The Meaning of Life - Paint It Black

In 2013, I watched a funny programme starring Karl Pilkington called The Moaning of Life, where he travelled the world seeking inspiration for the meaning of life in key areas, such as happiness, kids and death.

Karl Pilkington is a straight talking funny man whose perception of life in general is rather weird, so weird in fact that he is genuinely funny. The show inspired me to write about the meaning of life from my own perspective mirroring the subjects tackled by Karl.

This is the man at is weirdest best - simply trying to promote the book accompanying the first series:

See what I mean? He can't even talk about his book without flying off at weird tangents.

Anyway, now he’s back with a second series where he continues to give us his view of life with new subjects. Again I have decided to join in and offer my views on the same subject.

The first post discusses something that I have mentioned before (and ranted about):

Art

Regular readers may consider me to be an unsophisticated barbarian when it comes to the arts, mainly because I have written a few posts about my views on contemporary art, the people who produce this art and the people who claim to understand and appreciate it.

These people are wrong.

It’s true that I am a stubborn old git but my opinions on art are just my own. While I may mock the pieces of crap that hang on the walls of museums of contemporary art, I genuinely have praise for paintings and sculptures that, in my opinion, say something to the world.

For example, I love paintings of real things,, such as landscapes, oceans, storms and sunsets, particularly if these images have been captured in the past. I find that they give me an insight into life back then and I can imagine the painter sitting in the English countryside, using his skill to capture a specific moment in time for future generations to enjoy.

Here’s an example or two by J.M.W.Turner:

These are fantastic paintings.

I feel rather sorry for J.M.W. Turner to be honest because, sadly, his name has been used (or should I say abused) in modern times. His name has been given to an annual contemporary art competition that genuinely makes me wonder about the sanity and intelligence of certain elements of my nation. 

The Turner Prize is awarded to a so-called visionary young artist (under the age of 50 – so its ageist as well) for their new works of art.

However, the art is utter nonsense. In fact, it’s worse than that – it’s absolutely shit!

The Turner Prize shows everything that is wrong with art. These days, it has been captured and held captive by the pseudo-intellectual brigade, who refuse to accept genuine art because, in their words:

“It’s been done before!”

I could vomit in a bucket, throw the contents onto a canvas, empty the contents of a filthy cat litter tray on top of that, spread it around with a garden rake, throw in a few packets of cat food for good measure, leave it to dry and then hang it up on a wall with the title “Cat Chores Gone Wrong” and I am sure that some pillock out there in the world of contemporary art would start gushing over it, claiming it to be:

“The most exciting cosmic, trans-species interactive amalgamation in the myriad multiverses”.

I might just do that, actually!

But of course, art is really any form and while I may mock a pseudo-intellectual, I am certain that he has his reasons for spouting pseudo-philosophical crap about a vomit stain hanging on a wall.

I find beauty in many other art forms, such as music, video and the wonders of Mother Nature. To be perfectly honest, I prefer photography to painting, simply because when a camera captures an image, it is real. In the minute moment that a camera clicks, a picture of a moment is preserved, whether it is a moment of beauty or tragedy. 

For me, like a Turner landscape, we have captured a moment in time that can be preserved for our future generations to enjoy, contemplate or simply fantasize about. 

I would love a person from two hundred years in the future to see a photograph that I had taken and just spend a few moments trying to imagine what was going on at the time. 

Another art form that is close to my heart is music. Music is personal and, like a photograph, can have a special meaning for a person. I still maintain that a catalogue of personal music can act as a unique time machine for a person. Whenever I hear certain songs, my mind searches my memory banks for a specific moment, selects it and brings into my thoughts so that I can relive what is probably a cherished memory, either of a specific instance or a special month or year.

In that respect, music gives meaning to life and the good thing about music is that, like a fantastic statue, a beautiful photograph or an oil painting of an ancient landscape, we can think about our lives, past lives, history and the future all at the same time.

I’m not sure that a vomit stain hanging in the Tate Gallery would have such a profound effect.

I’ll leave you with two songs from my vast collection that are very special to me for reasons that I may elaborate on in future posts:

How about you, dear reader. 

Are you a fan of art?

What art do you enjoy?

Do you think that a lot of contemporary art is rubbish?

What does "art" mean to you?

The Most Dangerous Creature In The World

When people are asked to think about dangerous animal, they normally consider big vicious animals with huge teeth or massively poisonous snakes or spiders.

The truth is that the most dangerous animal in the world is in fact a tiny barely perceptible little vampiric bastard that is responsible for more illness and death than any other creature.

This little monster is responsible for transmitting disease to over 700 million people every year, resulting in over 2 million deaths.

Can you believe that?

This demonic blood-sucking little fiend is the mosquito and has terrorised me for the last month or so, as well as several times in in my recent lifetime.

Regular readers will know that I am a barely recovering hypochondriac and I have recently fallen off the wagon and spent hours fretting over potential illness. My trip to Brazil meant that I had to be vaccinated against Yellow Fever, a disease spread by these damned insects, and that in itself caused me major mental problems, convincing myself that I would catch the disease before my feet left the shores of Britain (you can read about it here) .

In the past, going to places like China, I have had to take malaria tablets to protect myself against another disease spread by mosquitos. Worse, the bloody tablets made me feel ill anyway with the list of possible side-effects being almost as terrifying as catching the disease itself.

I travelled to Brazil armed with enough mosquito repellent to thwart a vast swarm of the little buggers. If you haven’t used mosquito repellent, let me tell you that it is one of the most revolting substances ever stored in an aerosol can.

First, I had to smother myself in high factor sun screen to protect my delicate skin from the powerful rays of the sun. On top of that, I then had to spray all of my exposed skin with mosquito repellent. 

There are three other things you need to know about mosquito repellent.

First of all, it absolutely stinks. If you want to go out at night time and wear something that makes you smell nice, forget it. My paranoia informed me that the people would probably keel over as I walked past due to the stench of this foul liquid protecting me against blood-sucking mosquitos.

Second, mosquito repellent is nasty stuff. The warnings on the can tell you not to spray it near your lips and eyes because it will cause a lot of irritation. I speak from experience. One night, I was a little overenthusiastic and some of the foul substance hit me in the face. I could feel it on my lips. I was in the bathroom, swearing and cursing as I vigorously removed all traces with copious amounts of water.

Finally, this stuff ruins your clothes. Again, in another bout of overenthusiastic squirting, I managed to spray loads of it all over my shorts, leaving a nasty little stain that made people think I had had an accident on the way to the toilet. I also managed to spray some onto my black leather watch strap, resulting in a black stain on my skin that I had to scrub for hours to remove.

After a week and a half in Brazil, of covering ourselves in this crap, we were delighted to report that no insect had bitten us.

However, something happened that caused the hypochondriac within to surface with maximum prejudice.

There is a disease called Dengue Fever which is prevalent in the tropics, including South America. Brazil has had many problems with it over the past few years. It is spread by a variety of mosquito called aegis aegypti. 

Worse, this disease is incurable.

We arrived in Búzios at the end of our holiday for a relaxing couple of days by the sea and quickly fell into the routine of lazing in the sun. Sadly, we were so free of stress that we forgot to spray ourselves with mosquito repellent.

The result? We woke up on the first morning with a few bite marks on our legs.

Mrs PM thought nothing of it.

I, on the other hand, mutated into The Hypochondriac, and instead of calmly reading a book by the pool, I spent hours searching the internet on my phone looking for symptoms of Dengue Fever trying to calculate whether the little bastards  that had bitten us where in fact mosquitos or some other nasty little blood-sucking critters.

Within hours I had become an expert on Dengue Fever – and I didn’t like what I read. The chances of catching it were slim (only 250,000 cases out of 180 million people in Brazil), and even if we had been bitten by a mosquito, the chances of it being an aegis aegypti were even smaller.

What's more, the aegis aegypti would have to be infected with Dengue Fever anyway as the disease is spread when the mosquito bites a person infected with the disease. Furthermore, it was spring in Brazil and peak mosquito time is in the summer (December to March).

At university I studied statistics as part of my degree and all of my common sense was telling me that the bites were totally harmless and the chances of catching something nasty were very slim. Logic was thrown out of the window by The Hypochondriac.

The thing is that Dengue Fever is like a really nasty bout of the flu, with added

For the rest of our stay in Brazil, we saturated ourselves in mosquito repellent (I virtually SHOWERED in the stuff) and we weren’t bitten again.

Mrs PM took it all in her stride and enjoyed her time without worry.

I tried to but I struggled to silence the voice at the back of my mind trying to convince me that I was doomed to Dengue Fever.

Thankfully, the bites have disappeared and the incubation period over so I will not succumb to Dengue Fever.

However, my fear of mosquitos is now instilled and I know that in order to eliminate that fear, I have to soak myself in an obnoxious liquid, allow a nurse to stab me with a needle full of an unspeakably vile substance or take tablets that I know will make me ill.

All this because of a tiny buzzing, six-legged little horror that the eye can barely perceive – the most dangerous creature in the world.

I want to go on record right now to reiterate the fact that mosquitos, like wasps, are right up there in the list of creatures that I would eliminate from planet Earth if I were given omnipotent powers.

And, like wasps, I will endeavour to eliminate them one at a time, whenever the opportunity arises.

At least then I will never accidentally spray mosquito repellent in my face again.

Iguaçu Falls

So there I was, dressed like a condom and being drenched by Mother Nature at her most fierce. I looked around through glasses soaked with droplets of water and noticed that a hundred or so other people were also doing passable impersonations of condoms and being equally soaked.

Some brave fools had decided to take on the force of nature protected just by normal clothes and as a result, were totally drenched.

I was standing on a wooden walkway in the middle of Garganta do Diablo (Devil’s Throat) on the Brazilian side of Iguaçu Falls quite literally surrounded by tons of water cascading over rocks both above us and below us. I think the name Devil’s Throat is quite an apt name.

I’ve been to Niagara Falls in Canada and marvelled at its fierce beauty. I honestly never thought that I would see anything better in the waterfall department, that is until I saw Iguaçu Falls.

We arrived in Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil a week or so ago in the middle of a rainstorm and on our first full day caught a local bus to the Iguaçu National Park. We paid our entrance fee and a few moments later we found ourselves on a double decker bus heading for the falls themselves, following a rough tourist map written in Portuguese. The bus stopped a few times but with the help of my poor Spanish and Mrs PM’s limited Portuguese vocabulary, we managed to get off at the starting point for a small hike that would ultimately lead us to Devil’s Throat.

In the distance amongst the trees we could hear a distant rumbling, which meant that I heard the falls before I actually saw them. When I eventually did see them, my first thought was that there were far more than at Niagara. From where we stood the falls were across the river in Argentina and in the distance we could see walkways where Argentinians could get up close and personal. We had already decided to go to Argentina the next day so that was something to look forward to.

Our first view of the waterfalls

A closer look

The trail gradually led us down from our high vantage point. There were hundreds of people all trying to take photos with is so we had to be very patient. While we were waiting we observed the local wildlife, in particular a rather strange creature called a coati, which looks a bit like a raccoon. There were warning signs asking us not to feed these persistent little creatures as they are known to bite. I was happy to oblige because the last thing I wanted to worry about, being a massive hypochondriac, was rabies.

A cheeky coati

As we descended the views of the falls became more spectacular and the noise became louder. Mrs PM was far more prepared than I was and about half way down she bought a couple of human sized condoms from a café, anticipating the need to protect us against the water.

Getting closer

And closer

The lower we got, the spray became more prevalent and, reluctantly, I put on the giant body condom. I felt like a total berk until we arrived at Devil’s Gorge. A wooden walkway led out into Mother Nature’s biggest shower system. I could barely hear myself think, such was the volume of cascading water. We were surrounded by high waterfalls from above and below.

Deep in Garganta do Diablo

Devil's Throat

It was magnificent and I was in awe of the beauty of Mother Nature.

We kept the human condoms when we left the Brazilian side so we could use them in Argentina. The next day, a small minibus picked us up at our hotel in Foz do Iguaçu and after a relatively easy border crossing, we arrived in Parque Nacional del Iguazù on the Argentinian side of the falls.

The main difference in Argentina, apart from the language, was the view of the falls. In Brazil we descended into the Devil’s Throat. In Argentina, we got up close and personal with numerous other waterfalls from both below and above.

There were several trails. The first trail, the so-called “Low Trail” was similar to the Brazilian side apart from how close we got the falls themselves. We didn’t find ourselves trapped in Devil’s Throat but we were a lot closer to the many cascading waterfalls.

There were a couple of instances when my fear of heights joined the party. The low trail was supposed be low but in reality the pathways crossed the falls at quite a height. I was okay but I had to hurry across a couple of the paths because the drop below was enough to make me jittery. I left Mrs PM to take the scary photos as I watched by the sidelines. 

The "Low Trail"

Up close and personal

We had to put on our human condoms again for an encounter with a particularly high waterfall from below.

Later, we took the “High Trail”. I was slightly nervous because the low trail had made me worry about heights but the high trail took us over the top of the falls at an acceptable height above the rivers. The views from these lofty heights were absolutely remarkable. We walked over countless waterfalls, watching the water flow over the edges of cliffs in a raucous fusion of spray, foliage, rock and thunder. 

It was magnificent.

We barely noticed that the weather had taken a turn for the worse. Our condoms protected use from the torrential rain that had started.

We walked back hoping to see Devil’s Throat from above but sadly we ran out of time and had to meet the minibus so that we could return to Brazil.

I’ll leave you with a video that hopefully gives you a feeling of how beautiful  Iguaçu Falls is. To be honest, I preferred the views from Argentina but I would urge you to visit both for the full experience.

Rock Fusion

I’m off on my travels again on Monday and I can’t wait. I’m heading west across the pond again but this time, I’m heading south of the Equator to Brazil. We are starting off in Lisbon for a day before flying to Salvador, Iguazu Falls, Rio de Janeiro and finally a couple of days by the beach in Búzios.

We’ve never been to South America before and I am looking forward to crossing off another country from my travel bucket list.

I will post more details on my return but in the meantime I thought I would offer you a couple of rock songs that cross over into other genres. 

Regular readers know that I love rock music and I my quest to introduce new music to readers will continue (sorry about that). The songs below are all probably by artists you haven’t heard before but have been influenced by other musical styles.

Rock meets 1980’s Pop – Yes – Owner of a Lonely Heart

I love pop music from the early 1980’s and Yes, a progressive rock band, produced the perfect fusion of this style with rock. Many die-hard fans of Yes hate this song accusing it of being too commercial and that the band sold out. I totally disagree. I love it and it was of my favourite songs from the 1980’s.

Rock meets Reggae – Rush  - Digital Man

Regular readers will know that Rush are my favourite band and they often incorporate other musical styles into their songs, which is one of the reasons I love them so much. This particular song has a heavy reggae influence throughout.

Rock meets Blues  - Led Zeppelin – I Can’t Quit You, Baby

To be fair, Led Zeppelin started life as a blues band and evolved into something that many people think was the start of heavy metal. As you can see from the song below from their eponymous debut album the band’s roots are deeply embedded in the blues.



Rock meets Gospel – The Answer – Preachin’

I love a good bit of gospel and when combined with a bit of rock and a slide guitar, it is a recipe for a cracking feel good song. The Answer are a cracking British rock band who I first saw before they were famous in a tiny venue in Manchester. The next time, they were supporting AC/DC at the Manchester Arena. They are definitely worth checking out.

Rock meets Jazz – Nightwish – Slow Love Slow

Nightwish are a Finnish symphonic metal band who regularly cross musical genres. I am not a huge fan of jazz music at all but this particular slow and sensual song is just brilliant and wouldn’t feel out of place in a 1950’s jazz club. Here are the band performing it live at the Montreux Jazz festival:

Rock meets Latin American – Santana – Smooth

Okay – Carlos Santana is from Mexico so it’s hardly unexpected that his music is heavily influenced by his Latin American roots. However, he is a fantastic guitarist and in my humble opinion it makes his style of Latin American music much more enjoyable.

Rock meets Dance – Nine Inch Nails – Only

Nine Inch Nails have always flirted with electronica (which is the main reason they are one of my favourite bands). Only is a great little song that borders on being a pop song. It’s certainly a song that would persuade me to jump onto the dance floor and strut my funky stuff, even though these days I look like an embarrassing old man at a wedding.

Rock meets Mexican Mariachi – Rammstein – Te Quiero Puta!

Rammstein are always producing bizarre songs and this is arguably the most bizarre of them all. Most fans of the band hate the song but I find it quirky and intriguing. It is sung in Spanish and I won’t bother translating the words for you (because as you can guess they are offensive).

Rock meets Opera – Nightwish – The Passion and the Opera

The original singer of Nightwish, the fabulous Tarja Turunen, has an amazing and very operatic voice. To be honest, I could have chosen many more early songs by Nightwish to illustrate her vocal capabilities, but I selected this one because it focusses more on the operatic range of her voice. I’m not a fan of opera at all but somehow her voice fits in snugly with the heavy music. About two minutes into this song you can hear for yourself how operatic her voice is.

Rock meets Techno – Joe Satriani – Devil’s Slide

Joe Satriani is a brilliant guitarist, arguably the greatest rock guitarist in the world. The album Engines of Creation is probably the most experimental he has produced, with synthesisers and computer manipulation taking centre stage alongside his guitar genius rather than the traditional drums, bass and keyboards.



I hope you enjoyed the songs and I will see you in a couple of weeks.

Who Stole My Milk??????

When I think back to the period of my life between 1981 and 1984, I feel a deep sense of fierce nostalgia and excitement. It was the period of my life when I evolved from a spotty naïve little kid into a more focussed young adult.

That was the time I was a student at the University of Liverpool.

So many things happened during that time that I could almost write a book about them all. However, the lifestyle was something that stands out.

At the time, there was a TV comedy series called The Young Ones about four students sharing a house. While it was a rather extreme portrayal of life as a student with extreme and unbelievably anarchic storylines, there were some scenes that reflected my life as a student enjoying communal living.

Scenes like this:

I had a taste of university life again a couple of years ago when I visited my eldest lad at university in Newcastle. He lived with a few other students and they shared a communal kitchen and bathroom. I looked around the place with a smile because the place looked like a bomb had gone off in it. The bathroom was disgusting and the kitchen had a “lived in” feel about it. It looked like neither had been cleaned for ages.

The memories came flooding back, particularly when he told me that he had made an effort to “tidy up the kitchen” for our visit.

Life was the same for me back in the 1980’s. Communal living with seven other students was an unlikely fusion of entertainment and disgustingness, an amalgam of comradeship and deviousness.

Some of these guys were my best friends and remain so after all these years. Nevertheless, at the time, we had a love/hate relationship with each other due to the pressures of communal living.

Each person had different levels of tolerance when it came to cleanliness, trust and expected behaviour.

Here are some examples (with the names changed to protect the guilty!).

Peter decided that he wanted to entertain a young woman and impress her by making a Spanish omelette. Sadly, he didn’t have a frying pan so he thought to himself “I’ll just use Dave’s”.

He didn’t ask me or tell me.

 I would have said yes, of course, and asked him to clean it afterwards, something I always do. I have a bugbear about dirty plates and will always wash up as soon as I can after eating.

Two days after Peter had entertained his young lady friend, I wanted to use my frying pan. I kept my pots in a cupboard, clearly labelled “Dave” and I knew that my clean pan would be in there because I hadn’t used it. I couldn’t find it.

“Has anyone seen my frying pan?” I asked.

Nobody had seen it and Peter wasn’t around. In the sink, there was a huge pile of dirty washing up (not mine I hasten to add). With my heart sinking, I systematically deconstructed the foul mass of plates, cutlery and pots. When I reached the bottom, I found my pan. At first I didn’t recognise it as it was covered in the burnt remains of a two day old Spanish omelette.

My pan was WORSE than this!

Peter had started the omelette, returned to his room and forgotten about it. When he remembered, he returned to the kitchen to discover that his delicious meal had been incinerated. Rather than cleaning up the mess, he simply threw the pan in the sink, without disposing of the scorched contents, and taken the woman out instead.

I was livid. It took me hours to clean it up and when he eventually returned, I was tempted to either use the pan on Peter as a weapon or a suppository.

I can’t claim to be innocent. Once, I started cooking bacon on a grill that was full of hardened fat (it had never been cleaned to that point). I popped to the toilet and when I returned, I found that the fat had caught fire, cremating my bacon and threatening to burn down the kitchen. With another student’s help and using a fire blanket, we managed to put the fire out but not before the entire flat was full of smoke and every single surface covered in a fine black soot.

Unlike Peter, I was filled with remorse and spent the next few hours cleaning the entire kitchen and washing everything up. When I had finished the only trace of my disaster were a few scorch marks on the cooker.

Sadly, however, another flatmate wasn’t as anal about cleanliness as I am. Months later, the exact same thing happened to him but rather than cleaning everything, he simply put out the fire and went back to his room as if nothing had happened. The timing of this accident was terrible because later that day, the landlady popped around and witnessed the carnage in the kitchen. We were all threatened with eviction as a result but managed to avoid this drastic action by performing the same decontamination operation that I had done.

The fridge was another source of pain. Some of us clearly labelled our food because although we were good mates, we had made an unwritten pact never to have communal food – including milk and bread. Sadly this led to numerous arguments. We all labelled our own items as if this act would protect our food.

It didn’t.

I lost count of the number of times one of my so-called mates had “borrowed” my food. Even that phrase “borrowed my food” makes me laugh because we never paid it back. I was so fed up of my food disappearing that I stooped to their depths of criminality and started stealing their food instead.

The result was total mistrust.

This was aggravated by the fact that we were all absolutely skint, and when our food vanished it was almost as if we had been robbed of what little money we owned. I started storing all my food in my room and I even considered buying my own fridge.

I’ll leave you with the most disgusting thing that happened in my final year. I have a phobia for mouldy food. If I open a packet of cheese and find a little tiny bit of mould on it, the whole thing goes in the bin. Some deranged people will simply cut off the mould and carry on eating it. These people are either aliens or just plain sick (Of course, I realise that I may have insulted you, dear reader, but please be aware that when confronted with mould, I myself mutate into a deranged subhuman monster, lashing out at any other human being in the vicinity for not having spotted the mould and disposed of the cheese in the first place).

During my last year, we opened a cupboard that none of my flatmates claimed to have used. In that cupboard was a loaf of bread. That loaf of bread had been living in that cupboard for months. It’s original colour (which may have been white or brown) had vanished and been replaced by the sickest green I had ever seen.

It was almost alive!!

One brave soul lifted it out and put it in an already overflowing bin in the kitchen. I ran out of the kitchen screaming and locked myself in my room for four days until all traces of the loaf had been disposed of.

Those memories sound quite bad but I still recall them with fondness. Next month we are having a reunion in Liverpool where I am sure we will reminisce about some of the pain of communal living.

Hopefully, by then, I may just have forgiven Peter.

The Janus Men

There’s been a bit of a furore recently in the UK in the aftermath of the election of the new leader of the Labour Party, the current opposition party.

The new leader is a guy called Jeremy Corbyn, a man whose views are generally a little controversial. The right wing press have had the knives out ever since he put his name forward but, in my opinion have stooped to new depths.

The latest slur against Corbyn is that he was caught doing something absolutely despicable. As controversial as his views are, he has apparently committed a most evil crime against the country, an act bordering on being treasonous that has offended not only the establishment but the veterans of two World Wars and the Queen herself.

Evidently, he can stoop no lower.

So what is this hideous evil thing he has done?

I swear I am not making this up.

HE WAS CAUGHT NOT SINGING OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM!

Here are some of the headlines:

“Corb snubs the Queen” The Sun

“Corbyn snubs Queen and country” The Telegraph

“Shameful: Corbyn refuses to sing national anthem” Daily Express

“Fury as Corbyn refuses to sing national anthem at Battle of Britain memorial” – Daily Mail

“Corby a zero: Leftie refuses to sing national anthem” – Daily Star

This was front page news despite all of the other tragedy that is going on in the world.

Now I don’t really care what your political views are but this story is typical of the kind of shit that makes headlines in our country. I am convinced that we are becoming a nation of idiots who ignore the real tragedies in our own country and the rest of the world in favour of this misguided madness that fuels the fire of absurdity in the United Kingdom.

My views are summed up in this image:

Let me tell you some things about our national anthem.

It’s called God Save the Queen and it is one of the most boring anthems in the world.

It has six verses and of those people who know the words, only a handful actually know all of them.

The people of Scotland hate the anthem because, nestled away in verse six, are the words:

“May he sedition hush and like a torrent rush rebellious Scots to crush”

Here is the anthem:

I do hope you didn't fall into a coma listening to it.

If you are not religious and not a royalist then the song is meaningless to you.

I’ve been to England football matches and traditionally they play the national anthems of the teams involved. I don’t sing it and to be honest a lot of other people don’t either.

At the last cricket match I went to see involving England, they played Jerusalem:

Another candidate that other people have suggested be the anthem is Land of Hope and Glory:

I would probably sing both of those. because they are better than God Save the Queen, more upbeat and joyous. We want a bit of pomp when the anthem rings out and we want to sing about the country’s good points, not a dreary dirge about whoever the current monarch is.

I have nothing against royalty but I largely ignore them. I’ve said before on this blog that they serve a vague purpose but I have no desire to actually prostrate myself in front of Queen Elizabeth as if she really were a better person than me. I would sit and have a chat with her about her life but I would refuse to cave in to the expected social etiquette.

We don’t live in the times of Henry VIII.

For these reasons, I can understand why people are embarrassed to sing the anthem or simply refuse to do so.

Don’t get me wrong; I love my country but there are more important things to consider other than a politician being caught with his mouth closed when he should have been bellowing the words to an outdated song about the monarchy.

Sadly, he has caved in to pressure and will sing the anthem next time he has to in public, just to please a bunch of fawning royalists.

I mean, I thought that our country was free and you should be allowed to live your life as you please without having to fit in with outraged little Englanders.

What annoys me most about this is that the newspapers are claiming the moral high ground about this. It seems to have been forgotten that journalists who work for these papers have been guilty of attacking the royal family in the past. Do they think that we have forgotten about a certain newspaper hacking the voicemail of Prince Charles, the heir to the throne?

The hypocrisy is breath-taking.

What worries me most is that I am surrounded by people who believe absolutely everything they read in the newspapers and their views are moulded by the garbage that they read. There will be people who will never ever consider voting for Jeremy Corbyn because of these pathetic headlines.

The most disturbing hypocrisy has been the refugee crisis where certain newspapers have made a sudden about turn, showing themselves as total hypocrites.

Look at these contrasting headlines in The Sun and the Daily Mail:

Such two-facedness makes me sick.

I’ll end on a lighter note. Here is what Billy Connolly thinks should replace the national anthem:

I think I agree – as long as I can write the new lyrics.

That’s a subject for another post.

The Hypochondriac (Part Two)

I have a confession to make.

My name is Dave and I’m a hypochondriac.

Actually, that makes me feel like I’m sitting in a meeting of Hypochondriacs Anonymous. I’ve told the world before that I suffer from hypochondria in an early blog post (you can read it here) and I have learned to stop reading about illness and asking Mr Google about symptoms.

Sadly, a couple of weeks ago, I fell off the wagon and spent a week convinced that I was suffering from a major illness.

It all started when a work colleague who had been on a trip to Brazil advised me that I need to look at vaccinations for my forthcoming trip to that country. Now normally, I’m not too bothered about vaccinations because ultimately they protect you from all manner of nasty viruses that can wreak havoc with your body.

Being well travelled I am used to trips to the doctor to check on what he needs to inject me with. I don’t like needles but I look away as the nurse administers the vaccine before going home as if nothing has happened, with just a small pain in the arm.

I made an appointment and the young nurse told me that I should have Tetanus and Hepatitis A boosters but that I also need to have a vaccine for Yellow Fever.

“Now there’s something I need to warn you about with the Yellow Fever vaccine,” she said. “It can have side effects.”

My mind started working overtime and before I knew it, my imagination was running amok. I envisaged everything from keeling over in a rabid seizure to growing a new head and turning into one of those lizard people that conspiracy theorists think rule the world.

I had a vaccine last week! Now look at me!!

“What sort of side effects?” I said, trying to control my shaky voice.

In a nutshell she told me that one in ten people felt ill with flu like symptoms but there have been cases of people falling really ill up to ten days after injection.

“It’s alright,” she said. “I’ve never known anybody actually turn yellow, but if you do just go to A&E!”

She said this with a smile on her face as she stabbed me with what I now imagined was an alien virus from the Planet Tharg that would make me disintegrate into a mutant creature, like Jeff Goldbum’s character did in The Fly.

She then told me that my immune system would fight off the virus and in ten days I would be fine. But then it got worse. She decided to make casual conversation by telling me that I shouldn’t have the virus if I am ill or that people over 60 are recommended not to have it.

“I’M ONLY EIGHT YEARS AWAY!” I screamed. “AND I’VE GOT A COLD!”

I didn’t really. I smiled and nodded, feigning interest when all I wanted to do was rush out of the surgery screaming.

I drove home with my weird imagination in full control. I had a slight cold and, in my mind, my immune system was going to be fighting that instead of the Yellow Fever and I would end up turning yellow and being strapped to a bed in Intensive care surrounded by lots of armed men in Hazmat suits.

Could it get worse?

Of course it could. The second I got home, I was at my computer asking Mr Google “What are the side effects of the Yellow Fever vaccine?”

What followed was panic as I read all possible effects.

One in three people suffer  from mild effects such as headache, muscle pain, a mild fever and soreness at the injection site.

One in 130,000 suffer an allergic reaction.

One in 250,000 suffer a condition that effects the brain and nervous system causing confusion and coordination problems.

One in 330,000 people can suffer a condition that effects internal organs which can in even rarer cases, actually lead to organ failure.

Guess which category I thought I was going to fall into?

Mrs PM had had a Yellow Fever vaccination about eleven years ago when she went to Nigeria with work and she had to have a booster this time. When I broached the subject with her, she told me that the vaccine caused her to bleed from the eyes for three days. No she didn’t – I made that up.

She suffered no ill effects whatsoever and told me in no uncertain terms that I was being a big baby.

The rational part of me agreed but the Hypochondriac fuelled by Captain Paranoia told me to expect the worst.

I became obsessed over the next few days. Remember that cold I told you I had? Well that got worse, and at work, I looked up yet more symptoms and worked myself up even more.

“Oh God NO!!” I yelled at my desk.

“What’s up?” asked my work colleague.

“Nothing,” I stuttered. “Just a stupid bug in my program.”

By day three, I genuinely felt ill. My cold had got worse, I had a headache and I had flu like symptoms, just like one in in three people apparently suffer from.

I got home and lay on the settee feeling sorry for myself – a bit like this guy:

Thankfully, the next day I felt a lot better and went to work with no ill effects.

That was a couple of weeks ago and I am now officially immune to Yellow Fever with a little yellow certificate to prove it.

I didn’t turn into Jeff Goldblum’s fly.

I didn’t grow a new head.

I didn’t turn yellow.

The only thing that was injured was my pride.

I pledge to you, dear reader, that I will never ever ask Mr Google again for advice about symptoms.

I’m looking forward to the next meeting of Hypochondriacs  Anonymous.