David Cameron - Entitled to Tweet

David Cameron launched his own twitter account this weekend (@David_Cameron). I have of course spent large parts of today sending him (ahem...OK, the junior assistant that tweets for him...OOER!) 140 character diatribes ( trust me I can diatribe in 140 characters) about his disgusting attacks on the disabled that have increased the anxiety and lack of self-worth felt by them (us) and led to increased suicides amongst us and more attacks on us by the non disabled. But after all he is only trying to "help" us back into work....of course he defines help as completely removing your income in order to "motivate" us. 16 years ago I was making a substantial income, I was a bread winner, a husband and father. I was two weeks away from a promotion I'd spent two years working on. I was physically active, walked my dog, rode my horse. Life (after a lot of struggling years) was pretty fucking good. And then I fell. The only thing left of that life now is fatherhood and I have to Iive with the knowledge that my physical, mental and financial shortcomings have meant I have not been the father I wanted to be. Oh yes and, just in passing, I also am in constant pain and permanently saturated in levels of opiates that far outstrip the combined morphine doses of both my parents when they were dying of cancer. All of which means I am a lazy, shiftless member of a "Society of Entitlement"....and Cameron hates "entitlement"....tell you what, hold me up beside HIM, take a long hard look at both our life stories, our backgrounds, our choices in life etc and then tell me which one of us feels ENTITLED.

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My little Soviet pal

You know the NHS cuts are biting when you have to perform surgery on a friend.
Today I commenced surgery on my friend Zorki. I haven't mentioned him for about a month as the arrival of Steve Jobs' little legacy, the iPad has rather dominated, but my love affair with my little Soviet time machine has been ongoing....actually now I look more closely at that Leica lens mount He might well be a She...er...Anyway (cough...I have to get out more), not unexpectedly Zorki, while perfectly functional, needs a little work. 45 years of Russian grime and finger grot.....excuse me I've just got to wait for that wave of nausea to pass....a dodgy spring on the rangefinder/lens sensor arm, practically invisible image in the focussing prism etc etc Nothing for it , it's time for some kitchen table surgery, or rather living/dining/everything table surgery. You can't get a table in my kitchen, you can only just about fit the dog in there and frankly he's not much use as a food preparation surface...I digress. Time to assemble the finest surgeons money can buy, gleaming, expensive autistically engineered surgical instruments, the best research science can conduct to guide our bone saws and scalpels . Or me, a few terminally cheap watchmakers screwdrivers, the tweezers out of my 30 odd year old dissecting kit, a scratched together website on the intricacies of Zorki innards, and a handful of trouser pocket fluff and a lump of blue-tac. Alright nurse lets save this patient! I say nurse, obviously I mean a cat called ASBO who really, really wants to be helpful. Having done all of the above and with screwdriver poised to remove the top plate (which from the state of the screws has never been opened before)....I decided that was enough for one day and I’d just put a camera strap on her (Zorki not ASBO). The problem is Zorki (my little babooshka) has a 1930's approach to that sort of thing and requires the fitting of a couple of little lugs before she'll wear that sort of modern innovation. Nil desperandum! eBay sell them for a couple of roubles a throw along with a huge range of straps for just a couple more. Straps with polka dots! Straps with stripes! Straps with cartoon characters! Straps that tell little lies like Contax and Leica! Peek-a-boo straps! Crotchless straps! It's like being an 80's yuppy loose in a combination Tie-Rack and Anne Summers shop! PayPal however, who seem determined to ruin my career as Zorki enhancement surgeon, say I can't afford things like that and so poor old Zorki has to put up with some creative salvage from my redundant filing cabinet key collection (a rather specialised collecting niche I admit) to-wit a couple of small split rings, and an old spare strap off my Canon EOS. She ain't happy in her borrowed Japanese finery but at least it means I no longer have to put up with what feels like 3 feet of 1960's Soviet leather "Ever-Ready" Case dangling around in the way when taking pictures. It's just putting off the inevitable though, all this sartorial shenanigans. Zorki still has An appointment with Maintenance. Stay tuned.

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Unreliable house elves

Ok enough is enough! My housework arrangements are not working. For long and weary I have faithfully left out a bowl of porridge every night and every morning I drag myself downstairs, past the debris and junk on the stairs, and the place is STILL a tip! Bloody Elves! What do they want? Butter on it ? I have given them years to get this right. I have left subtle little hints; like the time I put photographs of the washing up on top of the porridge bowl so even these myopic little squirts couldn't miss it, those plates are still lying in the sink to this day, years later. I've tried shouting threats down the big rabbit hole behind the fence (where I'm sure they live), I've even got down on my knees and pleaded with them down that bloody hole. Nothing. Lately I've even begun to suspect the little bastards are bringing their own stuff IN here. Today however they've gone too far. There is a "Fairy Ring" in the garden. They ignore the housework, they haven't made me one single pair of shoes - not so much as a sandal in all these years - they add their shit to my kiffle pile, and now they're having parties on the sodding lawn and pissing in circles on the grass! No more mister nice guy. If this place isn't cleared up by tomorrow then the days of porridge eating are over!

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iPad Finger-painting

See the full gallery on Posterous

First doodles with a simple drawing app on iPad. Ladies and gentlemen I give you...(drum roll please)..."The Potato"...and...(breathless hush)... "Think Bubbles"

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Richard III's body found?

If it is Richard III they've found under the council car park that's incredible. I am something of a Riccardian at heart ie. I don't believe the popular conception of him is at all accurate. This discovery has brought him very much to the front of my mind and so I've been enjoying a rehearsal of all the old arguments pro and con. Looking at the evidence and the contemporary eye witness accounts (rather than the Tudor sources such as Thomas More & Shakespeare) one is left with the impression of a man who was unusually loyal for a time in which betrayal, even by brothers, was common place (contrast his efforts on behalf of Edward IV with those of the third brother Clarence), who was relatively fair and just as demonstrated by his prosecution of his own people in response to complaints while he was ruling the North for Edward. He was certainly capable in the violence department but it was a brutal time, he had been at war since adolescence and was good at it but the malevolent serial killer of the stage? Hardly. Compared to your average Plantagenet who chewed up their foes and friends and spat out the gristle , Richard was decidedly civilised. A revision of history's judgement on him has been building momentum for years and this discovery will hopefully help to focus minds on the reality of the man as has the recent discovery of baptismal records in France which strongly indicate that Richard was right about Edward's bastardy. Rather than a nasty, self serving lie to justify his usurpation it increasingly looks like Richard kept silent on this while his brother was alive out of personal loyalty, after his death though he was faced with a threat to his political and physical survival from the Queen and her family whose lowly origins must have made any knowledge he had of Edward's similar proletarian routes gall him even further. A prole sit on his family's throne? What Plantagenet could stand for that? Did he mean to take the throne? Maybe, but it's not certain. The way events played out I think it started as a move against the Woodvilles, a showdown there was inevitable at some point, take control of the new King and eliminate his political rivals who were clearly plotting to do exactly that to him. And then it becomes opportunism, if Edward was a bastard then he and not the Princes was the rightful heir (pretty much) and if he didn't take the throne it would pass to the descendants of commoners. Whether he killed his nephews I don't suppose we'll ever know. The case is a strong one. He had disinherited them, declared them a bastard line but they were still a threat as a focus for revolt. Two boys lives or the mayhem of the Wars of the Roses rumbling on. It would have been expedient. There are however reasons to introduce doubt. The boys were much more of a threat to Henry Tudor who had no real claim to the throne at all and unlike Richard they were not related to him, were not the children of an apparently much loved brother. There were some strange circumstances too: the behaviour of the boys' mother after their disappearance - leaving sanctuary and coming back to Richard's court was scarcely the behaviour of a woman who's children had disappeared while in his care, did she have reason to believe they were still alive after they were last seen in public playing in that garden in the Tower? And then there is the strange behaviour of Henry VII. After Bosworth he accused Richard of a catalogue of crimes, some patently ludicrous, but not of these murders. He was singularly silent on their fate. He bolstered his claim to rule by marrying their sister so if he had evidence of their death it would have been very much in his interest to heap calumny on Richard's head and rule as the boy's successor but he didn't. The accusation came years later. And then there is the character of Henry. A ruthless, ambitious man who did eliminate potential rivals including Clarence's young son who Richard had not touched despite the fact that the lad's claim to the throne was superior to his...and of course Henry's.
The recent find has also led to me taking a happy browse through my memories of Anthony Sher as Richard at the RSC in 1984, an extraordinary performance that utterly transformed my understanding of the play and the character. I'll never forget the image of him as a looming black distorted body, the crutches becoming long extended forelimbs that propelled him across the stage at frightening speed in a scuttling, vaulting manner. A huge black spider and sitting on its misshapen shoulders the shockingly incongruous human head, curly haired and handsome. It was truly horrifying and mesmerising.

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Jesus continues his interest in me

This Jesus character seems to be stalking me! As I hobbled across the hospital car park on my crutches today I felt a definite...how shall I describe it...a presence. As if someone was watching my struggles intently, as if they were walking close behind me! I turned and to my great befuddlement found that I was being followed by what appeared to be a man in a long black dress. Well you know me I'm all for live and let dress up and "alternative lifestyles" are fine by me and if you put a gun to my head I'd even have to admit that black probably was this guys colour but I didn't really like the way he was following my slow and painful progress, nor the way he was staring at me - a sort of mixture of pity and...well...hunger. It was all getting a bit too James Hogg-ian for my liking. What could this person want? Naturally I checked my wallet. Our eyes met and suddenly off he flapped, at speed, away across the car park in the way we had come, like some huge black bird. At this point I recognised the dress from deeply suppressed child hood memories of Kenneth More as Father Brown. This was none other than a Catholic priest in full plumage. A minion of this Jesus chap who's been sending me the notes. Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps he wasn't stalking me on his boss' behalf, perhaps it was a more obvious catholic priesty interest of his own...I am known as "Buns of Steel" in some quarters you know...but I would think I'd be a bit old for him. On the other hand some of us just can't help stirring these passions in others - after all I was once whistled at by a Russian sailor in Leith...and then there was the time during the Edinburgh Festival when I had my (admittedly pert) buttocks pinched by a large, hairy, bearded red headed person in Rose St.....But I digress. Strangely I found that as I drove home there were crowds of crows and ravens everywhere......all it needed was Carmina Burana on the stereo.

Apparently its all my fault

There was a leaflet in my postbox today advising me that a certain Jesus died for my sins. This puzzles me. I have by no means led a blameless life - a fact that fills me with both pleasure and regret depending on which sinful memory I'm contemplating, but I'm pretty sure (despite the drugged uncertainties of my memory) that I haven't done anything that merited nailing to a wooden framework for a lingering death. I am also fairly confidant that I didn't commit any crimes, transgressions or even acts of less than impeccable manners during the first century CE (or AD if you prefer). So on sober reflection I must conclude that this chap Jesus was mistaken - it was very civil of him I'm sure - but to be honest if he wanted to take responsibility for my sins it would have been quite adequate if he'd paid my speeding fines and debts and apologised for me to a few people.