I Am Not A Chef

More haiku.

Chicken simmering

Broken extractor fan whines

I forgot the rice

The Gale

This is my first attempt at Haiku. A traditional form of Japanese poetry, a Haiku is a three-line poem. The first line must have five syllables, the second seven, the third five. Originally Haiku were about nature. This one is too, but many contemporary Haikus are outside of that subject. This one is traditional in that it relates to nature.

Enjoy.

The Gale

Hard wind bends the tree
Old man stoops, grips walking stick,
Standing, defiant.

Manbags- A Doomed Trend

‘I don’t make things difficult. That’s just the way they get. All by themselves.’
- Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson), Lethal Weapon

There was a poignant moment in the middle of last night while I stood in Rififi, Stalybridge’s most popular nightclub.

I was half-drunk on overpriced Glenfiddich and, according to my mates, dressed like a waiter: something had possessed me to wear black trousers and a white shirt with a loosely fastened white tie. While staring into a dance floor full of fine women, I realised that on that particular night I couldn’t have any of them.

But it was not my office attire damaging my chances. Adding to the jarringly formal monochrome, I was carrying a not-too discreet black Ted Baker man bag.

I have carried this bag on pretty much every night out since January. The reason for this: a short-term memory disability, which has been the bane of my existence since birth. Whereas with most men it is more a fashion accessory, I was hoping that, for me, it would be more an organisational benefit- something that would my life easier.

Prior to buying this bag, I’d got by on nights out by jamming essentials into my pockets: the wallet, the keys (house and sometimes car), the phone, an A7 pocket notebook and a pen. All of this gave the impression that, under my jeans, I was wearing a pair of Megatron’s boxer shorts. The angular shapes jutting from my crotch not only looked weird but felt uncomfortable, particularly when attempting outrageous dance moves. I’d lost track of the amount of times my phone had flown out of my pocket while throwing shapes.

This, I now realise, was a small price to pay.

An A5 man bag allows me to carry a diary and a larger notebook, which helps me to stay organised. I can also throw in painkillers (for sport injuries, maybe… or just to quell the effects of the previous night), blog cards and eye drops and nasal spray for hay fever. Despite these ‘plusses’, the bag is first and foremost a highly powerful woman-repellent.

Last night, like on various nights, a woman walked up to me like I was some kind of mannequin- subhuman- with her nose crinkled, fingering the bag’s strap across my chest.

Suffice to say, it didn’t flick her switch.

She’s not alone. People in Stalybridge (men and women) have voiced their disliking of my man bag as have various people in Oldham. I’ve given it half a year to catch on, but I’m resigned to the fact it isn’t happening.

When people have asked about the bag I have tried every response I could think of- from ‘I am a drug dealer’ (a lie, for the record) to ‘it keeps my stuff correct’ to a general arrogant display of defiance, something along the lines of ‘what does it have to do with you?’

Wow. And I used to be such a nice guy. I sure don’t pull as much as I used to, before I carried the man bag.

Surely, you would have thought, I could have foreseen the barrage of prejudice heaped upon me for making this fashion decision.

Maybe I could. But I was enthused by the number- and calibre- of men already carrying them. Matthew McConaughey, David Beckham, Hugh Jackman and Robert Downey Junior have all been photographed in public carrying man bags, as have George Clooney, John Terry and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Let’s look to the world of movies- Indiana Jones, whilst venturing through various dangerous regions of the world, carried a brown shoulder bag not dissimilar to those available on the high street today. 

And check out Star Wars. Ever noticed how Chewbacca’s beige satchel blends into his fur?

Nobody would dare take the mick out of those two dudes. However if you’re an unbridled idiot and an overrated fictional character like Joey from Friends, you’ll get an entire episode dedicated to your bag, and people will rip you and call you a homo for half an hour. Or so I read on the Internet. I have an aversion to canned laughter- especially when it is unjustified- hence I avoid Friends like herpes and haven’t seen the episode.

 

Oh yeah, by the way- remember Barbie? Well, at least the adverts? Remember her fella, ‘Ken’? Guess what the latest model, ‘Metro Ken’, comes with. I’m not even going to say it.

And you might want to check what Jack Bauer has slung over his shoulder in the latest Season of 24…

Aside from the celebrity roll-call, there are men I personally know who carry manbags. All three of them are straight, before you ask, and all three are- or have been- professional cage fighters. One is a well-known instructor of Mixed Martial Arts.

I suppose you can carry a man bag off if you’re a big guy with a shaved head and generally look mean. When you’re a regular 65kg guy, it’s not so easy to master. Even if I reached for the clippers- and I may do soon out of a need for a fresh start- it’s still not going to balance out the potential risk of being a walking fashion disaster.

One other possibility is that I shell out more. I spent £20 on my Ted Baker man bag. Functionally it’s sound, with a long cover flap, a zip pocket for coins on the front, a spacious interior and a couple of hidden pockets. No elastic loop for pens though, or a zip lid for waterproofing. The whole thing is somewhat nondescript- which could be a virtue, but isn’t.

I asked a friend of mine his opinion- he’s usually dripping in Vivienne Westwood and All Saints gear. He knows the fashionista score.

‘If you’re going to carry a bag,’ he suggests, ‘I’d invest in a pimp-arsed man bag. Something like Gucci. But spend a minimum of £100, £120. For you, it would be a worthwhile investment.’

I considered this, but a quick scoot around the trendiest stockists in Manchester proved that bags of this price range don’t look much different from my own. And in a packed, darkened club, which woman would care? All she would see is the black strap, and that doubtful expression would return.

One other issue with wearing a man bag is the slightly different kind of attention you might also get. In one unnameable bar in Oldham, a young, skinny but dodgy-looking man stopped me in the corridor to the toilets. You can forget you’re wearing a bag that light.

‘E’yare mate,’ he said quietly, looking over his shoulder. He tapped the side of his nose. ‘You got any sniff?’

I’d not been asked for drugs before. I’m not proud of it, but I suppose it’s a milestone of sorts. So aside from an affinity with drug dealers, along with some of the most lethally skilled men in Britain, gays and people who are so internationally famous they can wear whatever the hell they like and not have to deal with people’s attitudes, the man bag may not be particularly popular- at least not for the next few years.

For the time being I’ll just go back to more compact notebooks and more jammed pockets, and my man bag will be resigned to the storage unit for all redundant fashion accessories- the cupboard.

Alcohol

I wrote in to my local paper after a documentary on my town’s light life was shown on BBC1. The Panorama investigation exposed the bar area of the town as being possibly the most violent in the country. However, many people on Facebook complained that it was one-sided and gave the town a bad name. I felt it necessary to remind people of their responsibilities. Here’s my letter, published in the Oldham Evening Chronicle, which they printed pretty much word-for-word.

The recent Panorama documentary on Yorkshire Street, followed by numerous readers’ letters, have failed to hit the nail on the head with regards to the town’s problems.

Even though alcohol is available- sometimes at low prices- in the town, it should not be regarded as the primary cause of the problem. Here’s why:

1) Cheap booze is available through off-licences. Where’s the documentary on them?
2) If you watch the troublemakers on Yorkshire St, a lot of them drink a particular brand known to be ‘reassuringly expensive’- far from the price of the drinks on offer.
3) In Manchester’s Oxford Road, by comparison, students can take advantage of cheap drinks every night of the week. I was a student a few years ago. I saw one fight on Oxford Road in three years. And regrettably, I went out a LOT.
4) It is not uncommon in Oldham to see trouble occur around 9pm- a time when people are only just starting to drink.
5) Most importantly, the only people who are allowed to drink in these bars are ADULTS. Being an adult means taking responsibility for your own actions. If you are violent after a few drinks, it is your fault. Not the booze. Not the bars’.

The solution in Oldham is not to hike up prices (thereby punishing well-intentioned, careful drinkers- and yes, there are a few), but to reprimand the people causing the problems who don’t want to act like adults. We could also educate youngsters in school on the issue of alcohol, as it will undoubtedly be a common theme for the rest of their lives- just like it is for most adults today.

A Glimpse of Blackpool

‘The possibility of physical and mental breakdown is now very real. No sympathy for the devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride.’
-Hunter S Thompson

…and it’s not big or clever but it’s usually been funny on those rare occasions when I’ve done it. So I knew I was going to.

Vasquez is apparently ahead of us all, literally and figuratively- a few cars in front, cruising in the inside lane. His silver van is loaded with all of all of our bags, and he himself is loaded with a cocktail of Stella, weed and coke. I am just glad to be in Hicks’ car; neither of us has taken anything.

But the night has not yet begun.

As early Noughties’ garage music blasts out of the stereo, Hicks encroaches on Vasquez’s van. Unassumingly, Vasquez pulls left into the middle lane, allowing Hicks to cruise up the inside next to him. I loosen my seatbelt. This is going to be more idiotic than taking the drugs, and I know that explaining an immense pile-up on the M60 could be required of me if this goes wrong. That’s if I survive.

Hicks asks, ‘Are you ready?’ and he winds down my window electronically.

I slacken the seatbelt as far out as I can. ‘Yep. Let’s do it.’

Hicks, pedal-to-the-metal, cruises past Vasquez’s van as I force my bare arse out of the window frame. I have never felt cold air flow over that particular part of me. Through the available space around my body, I can look back and make out Vasquez’s double take- a facial mixture of surprise, horror and amusement. For a moment I think the air is going to bend my whole body in half and suck me out onto the tarmac, Goldfinger style.

Blackpool: The George’s Hotel is not exactly a hotel at all. It’s a budget B’n’B, but that’s all we want. We are the only group of lads in the hotel- the only other guests are 2 large groups of nubile girls. Oh well, I think. I’ve been in worse situations…

Everyone’s queuing up for the shower only there’s an obstacle of sorts- Apone’s on the toilet in the same room with the door wide open, playing with his disturbingly large cock that disappears deep inside the toilet bowl. In order to get showered you’ve got to get past him, and he’s having one of the foulest shits ever smelled. It is like a man has dipped his hand into raw sewage, and is now using it to karate-chop you in the throat.

Apone runs his tongue over the inside of his lips. He looks almost confused. “My mouth tastes like a badger’s arse,” he says.

“I hate that particular taste,” I randomly retort.

“Hudson,” shouts Apone. “My poo’s not coming out right. It’s all wrong!

Hudson, far from a proctologist, admits he does not know what to do about that situation.

We’d all struggled finding lifeguard outfits. Hudson had actually rang me- coincidentally- at the moment I was at the front of the queue in TK Maxx trying to buy some cheap red shorts, as part of that theme. He’d said we’re scrapping the ‘lifeguards’ idea and going as whatever. I got the green light to use the fireman outfit that a flatmate gave me when I left uni all those years ago. So I’m slamming it on in this hotel room, fully aware of it’s power. Women love it. This afternoon we will be out in force: me as a fireman, Apone a cross-dressing black nun, Hudson a cross dressing white, erm, dude, Drake playing Julius Caesar, Burke as Scooby Doo, Hicks as Scuba Steve, Gorman as a Knight and Vasquez as a Mexican Gringo with a technicolour poncho and hat that pretty much covered his entire body like a disguise.

I emerge into the corridor feeling like an absolute pimp- the steel-toecap boots, the heavy trousers that reflect at the cuffs, the braces holding them up covered by the thick warm jacket emblazoned with the reflective strip right across the chest. I don’t need a yellow helmet to get the message across- it would only get robbed by a pisshead anyway.

We line up outside Hudson’s room. One by one, the Fifty is handed to us and we hoover up a short line of coke each. It is time to take on Blackpool.

Tower bar, located directly underneath the iconic Blackpool Tower, is rammed. The windows are blacked out, making it easy to forget what time of day it is. The booze begins to flow.

Scuba Steve lowers his wetsuit to his waist, oozing sweat. The front of his t-shirt, damp from being pressed against his body, reads ‘Swallow- or it’s going in your eye!’ Whoever notices, Scuba will turn around to show them the back, which is emblazoned with the phrase ‘Big fat tip’. Hudson the cross-dresser, flicking his curly wig-locks aside, holds Scuba Steve still and pours Stella down his snorkel. He chokes, pulling the mask off, laughing. Then Scuba Steve darts over to Julius Caesar, kneeling before him, worshipping. ‘Hail Caesar!’ he shouts. Our group joins in the worship, bowing on our knees as holidaymakers look on, perplexed. Caesar laps up the praise. Apone the nun jumps on stage to commandeer the steel pole. He spins around it, veil flowing from his head. Behind him nine TV screens flash in technicolour like one side of an interchanging Rubix Cube. Scooby Doo pushes two French maids off a podium and shakes his arse at the whole bar. When he jumps into the crowd, chicks gather round to stroke his head. Scuba and the Cross Dresser notice the elasticised braces holding up my fireman trousers. They take one each and yank them out as far as they can. When they let go I’m left with two giant red lines down my chest. Someone follows this up with a giant open-handed slap across the stomach. I take the stings like a man, but the Jack Daniels and two types of coke take the edge off.

For the first time in my life I emerge from a busy club, blurry, into blinding afternoon daylight. The night is young.

The next bar looks and feels like the last and the two have started to blend together in my conscience. In this one- or the same one- two policewomen dance together. When I pull out my camera one policewoman pulls the other’s top down and kisses her cleavage, then kisses her on the mouth…

Back at the B’n’B we change back into clubbing wear, slightly to my dismay. I feel stripped of a superpower, human again. Then, as the sun goes down behind Blackpool pier, we head back out to Sanuk, one of the biggest clubs in Blackpool with a capacity of 2300. I will remember little of the club- every stranger I speak to is from some random part of Britain, as is pretty much everyone I have spoken to all day. Other than business employees- shop, bar, club and hotel workers- there doesn’t seem to be a single native of the town, in the town.

The club is rammed. Hicks approaches a random girl, holding out the fabric of his t-shirt between his fingertips. Bemused, she feels the texture between a forefinger and thumb. He leans into her and I can lip-read him saying, ‘that’s boyfriend material.’ Burke, formerly Scooby Doo, has pulled. Hudson, the former cross-dresser, is fuming.

‘Fuck it,’ says Hudson. ‘You know what? I didn’t even like her that much. I’m not bothered about her. He can have her. But if he thinks I’m not texting his missus and dropping him in the shit, he’s unbelievably naive.’

I ask a girl for her number just before we leave. She’s been staring at me all night. She asks me where I’m from then tells me she’s from Derby so she didn’t see that working.

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Can I just put my hands on your arse?’

She lets me, and it quells the slight sting of missed potential, but then I remember that I acquired some numbers in the afternoon so I tell her she’s fit and Hudson and I walk out of the club, starving. Fast food is fast needed…

Worn out, blurry eyed but full of cheeseburgers and fries from a kebab shop next to the branch of Walkabout that my former manager now runs, we find a taxi. I give the driver the street name. He knows it and agrees to take us there. I am amazed by my own organisation- that I would know to scribble the address of the hotel, even in the state I was when we first set out in the afternoon.

As we wonder into the George, Burke marches out, rucksack on his shoulder. ‘See you later, guys,’ is all he says. Hudson wonders out after him, fuming. I cannot be arsed intervening.

I find our room. Hicks is steaming, lying on a bed banging on about a Youtube video he saw a few days ago.

‘Voldemort. Voldemort. Voldemort,’ he says. ‘Harry Potter. Harry Potter. Harry Potter.’ Then he shrieks, ‘RON WEASLEY????’ He laughs to himself, slurring.

Hudson barges back in the room, running his hands over his newly-grazed face. ‘Oh, mate,’ he says. ‘Oh…’

Hudson explains that he had gone to find Burke to straighten things out and bring him back. Only an argument had broken out, Hudson had swung at him, not even reached him, pirouetted on the spot and fallen face-first on the road. He tells us this as he picks at a scab on his arm.

Hicks, his face pressed into the pillow away from the increasing daylight, has gone quiet. Hudson quietly taunts him over his ex-girlfriend.

‘Ron Weasley’s got Michelle… He’s kidnapped her… He’s gonna bum her, Hicks!’

‘Right then, so shut the fuck up,’ snaps Hicks. Then, mumbling, ‘Fuck Ron Weasley. Fuck him.’

The sun is streaming through the window now and I am desperate for sleep but my eyelids aren’t opaque enough to block out the light and seagulls are shrieking all around the hotel and I’m drifting off.

Hudson doesn’t know what to do. He mentions the array of weed plants he’d shown me when I’d stopped by at his house. He says they aren’t there any more.

Hicks snores loudly. We are the only two awake in the room now.

Hudson had moved the plants to a different house. He’d given one to Burke to help set him up, along with growing equipment, as Burke had been struggling for work. Any money made from that, Hudson had told him, would be split between them down the middle. Later, Hudson had found out that Burke had stolen a shitload of money from his parents. They disowned him when they found out, and haven’t spoken to him since. The chance of Burke robbing Hudson was high.

‘I am a drug dealer, mate. That’s what I am. I know it. And I know it’s wrong.’ Even though he knew of his own ills there were certain crimes he didn’t want to be a part of, people he wanted nothing to do with. Thieves. ‘Do I go round and threaten to cut up his parents until I get everything back?’

I advise him against this. As if I know anything.

‘Or,’ he says, mind ticking, ‘do I use the spare key, go in while he’s at work, take everything, lock the door behind me then boot it in and move the plants to another house? Ring him and say, “mate, you won’t believe what’s happened. We’ve been robbed.”’

‘That sounds much safer to me,’ I say, drifting.

‘I’m gonna have to do it, aren’t I?’

‘You’re gonna have to step forward and do something.’

Outside the sun has risen and seagulls screech and swoop around the hotel and a street-cleaning vehicle hums as it crawls past, sucking up copious amounts of takeaway wrappers, used condoms, lost shoes and probably the skin off Hudson’s arm that was left on the tarmac. I pull the covers over my head to shut it all out but I’m thinking about

Metrolink- Good News?

Another unpublished letter sent to various local papers- this time regarding the new public transport announcements.

Jesus. I used to blog about coke binges, irresponsible driving, insane parties and female ejaculation. Now what am I covering? Trams.

God help me.

Anyway, here’s this letter I hammered out:

So the proposals to bring the Metrolink to Oldham are going ahead. Great news. But wait a minute- weren’t we told we wouldn’t get this extension, because we voted against the congestion charge that was supposed to fund it? It feels to me like the government are admitting, by way of this decision, that they lied about the need for the congestion charge. I wonder what else they lied about…

Meat

A reader’s letter sent in to local newspaper The Metro claimed that people opposed to bullfighting should presumably be vegans, as cows in Britain are also killed for ‘the pleasure’ we get from eating them. This moronic view angered me enough to write in the following response. It wasn’t published.

Charlie Roberts (13/8/09) clearly does not understand the basic dietary requirements of the average human being. We are omnivores. We eat meat because out bodies require protein, and we have eaten it for thousands of years. We don’t just eat it ‘for pleasure’. It is also recommended that you get this protein from a variety of sources. To be healthy, meat should be one of these.

What I didn’t mention in this letter- possibly being why it wasn’t published- was a description of how animals are treated in slaughterhouses in the UK. Cattle in Britain are stunned before a quick dispatch and pain is kept to a minimum.

During bullfighting, on the other hand, ‘the animal is stabbed repeatedly until paralysed. When the bull finally collapses, the spinal cord is cut, but the animal may still be conscious as his ears and tail are cut off and kept as a trophy.’- (League Against Cruel Sports, league.org.uk)

I will continue to eat meat as part of a balanced diet, but I won’t support bullfighting.