Tag: End-times

Kingdom of the Sunak

Rishi Sunak outside Number Ten, his waving arm dissected by a Covid positive lateral flow test.

 

In the miserable year that the Tories regained power, a humble investment banker from Southampton joined a hedge fund called Theleme, which would go on to invest in Moderna. Yes, that Moderna.

Dishy Rishi Sunak became a Conservative MP in 2015, rising up the party ranks until, as Chancellor of the Exchequer during the COVID-19 pandemic, he brought in hedge fund partner, John Sheridan, as an advisor. Goodness knows whose advice he was taking when he axed the £20-a-week increase in Universal Credit but it was our first proper indicator of his compassion for the poors. Continue reading “Kingdom of the Sunak” →

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Diary of an Elderly Schoolboy: Part 1

As a mature journalism student in my hometown, I just had to visit my old school and provide a statement.

 

Due to less than stellar book sales – which I’m going to attribute to the effect on the markets of Brexit, Covid and Putin – I’ve gone back to school.

Like an addict mistaking sobriety for enlightenment only to return to the bottle, I’ve decided to hobble around Portsmouth University on a bad knee like a fat ghost, hoping against hope that Student Finance England will get their act together before all my credit cards are maxed out. Continue reading “Diary of an Elderly Schoolboy: Part 1” →

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Eight Stories in an Evening

I asked friends to give me a word each so I could build a story from three. It just seemed like a good idea because wine and I’m not saying these wee tales are any good but they made me feel good writing them and that was lovely, thank you. Written in six hours or so, so go easy.

 

SLUG SUGAR SWEAT

They called it a slug, you know, that round that goes in the gun or whatever. I called it a bullet and they all sniggered, sniggered at how I held it, how the sweat poured down my face as I aimed the cursed thing.

One thing’s for damned sure – ain’t no one gonna be callin’ me sugar no more.

 

Continue reading “Eight Stories in an Evening” →

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50/50 share in proceeds for Northern lass and Southern lad able to match mouth noises to written symbols

Red Roger Red Hat's White House
The colour of Roger Red-hat’s hat is not a trick question but with no mention of his face, I coloured that red too – thinking outside the box, you see, means sometimes colouring outside the lines. On the next page, my teacher used my pencil to write in large letters that Roger lives in a white house then watched as I traced over each letter with my red felt-tip pen. Pleased, she moved on to another child in the class and left me to draw Roger’s house. Once satisfied, I put down my pencil and picked up my red crayon. As Pollock described it, ‘When I am in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing.’ There is no hesitation in those crayon strokes, just the determination of a willful boy with none of the doubt that would come to define him as a man. While I am incredibly fortunate to have this piece as a testament to an innocence once truly free, there does remain, however, one nagging concern with regard to the difficulty Red headed Roger Red-hat’s wife would have faced whenever looking for him in that red house. In retrospect, my mother clearly wasn’t hitting me hard or often enough.

How’s your reading? Does it give you headaches? Perhaps you need glasses. Do your lips move? Doesn’t matter, because I need a couple of people who can match the noises coming out of their mouths with the corresponding symbols on the pages of a book, just like back when books were thrilling accounts of all manner of adventures  which people in coloured hats were having. Continue reading “50/50 share in proceeds for Northern lass and Southern lad able to match mouth noises to written symbols” →

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Lithuanians and other bogeymen (2009)

lith flash

While desperately searching various drives for my old short stories but finding only corrupted files I came across an old project report, (Back in 2009, Vilmantė, Sölvi, Dina and I produced a heartwarming wee Choose Your Own Adventure style Flash game about villains of the week, those dastardly Lithuanians, and that’s why there’s no such thing as racism anymore.)

It made me smile to remember a time when the knee-jerk armchair generals and vicious bigots of this country were all up in arms about ‘swarms’ from the east rather than the south-east.

The rhetoric may be saccharine and naive but I thought I’d share the report regardless. I’ve stripped most if not all of the business/marketing guff since I didn’t write it anyway; besides, no one visits this blog flushed with expectation for Target Group Analysis and User Scenarios, right?

If nothing else, it shows that you can get away with using colourful language like the S, F and N-words whilst trying to make some sort of sense of this shitty fucking world full of C-words. Continue reading “Lithuanians and other bogeymen (2009)” →

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Talking with the Pope about homosexuals: A damning account

“We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.” ― Gene Roddenberry
“We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.”
― Gene Roddenberry

The late great Ricardo Montalbán (above) once said that he believed all good villains do villainous things, but think that they are acting for the ‘right’ reasons. It was with this thought in mind – and others more frustrated – that I considered my meeting with Joseph Ratzinger; the then Pope Benedict XVI.

D― had approached me, appealing to my ego, telling me I was wasting my talent, that he was whoring his: “Let’s make something fantastic,” he said, “then get people to give us money to make more.” Continue reading “Talking with the Pope about homosexuals: A damning account” →

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Adventures in hatred or: Crossing pigs with spinach, pushing the poop and living in the Tribulation

Brandishing a hair-trigger revolver with only one round chambered, the toddler keeps spinning the cylinder, dancing and screaming it wants less, LESS, NOW!
Brandishing a hair-trigger revolver with only one round chambered, the toddler keeps spinning the cylinder, dancing and screaming it wants less, LESS, NOW!

A friend of mine asked how come I was getting so mindfucked with theology while working on a script advocating gay marriage. He said it was purely a civil rights issue and mentioned something about my godless heart burning in hell but I was too busy thinking about gay honeymoons to respond properly.

But now I hope to convince him, and you, that it is impossible to defend the persecution of homosexuality – which is exactly what you are doing by denying gay folk equal rights – without explaining WHY two sets of the same genitals can’t rub up against each other. Continue reading “Adventures in hatred or: Crossing pigs with spinach, pushing the poop and living in the Tribulation” →

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A Belated Eulogy for the Tricorn Centre, Portsmouth

Prince Charles called this "a mildewed lump of elephant droppings"; but then should we really value architectural review from a man who allowed his parents to murder his beautiful wife?
Prince Charles called this “a mildewed lump of elephant droppings”; but should we really value the architectural review of a man who allowed his family to murder his wife?

UPDATE: Tricorn: Controversy in Concrete – incorporating records, inspirations and materials – is running at Portsmouth City Museum between 15th March and 29th June 2014. Even though I bet they’ll have free wine at the opening, I can’t get down there for it, but these pictures and more will be.

It’s been more than eight years now since Portsmouth tore down the Tricorn Centre: that Brutalist monstrosity despised by many but to me as much a part of the city’s dark soul as the Historic Dockyard; pebbled seafront with its promenade, piers and castle; and getting punched in the face outside a nightclub for making eye contact.

I took these few meagre, poorly descriptive images back in 1996 but by then the thirty year old concrete was mouldy and crumbling, held together by rust, rats and Laser Quest. Continue reading “A Belated Eulogy for the Tricorn Centre, Portsmouth” →

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The squirrels of the fourteen b’ak’tun

14th b'ak'tun squirrel
14th b’ak’tun squirrel

If you’d told me five years ago I’d be spending the last day of planet earth in Gosport I’d have laughed in your face. I’d planned to play it safe and ride out 21st Dec 2012 somewhere up a mountain with a hunting rifle, caring Scandinavian wife and waterfall caves of tinned food. I came to my senses; but when 11.11am passed without global incident I shrugged like everybody else.

Still, there’s always the Rapture to look forward to. That and any number of asteroids. And the whole global warming thing. Another end of the world is always just around the corner, friend. Continue reading “The squirrels of the fourteen b’ak’tun” →

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