Revolutionary Rants

Wenger is STILL IN CHARGE! How can this be? Having sat through two of the most painful games of my life as a Gunners last week I cannot quite believe it.

Grrrrr.

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It is now 2012… And M. Wenger is still in charge, and we might not even make it in to the Champions’ League… Argh.

Newt Gingrich is winning primaries, the Coalition is clinging on and the second series of Sherlock has finished already… Oh the gloom, the gloom…

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Here we are in October already. We had an amazing Indian Summer at the very end of Sept. and beginning of this month, but it is now real autumn outside. I managed a dog walk before the drizzle set-in but it gets dark earlier and earlier and winter’s long, cold fingers are gripping and the neck of 2011 for sure.

So far it has been a gloomy month for deaths, with George Baker (of Wexford and I,Claudius fame) and Steve Jobs (of Mac, iPod, iPad fame) passing over… Mr Wenger remains at the helm at Arsenal so that also makes me gloomy!

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Time to say “Au revoir”, M. Wenger.

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It is only September 15th, but it is very autumnal here in Devonshire. It is pitch dark outside now, at 20:40, and it was jolly cold when I popped to the allotment earlier to get some veggies.

Plus we haven’t even had a summer at all, let alone one to be followed by Indian Summers… How miserable!

Since I last blogged we have been to France – twice – and life has drifted on. I despair of Arsenal so much I can even update my Facebook status about them much, never mind blogging! At least now it is autumn we get new series of QI and Downton Abbey! And at some point Sherlock, my favourite, too!

In the meantime reading lots of Ian McEwan and drinking too much Clipper Sleep Easy tea. Which doesn’t help me sleep easy, mind…

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Radio 4 yesterday advised that republican sentiment is more or less dead. Well, I am still a republican, so there is only one song that fits the bill today:

God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
Potential H-bomb

God save the queen
She ain’t no human being
There is no future
In England’s dreaming

Don’t be told what you want
Don’t be told what you need
There’s no future, no future,
No future for you

God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves

God save the queen
‘Cause tourists are money
And our figurehead
Is not what she seems

Oh God save history
God save your mad parade
Oh Lord God have mercy
All crimes are paid

When there’s no future
How can there be sin
We’re the flowers in the dustbin
We’re the poison in your human machine
We’re the future, your future

God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves

God save the queen
We mean it man
And there is no future
In England’s dreaming

No future, no future,
No future for you
No future, no future,
No future for me

No future, no future,
No future for you
No future, no future
For you

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The summer of 1995; aged 12. Life was like a motorway stretching in to the sun on a hot, sticky Saturday afternoon. Blur vs. Oasis. The second I heard Country House I knew which side I was on, the second I saw Damon Albarn I knew what side I was on…

A year later, the motorway didn’t seem to have too many views, not enough side roads so far… and I found I quite like a song by a band from South Wales. A Design For Life… Ironic thinks the teenage miserablist.What followed as the majority of my angsty teen years and early adulthood: the Manics were my band, James Dean Bradfield my ideal of maleness. Sixteen years later and the band from South Wales are still my favourite band, I have read the books they recommended, stood whole days in leopard-print skirts to see them, partly found politics as a passion due to them.

Tonight, aged 28, I watched them play a gig in their home town; they looked a bit sad, a bit out of place. A town they used to say they loathed they now seemed to look back to with the rose-tint of nostalgia. I suppose we all look back on our youths that way, as I look on them… They were my idols, hey made me drive faster on that motorway.

I guess the my own rose-tinted specs first fell a little the day I stood before the sheet that told me I had gained a better degree than any of them (in the same subject). It took another blow the day they became little more than parodies of themselves. I think the death blow is, more or less, that I work each day in a role that has more responsibility than any Manic may ever know.

So I suppose what I am saying is my youth is gone; the dreams of my youth have not come true (other than Arsenal winning the Double) but I am not yet sure how bad a thing that is………..

I don’t believe in absolutes anymore
I’m quite prepared to admit I was wrong
This life it sucks your principles away
You have to fight against it every single day

These are the postcards from a young man
They may never be written or posted again
These are the postcards from a young man
They may never be written or posted again

It is like so many other things
As distant as your former sins
So sad and lonely and so derelict
As the optimism that we once shared

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Well, it was very foolish of me to post that we’d hadn’t had much snow here….. We spent most of December under it, and it was ghastly.

Christmas has been lovely but now we only have one Bank Holiday and it is back to life as normal, except it is 2011 and not 2010.

The telly gets worse every Xmas, it seems. The only thing I’ve watched this year are the glut of Agatha Christie updates and Father Ted night. Not the same as when I was young……

Oh dear, well it was only a matter of time before I started saying that.

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We haven’t had much snow here in the village. On Friday evening dark clouds gathered around the building where I work and we all fretted we wouldn’t get home… We did. It snowed that afternoon, but has been more of a frost since. It is very, very cold though and we are glad to be cosy and war min our ‘newly’ decorated sitting room tonight.

Speaking of Friday afternoon, another weekend gone and I hardly felt it. We went to see the new Harry Potter; which was OK but somewhat disappointing really as the “actors” playing the three main characters just cannot carry a film and they changed stupid, unnecessary things in favour of scenes that were not in the book of people dancing. Not as good as Stephen Fry reading the book, which Chicken and I enjoyed on various journeys this summer!

Christmas is fast approaching, but doesn’t seem quite as wall-to-wall as last year (or is this just because I hardly watch anything but the BBC these days and therefore I’ve missed the worst of the adverts?!)

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Two words for the BBC. Mark Kermode.

Let’s try that again: Mark Kermode.

Not, not, not, NOT Claudia Winkleman and the unknown man who has a lot of pointless and annoying things to say. What have they done to ‘Film…’? Horrific…

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