I become very conscious of the fact I am a Westerner. The grandfathers dangling out of the whorehouses and the fat old American ladies ranting about the quality of their $50HK desserts instil in me the belief that I should be a shining example of Western cultural acceptance. Not that this is always effective...

Last night however, I was not down on Hong Kong Island and was instead enjoying a single pint with a Western and Chinese person in a bar in Yuen Long; a town famous for seafood, gangsters, prostitutes and the Porky Pig Portuguese BBQ Restaurant.

After a ‘delicious’ dinner of pork fried rice (a mercilessly hacked Matteson’s Smoked Sausage in dry rice), we decided the evening was still young enough to merit an old times sake trip to our favourite local bar. Naturally, we had to play the dice game…

This game is uber popular in Hong Kong, a place where boring, stupid and pointless shite invariably becomes eligible for hero worship. Basically, each player rattles their dice around in a cup and then make projections of how many dice display a given number. Yes… it is pish*!

As dull as this game is, everyone seems to see playing it as acceptable and enjoyable entertainment for a Saturday night. Though I guess in a place where a shot of beer can inspire a frenzied vomiting session, having to take a drink if you lose is a pretty punishing and therefore high stakes thing to avoid.

Probably more popular than the dice game is the use of rock, paper scissors to resolve all of life’s great little moments of indecisiveness. Take for example this little scenario which uses actual Chinglish names…

COW: Darling, there’s something I want to talk about.

OPEN-DAY: (Rattles dice furiously) Six fours la.

COW: Just a moment Open-Day, I’ve been working eight days a week and I think I’ve saved up enough money. I think we should have a baby. I call you on six fours!

OPEN-DAY: Well we do only have a two bedroom house which we share with your parents, my parents a maid and four of our cousins. With all that spare room perhaps we could try for twins?

BOTH: Yat (One), yi (Two), sam (Three) … (Standard rock, paper, scissors hand-actions)

(Open-Day’s scissors beat Cow’s paper and for some reason this means they will be adding another bunk-bed in the maid’s room. Having lost the dice game, Open Day takes a gulp of pish beer and falls forward in a pool of his own digestive juices).

So as I say, I always worry about being perceived as a raucous irritable Westerner by the locals. However, taking a drink is not a punishment for Gallic people and so we decided we had to add a new dimension to the dice game (Remember the dice game in Yuen Long? This is a story about the dice game in Yuen Long?). So we decided to play strip dice game.

With alarming haste, I seemed to be down to my socks, jeans (unbelted) and t-shirt within a matter of minutes. In a cold bar like that, I’d picked the wrong night to go commando and I had my fear on that I would soon be exposed to the elements in every way. The chances of my defeat were enhanced by the fact one participant was wearing more jewellery than a chav in a registry office.

Mercifully, Simon ‘enjoys’ the most remarkable bad luck when it comes to these games! And so, the game concluded with me standing topless and sockless taking the all too important commemorative photo of Si’ sitting with his trousers round his ankles.

As bizarre as this modification of the dice game may have seemed, it seemed we were the only people in the bar who found it remotely novel. For the entire duration of our ‘risque and embarrassing’ game, at worst all we inspired were a few confused giggles from a group of Chinese guys which all died down after they drank shots of beer and sank into unconsciousness.

There’s something to love about such anonymity and I must confess, I am not looking forward to returning to Scotland. I wonder if the Chong-Hing Bank would afford me a loan to move my family and friends here?...

Oops… I forgot… They’re not really a bank…

*Why is the word pish not in my Microsoft Word dictionary?!

'Wait A Minute: Speed, Employment & Year One In Hong Kong'

If I have one hangover from my university days, it is definitely my enthusiasm for the underlying psychologies and sociologies of individuals and micro- macro-societies during World War II. I always wondered how people felt when they were unburdened from the hardline bureaucratic governance of the National Socialists. Having now completed my contract with an un-named educational foundation, I really think I’ve come a long way towards understanding how these people must have felt. Not just how they felt at the demise of Hitler, but also at the demise of his altogether more brutal and underhand henchmen. As I now spiral into (albeit temporary) unemployment, leave my home and bid goodbye to some firmly bonded friendships formed over the last few year, I am quite aware that I should really be off the charts of the Stress Index. And yet, as with all those people who made the best of a bad lot during the Hitler years, I find myself thankful for all those things that made it a good year! I find myself trying to think of one word to best sum up my time in Hong Kong… And if pressed, I think I would have to go for the word… Speed! I arrived in Hong Kong, and will leave it to, on a fairly risqué dosage of amphetamine. Before I make the front page of the Daily Mail (Young Asian Immigrant Junkie Is Not to Be Trusted, Says God) I should point out that this was entirely endorsed by my physician. And by all accounts, he was fairly likely to be the friend of someone whose cousin was once a doctor. So the whole thing was legitimate. My next encounter with speed was with my new employer. Her thinking was so fast that she claimed to know everything about me before having met me and I became suspicious that we may well have had the same physician*. In the face of the ultra-speedy Hong Kong, I was always impressed that she tried to slow it down for me by constantly saying: ‘WAIT A MINUTE! WAIT A MINUTE!’ But then these are just details la! One of the most remarkable things about the speedy city of Hong Kong is that it possesses some of the slowest people on the planet. People will dance behind you like a hypoglycaemic child in frustration at not being able to pass you in the street, they will then reach V2 (Note to self: Confirm this with Cesca) as they go past before developing a strange form of Werner Syndrome as they overtake you which makes them slower than a fat senescent man in a diving suit. ‘WAIT A MINUTE! WAIT A MINUTE!’ This all changes of course when the same people are taking the train. The Mass Transit Railway (MTR) is Hong Kong’s speedy and efficient underground rail network. At most, you have to wait four minutes for a train. However, in the ultra-fast city of Hong Kong four minutes is too long to wait. So even if an osteoperosis suffering antique is poised gingerly inside the door of the train, giant hulks of human beings will pay them scant regard and instead use them as their emergency handbrake as they thrust themselves onto the train to save a moment or two. Arseholes! ‘WAIT A MINUTE! WAIT A MINUTE!’ Yes… Let’s take a minute. A minute to remember the promise made before around sixty other people and I came to Hong Kong that we would enjoy a culturally mediated introduction to employment in Hong Kong. Let’s take a minute to remember the absolute dread that anyone from the foundation might visit my school and make grinding assertions about my moral character and personality. And let’s devote another minute to think of the poor kids who came over at great expense to be fucked over at further expense by a deluded individual whose misguided appropriation of power and delusional self-belief borders on psychopathy**! * In no way do I claim that this individual abuses or has ever abused drugs; only their position. ** I have used the term psychopath in reference to an individual whose own convictions completely and utterly fail to accommodate the obdurate reality of the world.

You Are Worthriss Aric Bawdrin, You Are Worthriss Aric Bawdrin!

I always found it difficult to sleep as a child. For up to four hours a night the eldest sister of the kids upstairs would fight a losing (and what seemed an emotionally breaking battle) to keep her siblings in check. Then, just as she was beginning to flag her parents would come back pished as farts from the pub and kick the shit out of each other for a few hours.

Simpler times…

On the nights when the carnage and the domestic violence gave way to psychological torment and unconsciousness, I would usually dose off around eleven. However, just as I was beginning to drift off into slumber, my bedroom door would invariably flash full with light and the behemoth figure of my mother would appear as an arm-raised silhouette in the doorway.

Held aloft in her hands were my dad’s ‘good shoes’ which when he was on the nightshift doubled up as arachnid destroyers. The shoe would be thrust into my hands and I’d plead for a night where I didn’t have to kill something! Maybe I could move in with the domestic abusers upstairs?

But I was never allowed to… I’d gingerly grasp the shoe taking care not to brush my hands against the splattered remains of the previous intruder’s mashed carcass! A gargantuan task given that we lived next door to a dampened wood collector and so spiders were aplenty seemingly destined to be fed to my dad’s shoes…

I’d approach the ‘beast’ which in reality was nowhere close to meeting the claimed dish-size of the spider in my mother’s head. Nonetheless, she would not be satiated until she saw blood on the carpet and guts on the ol’ size nines!

Fast forward to the present day and I find myself faced with a similar quandary. My housemate Simon and I are both of a similar school of thought on small animals; no killing. However, that has all gone out of the window now that there is a cockroach the size of my fucking thumb darting around our kitchen.

It’s 2am… If ever there was a city where you could get pest control products at this hour it would have to be Hong Kong. However, as a certified lazy bastard I’m reluctant to go out and find out.

And so in a full scale shift from my Dr. Dolittle ethos of not harming anything great or small, I find myself maniacally musing over the best way to murder the little bastard. I’ve never been in the scouts but I read that in between beatings and learning to be a lame-ass, they learn to be resourceful with what is around them…

So after a quick sweep of the flat I find that the most homicidal substances available in our flat are (1) Adidas Power Deoderant (2) Mr. Jackson Lemon Pine Toilet Cleaner and (3) Old red wine. In an instantaneous act of cruel thinking, I lay a small pool of bleach on the work surface, rustle up some courage by glugging at the surely mouldy wine and then spray the shit out of the roach with the Adidas Power Deoderant.

Now given that those little bastards can probably survive a nuclear explosion I felt compelled to spray it pretty comprehensively. The plan was to get it pissed on the alcohol before the more deadly repercussions of being doused at close range in body corroding chemicals became apparent.

The roach, possibly sensing the game was up, made a dash for the top of the cupboards and bloody made it too! When I’m as trolleyed as he must’ve been I can barely walk horizontally – but he had a plan to go vertical and what’s more he managed to follow it through. This again is something I couldn’t do if I was that drunk.

And so it all ended in an embarrassing scenario where I broke into a game of catch-out. I found myself salivating wildly as I turned out the lights then moments later turned them on in an auroric flash of anticipation; but the roach never appeared…

He could be dead…

He could be alive… Plotting and planning my demise from the ragged dried cornflake edges of my cereal bowl. As I write he could be amassing an army of cockroach cunts ready to ambush me upon my return home…

And what’s more, he’ll have so much Adidas Power Deoderant on that he’ll not even break a sweat!

Jimmy... I Hope You Haven't Been Campaigning for Social Justice Again?...

As the United Kingdom prepares to go the polls today, a veritable furore of disinterest towards the election pervades here in Hong Kong. As was to be expected, people are hardly drawing their eyes away from joyous afternoons monitoring their shares to see who out of Clegg, Brown and Cameron looks like flying past the post.

So, in the interest of drumming up something of a political atmosphere in my college, I decided to have a week of politically charged conversational activities with the students. It has cost me a fucking fortune in muffins and panettoné! However, it was worth it given some of the opinions that were expressed during our exchanges…

I started off with the gentle introductory questions inquiring what the students like, dislike and would want to change about Hong Kong. I groaned in resignation as the students respectively responded with shopping, mainland Chinese people and a desire to have more money and success.

Anticipating a long hour, I bit into the bleeding sore of a finger lickin’ good cherry panettoné and asked… Do you think Hong Kong should be a liberal democracy? I built a reservoir of mashed cake in my cheek ready to chew the predicted silence into sugary trans-fat oblivion.

‘NO!...’

All hell broke lose! Partly digested panettoné danced clumsily across the table as I failed blindly to ruminate on the unexpected chorus of negatives I had just heard…

‘No…’ I said, accentuating my disbelief.

‘If we have liberal democracy, people who are irresponsible and poorly informed will vote. Furthermore, people will vote for people because of them and not because of what they are saying they will do’…

This response was even more remarkable than the song of disapproval towards liberal democracy. For one thing, I usually cannot coax a sentence from most of my students without the words descending into a chorus of giggling and embarrassment. Also, most students recoil in horror at the thought of saying something in English to a native speaker; especially in from of their friends.

The enthusiasm and reasoned opinion of this student struck me as remarkable when considered against the image of the politically mobile young person in Hong Kong. Here, the media have conveniently labelled anyone with a degree of political energy under the age of thirty the “post-80’s” generation. And as you’d expect with the news media, the rationed, objective, passionate and intelligent connotations of this label have been overlooked in favour of the negatives.

The “post-80’s” are seen as a nuisance and a threat by older generations and also by many who fall into the category on an age basis. For them, a politically mobile youth in Hong Kong presents a challenge to a social order that keeps most “post-80’s” objectors nailed to their desk for twelve or more hours a day. Apparently, people want democracy but seem less than willing to push for better terms than those plied and moulded in Beijing.

In my opinion, Hong Kong should be proud of its young people. Before they’ve fully learned to stop pishing themselves, the poor children of Hong Kong are thrust into piano lessons, intimidating school interviews and six day weeks in the most needlessly disciplinarian education system. Who doesn’t let five year olds drink water when it’s 30° and 95% relative humidity?

From there, it’s high pressure exams, long (after) school days and supplementary weekend activities during which you spend your days militarizing your memory retention skills under the leaden burden of familial expectation. I swear I saw a fourteen year old kid going bald the other day and even then it was probably from daily beatings lest his parents end up on the streets in old age…

For this is the major problem with Hong Kong. Parents are motivated as much by a desire for their child to do well as by a desire to secure a cushy nest egg for their future. If the kid is a dumbass and they don’t raise enough money to support themselves then it’s an old age spent pushing cardboard around a city that doesn’t give a shit!

‘Cheers we needed the old cardboard, have a pension of less than £80 a month!’

If I had this kind of pressure hanging over me, my parents would be floating in a canal somewhere next to my guilty corpse and the rotted remains of the entire teaching staff of Arbroath Academy; the latter being drug addled but through no fault of my own.

Hong Kong needs to learn to be proud of these “post-80’s” kids and to recognise their remarkable resilience to a life and expectation cycle that would make strong men lose their minds. They should be lauded for showing an interest in their politics that is not echoed in their counterparts in more democratised nations. Instead, I fear the negative connotations attached to these fine young foot soldiers will drive them closer to the dire line of social stagnation. My young respondent will see the pointlessness of fighting the bigger birds and perch on the perch of middle of the road comfort…

Oh well… Perhaps they have Liberal Democrats in Hong Kong too…

"There's Something Different About Blanche..."

During the cold anti-social months when I was a teenager, my days were moulded around three things; Neighbours, Emmerdale and Coronation Street. You could even throw Home & Away into that mixer until the very bizarre ‘Alf has psychosis’ storyline rendered it unwatchable. Not that the others were of a better standard of course…

I remember one Neighbours episode which revolved entirely around a dream sequence. This of course is not immediately unusual until I add that the whole thing was done from the perspective of Bouncer the dog.

Also, as much as Emmerdale and Coronation Street are ripe for ridicule, it would be a sin to write on this theme and not pay special credence to Neighbours’ ‘evil Harold’ storyline. For those of you not in the know, Harold Bishop is a God-fearing moral mentor played by a God hating bike loving party addict called Ian Smith.

His descent into evil occurred after he became convinced that that BASTARD Paul Robinson was responsible for the plane crash (ahem…) that killed his family. Of course, everyone but Harold was happy to know his family was dead as they were rotten to the core as characters and as actors.

I don’t watch Neighbours any more of course. The move to channel 5 rendered it unwatchable given that I live in Aberdeen where the only signals we receive are those from the Lord above telling us to have sex with our livestock and then marry our cousins.

My discontent with the more TV signal friendly soaps such as Emmerdale and Coronation stems not from their unbelievable storylines, but from their insistence on cutting and pasting reality into fiction.

This week, Coronation Street viewers ‘will be shocked and saddened’ by the surprise death of Deidre’s mother; the Gillian Duffy-like prejudiced windbag Blanche. I’m sorry but have these fucking people been living in a wind tunnel? The wonderful actress who plays Blanche, Maggie Jones, passed away about a year ago!

For the TV bosses of course, this is television gold given that the actors and actresses express the rawest emotion imaginable. Those who wouldn’t normally watch the show, do so out of intrigue to follow up on what they’ve read in the news. For others, it’s an opportunity to see which cast members bleat so weakly that you can tell they thought the person was an arsehole.

I hate this kind of shit though! For me, if they are going to augment fiction with reality then they have to go the whole hog. Entire Coronation Street storylines would be neutralised if, instead of someone saying ‘Eddie, I had sexual intercourse with your brother and a duck and now I’m not sure whether our son’s big nose is because of that or the radiation leak from the plane that crashed on t’ street the other day’; the characters would simply say ‘Shut the fuck up Doreen… I’m trying to watch Eastenders!

Similarly, characters should be given license to rip the pish out of each other. For example, if she’s still in it, the cast of Emmerdale should just turn round and say to Patsy Kensit something like ‘I got an erection once watching your sex scene in Qaudrophenia’.

Ultimately, I prefer my soaps to stick with absolute hyper-nonsense. Such as in Neighbours when Harold’s adopted son Paul went off to become a big star playing Australian rules football for a team that doesn’t actually exist; after negotiating an addiction to steroids of course! Or there was the storyline where his neighbour Jack Scully returned from a less than successful spell playing professional football for the great English Premier League; the likely reason for his lack of success being that the team he was playing for (Barnsford) doesn’t actually exist.

So to all those who write for television soaps, I beg you to reconsider when you prepare an in-show homage to your dead. Instead of burying them for all eternity, follow the Australian model of complete ridiculousness and employ a new actor to take the place of the dear departed. If you want to follow the Australian model, perhaps you could replace the deceased with an actor who looks nothing like the person or go nuts and change their gender or species entirely.

When you see past the jocular racism, those Australians have got it bloody all right!

Johnson Johnson and Jackson Johnson Are Right!

In my home town there are at least 25,000 people, many of whom all share the surname Cargill. There’s Bill Cargill who runs the ice-cream parlour; he only sells vanilla ice-cream and thinks that white people are just all-right! Johnson Cargill is our local policeman and he has a zero tolerance policy on crime. Only last week he beat an elderly woman to death with a salmon because she drank bacon juice from an old boot on a Sunday.

Okay, I’m kind of paraphrasing from the Blazing Saddles-esque train of thought coursing through my mind. But as we delve back inside the pages of Arbroath’s local paper, you’ll maybe notice that my town is quite close to being my own little Rock Ridge.

Even though the town of Arbroath is still anxiously behind in the pursuit of scientific and social enlightenment – just the four ‘witches’ executed this week by the by – let it not be said that the good people at the local paper are bereft of a sense of humour. Embedded into an article on a local couple’s 54 hour alternative journey following the grounding of all planes due to the ash cloud of sensationalism; an advertisement for luxury coach travel. Brilliant!

In more pressing news, an apparently effective solution has finally been found for the enduring seagull problem in the town. This is great news as reports from home suggest that the previous tactic of engaging in constant man-seagull circle of deaths was proving to be time consuming and utterly insane.

Apparently, the method of choice is to scare the birds away. This of course will not involve the kind of abusive, racist and unacceptable social behaviour employed by the locals to scare away unwanted (i.e. foreign) people. Instead, the town council have employed the services of a team of hawks to drive away the birds.

Ultimately, the aim is to stop the birds from breeding, thus reducing the population dramatically over the next five years. Previous attempts involved getting the seagulls when they were young and telling them how having children early would ruin their lives. The town elders also insisted that welfare officials arranged weekly sexual awareness appointments for all seagulls.

The plans initially fell by the wayside when it was determined that the seagulls spoke worse English than ‘the Polish’ and were fully abandoned when the gymslips complained about the shameless seagull shagging sessions that had begun to characterise a trip to the family planning clinic.

For those of you who wish to support local opine, the paper’s website carries a poll asking whether employing falcons and hawks can help reduce the gull population in the town. Options include the traditional ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘let’s just put our faith in God and have a good old pray’.

The adjoining comment box also offers the opportunity to really sink your teeth into this issue. At present, the dominating comments on the issue are ‘Jimbo Cargill…whaur’s ma fuckin’ maintnins munny’ and ‘Britney Cargill hiz nae tits!’

Finally, and I feel I should tread carefully here if you pardon the pun, Johnston Ralston (really…) writes that there have been further developments in the sewage leak story carried by the newspaper in recent weeks. My favourite thing about Ralston’s story is his potentially accidental revelation that all is not harmonious amongst the staff at Herald Towers…

Hoping to uncover some ‘straight from the horses mouth’ journalistic gold from the visiting inspectors of Scottish Water, Ralston bitterly states that ‘unfortunately, by the time our reporter got to the scene the Scottish Water workmen had already left’. Sadly, the paparazzi potential of our local hacks is massively hindered by the fact that almost all of them are either clinically dead or have long since forgotten that they are in fact journalists.

Like most people, I don’t want to detect bitter undercurrents of staff tension in my local leader. I want to read about damaged farming equipment crushing a cow or Maureen and Alec celebrating 60 years of wedded bliss (read… misery). You missed the scoop Ralston… Take it like a man…

You missed the scoop.

"Dawkins May Well Be Supremely Fucked" say Cardinals

In the week that Richard Dawkins mooted the arrest and probably the execution of Pope Benedict XVI, does anyone now find it somewhat alarming that the United Kingdom is presently burdened under a static plague of volcanic ash?

‘No… Too Jewish!...’ I hear you say…

Perhaps it is, but in these days of irreligious headlines like ‘Anarchic Kids Knife Blind Priest’ (Daily Telegraph), ‘Blind Priest Defending Orphaned Puppies Killed by Immigrants’ (Daily Mail) and ‘Massive Tits!’ (The Sun), do increasing incidences of superbugs (Daily Mail), immigrant crime (Daily Mail), teenage anarchy (Daily Mail) and ‘Leaking Plastic Tits!’ (The Sun) suggest a need to re-evaluate whether we’ve backed the right horse God-wise?

Many people would argue that we should get in with God whilst we still have the chance. As allies go, he’s second only to the Chinese in terms of power and resources. However, Tony Blair did of course employ God as a consultant on the war on/in/with Iraq and he was ultimately guided down some pretty dark avenues.

I’m personally not much of a gambler but even I know that the likelihood of God lining my own path to Heaven with gold is pretty slim. Therefore, I like the odds attached to a life of secular agnosticism. If he drops by for a cup of Hong Kong’s finest tea (aka the world’s worst) and some judgement of course, I’ll rue omnipotence and my lack of haste in removing this post from the web.

For now though, I’m pretty willing to give Dawkins idea some cautious backing. Having lived of late in a society where the mobile phone is God and its contract His commandment, I’d be intrigued to see what the consequences of Papal imprisonment might be.

Although our media are persistent in approaching the RC Church for their view on even the slightest of social quandaries as they arise, something tells me that there will be no anti-cartoonist style euphoria directed at the sentencing official and that incidences of leaking breast implants will increase no further than present risk estimation would suggest.

However, just to be on the safe side, I thought it was important to research which prison would be best suited to Papal porridge in case we need him to put a good word in should God protest our treatment of His man on the ground.

For food, nothing can beat Peterhead prison which is located in a town famous for landing most of the fish (that hasn’t been ‘stolen’ by the Spanish of course) in the North Sea. However, the prison is also famous for its population of paedophiles who are something of a societal subset that he may be looking to distance himself from...

Peterhead is out…

A little further down the road, he may find Craiginches prison in Aberdeen a little more accommodating. This prison is famously despised amongst locals for possessing more PlayStation’s than the homes of most of those it incarcerates and for its wonderful penthouse cityscape views. However, in his advancing asthmatic years I’d imagine he’d want something a little less archaic; Craiginches is dustier than the Queen’s cludge.

Craiginches is out…

But to be brutally honest, if the Pope was to be sent down he’d probably end up in Goodfellas style prison with only the finest foods served to him in the company of the great and good of the convicted Catholic community. “Hey! Cawdinal Moyfy! Don’ you go puttin’ too much towmaytos in de sawce see!” he’d insist. The only drawback of course being that his cocaine-addled wife would have to survive on the outside with no money from Big Paulie until he’s released.

“He’s what?.... Oh great!... Nothing to lose!...”

So go for it Richard Dawkins you mad bastard. If anything, it would act as a barometer on the reactionary state of our wonderfully skewed society. And if all else fails, the rest of us can blame everything from the impending demise of the global aeronautical industry to the leakiest of bursting boobies squarely on you!

謝謝

How Do You Turn A Duck Into A Soul Singer?...

How do you turn a duck into a soul singer? Oh wait… Hang on… A general election has just been called. Not a column inch can be spared for big tits and wheelchair bound blind babies. It’s time for the hacks to scythe apart the souls of the damned as the latest lunatics attempt to seize control of the asylum.

Normally in the UK, people don’t really give a shit about politics or politicians unless the Mirror and the Sun decide that they need to. To illustrate, a recent by-election in Glasgow East was decided by a naked swimathon after the four people who were registered to vote were found to be either clinically dead or making love for the right price at the pleasure of Her Majesty.

For those who do legitimately exist and opt to vote, this sacred right is often seen as something of a pointless lark. My friend Jodie once voted off the back of a Keith Richards-esque bender for the Pensioners Alliance despite being only 20 years old. I myself voted for the Scottish Conservatives when I first became eligible to vote; tantamount to trying to get a bomb-toting Asian paedophile a job in the crèche at the head office of the Daily Mail.

To address this pitiful apathy towards British politics, the fair, reasoned and loveable rogues at ITV finally managed to convince the major parties of the validity of an American style policy debate; much to the chagrin of the hundreds of other small to medium sized parties in our pluralist system all pissing in the wind this election at great cost to themselves and others.

The tens of tens of UKIP voters had to be restrained; nothing to do with the matter in hand they were just inconsolable upon finding out that the debate was being presented by Alastair Stewart and not his affable former 15 to 1 host namesake William. Fourteen catheters and three of their hard-working, low paid and undervalued legally migrant companion carers were injured in the ensuing carnage.

Clegg, Brown and Blair (nee Cameron) fielded a selection of questions from an apparently representative audience under the guidance of serially convicted drink driver (take that Mail on Sunday) Stewart. All three successfully managed to encourage us of the incompetency of the opposing parties with Clegg making particularly masterful use of his trump card; that of simply not as yet being remotely associated with the Conservative or Labour Party.

I was far from impressed with Clegg to be brutally frank. To be fair, when he talked policy he was in the zone. He was forcing home his well versed manifesto with greater gusto than any recent Lib Dem leader in memory; sorry Charlie.

This was a man aware that he had little to lose in settling at potentially worst for a pivotal role in a coalition government. Nonetheless, I found his overly trained demeanour quite disturbing and his insistence on playing the ‘rational alternative’ card throughout deeply unsettling. The last time I opted to engage something because it was the lesser of alternative evils I ended up working in Hong Kong for a warm and attractive little company called Chatteris.

For me, the ‘Faux-Pas of the Evening Award’ definitely goes to Blair (nee Cameron). Apparently, he knows a black person from ‘Daahn Saahf’ who has not always lived in the UK but supports his hardline approach to immigration. Nice one Tony (sorry, Dave) but I believe that is like saying your mother was once a barrister and her experience alone should be aired to justify your hardline approach on crime. Oh wait… You said that too…

Surprisingly, not least to myself, I found I was most impressed by the performance of Gordon Brown. When you look through his Yeltsin-like tendency to suggest he may not survive another part-term of office, he gave a pretty assured performance.

Brown comfortably portrayed Cameron’s party as impulsive renegades in painting their policies as reactionary, ill-thought and untenable whilst caressing Clegg’s ego and agenda in the face of an ever plausibly hung parliament. I thought it was also either exceptionally foolish or extremely clever of him to paint a pretty grim picture of the coming years regardless of who is in charge.

As far as who I actually want to vote for in the election? Well that is something of a redundant point as I will not actually exercise the sacred right on May 6th. The last person I was even remotely tempted to vote for was that great debater William Hague. I am sure Hague contributed greatly to the remarkably accelerated greying of Blair’s temples and I think it’s a shame he has never yet had the opportunity to prove himself in the top role. Oh well…

There’s always Boris…