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R. I. P. Bounce

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

Bounce, a loyal and kind Stafforshire Bull Terrier, died today at 9:20 a.m. He had been getting weak for some time, not eating much and finding it harder to get about. He was fourteen years old and simply faded away in the end. He had a good life and was much loved by his mum and dad and his three brothers. He clung on for as long as he could, he wanted to see the summer and stay with his family, but in the end he just didn’t have the strength.

I know he’s only a dog but to me he was as human as you. He could read my mind and was the best friend I’ve ever had. I’ll miss him every day of my life.

New Planet

Rest in peace Bounce and I’ll see you again one day running through the woods, jumping for your ball and chasing rabbits. The sun will always be shinning for you now. Lie and bake yourself in it, we’ll all meet again soon.

Love Dad

An Interview with The Diet Mentor

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

I met the Diet Mentor on a cold day in August 1993 on Hampstead Heath. I wasn’t so sure about the venue, and felt nervous. It’d been raining and the leaves looked like they’d soon be turning. It had been a strange year: a washout. Much like 2007, poor old Tewkesbury Upon Avon turning into Tewkesbury-in-Avon. I felt so sorry for those poor folks. Anyway it’d been raining all day and at about four o’clock in the afternoon the light had begun to fade.

I stood shuffling from foot to foot pondering on the nature of diet. I was extremely over weight at the time and was actually rather hungry, looking forward to my third Big Mac of the day. All of a sudden a huge elephantine man came walking towards me. He had a big bushy beard and wore a hat like Gandalf’s, the beard was somewhat grey and tobacco stained. He smiled widely beneath the bristles showing yellow stained teeth. He carried a part eaten and part wrapped burger in one hand and a carton of coke in the other. His dark green tweed jacket was so big the weight of the cloth made the pockets hang half way down his tree trunk thighs. These looked more tree like than they otherwise might given that they were cocooned in dark brown corduroy that flapped as he walked. The sheer size of him reminded me of a chestnut tree.

He stuffed the burger in his mouth and then stretched out his hand to shake mine all the time nodding. He quickly withdrew his hand and methodically chewed before he emptied his mouth, then as he raised up the empty burger-wrapper he slurped on his coke. With a dramatic gesture he wiped his mouth with the greasy wrapper, before throwing it to the ground.

“Hi, pleased to meet you, I am The Diet Mentor,” he said, again shaking my hand enthusiastically.

My quizzical frown was sufficient to launch him into a well-rehearsed story.
“Look, you don’t have to be thin to tell people how to lose weight. Look I don’t want to, but that’s me. I know it’s bad but I can’t help it,” he said through the chewing.

I couldn’t help but notice the glint of sunlight that reflected from a the top of a brick wall just behind the small copse. It seemed to bounce off the ketchup stains that adorned his large silk tie that hung loosely from beneath his chins, the top button of his splattered silk shirt looked like it had never been fastened. He sweated profusely even though it was cold and seemed to pant, even after the slightest of movements.

I considered my own girth in the light of my astute and journalistic observations. Yes, I’m not that fat I’d thought naively. I considered myself to be rather clever at that point. The Mortgage Mentor clearly had many issues unresolved. Why, I thought, a man of at least thirty-five stone a Diet Mentor. He can hardly walk. And he could not: he walked, no staggered, for about fifty more yards and then headed, as if with an urgent purpose, one arm out stretched, the other grasping his flapping jacket, towards the nearest bench. He collapsed in a heap both great arms placed either side of him.

He removed his Gandalfian hat to reveal a head as bald as a billiard ball. It shone, indeed gleamed, decorated as it was with a patina of sweat. It had a red tinge to it. His hair began about two inches down the side of his head and flowed in grey locks to below his shoulders. His chest heaved at the effort and he belched sotto voce numerous times before I sat down beside him, moving the hat to accommodate my slighter girth. Notebook in hand and pen poised I began to speak.
“Are you gay?” He asked me.
“Erm, no, I’m married actually,” I replied. I felt instinctively defensive in the presence of the Mentor.
“So you want to lose weight, right?” He asked, eyeing my stomach that struggled to break free of my starched white shirt.

“Well no actually I’m here from Lose The Gut the diet magazine, you left us a message to meet you here,” I’d said, now wondering as to The Diet Mentor’s motives for meeting me in this place,
“Oh I thought you were from Slap The Fat, the contact mag,” he said, then sat back open mouthed.
I dropped my pen before he started to laugh.
“Lighten up man,” he said then smiled as he threw the empty carton of coke over his shoulder.
“What do you need to know?” He asked me.

Was David Icke Right?

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

I don’t know. I’ve never read any of his books and not been told what it is that he may have been right about. However I have just finished watching about three quarters of a programme with that title. For those who may not know David Icke was a sports reporter with the BBC before he had a revelatory experience that some have said was a schizophrenic episode. I do not know the truth or otherwise of that claim. He is of course a charismatic and interesting man. In this programme he seemed to posit the idea of a global conspiracy that is genetic in origin. In other words a group, or groups, of people, that include the Royal Family (but not Harry – mmm) and the Bush dynasty in the States, control the world. These folk are called the Illuminati. They seek to create a global government, with a world army, and presumably bureaucracy and legal system. He doesn’t describe the jurisprudence of this legal system or the structure of the proposed bureaucracy. He believes that this will be precipitated by a way of a contrived war. This war will (and indeed does) include an Islamic uprising and China. The UN will be overwhelmed and chaos will ensue. He also predicts the hurricanes and so on. He is quite animated about “labeling”. He is alluding to semiotics of language here and the power of discourse. I’m not sure what he’s read but I have to say that lot of what he is saying has been written about before. I have been reading Derrida, Foucault, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger and so on recently and these chaps do seem to have considered all of these possibilities in various ways. Of interest to me personally is the use of words, discourse and language to shape thought and thus behaviour. He calls people like doctors, lawyers, teachers and reporters “repeaters”. In other words they repeat what they have learnt to trick us all. He seems to have the idea that there is a great grand narrative that these people are reading from and “repeating” in order to con us all. He argues that there is the reality of existence and an alternative depiction of it in the media. The media is of course controlled by the Illuminati. I’m guessing language is as well. Lyotard and others have considered these ideas of course and called it “postmodernism”. This in turn has a strong grounding in the ideas of the post structuralists and the deconstructionist approach towards literature. Icke’s scepticism at the depiction of reality is nothing new here. Kurt Vonnegut and many others have written on the dubious (in their view) nature of history and historicism in the canon.

He seems to be of the view that he is some sort of prophet. He may well be. On the other hand he may be a classic example of the simulacra that Lyotard considers in “The Postmodern Condition”. He is in fact a creation of the very media that he now derides, indeed he worked within it for twenty years and because of that gained a platform. His ideas and what he considers to be original thought are in fact nothing new, but creations of the media and philosophers, they are pieces of “knowledge” that he has assimilated over the years. Subsequent to what he calls his “Turquoise Period”, and what some call schizophrenia, he has distilled this input and has himself been transformed into a “repeater” and is simply repeating what he has subconsciously assimilated.

Nonetheless he is an interesting man and a charismatic speaker. Much of what he says is reminiscent of L. Ron Hubbard’s ideas of aliens and so on. Indeed he has some theory about reptiles, I didn’t catch it all but am guessing it’s as interesting as Hubbard’s ideas on Thetans.

It was well worth watching and respect to him for preaching this view. I agree with his theory of the World Government. But this is simply a natural progression for humans. After all humans are social animals, they live in herds and have a herd mentality. As the world becomes smaller, whether this be as a result of an Illuminati plot, reptile invasion or Thetans et al, it will be natural for there to be bigger and bigger government. The EU is an example of this process.

In short I would say that he is not an original thinker, however the way in which he preaches his ideas is original. His books have merit because they will make some conspiracy theorists think they have a champion. Of course how are they and we to know that David Icke is not an Illuminati placed man and nothing more than a “repeater”.

Then again, what is knowledge? What is truth? What is justice? What is virtue? What is reality? What is good?

Didn’t Socrates start the whole sorry business a couple of thousand years ago?

Philosophy is where it’s at, and well worth “repeating”.

UK Poetry Competition – Daily Telegraph

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Check it out here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/exclusions/books/poetry/nosplit/poetry.xml