Hubris

“The 13th has never been unlucky for me. Never. I’ve never had a bad experience with the number 13. Not once. Not ever. I’m immune to it.”

Even as I typed those words last Friday I was reminded of a poem by Roger McGough (can’t remember which one, sorry) where he talks about being afraid to tempt fate in case fate, tempted, one day weakens... but I shrugged it off anyway with a cavalier laugh and got on with cocking my snook at the universe. You can’t touch me, I thought to myself. I’m immune. Y’hear me? Immune! You can’t touch me with your so-called Friday 13th bad vibe!

Somewhere in the very centre of the universe an omniscient mind heard me and had an inclination...

And by the end of the day Friday 13th was going all out to prove just how unlucky it could be.

All was fine until it came time to head home. Of course this is the moment where you desperately want things to run smoothly. You can practically smell your evening meal being cooked. You can almost feel the warm cosy embrace of your sofa wrapping itself around you and calling you to submit to end-of-week TV-soothed slumber.

You just want to get out of the office and escape while the going is good.

Last Friday, the 13th, the going was decidedly not good. As I was literally on my way to the exit doors I was called to the men’s public toilets. A cubicle was occupied and the patron was refusing to respond to all calls to vacate the premises. I had no choice but to force the door. Inside I found a young male slumped over, completely unconscious, his trousers around his ankles and his head face down on his knobbly knees. He absolutely could not be roused by anything we did. It didn’t look good. One of my colleagues recommended we try smelling salts until I pointed out that, given the ever present stench of the urinals, if he wasn’t compos mentis now with the ambient bio-fall-out irradiating his nasal hairs a tiny little smell in a bottle was hardly going to kick-start his cerebral cortex.

So we called an ambulance. And therein the farce truly began. The operator took all the details and then asked some bizarre questions along the line of did the injured party have a history of heart trouble, etc. Now bearing in mind I had already explained that the injured party was an unknown member of the public I found this question rather ridiculous. I think the operator picked this up from the mocking pause that I dropped into our conversation. “I still have to ask, sir” he told me smartly.

Did he? Did he really still have to ask when he already knew I had never met the person in the toilets before in my entire life? I realize that most telephone operators work from a script these days but surely there is room for commonsense? Room for people to think independently and realize that sometimes portions of the script can just be dispensed with?

Plainly not.

Anyway. Despite all this guff the ambulance was apparently on its way.

Great, I thought. Blue and twos flashing it’ll be here in 5 minutes and I can get away home.

Not so. 20 minutes later me and my loyal colleagues were still waiting. 25 minutes later we saw a paramedic’s car parked on the other side of the road. Just sitting there. Waiting. What the hell was he doing? Mr Knobbly Knees in the toilet could be choking on his own sputum by now! Why wasn’t he attending to the 999 call I had made? We approached and asked, amazingly politely, if he had indeed come to answer our summons for help. Yes he had, he said, but he couldn’t do anything until his “back-up” had arrived.

Oh. Back-up. A SWAT team was on its way then. Or possibly armed specialist forces. Great.

We had no choice but to back to the building and continue our wait growing more and more sour with each passing minute. We appreciated, loudly, that in today’s world dealing with possible drunks or drug users can be extremely hazardous and a bit of support is probably a necessity but even so... this poor guy could be voiding his entire colon down the bog for all anyone was doing to help him.

And so the wait went on. And on. Made worse by a drunken gang of teens who suddenly appeared and decided to hang around outside the front of the building and empty their bladders over our railings. Charming. The evening was getting better and better.

Finally, 50 minutes after my initial 999 call an ambulance at last sirened into view. Hoo-bloody-ray. At last. Now with two green jacketed body guards flanking him the paramedic boldly stepped into the breach. As I opened the door to let them in one of the teens mumbled something along the lines of: “oh, hey mate, we think one of our friends might be in your toilets...” Cue Beavis and Butthead laughter.

Oh how typical. I managed to marshal my sarcasm (i.e. utilize it) and told him that yes, that was why we had called an ambulance as his so called mate was out stone cold.

“Oh,” said the dazed teen, “is it OK if I come in and watch?”

Come in and watch. Not, how is he? Not, is he OK? Just: can I come in and watch.

I shut the door on him and locked him outside.

15 minutes later the paramedics had got Mr Knobbly Knees up and mobile. He looked as dazed as his erstwhile mates outside. Confused and a little embarrassed too. But I daresay by Saturday he was rather proud of his exploits and was boasting of his advanced state of inebriation to all those of his friends who were not too inebriated themselves to tell him to shut up and go and flush his stupid head down the toilet.

Their job done the ambulance crew melted away into the night, reholstering their standard SWAT team issue revolvers. Don’t thank us; it’s just what we do. Yippee-ki-yay.

Whatever. My colleagues and I headed outside too and wiped the dust from our shoes and headed our separate ways.

I finally arrived home over an hour late, tired, soaked with rain and in a foul mood.

Friday 13th? I shall never mock you again. And that’s a bona fide promise. I have seen the power of the Universe and it scares me.


Postscript: Somewhere at the centre of the universe an omniscient mind wonders perhaps if it has gone too far and decides to offer a little consolation... a small token of recompense.

On my way out to get some milk on Sunday morning I noticed that among the assorted chip wrapping and drinks cartons that the wind constantly deposits on our front lawn a slightly damp but otherwise perfectly intact £5 note.

For moi?

Why, thank you Universe. Apology gratefully accepted.

Just A Small Sample

I had to remove a little bit of me and insert it into a plastic tube last night.

A part of me that has been succoured on my blood and the food I intake daily. I’ve walked around with it. Slept with it. Worked hard and played hard with it (according to my old school Principal’s motto).

And then this morning I dropped it off at the Doctor’s reception desk without even a fond farewell or a by-your-leave. We didn’t even exchange a hug.

Abandoned. Orphaned. Destined for some white coated scientist’s lab... Some Uni post grad who’ll dissect it, analyse it, microscope it and then... gulp... see if something grows on it. I have sent it out into the big wide world with neither my protection nor my blessing.

Well. It was beginning to be more trouble than it was worth. And at the end of the day dodgy toenails are notoriously hard to love.

Over the years it had become ridged, thick and ugly looking. More like a dog’s dewclaw than a toenail. By and large I ignored it. I clipped it along with its brothers same as usual but bestowed no special fondness upon it.

I was a bit ashamed of it really. Least said soonest mended.

But then the discoloration began. A dark browniness. A yellowing. A muddy blackening of parts.

It was undoubtedly a dirty protest.

An ignored child seeking bad attention.

It was a foolish manoeuvre because now things have been set in motion that I just can’t stop. The doctor requested a sample. A clipping. I had no choice but to separate us.

It all now depends on the lab results which could take 5 to 8 weeks to come back. There’s a possibility that it is merely dystrophic / atrophic growth – I can’t remember exactly what she said as I was hypnotized by the small wooden airplane that was hanging down from her ceiling on a wire. If that’s the case there is nothing she, the doctor, can do. I’ll just have to live with it and embrace my ability to climb tall trees in my bare feet. Think of the fruit I could gather for my kids!

But there is a real possibility that it is a fungal infection. Something unwholesome living off the fruits of my body’s labour. If that’s the case then it’ll mean 3 months of medication. What exactly I don’t know. But she mentioned “possible side effects”. Again, what I don’t know. And I didn’t think to ask. Curse that damned airplane!

I’m betting it’s not a sudden ability to climb walls with my hands and feet and swing from skyscrapers with webs that I can magically produce from glands in my wrists.

It’ll be constipation. Or sleeplessness. Or itchiness. Or all three.

*Sigh*

Take care of your toenails, people, before they take care of you...

The Death Of Magic

When I was an impressionable teen I got into magic. Or rather the idea of magic. In fact this occult interest lasted well into my impressionable twenties.

At the time the occult section of Waterstones (now, I believe, respectably entitled “Health, Body and Spirit” or some such) was bursting at its magical seams with middle class grimoires from the likes of Laurie Cabot and other darker tomes from the late, great and dangerous-to-know Aleister Crowley, who is in fact a fellow Leamingtonian.

I have to say I was swept along more by the theory than the practice though I do recall once going into an “alternative” shop in York and buying a wand that looked like a Native American phallus. All dangly feathers and a ruddy great bulbous crystal sprouting from the end of it. It languished under my bed for years until I offloaded it onto a kooky ex back in 2003. I don’t miss it at all.

As for Crowley... well I was never tempted to try out any of his Magick™, beleaguered as it was with demons, drugs and downright moral depravity but I did purchase a lot of his books. I got about 2 thirds through his immense autohagiography (for those of you who don’t know an autohagiography is supposedly the biography of a saint) before getting bogged down in lengthy "he said / she said" transcripts of various conversations Aleister had enjoyed in various privileged gentleman’s clubs across Europe. It all got a bit stuffy. I just wanted the salacious bedroom exploits and the otherworldly descriptions of the Abyss not the scripts from an Open University staff meeting.

I still own the books and have a few rarities too including a copy of his very dirty poem “Leah Sublime” (which in the modern age is no worse than a 6th form Rugby song).

I keep them now not out or any respect for magical lore but as interesting historical documents. As a figure Aleister Crowley has, I think, stood the test of time. The magical theories, I’m afraid, I now view as complete bunkum. It’s plainly obvious that Crowley was doped to his eyeballs most of the time on heroin and cocaine and various other Victorian opiates and spent a great deal of his time reading esoteric texts and then hallucinating as a direct consequence.

One story from the autohag is a case in point:

Aleister recounts an occasion when he saved a man servant’s life by wrestling a demon to the ground. It’s one of the signature notes of his autohag and makes a great read. However, that same man servant later independently recounts Aleister taking various drugs and then suddenly attacking him. The man servant was lucky to get away with his life, his dignity and his virtue intact. Enough said.

But there was more to Aleister than the dodgy magic. There was philosophy, literature, appalling poetry and a rock and roll lifestyle a good 60 years before rock and roll was even invented. He’s a genuinely interesting character and I may write more about him in the future but don’t have the room or the time now.

Laurie Cabot – an American white witch – is another case entirely. Stephen Fry met her earlier this year during one of his televised road trips across the States and she came across as an aging nutter who spent her time living in a yurt for the tourists and touting feather-based love charms for the sad, lonely and financially incontinent.

I can’t believe I ever fell for any of that crap. It all seems utterly ridiculous now.

Me and magic have, alas, parted company. I’m no longer a believer.

Which isn’t to say I don’t keep an open mind on ghosts, UFOs, and other paranormal oddities.

But magic... magic I’d like to believe in but sadly just don’t anymore. I’ve grown out of it. It’s a young man’s dream, borne out of ignorance and wishful thinking; a desire to control the uncontrollable.

Nowadays I’m more accepting of the uncontrollable. In fact part of me is rather glad that there are some things beyond my control – I can take neither responsibility nor blame for them. It’s an immense relief.

And yet...

...and yet there is a tiny part of me that is sad that I have lost this wide eyed belief in magic. The world seems a little smaller, a little greyer as a consequence. It’s like figuring out the true identity of Father Christmas. You still get the presents. Nothing physically changes in the world.

But the magic has gone.

Jules Theft

This is probably a minority interest post so I apologize in advance but will carry on regardless.

Julia Bradbury.

Not a megastar. Not an A list UK celeb. But kind of always there. Grafting away. And in my opinion delivering some of the Beeb’s higher quality programmes. Lakeland Walks and the more recent Railway Walks spring to mind. If you’re an avid hillwalker – always out and about with your waterproofs and your mountain boots – these programmes are an invaluable source of ideas and inspiration. And if you’re a hillwalker who’s strapped for cash these shows offer the opportunity to enjoy the pastime vicariously from the comfort of your own armchair.

Julia also co-presented the Beeb’s Watchdog, a show that tracks down and grills wrong doers – particularly of the corporate kind – and gives a voice to the little man when he has been wronged.

Alas Julia disappeared from Watchdog a few weeks ago amid reports that a friend of hers in the air industry had been bunging extra air miles onto Julia’s account (either with or without her consent) as a way of doing “an old pal a favour”.

Or so rumour has it.

I don’t know the ins and outs of it and don’t rightly care. Julia immediately withdrew from Watchdog and is staying off the show until she has cleared her name.

Personally I reckon she’s innocent. Anybody who champions Wainwright has got to be a decent honest person in my opinion. Us hillwalkers have got to stick together (unless we’re actually hillwalking in which case a bit of solitude is the unstated prerequisite). She’s also a brunette. A fact sure to win my unswerving loyalty. And she has a great voice. Sort of smoky and chocolaty at the same time. That proves her innocence. No further evidence is needed.

More importantly though she’s a darn sight better looking than her Watchdog co-presenter, Nicky Campbell – a man who has no right to look so damned smug and constantly superior after presenting the God awful Wheel Of Fortune on TV in the previous century.

*Shudders*

But I’m digressing.

My point is this: do we expect our TV presenters to be totally squeaky clean all of the time? Absolutely 100% above board and bangs to rights?

Simple logic dictates that we should but – even though I don’t doubt Julia’s innocence in this case – wouldn’t we all have accepted a few extra air miles from a friend if we had one in the commercial flight industry? Wouldn’t we accept a favour from a friend whatever industry they work in? A discount on a pine dining table? Some hardback books at cost? A few pennies off a burger (hold the mayo)?

I mean a few air miles are hardly on the same par as Angus Deayton’s much publicized coke fuelled liaisons with some of London’s finest scarlet women a decade or so ago. Or Richard Bacon’s scarlet-women-less coke fuelled adventures a year or two before that.

And it’s not like Julia is a politician, wielding power enough to change the lives of every man, woman and child in the country. Does her character need to be as pure as a saint, impervious to all attempts of bribery and corruption?

Like our actual politician’s are that anyway...

It seems to be a lot of fuss over nothing. Or am I just being biased simply because I like Julia? I admit if it was Campbell accepting a “free gratuity” from the Bell’s Whisky company I’d be calling for his head on a pole. But who wouldn’t want to see that period?

Hmm.

So apologies for the nature of this post once again. This post has no point other than to register my demand with the BBC that Julia Bradbury be reinstated immediately to augment my television viewing pleasure.

And to demand that Nicky Campbell’s skull be surmounted on a brass topped spike and displayed over the gatehouse of Warwick Castle (I can’t afford the train fare to see it at the Tower Of London).

To be honest, part of me thinks that this air miles baloney is just a smokescreen created by Campbell and his other Watchdog cronies anyway and Julia is currently being held hostage in the boot of Campbell’s car, her smoky, chocolaty voice brutally muffled by Campbell’s sweat stained sporran.

Scotland Yard should be informed immediately. Interpol should be alerted. A cell should be swept clean (or unclean) at Guantanamo Bay ready for Campbell’s imminent arrival.

I pay my TV license fee for emergencies of this kind and I expect to be obeyed!

Where’s The Story?

Heaven forbid that I ever throw my support behind a smug Tory toff but I’m astonished at the ridiculous fuss the UK press is currently making over David Cameron’s “drugs past”.

Where the hell is the story? Where’s the newsworthiness?

The guy took a toke on a spliff when he was a teenager... and he ISN’T denying it.

Big deal.

Now if he was denying it to all and sundry and flying in the face of hard facts then there’d be a story worth a column inch or two.

But "David Cameron Refuses To Deny He Was A Bit Naughty As A Lad" can hardly float any scandal monger’s boat. Even on a quiet news week.

Personally I think the story has been leaked to the press deliberately by Cameron’s supporters to try and gain the elusive youth vote. "Hey David took skunk when he was at Eton – he’s a geezer like us, in’ee?"

Eton?!

I bet his schooling at Eton is far more damaging to his quest to achieve super street cred than all the bongs he may or may not have smoked put together...