Brown Shoes

When I wear brown shoes, a brown belt and jeans I think I look a little bit like a cowboy. 

And I like looking a little bit like a cowboy.

I think everyone should aspire to be one. 

As a wee boy I thought cowboys were cool. They were rugged, tough and everything someone living in a council estate in Scotland wasn't. My opinion on this hasn’t changed much over the years. Cowboys were cool in the 70s and they still are today.

So whenever I dress in my brown shoes and jeans I tend to walk a little bit taller and with a little bit of a sore arse swagger.

The problem is I’m not a cowboy and never will be.

It’s one of those depressing realities of life. I have as much chance of being a proper, bona fide cowboy as I have of becoming an astronaut, scoring the winning world cup goal for Scotland or being a rock star. At one point in my life all of these career options were potential choices for me. That was until I learned that I am short sighted, am not really that good at football and I cant sing. 

I also have a very annoying allergy to horses.

I work in Finance but this doesn’t stop me pretending every so often I am Jimmy Stewart or Clint Eastwood. It’s a compromise I have learned to live with.

Arseless chaps are wrong.

I can’t think of anything more ridiculous than a grown man wearing leather chaps with his bare arse hanging out.

Now, thankfully I live in a country where the odds of me bumping into a trans-whatever person in the street wearing such things are slim to anorexic but still, I’ve been to San Francisco.

Stop wearing them please, leave them to the proper cowboys and put them back in your closet where they, and a lot of other things probably, belong.

Being different is ok though.

Thankfully in todays society being somewhat left or right of center is tolerated and sometimes even celebrated. Minority groups all over the place live out their lives with very little fear of discrimination, persecution or other such things which have been left behind in the historical waste bin.

It’s allowed and society is reasonably happy to accept you for what you are or the lifestyle you choose.

Why is it though that some minority groups seem to be able to punch well above their weight when it comes to making noise or complaining about one such thing or the other?

Gay marriage is a good example.

Last month in the UK parliament spent hours discussing whether or not to legalise gay marriage. Which you would think on the face of it is a good thing. Same sex couples should be able to enjoy the same rights as everyone else, right? Of course they should.

But they already have the same rights. 

Its called civil partnerships and this offers same sex couples exactly the same rights as married people.

So what exactly were parliament discussing at length then? 

Well as far as I can ascertain, they were discussing the name and the location of the ceremony - i.e. in a church or not.

This is about the point I start getting annoyed. The discrimination piece has been dealt with and now we are discussing a word, really? Are there not more important things to be getting on with like putting out the raging fire of two wars or fixing some serious economic issues perhaps?

Like it or not, we live in a democracy and in that democracy there are minority groups which need protecting but there is also a large majority who are allowed to have a say. I don’t know the opinion of the majority but given the heated debates I have to guess they might be opposed to it for say, religious reasons. 

This group of people’s beliefs are every bit important as a minority groups, however inconvenient that might be.

Are we really just arguing about this? I did try to understand the debate but kept coming back to nothing more substantial.

Are we now at the point where there is so little to campaign about we are now marching through the streets for something as minor as this?

I accept there will be some people who want to celebrate their love for their partner in a church and call themselves married but really how many are there and is it really worth this?

Surely there must come a point when most of the important prejudices/injustices have been eliminated. The time for us all to live in harmony side by side on a keyboard. Surely then people should just stop complaining?

The status quo now isn’t that bad, really its not.

Could it be, and its just an idea, that if you spend your life demonstrating and campaigning  then its hard to stop, even when there really isn’t anything to complain about. Like the various impotent unions which are scrabbling and shouting about nothing in a desperate attempt to earn some legitimacy long after it has gone.

I'm no psychologist but perhaps wearing arseless chaps isn’t just an expression of who the man is. Perhaps the man mincing down the road also loves the attention, he loves it when people stop to point and stare. He wants something to complain about, something to fight against. He wants to be different but with the acceptance he is fighting for comes normality. 

It’s a catch 22 situation.

Anyway that’s just my heterosexual conservative opinion, nothing more and I'm probably wrong. It wont be the first time.

Mr Brokeback mountain man, feel free to wear whatever it is you want. Dress up as a S&M Dalek for all I care. Just do it somewhere private please. I know you crave the attention but trust me the vast majority of the population think you look silly and quite frankly you are frightening the kids.

Also stop shoving your public displays down my throat please.

I will most likely gag and then use highly offensive and prejudicial terms as I tell you what I and the majority of the population really think of your wardrobe choices.

Thanks.

Few years ago. Central Switzerland

I noticed them and sighed. 
From a distance there appeared to be at least six. Hanging around the vending machine, playing music and talking. A thick cloud of smoke hovered over them like a mini microclimate made up entirely of cannabis and tobacco. 

I kept going. Having run out of cigarettes at 11pm there was no way I was waiting until 9am the following morning for my next fix.

No, I would steel myself, fix an un-threatening, un-confrontational look on my face and show no outward sign of trepidation or weakness.

As I approached they stopped talking and turned to stared at me.

Teenagers. Four young men and two women. They each wore the same black on black uniform with multiple facial piercings. Rings, spikes, studs. Explosive hair with the consistency of red granite. Goths.

The music sounded angry. I couldn’t tell about their mood.

They parted to give me access to the machine and then reformed. It was a pubescent, rebellious pincer movement which effectively trapped me inside. No words were spoken.

My heart raced as I fished in my pockets for the correct change waiting for the verbal abuse to start and hoping this was as far as it would go. Sticks and stones.

I fed the coins in and pressed the appropriate code. The machine burst into life and a coiled silver spring started turning. I watched as the red packet slowly edged forward towards the drop. It moved with a glacial speed. They were silent, only the music continued, fast, loud and aggressive.

The pack stopped and the machine returned to its pre-coined, impotent and inactive state. The packet hung there, suspended by nothing obvious. According to a robot brain somewhere in the metal box it had done its job. Only it hadn’t.

The cigarettes were fixed balancing between the end of the silver coil and the drop. It was defying gravity, taunting me in front of a restless nocturnal feral pack. Shit.

I shook the machine but it remained. I shook it harder and the pack just wobbled, still balancing precariously over the abyss, infuriatingly refusing to budge. I stood back and pondered my predicament. The vampire thugs watched me. I could sense the circle closing.

I jumped as I felt a hand touch my shoulder. It was the largest of the kids, broad shoulders, eye liner. His head appeared to be weaponised. If he bent down and head-butted me would I find out the spikes were tipped with a deadly frog poison?

‘Entschuldigen’ he said quietly and motioned for me to stand back which I did without question not entirely sure what he was going to do to me. Gore me with his head or lick me to death with his spiked and studded tongue?

He did neither. He stepped back and kicked the machine hard. Very hard.

Hard enough I imagined to set off an alarm deep in the 24hr vending machine central control room which I assumed had to exist somewhere.It was also hard enough to make the packet drop.

I watched as he quietly bent down to retrieve the small cardboard box which he handed to me with a polite nod and a respectful smile.

‘Thank you, I mean vielen dank ’ I stammered taking the packet from him. I stood there for a second not quite sure what to do next. The remaining ghouls glared at me so I quickly took my leave, not wishing to test my good fortune any further.

I left them there to their music and rebellion and walked quietly back to my apartment, smoking. I was smiling as another preconception shattered around me.

There are times when I really like the country I live in, Switzerland.  

For all their music, hairdo’s and aesthetically rebellious appearances Swiss teenagers are just grown up versions of the little children I see every morning walking hand in hand to kindergarten wearing their yellow anti-traffic florescent vests. It’s going to take a lot more than some heavy rock, sex and drugs to sway your average Swiss seventeen year old.

Deep down, buried away beneath the clothes, the snarls and the cannabis they are still the friendly, law abiding, elder respecting kids they have been taught to be since birth.

And I for one like this.

Fat boy has a gun

Kim Jong Un is a cartoon. Hands down he would easily land the role of fat comic bad guy in the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie.  

He’s become a joke and over the last few months also the target for anyone with a rudimentary understanding of how to photoshop a picture or edit a you tube video. 

He has a youthful pudgy bland face which seems to ooze out of a bloated button-straining torso and his dress sense is so awful it makes Colonel Gaddafi seem like a fashion icon.

Add to this a face so devoid of expression it looks like he has botox for blood and you end up with a man begging to be taken viral. And for all the wrong reasons.

Right now as I write this I cant think of anyone more in need of a make over than Kim Jong Un.

Initially though the threats coming out of the Korean peninsula were much less funny. Initially that is, but as they went on and the threats got more and more insane I think we all, including most of the worlds leaders, realised it was just the yapping of a lunatic dog. The line from Reservoir Dogs ‘Are you going to bark all day little doggy or are you going to bite?’ seemed somewhat appropriate.

Once we realised the people living just over the border were more interested in the latest release from Psy than the immediate threat of nuclear annihilation everyone breathed out and then the jokes and photoshoping started.

Its now gone very quiet.

This is most likely because Mr Un has nothing left to threaten anyone with. He’s already used the ultimate threat; nuclear war. So what next? Threaten to turn his Death Star in the direction of Washington? Conjure up a biblical plague of locusts?

I’m guessing Kim’s ‘things to threaten people with’ cupboard is pretty bare at the moment.

Nuke Psy that would be my suggestion, should he ask.

Even Kim, and his smaller than he said it was arsenal, must have the capability to do that. It would have the double effect of seriously pissing off the South and also pleasing me immensely. A very, very small warhead, dropped directly on his head would do the trick. I would then never again find myself trying to ride an invisible horse badly on some crappy euro-pop dance floor.

I had a beer once with a man who claimed he went to university with Kim. This was long before the recent escalations. In a time when his father was still alive, him of the Don King hairdo. Over the course of the evening this man managed to convince me that once Kim Jon Il (weird hairdo dad) died and his university friend ascended to the throne all would be much better.

‘He’s a nice, normal, regular guy’ he told me.

Assuming this is true then something serious must have happened to Kim Jon junior (try saying that quickly) since his carefree and normal, regular guy, university days.

Which is not surprising really.

I have changed since my youth so why would he be any different? Granted I’m not creating bad CGI videos of the white house being bombed or threatening stuff I can’t do but still, I have changed.

A lot of things have changed and its not just the lines on my face or the tufts of hair sprouting from my ears, nose and every other orifice either.

Years ago I asked someone much older what’s it like to be old. He responded by telling me that its no different. He felt and thought no different to how he did when he was twenty (my age at the time). Things just hurt more he added.

I’ve subsequently discovered this to be a load of rubbish. Everything has changed.

I think the only things which remain from my youth is my name and a small colourful smudge of a tattoo. My whole outlook on life has shifted dramatically in the last twenty years or so.

I’ve matured.

Yes, I accept there are a lot of people who might disagree with me on this one but believe me, I have.

I read a speech Bill Gates is supposed to have given to a group of college students recently. It was posted on FB and carried with it a gazillion ‘likes’. Even with its questionable veracity the sheer popularity of the posting says something about my generation I think.

I am of the generation which was born in the 60s/70s, grew up in the 80s, partied in the 90s and matured in the naughties.

Generation X is the term used to describe us and I am using the term ‘us’ very loosely here.

In the UK we grew up during the miner and teachers strikes, Thatcher and the Falklands war.

We remember punk rock and our parents were born during WWII. A whole strata of the population were shaped by these events and resulting parental influences.

A good example is Margaret Thatcher. Probably the most polarising individual from the last fifty years or so.  Where she was concerned you either loved or hated her but you never, never ever, sat on the fence.

Generation X have opinions. Agree with them or otherwise but they will have an opinion. This blog is a good example.

The generation following X is logically Y. They were born in the 80s and 90s and it was this cohort which Bill was addressing.

This is the generation, according to Bill and his army of opinionated likers, who do not have a clue about the real world. They don’t understand the concept that hard work is a prerequisite to get a reward. They think everyone wins a prize. They have an inbuilt sense of entitlement. They have the attention span of a gnat and it goes without saying that their music is rubbish.

Is this true? Maybe.

Is it bad? Dunno.

An ocean of little blue and white thumbs up signs suggest a lot of people agree with his sentiments and the moral high ground he seems to be claiming as his own. 

So what are the implication of such a generation existing, if they do in fact exist?

Probably none in the same way there has been no implications coming from generation X maturing. Well apart from the economic crisis, global warming and a couple of wars that is.

Generation Y are different but then generation X was also different to the baby boomers who came before them and so it will go on. I don’t think its bad. Its just different.

Generation Y grew up in a period of wealth, economic prosperity, technological advances, computer games and easy credit. Everything was easy and on tap so is it any wonder their approach to life, their outlook on the world or their attention spans for that matter are different?

According to research Generation Y don’t want to work to live, they want to live and understand they have to work to do so. They want a career which isn’t just about money. They want a career which gives them a sense of fulfilment. They are passionate about environmental issues and lets not forget this is the generation we are sending away to get their limbs blown off in far flung places around the world.

All in, I think its very easy to criticise. But before you do Bill, or whoever actually wrote it, think about what you have done to create this generation in the first place.

If someone has a sense of entitlement, this is because you put it there in the first place. It was you who pandered to their instant gratification requests, got them a PlayStation, tuned into x-factor/Britains got talent/the national lottery/every other instant fame, c-list celebrity, program on TV.

It also wasn’t them who screwed up the economy. Its just them who will ultimately have to pay for it. It wasn’t them who raped the environment but they will have to figure out what the hell to do about it and it wasn’t them who turned the world into a much more dangerous place than it was thirty years ago. But again we are expecting them to sort the whole mess out for us.

Every generation is criticised by the one before. This is normal.

Will we as a generation be able to say we have left the world a better place than when we arrived? I don’t think so.

Generation Y and the ones which follow them are inheriting a utter basket case of a world and it is us and our parents who are fully responsible for this.

Its just a suggestion, but perhaps we should temper the gleeful enthusiasm which we seem to have in abundance when it comes to finding fault or criticising the upcoming generation.

If we don't how does the removal of the old age pension sound? What about a wrinkly tax or a statutory retirement age of 95?

The fat-joke-boy-king Kim has had his bluff called but I’m not so sure generation Y will be so easy to ignore when their time comes.

We could very well find that when the little doggy does grow up and stop barking it will be to turn around and bite us all hard on our respective hairy aging arses.

Indiana Jones and the Teahouse

A short travel related scribble which will be published in InTravel Mag, May 2013:

In the absence of anything else we were done. Time to leave.

I turned and made the universal cheque, bill, l’addition, conto sign. I wrote on my hand in thin air with an imaginary pen in the direction of the young girl standing attentively nearby. Immediately she scurried away and I returned to savour the view for what remained of my time in the exquisite Chinese teahouse.

Our day to that point had taken us on a local taxi ride from our hotel in downtown Xi’an central China to the Lintong District of the city. We were deposited close to, but not exactly at, the entrance of the World Heritage site containing 8,000 life-sized terracotta warriors built to protect the first emperor of China. The close to drop off point was by design. A barely disguised local conspiracy to funnel the thousands of tourists heading to the famous site through a well constructed street seller ambush. From the drop off point there simply was no other way there. If you wanted to visit it you have to run the gauntlet and judging from the skin colour and girth of our fellow travellers most had travelled some way to be there. It wasn’t as if they could come back later when it was less busy.

In my experience the Chinese are only beaten by the Egyptians when it comes to selling. Persuade, talk, keep talking, be physical, angry, happy, keep talking. 'No' is simply not part of a street sellers vocabulary. It doesn’t register. Keep going, keep talking, keep pestering and eventually, if all else fails the customer will buy just to make it stop. Persistence is key and Chinese street sellers have this in abundance. 

‘Don’t make eye contact’ I warned sternly as I gripped my girlfriend’s hand and pulled her firmly down the centre. I could see in my peripheral vision tourists being picked off with ease but we didn’t hesitate or falter. We kept going, body swerving the stand in front of you tactics and ignoring the calls, shouts and a plethora of terracotta offerings lining the route. An avenue of naked dancing medusas would have struggled to catch our eye that day. We were seasoned travellers, we had the boots, we had the hats, we had the bum bags. I even had the beard and it would take a lot more than a few shouts or a good price to make us fall into such a well-worn tourist trap.

Arriving at the entrance with our self-esteem and our wallets intact we breathed a sigh of relief and wiped plaster dust from our clothes. Behind us it was a feeding frenzy. A massacre. A lone tour guide held a flag high above the crowd, her flock were being picked off as she walked, pulled away, chewed up and spread to the wind. She arrived next to us. Alone and smiling. Perhaps she was part of the conspiracy too I thought.

We spent four hours wandering around the various marquees protecting the warriors marvelling at the sheer scale and craftsmanship on display. Whatever it was he had done it must have pretty damn serious judging from the protection Qin Shi Huang took with him into the afterlife. Eventually though it was time to leave.

Once more into the valley I thought as we stepped out into the humid spring day but fortunately the sellers were gone. The stalls were deserted. There was the odd tourist left standing outside looking confused and holding a life-sized replica warrior but apart from that it was deserted. There were one or two taxi’s waiting hopefully for the odd tourist not assigned to a bus tour (us) so we ambled towards them.

Next stop the Huaqing Hot Springs and a cup of tea in a teahouse.

Some time later the girl returned with the bill. 

She spoke in Chinese to my girlfriend. Her voice was soft and she had a very appealing demeanour. Waif like. She handed me a small handwritten note with both hands, bowed and stood respectfully back. The note was littered with unintelligible symbols.

My girlfriend glanced at the note, looked at me and then said a few clarifying, sing, song words to the girl. Her expression was dark.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked

‘We’ve been charged about €15 for the tea’

‘How much?!’

‘€15’

We’d been had. Been got.

For all our experience and savvy-ness we had fallen for the oldest trick in the book. Don’t turn on the meter in the cab then pluck a number from thin air at the end of the ride. Don’t mention the price before you pull away or consume, then inflate after the service has been performed.

We had fallen for it and I scratched my Indiana Jones beard feeling more like a British accountant on holiday than I ever had during our adventure holiday. The girl stood by quietly smiling. She was smiling an ‘I got you smile’, that ‘You are so far away from home, try complaining, just try it white boy’ smile.

We looked at each other, the look was enough and we both knew it. That sinking feeling, that realisation we were not as worldly wise or tourist trap resistant as we had led ourselves to believe.

I started to count out the notes onto the table. As I finished I handed them over with a glare to our sweet young thieving hostess. She bowed yet again, smiled and then spoke in a thick, heavily accented English.

It wasn’t the jetlag and it isn’t my memory playing games with me. I am certain that as she spoke and for the briefest of moments her eyes glowed a deep dark red.

‘Each’ she said.

A big boy did it

As I sit here writing the outside temperature is slushing somewhere between 1c and 2c. 

The roads have been gritted a nasty dirty brown, my garden is a thick blanket of white and my overcoat is rapidly becoming a threadbare embarrassing rag. Its been this way for some time now, not the coat, the weather. In fact as long as I can remember and even knowing I have the short term memory of a demented blowfish this is still a long time.

We have already Spring-ed forward, the days are getting longer and winter is supposedly over. Only problem being is it isn’t and as of today it shows no sign of abating.

Is this the beginning of a new ice age or a global catastrophe? A Hollywood style icy cold, icebergs covering Paris, Jeff Goldblum, Armageddon thing?

No apparently not. This is Global Warming.

Some time ago in another blog, in reference to an unpronounceable Icelandic volcano I suggested we might need a global naming body (GNB) to police the naming of things. Global warming seriously needs their help as it is someway away from adequately describing the weather outside my living room window just now. It’s actually the polar opposite if you forgive a very loose pun.

I understand the concept that global warming doesn’t necessarily mean warmer. Its more extreme weather. I am grown up enough to know that it doesn’t necessarily mean the Costa del Govan anytime soon. But still, change the name please.

So, who is to blame?

As with most things these day, if something bad is happening or has happened, then someone or some organisation must to be to blame. The economic crisis = bankers. Horse meat burgers = Romanians. Greek, Spanish, Cypriot austerity measures = Germans.

Having someone to blame allows us to deflect responsibility and direct our anger at someone. Kill the bankers! Stone them! Tax them! Burn them!

Of course the reality is somewhat different but having someone to blame is much much easier. And if that someone happens to be rich, aloof, a bit poncy or German then even better.

It’s a load of rubbish though. Sorry, but it is.

I watch on the news the vitriol being directed at Chancellor Merkel and the nasty Germans from the streets of Athens or Madrid. Why? Because Germany are bailing them out, loaning them money and expecting some guarantees in return? 

If I was German, facing a tax hike because I lived in one of the few countries in the world which have not mismanaged their economies, I would be very pissed off indeed.

Sorry Mr Stopalopalos, if it was me I would be just letting you get on with it. Take responsibility for the mess you have created yourself and go back to smashing plates for a living.

In a illegal drug market who is responsible? Is it the drug dealer coming in and pushing his dirty, nasty products or is it the existing demand and the dealer is just taking advantage of the market conditions?

One simply would not exist without the other. 

A drug dealer wouldn’t exist in a town full of saints in the same way as an economic crisis would not have happened if everyone stopped, took time to considered it and then realised that they couldn’t afford the house, the plasma TV, holiday to a hot place or new car.

It just wouldn’t.

Its not just the bankers fault. Its as much your or my fault for being so fucking stupid in the first place. Just because you are offered something, doesn’t mean you should take it.

This is why when I read the anti-banking propaganda being peddled in the news or from both sides of the political spectrum I instantly think witch hunt or scapegoat.

The problem with following my train of thought is that it shifts the blame from the nasty fat cat, tax avoiding, Southern English sleazy, scum, tory bankers onto you and me. And this isn’t nearly as much fun or easy to stomach however true it might be.

So global warming, who is to blame for the ruination of the planet and me having to delay my first barbecue of 2013?

Again the answer seems to be everyone. The difference it seems with global warming and the economic crisis is that there never has been some group or individual to blame. It always has been everyone to blame and I would contend this is why we are still arguing about the real causes and the real impacts – i.e. not doing anything real about it.

Judging from my garden right now its real. I don’t need some politically or financially motivated organisation telling me otherwise. Its real, just look outside or try taking off from Zurich airport this afternoon on the first day of Spring.

The penalties and restrictions which are being proposed for the banking world have a Treaty of Versailles-esq feel about them. Almost vengeful. And its not just restricted to banking. Cross border legislation is being proposed to hinder larger businesses taking advantage of their earned economies of scale. The whole point of growing a business is to increase such opportunities, any country which restricts these opportunities will increase the percentage of tax they receive, yes, but unfortunately it will be a higher percentage of a much lower pot. I haven’t done the calculations. I cant do the calculations but I would bet a lot of money this will work out to be a lower number.   

As Bill Gates is supposedly said recently, the world and life isn’t fair, get used to it. He’s right - it isn’t. 

There are winners and there are losers and not necessarily the right ones.

If you have spent the last 25 years sucking up cheap unaffordable credit or enjoyed your annual holiday in the sun on the never-never. If you have built a thriving economy based on debt and employed an unaffordable army of civil servants who are essentially parasitic in nature, from a tax balance perspective, or built up a nanny state where personal responsibility is largely absent then I fail to see how anyone can claim to be a victim.

Its yours, mine and everyone’s fault so please stop blaming the bankers, the Germans or anyone else for that matter.

Unless you happen to have your life savings in the bank of Cyprus that is. 

Then I might start to agree with you.