“The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems”.

‘What is alcohol?’ is the Final Jeopardy answer to the above in case you’ve never seen The Simpsons. I sometimes think I shouldn’t drink, because it stops my brain from working properly. I’m not exactly what you’d call a big time drinker, but I do drink, and I do occasionally drink too much.

When I say stupid things that make me look either like a complete dick or a drooling idiot, it’s usually because I’m drinking. If I post something dumb on social media or offend someone, it’s usually because I’m drinking. When I do stupid things at work, it’s usually because I was drinking the night before. I’m not saying I’m particularly smart, but I’m not exactly a moron either (somewhere in between the two usually). But when I’m drinking, I usually start to slide down the scale towards the ‘moron’ end.

It’s not always the case, however. There was the time I’d been drinking and joined some friends online in a game, shouting ‘What’s up bitches!’ by way of introduction and proceeded to kill twice as many Locust as everyone else, or the times when drinking gives me the little boost I need to be able to talk to good-looking strangers on a night out or to forget that objectively I’m quite unattractive or that I really, really, can’t dance for shit. Believe it or not, there are also those who have suggested I’m quite funny when I’ve been drinking as well. Whether that says more about them or me, I’ll leave to you to judge.

Since I am now bearded as well as balding there has been a few times when it seems assumptions have been made that I could be quite intimidating if I had a mind to be, appearing that I could go from mild-mannered to full-on nutter on a dime. As I am, frankly, about as tough as jelly this could lead to dire consequences if I allow myself to believe, even a little, in those assumptions when I’m drinking.

So should I stop drinking so I don’t make myself look like more of an idiot than I am? I have considered it, and I’m not going to do that. The truth is, I like to drink. I like tasting wines and ciders, and I could sip all variations of Jack Daniels all night long. So, I figure that the more unfortunate side effects of drinking are simply part and parcel of me, and anyone who knows me has long since accepted that sometimes I say weird or stupid things. And if you don’t know me? Consider it part of the charm.

Bristol: The new Birmingham and Aberystwyth.

Unless you’ve read this blog avidly for years, it’s unlikely that title makes much sense. So, to recap. Once upon a time I spent a night out in Birmingham and fell in love with the city again after being jaded for quite some time. It was everything it has a reputation for not being. I wrote about it.

I also had occasion to revisit an old haunt of mine, Aberystwyth, and found it less than it was. Miserable, with hen parties in full flow. At lunch time. I wrote about that too.

Recently one of my best friends got married and I assisted in organising the stag do. We decided to spend two nights in Bristol because, well, none of us had ever gone to Bristol before and it was between where we live in Telford and he lives in Wales. Bristol, it turns out, is fabulous. Before this, Bristol to me was basically a huge car park that we would pass on the M5 on the way to the south coast, but it is vibrant, bustling and alive in that way the best cities are. We spent a lot of time on a stretch of bars and restaurants on a kind of artificially created harbour, where we frequented a cider bar on a boat, a pub full of retro arcade cabinets (unfortunately the quid a go they cost isn’t quite so retro), a jazz bar, a rock pub and several others.

Head to the middle of the city, however, and you enter the ‘old town’, where 700 year-old stone arches are surrounded by newer buildings and quiet bars with supposedly haunted toilets. There are many, many places to eat and drink, most of them fabulous. That overwhelmingly positive feeling I got on that night out in Birmingham suffused the whole experience.

I was, however, also put in mind of that time in Aberystwyth, and this is because there were loads of stag parties and hen dos. They were everywhere. But hey, we were one of them, so how hard can you judge them really? During the second night out this reminder of that disappointing visit to Aberystwyth turned hugely positive as well, as we managed to team up with a hen party and saw the night out until almost 4am drinking, talking, laughing, dancing and generally having the best damn time I’ve had in, frankly, years. I’ve written before about how much I love cities, and Bristol is now right up there with London and Birmingham. If money was no object (yeah right, keep dreaming) I would take some close friends and spend as many weekends in as many different cities all over the world as I possibly could.

Bristol: I would recommend it.

The little things.

Perhaps I’m alone in this, but lately it seems to me that there is more of a sense of the world spinning out of control than usual. Politically, we continue to lurch to the right both here and elsewhere, paying little attention to the damage we’re doing to ourselves or others. I’m half tempted to move to America just so I can leave the country in protest if that shit-stain becomes President (it beggars belief that I can genuinely look back on the Presidency of Dubya and think ‘Now he was pretty smart for a Republican’). It all feels a little like the beginning of the end.

Climate Change is gathering pace, as we were repeatedly warned it would until we just put our fingers in our ears and shouted “La la la not listening!”. Now that genuine progress has been made in Paris there’s a distinct feeling of ‘too little, too late’ and when talk turns to staying within that magical 2 degree warming limit, you feel like patting them on the head and treating them like a young child who declares their intention to fly because they’re too young to understand gravity: “Aww, sweetheart. Keep dreaming, that’s the important thing.”

The banking world continues to go completely unpunished for their rampant buggering of the West’s economy, while all the normals have to collectively foot the bill. More than that, it seems they’re also allowed to continue on just as before, as if somehow the oft-repeated line it was all the previous Labour government’s fault; they caused the GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRASH (keyword: global) has actually become the accepted truth. There should be scores of hedge-fund managers (generally known to most people as ‘cunts’) in prison. Instead we keep filling jails up with black people and poor folks for minor drugs charges.

Not to mention a bunch of utter fucktards who are constantly trying to murder everyone in the world because hey, god says. Which gives us a great reason to go on selling arms and bombing poor people in the hope of killing some of the aforementioned fucktards.

Up on the world stage it all feels a bit overwhelmingly shitty at the moment, and if I’m not careful, it’s going to start getting to me. I’ve felt like this before though, and I’m sure most people have felt something similar. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like all of that stuff is too big to overcome. Well, so what if it is? As I’ve said before, the key for me is to remember the universe’s opinion of Donald Drumpf or ISIS: complete and utter ignorance. Couldn’t give a sky full of flying fucks. I find focusing on positively effecting my local sphere of the world helps to drive away some of that choking feeling that I get from being a fairly well educated, not particularly well off human in today’s world.

Find joy in the little things. One of your favourite ever TV shows coming back for a 6-episode mini-series and coming back far stronger than we had any right to expect (seriously, I’ve been quietly retro-gasming ever since they announced it and having Mulder & Scully back on screen has been nothing short of glorious). Losing yourself in film (Song of the Sea is worthy of all the comparisons to Ghibli, and it is utterly engrossing and so, so gorgeous). Reading. Meeting new people while out drunk in a new city only to find you seem to agree about absolutely everything. The people you love. Getting a headshot on an Armoured Kantus on insane difficulty (granted, that one might be a bit niche, but there are few things in this world that are more satisfying).

Maybe we’ll find a way to get past the big stuff. Maybe not. Do what you can and let the rest go. I’m not convinced the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders will ever actually get elected, nor that anything will change if they do, but if The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Harry Potter have taught us anything, it’s that sometimes you need an old white dude to save the world.

Operation Don’t Die: Update.

It's been some time since I last wrote about this eternal struggle. And that's because for a while now I've kind of stopped trying. Like everyone who tries to lose fat bastard points, I tried a few different things and they worked or didn't with varying degrees of success. I'm alive, so I guess you could say that, having called it Operation Don't Die it has, so far, been successful. That's not the whole truth though, and seeing as failure in this respect is eventually inevitable, it should be called Operation Keep from Dying for as Long as Possible. Less catchy though.

As I've mentioned before in these things, I don't really like food all that much, which makes me less inclined to try different things, leading me to stuff the same things down my throat week in, week out. In addition, I don't handle bad or stressful days particularly well, and I tend to want to give up being good too easily. Still, I'm not quite to King of the Toads again just yet.

The thing that seemed to work best for me was an internal mantra - "Just don't fucking do it." When the snack trolley came by at work, or when I was awake late at night, I would tell myself this until the moment had passed. I ought to try that again. We'll see if it works.

On the buses.

I quite often get the bus to and from work. That’s because my wife usually needs the car and we can’t afford/wouldn’t want a second. I sometimes find that there are things that take place on my bus route that give a brief glimpse in to a whole other world of lives lived; a small peek of some of near endless micro-universes out there that I will never register on, and that will never register on mine, with the exception of this brief moment.

There was the young girl getting the same bus home as I was, and the giant douche that sat next to her. I’m no good at guessing ages, but I wouldn’t put her older than her mid-teens at a guess. Sitting there, minding her own business, while this tall overweight guy, probably in his mid-twenties, gets on and plonks himself right next to her, even though there are plenty of other free seats (a major breach of bus etiquette), and, for want of a better phrase, rather aggressively invades her personal space. It made for quite an uncomfortable journey, her shrinking and looking resolutely at her phone or out the window while he looks, without the slightest hint of self-consciousness, at her body. Now, this looked disturbing to me, but perception is the mother of deception, and I couldn’t say for sure that what I saw was what was actually taking place. I did, however, keep an eye on his behaviour for the rest of my journey. Not that I know what I might have done had he crossed yet further over the line, but we all like to think of ourselves as decent people that would take action to prevent suffering if we could, don’t we? As it happens, she got off, without him following, at my stop. And then proceeded to walk the same way as me. Right up to the point she passed the front of my house. I dread to think how much more stress I put on her as I followed her along the streets, silently, in the dark. I think speaking up and saying something like ‘Don’t worry, I’m not a weirdo!’ would fail to improve matters.

There was the time when we were queueing to get on the bus that had just arrived, late as it often is lately. A woman, with seemingly limited knowledge of social etiquette, walks up to the front of the queue, presents her ticket to the driver and walks on. Nobody said a word, but you could feel their outrage at this stranger in their midst, not doing things right. Of course, I did mention above about the pitfalls of perception, and it’s true that this is just what I thought. I was, essentially, making up a story in my head about what I thought everyone was thinking – the queue-jumper I assumed just lacked the appropriate cultural knowledge regarding the British obsession with queueing, and then, when I saw everybody’s silently aghast faces I assumed they were all justifying the awful things they read in the newspapers about migrants being something less than they are; less than human. All because she walked onto a bus. Of course, none of that could be even close to the truth.

Coming home late one Friday night and three drunken guys stumble on the bus I’m sitting on, head to the back and proceed to act like drunken buffoons. Before we leave, a woman steps on and asks for help. It seems she’s an off-duty nurse or possibly a paramedic and she’s worried because an injured drunken idiot she was treating has wandered off. She asks for help finding him and without even the slightest hesitation the aforementioned three guys simply get up and go to help – no questions, no asking for refunds on their tickets, just concerned with helping this woman find her injured charge. When you take the time to observe people and see them as people first rather than stereotypes and caricatures, then even people that would usually annoy the shit out of you are, when you get right down to it, alright.

Behind a guy in the queue once he only had a fiver to pay for his ticket, but the driver had no small change. I offered him the 60p he needed for his ticket, for which he was surprised and grateful. And then he surprised me by turning around and handing me his £3 change. Positivity breeds positivity, compassion breeds compassion and conversely, negativity and hate breed only…well, I’m sure you can finish that thought for yourself, but try taking a moment to think of all the small occurrences every day that illustrate the inescapable truth of it.

Stepped off the bus one night only to get slammed into by some fool on a bike flying down the path. I’m not exactly small, but the force of this collision literally sent me flying, leaving me sprawled on the pavement. Stumbling to my feet, I dust myself off and take out my headphones. My first, irritated thought was along the lines of What the hell did you think was going to happen when you saw a bus stop at bus stop on the very path you were cycling along like you had a rocket up your arse? But I don’t articulate this, and instead take a look at him. He is clearly mortified, genuinely apologetic and concerned for my welfare. What good will me having a rant at him do? Bugger all is the truth. Luckily I’m big enough to take a hit like that and get back up, I reassure him. I’m a little dazed, but I’ll be fine. He’s shook up enough that I get the feeling he’ll be more careful when buses pull up in future, so he’s unlikely to be smashing into some kid or old lady any time soon. When I arrive home and start to explain what happened to Rach, I can’t help but have a very brief cry; it seems I was affected by the smash more than I thought. Soon resolved by hugs and a cup of tea though. Long story slightly less long, I’m fine.

The only thing that has genuinely pissed me off on a bus recently is a driver. They’ve recently rearranged the routes where I live, and while I don’t really see that there’s much to complain about, the bus I catch to work in the morning is always late. Sometimes 5 minutes, often 10, routinely 15, sometimes 20 or 25. It’s a bit annoying – clearly the new route or the times need tweaking a little on a weekday morning. On a Saturday I was taking my 2 girls up to town and the bus turned up, on time, and I was helping my 8-year-old count out her change for her ticket. While clearly trying to stay cheerful but just as obviously getting annoyed, the driver basically told us to hurry up. I very nearly launched into a moaning rant right there – not once has any of the drivers who were late in the mornings shown the slightest hint of apology, not once indicating they give a shit about being so late so often, so where the frick does this weekend driver get off being pissed off by my daughter practising counting out change? I didn’t though. I held my tongue, because do you know what that driver did? That driver gave me the idea for this blog. So there you go – annoyed and inspired in equal measure.

So there it is. A quick glimpse into the lives of some of my fellow bus adventurers. As usual, I don’t really have a point, but the general gist is, as usual, we should all try to be a bit nicer in what we do every day.

I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Terrorism. If one were being cynical, one might think that the ill-conceived ‘War on Terror’ was nothing more than a marketing ploy on behalf of the arms trade, with the ultimate aim being to keep volatile situations unstable to perpetuate weapon sales. It’s obvious that a war on terror is unwinnable – you can’t declare war on a concept. May as well declare war on smoke, or time. Perhaps a war on quarks? Or Donald Duck?

The whole point of terrorism is to promote terror. To make people so afraid of you they’ll do exactly what you want. So if we’re too scared of an attack to see people as people first, before all other things like, in this case, religion or skin colour, and, acting on that fear, we refuse to help humans in dire need of our help, or actively seek to hurt (or terrify?) those of a similar religion or skin colour, then, logically, they’ve already won and we’ve already lost.

On the other hand, if we continue to recognise that grouping people together and giving them a label is always the first step on a dark path to dehumanising a whole section of our society, then we’ll never be beaten. That path did not end well the last time it was travelled. It’s fine to be afraid. I’m afraid. But I’ll tell you something. I may be afraid of weirdos with guns murdering gig-goers to impress their made-up god, but I’m much more afraid of a popular Presidential candidate assuming that banning everyone who happens to worship that same made-up god from his country will actually help the situation, while at the same time proposing a wall to keep Mexicans out.

All I can really take from the fuckery that passes for the world stage at the moment is that people make absolutely no sense at all.

Some questions (not exactly Keats).

Widowmakers, are you pleased at what you’ve done?
Are you celebrating, having fun?
Mission accomplished.
Many hundreds dead.
Many lives extinguished.
The fires of hate well-fed.
Your war you can’t ever expect to win, defeat is all you are,
Nous sommes ensemble dans la lumière, pour brûler le noir.

Orphanmakers, what drives you to such hate?
Some deep-seated fear, fear of your fate?
Murdering innocents.
For your made up god.
Do you think that’s what he wants?
Is he really such a sod?
We’ll beat back every one of your attacks; beat back all you are.
Nous sommes ensemble dans la lumière, pour brûler le noir.

Beautykillers, how do you think this will end?
Our death? Your death? The death of all we defend?
You want to make us afraid?
We already were.
Did that ever stop us?
Not bloody likely, sir.
Just a modern day inquisition; that is all you are.
Nous sommes ensemble dans la lumière, pour brûler le noir.

Motherfuckers, what right have you to do this?
Is it still because cartoonists took the piss?
You do not have the right.
No-one has the right.
The hundreds you have killed:
They did not start this fight.
Cunts like you try to drown us in terror, but you only light the spark.
We stand together in the light, to burn away the dark.