Mindful destruction and me (I’m a baseball bat kind of guy)

Posted: October 1, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Matters that Matter | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I’m not an artist.

And I’m certainly not a creator (my kids and debris aside).

I’m a smasher, a breaker of things, a “that’s not supposed to be in there, Sam” kind of guy.

No, actually I’m a baseball bat kind of guy.

Baseball bats are the place to be, a way to dance and the means of rhythm that coincides with deep and hearty impact in the soul.

Here’s one of my former favourites (once named ‘Old Slugger’), which caught fire one enchanted evening:

It’s natural to enjoy a stick, a good stick, a stick that makes your walk home from work a good one.

And aiming approximately at the planet, swinging wildly (the only way to do it) and bracing yourself for your own impact, this is about enjoying a collision that reminds you of who you are.

I prefer apples.

Preferably slightly rotten (for the spread) but I’m prepared to again spend to have the freshest ingredients.

Baseball bats and apples.

Also bananas, pineapples and occasionally a roast chicken.

This is the relationship I have with fresh fruit and poultry.

Impacts so deep I feel like I’m part of their diet. An unnecessary 5-a-day.

I can’t fix this smashed plant pot in the shape of a classic VW campervan. I can’t superglue it in the right places, and I can’t marry up the many pieces to be flush.

I can smash it again though, and we can all enjoy the pieces (or I buy a new one, most likely).

I moved onto a chair today, two big wicker inherited buggers that took up more room than the total mass of my family combined.

With hammer and axe, as well as sinew and love, I tore them to pieces, and have just finished. There’s sweat, foul language and bits of wicker everywhere. My children were told to stay out of daddy’s deconstruction area.

I now have pieces of the wicker chair up on my wall. Does that count as what you’d want to consider creation?

I didn’t build the wall, but I did nail something I broke to it.

Really, I need to learn how to use superglue.

But I can’t deny in me the ‘back home’ sensation of laying a baseball bat into something. It’s the future, and I’d like to think I’m a part of that.

It’s not helpful, but it does, I believe, make us feel better.

So let’s strive for this measured mindful destruction in the long-term, and meanwhile, let’s pay attention to those who now how to superglue, build walls and fashion wicker chairs.

I suppose, someone needs to make the baseball bats, but till then there’s always sticks on the way home from your walk.

Thanks for reading.

Yours, swinging wildly at the planet,

Sam

Making your brother King of Spain, just to show him who is boss

Posted: September 17, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

I was reading about Napoleon and Waterloo and Wellington, and their brothers and household expenses, and the monarchy, and becoming emperor, and Josephine, etc, and more etc, last night.

Or, I was reading about the ‘Napoleonic period’, if you’d prefer to read a better-written sentence?

There was a particular take-away for me, which was that at some point the Emperor Napoleon decided to make his older brother the King of Naples (which is nice), and then the King of Spain (which is also nice).

I cannot conceive of the bragging rights that allocates you, when you’ve made your older brother the King of two different things.

I’d love to make my big brother the King of Spain, just to show him.

Just to show him that whilst he once made himself King of the Castle, pushing me in the face back down the climbing frame, I’ve now gone slightly mental enough to make him King of Spain and there’s nothing he can do about it.

You’re King of Spain. No backsies.

And he’d have to sit on his throne and send me reports when I ask for them, and host banquets for important guests that I can’t be bothered to meet because I’m Emperor, bitch.

It’s also Spain, so I can regularly intimate that whilst I’m made him King, this is also a very easy kingdom to have bestowed on you by your younger brother.

However, for me to do this today would require a lot of paperwork, and quite frankly an invasion of Spain that I am just not up to right now.

I have a baseball bat and one of those flashlights you can strap to your head.

Spain might not be seen as a military power anymore, but I expect they can outdo me on the advanced military technology front.

If their army is two people, then they’ve outdone me on the manpower front too.

Two-to-one.

My brother tried to inflict a nobility on me once, by purchasing a square foot of land in Scotland that somehow entitles me to be known as a ‘Lord’.

It was a wedding gift, and I’ll have my vengeance, for that and for the climbing frame incident of 1996.

Now if you’ll kindly excuse me, I need to raise an army to overthrow the monarchy, become tyrant of Europe, lose it all, gain it all back again, have a really, seriously bad time in Russia, go down in history and one of the greatest generals and leaders of all time, and, most importantly, get one over on my big brother.

Sam

Why do those without legs insist on running marathons?

Posted: September 9, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I saw a news article on a Ukrainian teenager whose legs had been blown off by Putin.

And, after that, wonderful things happened because of wonderful people, and so she’s not dead and she now has prosthetic legs.

So now she’s running a marathon.

Why not archery?

Or, anything else that wasn’t a metaphor for overcoming all those naysayers, like Putin, who said she couldn’t run marathons anymore because she’s got no damn legs.

If my lower half left me, I’d regroup and set about working out how best to achieve sitting-down from now on, but I’m not going to take up tap dancing just to show ‘them’.

Maybe I’d tap dance against Putin, but not if he told me not to. Because he’s a limb-deducting psycho.

Good for that teenager. Good for Ukraine.

But remember you’re not bound by tradition to run marathons just because you’ve had your legs blown off.

You can do anything.

Even archery.

I dislike the idea of a PR agency suggesting that there is traction to be achieved if you go down the no-legs marathon route. And if you’re with-it enough to note “but I’ve never liked running, and I’d much prefer to do some other things”, they’d respond: “Oh dear, I don’t think you realise the full benefit of having your legs blown off.”

I dislike that a lot.

Being obliged is not my business.

Just as when you’re having a nice menstrual cycle (as my wife and I call it – having a ‘runny egg’), you’re not obliged to wear ghost-white clothing and go for a vagina-stretching bike ride in front of men in the park.

You could have a period and do archery.

It’s your choice, you’re not bound by narratives.

If you’re a grouch throughout the year till Christmas Eve, you’re not obliged to have a soul-searching experience that causes you to unfold in favour of the whimsy and spirit of the season the following morning. You can just read the paper and stay home with your tin of cold beans for lunch.

Your choice. Make it. Your paper, read it. Your beans, eat them.

Avoid Putin, and enjoy your choice, paper and beans. If he allows it. Or get your legs blown off again.

If you have no legs and want to run a marathon……fine. As long as you actually want to do it.

You could alternatively take up dentistry.

Speaking of which, if you’ve sensitive teeth and have recently begun using a new toothpaste to counter the sensitivity, there’s no law, no ruling, no enforced doctrine that means you must now drinketh only ice-water, and eateth only hot food stuffs, just to show you can.

You’re as entitled to tepid food as anyone.

I’ll bet Putin has sensitive teeth, and that’s what this is all about.

Hey Putin, got sensitive teeth?

“No. Only judo.“

‘Only Judo’, what are you talking about Putin?

Sam

Bring and Bless in Bulk – a Google Maps religion

Posted: August 11, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Bring it by to my house and I’ll bless it for you.

In bulk.

I’ll bless mounds of just about anything, just bring it by.

In bulk.

I’ll bless a large pile of poorly dogs.

I’ll bless your collection of wardrobes you’ve suspiciously just ‘inherited’.

Bring your babies by in bulk, and I’ll bless ’em.

Between the hours of 9:00-9:30, Monday-Friday. Closed on weekends.

On weekends, and after 9:30 on weekdays, keep your piles of poorly puppies to yourself, and don’t come near me with your wardrobes and babies.

I offer good rates (preferably donations, maybe even a pleasant sacrifice or two), but not after 9:30 on weekdays.

One evening I discovered that you can add businesses and places of worship to addresses on Google Maps.

This is very handy, as you can save it as a location, but you can also simply google search your house and then set directions to it from there. Easy.

Plus, you can build a business/worship empire by advertising on Google Maps that you specialize in blessing what people bring in bulk.

I still haven’t made millions in donations or sacrifices yet, but at least I can get home easier.

Also, I’m not too sure how to bless something. I can fling water at what I’m supposed to bless (in bulk, just bring it) but I was doing that anyway.

And I’m not too sure what kind of water to use.

There’s a tap on the wall in Westminster Cathedral. I reckon the priests there bless the tap, amongst other plumbing, so all water passing through is instantly blessed too.

So I could fill a bottle with that, but is that the luxury service I want to provide?

I should be able to offer still or sparkling holy water, chilled or boiled to remove toxins.

I could freeze it too, and so that you really, really feel the blessing when it bounces off your forehead.

But that might damage your wardrobes.

Either way, I’m on Google Maps now, but don’t come near my home for trouble as I’ve also blessed my baseball bat collection and will bless your brains out.

Donations and sacrifices still welcome, of course.

Between 9:00-9:30 on weekdays, anyway.

Sam

My Mud, good for your face, and wallowing

Posted: July 29, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

There are only two things I am familiar with in which one can wallow.

The first is depression.

The other is mud, and I’ve got some mud (and depression!).

I also got myself a mortgage and house to go with it several years ago, including a garden.

We’ve had a few heatwaves recently, and as the grass burned away from the sunshine, the mud that is mine became apparent to all.

So I sat in it.

The shame was that it hadn’t rained in weeks, so what was mud was more like dirt.

But that gave me time to consider what this really was, instead of enjoying it for a good wallow.

How deep does this property of mine go? Am I able to dig deep down vertically and still be home?

Can I scrape away a few inches beneath the top layer and get some mud that I can place in a jar, give a good shake with rain water, and then rub it into my face for fashion reasons (not health, just fashion).

Or I can dig deeper, deeper, deeper still.

I need a shovel, for fashion purposes.

I think the glory of my mud is that it is inheritance, though I don’t know from who.

Dinosaurs, mammoths, cave people, medieval peasants, and my great-grandad Arthur.

All of these things, and many more varieties, pooped their way through history, unrecorded, spoken, and written, and with a mix of rainwater, sunshine, and millions of millennia, and probably something else, became my mud.

Ancestral poop, mixed with the cosmos, in a jar, or on my face.

That’s inheritance.

Inheritance you can scrape off your boots after a good game of footy.

Inheritance I’ve lobbed at a sibling all in good fun but still hoping I got him right in the face.

Inheritance that I’d like to see my descendants enjoying, throwing at each other and wallowing in.

It’ll probably be good for the blood pressure too, because generally doing general things is generally good for your blood pressure, but this one features mud.

Probably not that great for your eyes though. Don’t put it in your eyes, but don’t let that discourage you from throwing it at a sibling.

Maybe wallow in goggles.

Sam

I’ve achieved so much less than Henry VIII

Posted: July 15, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The above title might read as though I’m eager, so eager, to behead more of my wives, and I won’t deny that I am definitely behind Henry VIII there.

He’s ahead in the beheading.

But I’ve got better wifi than he did, although that’s not really my doing.

In fact, I think beheading as a competition is a dead-end, much like Anne Boleyn’s neck.

It’s all very unpleasant, but at least they didn’t die from being be-footed. That’s not something you can walk-off.

Henry VIII was very accomplished prior to being notorious (when he was – it seems – lovely). More so than me anyway, and I’ve been notorious since the 90s.

This is making me feel inadequate. Regally.

Henry was a well-regarded jouster (I don’t even have my own Herald – so embarrassing), he wrote poetry and studied philosophy, spoke French and Latin, and established the Church of England – which I didn’t do.

In fact, I was raised CoE, which is also embarrassing. Of course, now I’m Catholic, just to spite him.

I need to get busy living if I’m going to catch-up with that dead monarch.

He lived till he was about 55, which means I’ve 22 years to out-do him in at least that regard.

I could start with Latin, but splitting from Rome and establishing my own religion seems a lot easier.

I’ll develop it from Taoism, and since I don’t really know what that is, and I’ll be the only practitioner, it’ll maintain a degree of ecclesiastical mystery. Then I’ll need robes, a big book, and something golden to hold and waggle about to convince people I’m informed in that ‘post-death’ sense.

Next up, the wives thing.

Just checked with my wife and she says that’s a no-go area. Zero divorces, zero beheadings. She was happy with the ‘survived’ prospect as a wife, but despite being a founder of my own religion – I’m not stupid enough to overrule my wife.

Lastly, poetry.

“Roses are red, violets are blue, good poems are short, so I think that’ll do.”

The second I click ‘publish’ on this blog, I’ll be a published poet. Genius.

So, since it’ll take a while to learn Latin, I’ll plow away at that until I’ve gotten the gist of it – at least to the point of being able to throw a few phrases at people.

“YES I KNOW TIME FLIES SAM, THANK YOU! AND YES I ALREADY WAS SEIZING THE DAY – LEAVE ME ALONE!!!”

Jousting though.

I’ve still no Herald, nor a horse.

But I’ve got loads, an enviable amount in fact, of long sticks.

And a big dog.

This may be a problem, even if it goes according to plan.

I also am without an opponent.

But I do have a wife, and she’s annoyed with me due to the divorce and beheading discussion from earlier, and she has her own collection of long sticks, so she may be well up for it.

She has a bicycle she can use, but I’ll stick with the dog so I’m less lonely.

Henry VIII probably was lonely too at times.

I wonder if anyone knows his dog’s names?

Anyway, 22 years to go.

Sam (the first)

The Vitamins We Don’t Know About Yet

Posted: June 4, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Naturally, I’m talking about witchcraft.

Or maybe that’s “unnaturally”?

At a zoo this past weekend, I made a grab for some buffalo hair, which was laying beside a buffalo that I supposed had finished with it.

Frankly it was still too near the buffalo, and I don’t think we as a species have the right vitamins yet that reverse being gored by a buffalo. Being gored and launched high and far, landing on the hard and sharp bits of myself that no one would want to land on – would require a lot of vitamins.

Strong vitamins. Big vitamins.

Y’know – witchcraft.

I do have some crushed beetle. That was entirely accidental though, but I’ve still got the crushed bits and if I could apply them I’d feel less guilty about that step I took.

My figuring was that I would take these bits, mix them together with some flora, probably some water because hydration is important even in witchcraft, and create a brew, the like of which witches would gather around on a dark and stormy night on a hilltop.

Despite stereotypes, they wouldn’t cackle at my brew, because I wouldn’t invite that sort of witch.

Such a brew, essentially a potion, is invariably, actually, soup of many varying qualities.

Carrot soup – is a potion to combat poor night vision.

Lamb soup – is a potion to combat that local lamb overpopulation problem you’ve been having.

All potions are soups, all soups are potions, some with particular benefits (garlic soup would be good for your immunity) and most have an overall benefit of ending your hunger for a few hours.

Once this was witchcraft, now ’tis science. That’s the order; magic until proven by someone with a degree.

That’s why I want to make a potion, or a ‘spell-soup’, out of some other ingredients, to see if there are some vitamins we don’t know about yet.

So I may take some buffalo hair and crushed beetle, perhaps some chicken stock for flavouring, and whooooooooosh, one sip and and a full, thick head of hair can be yours again tomorrow.

Or your penis will stay hard during whatever occasion you need it for. Probably not rock-climbing.

Or some foul luck will befall that person you dislike (like a horrific rock-climbing accident in which an appendage became lodged in a crook, or a cranny).

Or we keep mixing it together and realise it isn’t so great for swallowing, but is simply fabulous for building houses out of, like horsehair plaster.

Now those are some vitamins.

I like this path of having begun going about witchcraft, progressed through to cooking, had hopes of medicine, ended up in construction.

First things first though, I’ll be needing a cauldron.

And a big spoon.

So do you.

Sam

More family than I thought

Posted: May 29, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I’d love for ‘family’, in my context, to mean a little more mafia than it currently does.

My family are simply my family, of the traditional context – father, mother and a brother.

But I wish it meant people who worked in the concrete shoe shop.

Perhaps it’s in the enunciation: “The Fairmily”. Maybe then people would give up their train seats for me, or just bring their train seats to me at my family compound, so it’s more convenient for me that having to be on a train for them to give up their seats.

And I’d have a plethora of brothers instead of the embarrassingly singular sibling I’m stuck with, and their names would be ‘Paulie’, and ‘Joey’, ‘Tommy’ and ‘Mikey’. My brother’s name is Ben.

And we’d have nicknames. Like ‘Sam the Nose’ – which would be appropriate because of what I’ve got.

My brother would likely be ‘Big Ben’, because he is enormous. But that wouldn’t make me ‘Little Sammy’, because I’m only really slightly less obese.

Anyway.

Family. I’ve come to realise I’ve more of them than I previously realised.

I have long disliked large crowds, which I presumed was due to coming from a small family. Both my parents were a single-child, whilst both my brother and I are both single-children too according to how we feel about one another.

But at a family dinner yesterday, my father invited his only living blood relatives (aside from me and my brother, which is weird as one tends to picture a ‘closest living blood relative’ as being an appropriately distant and appropriately many-times-removed grandmother of an ancient generation, instead of it being me).

And there was a pile of extra family, all ages, many types of clothes, basically all one colour, and they all had no idea who each other was, least of all me.

“Here’s Sam, the less obese one I was telling you about” says my father, “and his equally less obese wife and two kids – both of whom are also single-children”.

And everyone looks at me and my family, each of them agreeing vaguely and approving the description. There’s some handshaking and pecks on cheeks, and then I left the room because I’ve got a problem with large crowds.

I didn’t feel any kind of interest towards these people and so didn’t engage (nobody’s loss), but my father was keen to get to know them, because he really didn’t know them, nor they him.

As I played with my kids, I saw him leading them in comparing old photos, the black and white ones, followed by the later coloured photos that have now gone a 1970’s shade of nicotine-brown.

And then, my father told his stories to the new lump of distant family we’d discovered, detailing his upbringing (some family remembered his childhood address – which was nice), his family and career.

I was listening and realised something I’d suspected before.

My dad is really, really super-cool.

He’s a cockney-rebel, a cage-shaker, and the new next big thing in the classic style, a rebel with many causes (in fact, he’s a Rotarian), but he’s always been willing to do what he can do get jobs done and to achieve so with flair. He’s my hero.

And looking through the photos, the variety of hairstyles and scenarios in which he had those hairstyles, were astonishing.

Meanwhile, I have a blog, and literally piles and piles of distant family that I’m about as related to as everyone else is related to the Cheddar Man.

I’d best look to emulate him. My dad I mean, but also the Cheddar Man a bit too.

They’re both fairmily after all.

Sam

Perpetually IN – a solid handshake and lava

Posted: May 15, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Perpetually IN | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I noticed that some things are invariable and persistently popular.

It’s easy to forget, because it’s all so everyday, but when it comes up in the everyday, it is lovely to remember that it’s happening right now.

Remembering the present?

Makes sense to me, but then again – maybe I ‘get it‘ because I can’t be bothered to dwell on it any more.

And frankly, I’ve other things to be confused about.

Not this though. I do feel like I’ve understood this following topic brilliantly.

Good, solid handshakes.

You’ve got to have good grip strength to have a reliable handshake.

Ballerinas have excellent handshakes, so I’ve come to understand.

It’s probably all the tiptoeing.

Tiptoeing, which is also perpetually IN by the way, take a lot of grip strength.

Try it. Try to tiptoe without holding your hands in a slight pantomime-creep manner, pinching nothing but your lack of dignity between your index finger and thumb.

Impossible. In fact, it is also impossible to tiptoe without thumbs.

Toes aren’t essential for it, however.

And that pains me to say, as I’ve a fondness for toes – they’re harmless and dopey. And I’d hate to take tiptoeing away from anyone, least of all an innocent toe. A promising young toe. A toe with gumption.

Toes are admirable as they’re the silliest body part after genitals, and therefore the second best.

And whilst we know toes aren’t essential to tiptoeing, we should appreciate that a penis or your favourite labia, ‘tween index finger and thumb, is indeed entirely vital to the procedure.

That being said, we should also remember that having a penis can debilitate your grip strength due to adolescence.

Thus, things have gone somewhat full circle with this initial premise, but with a lot of sudden corners.

I guess that’s my writing style, which is a ‘sudden corner’ in and of itself, as I had no clue I had a style.

I haven’t even started talking about handshakes properly yet, let alone lava.

“Let alone lava” – lovely.

A nice phrase, a little like the words ‘tiptoeing’ or ‘after genitals’.

I suppose the handshake could be improved via other means, such as living a long gritty life in a grey gritty part of a flat gritty country, raised by simple gritty parents.

But if you don’t have all that going for you, and you really want to improve your handshake, you’re going to have to start tiptoeing.

And I can understand why you’d want to improve your handshake – because a good sturdy (gritty even) handshake never wanes in popularity.

Even if they don’t shake your hand, folk like to know you’ve got a good handshake. It’s like hearing positive credentials of other people.

“Have you heard about Sam’s quality handshake?”

“Yes, I have, stop going on about it, it’s not news.”

But maybe even more perpetually IN is the dislike of a weak handshake.

I shook a chap’s hand once, though it wasn’t so much a ‘handshake‘ as he put so little effort in I may as well have just grabbed his wrist and waggled the hand so the fingers flapped about in the breeze I was causing.

The shake was so bad, I think other people could overhear the flapping and started to stare.

Fair enough though, as I was starting to stare too.

His hand was so limp, it felt wet.

Flaccid to the point of liquid – that’s a negative and no mistake, especially in the realm of body part functions.

‘Body part functions’ – sounds like there are galas and dinner parties taking place across your body. I might suggest to my wife, “say, darling, I’m having a bit of a shindig in my groin area – fancy bringing a bottle”, and she’d say “no” because even in absolute fiction I have the capacity to revolt my most beloved with utter nonsense.

However, a banquet in the hand – that’d be superb for your grip strength, and if there was music and dancing afterwards, you could even squeeze in some tiptoeing.

So, yes a mighty handshake is what the people want, and they never shan’t.

A bit like volcanoes.

Great for the garden is a volcano, and really super duper if you’re in need of some very new rocks.

That’s a thought, as how often do you encounter a rock that is a matter of a few minutes old, depending on how long it took to cool?

That’d be excellent for the Pet Rock industry.

Visit Hawaii, wait for the regular traffic of lava to make it’s way down your street, don’t touch it (just don’t touch it) and once it has stopped and begun to cool, you can actually witness your Pet Rock being born.

By golly that’d be a tradition I’d heartily invest in. Perpetually, in fact.

All the best,

Sam

The 1970s – it was all the rage at the time.

Posted: February 26, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

You know what I mean, even if I’m not too sure of it.

That’s because you’re instinctual, and this is a compliment.

This isn’t though, fuckface.

In the 1970s, ‘Fuckface’ was just coming to fruition. A little more socially acceptable, to fuck a face, have a faced well-fucked, and a great term to call people. People like you, fuckface.

And if you didn’t know, you probably should, there was many a fuckface in the 1970s. That was their decade.

In the 1960s, Small Faces, the 1980s, the Talking Heads, the 1990s, The Spice Girls – the latter of which was a true revolution of retro-reversion for feminism, in which people from Princes Diana to the Pope (same thing at the time) realised that women could be fuckfaces too.

I like a motif to a blog, but its possible I’ve extended ‘fuckface’ as far as ‘fuckface’ can take me.

So from here, its a matter of talking about what I thought I was going to write about before ‘fuckface’ inspired me.

It’s still about the 1970s (which, as I say – were extremely popular at the time), and it’s still about faces.

Essentially, I want to talk about a 50 year-old photo I saw in my hometown newspaper, which celebrated the win of a pub darts team in some kind of regional league.

10 or so chaps, with the variety of haircuts, facial hairs and fuckfaces that you’d see commonly back then.

And what a time to look suspicious! ‘Suspicious’ was in vogue.

Not to mention that the fuckier your face was, the more iconic of the time you were.

This blog didn’t proceed last night, as my wife wanted to watch Mission Impossible II on my laptop. I’m not going to enter a fuckface argument with my wife and new millennium Tom Cruise, and nor would you, so I fled.

Bravely checking my wife is now asleep, and considering I’m now well rested (being 12 hours later), I shall continue, though I do miss Cruise.

Accordingly, I’m playing some ABC News footage from the Fall of Saigon. 1975, the heartland of the fuckface decade.

Would I, however, be willing to write-off the whole Vietnam/American War as a fuckface combat? Probably not, as people who took part in that war, or were just near enough for war-crimes, really have fucked faces to the degree of whatever literal or metaphorical extents you’d be willing to consider, quietly, so as not to wake my Mrs.

“Vietnam fucked my face” sounds the sort of script you’d read on a found Zippo lighter in the Da Lat jungle highlands.

But I was talking about a darts in an English pub in the 70s. Black and white an image, being printed in an old local paper, but being from the 70s there is also a strong beige feel, maybe even corduroy. And cigarettes.

And you can zoom in on these ten or so faces, of young and middle-aged men, and suddenly you’ll hear a distant voice saying calmly “he was a respected member of his community, worked hard at the brown cigarette factory, and once got a bullseye. But nobody knew he held a secret so terrible, that it wouldn’t be till years after the case closed that the truth became known. For in fact, John ‘Cigarette’ Brown, was a closet fuckface. Even his wife didn’t know. And his children are coming to terms with it to this day.”

Or something criminal, not in a good way.

It’s now been two days since I started writing about this nonsense. But I’ve persevered, and all I need was three breakfasts.

The benefit to taking several days to conjure up a piece of writing such as you’ve endured reading (you’re lucky, you didn’t have to write it) is that you can look back on where you began a couple of days ago, what you went through, and where you are now, and consider: ‘what the hell am I doing here?’

And I like thinking that.

Because, what the hell am I doing here?

A blog, apparently, whilst watching a vast amount of news footage from the 1970s.

And breakfasts.

Sam

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