Winter in America

It’s almost impossible to write words under this Gil Scott-Heron track. Please click on the image to play the track. It’s not necessarily of today, but by god it’s summarises a lot of what’s happening today.

Sunday Morning

I know it’s Saturday, but yesterdays dark night of the soul, was yesterday. Today it’s Sunday Morning. Thank you Velvet Underground and Nico.

If Paradise is Half As Nice

What a great song title. What a wonderful idea. And I grudgingly agree, really I do. With the weight of the world upon you, sometimes it takes another event to put things in perspective. Or sometimes it just highlights how shit things are. Sadly, I was a victim of the latter. No Walton’s soliloquy for me, just the eyes blinking in the cold headlights of reality.


Fact 1: I’m unemployed
Fact2: I have precious hope of finding a traditional job.
Fact3: I can actually employ myself; just have to convert those synapses to money!
Fact4: I’m seriously disempowered, so when they ask me what I do, what do I do?
Fact5: And I don’t bloody do nothing. I write the Novel (4 years and counting) , I download a template to update my website, I look into writing smart phone apps (compiler on my computer – downloaded last week), I read the job mails every day; I apply for jobs – none this week as there has been ZERO. I’ve sold most of my possessions on eBay (that people actually like to buy – exclude books and paintings which are a bit like the black spot from Blind Pugh-Treasure Island reference for those not familiar with RLS) – but I investigate eBay as a source of income for what I have left. I run every day , to keep my ticker going. I make phone calls here there and everywhere, to try and reduce my fuel direct debit (failure), to respond to a call from an agency that was never returned. I read on the Guardian blog about Housing Benefit - some people think of me as a Benefit Scrounger (there appears to be nothing else but this for these people). I think of responding that my Tax and NI contributions amounted to hundreds of thousands, but really it doesn’t matter – you’re only as good as your last breath.

Fact6: My daughter left Primary School today. And I sat there feeling like a complete failure, watching her effortsly go through the end of her early School Years; amongst parents who can give their child everything. This was never a scenario I envisaged. When she was born, I paid thousands for all those childhood necessities. I took her every week to a restaurant and bought books by the dozen. Now I serve her cheap food, and avoid giving a fiver pocket money (because I really can’t afford it) . Oh and if you say, but you can teach her things, take her places that are free. You forget one thing, TV and other people.

I wish I could be like Edith Head

I’m interchanging David Watts with Edith Head, mainly because Edith managed to become a David Watts, by creating her own niche in the film business.

Edith somehow got a job as a costume sketch artist at Paramount, with only rudimentary drawing skills. Well that’s how the mythology goes. But she managed to climb the slippery pole and become Chief Designer at a major studio.

When she started in Hollywood, men were the chief designers, and Edith was thrown the scraps. During her early years at Paramount she was taken under the wing of Travis Banton (the studios Chief Designer), who delegated the jobs he didn’t like (actresses were not his favourite species) to her. She found her niche designing costumes for women, incorporating the actress’s personal preferences into costume sketches; rather than foist her personal taste on them. Ordinary actors/actresses were commodities, so the idea of choice, was not part of their working lives. Naturally for those lucky to become extraordinary, there were benefits; larger salary, star status and a little more choice. Edith progresses by the drip-drip method, some of her clients became stars, with the power to request her services. When Benton left, Head was appointed his successor.

Edith kept the same look right up to her death; a short fringed hairstyle and round dark glasses. The dark glasses were a relic of the black and white days when designers would wear tinted lenses to check how their costumes would look on screen. The glasses gave her an inscrutable, ageless look. And coupled with the unchanging school teacher black/brown clothes and hairstyle; pre-empted the modern day fashion designers with their signature looks. Karl Lagerfeld is the most obvious candidate here.

She dressed both men and women, but it’s the gowns that made her famous. Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday; Grace Kelly in Rear Window and To Catch a Thief; even Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid , which was released after her death.

Edith managed to become David Watts, without actually being David Watts. And in many ways that’s what I’ve aspired to. If your personality precludes, becoming the head boy in the school, head of costume design, head of IT; then the Edith Head strategy is a possibility.

I was reminded of my own Edith Head Empire building when commenting on a Guardian blog. The piece was purported to show real IT peoples view of the IT crowd(C4 comedy show), by using a couple of project managers and a technical architect. In the course of venting my spleen, a whole host of memories came flooding back. But first here is my reaction posted on the Guardian website :


A late comment. The three people you use are representative of a certain type of what is termed non-technical person. The sort of tier in the department pyramid you can remove, and feel no pain whatsoever. The rise of the project manager has been happening since the 90s, outsourcing as one of those enlightened people punted as a new idea has been around for decades. I agree with whoever said this was a picture of times past – in terms of a big operation, the lone ranger geek type was culled big-time when the dot com bubble burst. So you started getting managers walking around talking about soft-skills and adding value, and all that shite. The weird thing about the IT crowd is they are clearly desktop-support , and no server-support(operations team) or development team exists. These of course can exist somewhere else in the world, but it would be a nice touch if they sometimes communicated (in a off stage way) with the IT Crowd. Rather like Carlton your doorman in the old American sitcom Rhoda.

But I left the following out, because it’s a bit too personal and serious for a comment on a comedy blog. No matter how secure you think your empire is, someone is going to find a way to topple it. The old adage nobodies indispensable may be a cliché, but it’s correct. I spent a good few years, mapping out my own little area, so I could keep out all those project managers and management speak types. To use one of the spineless ones sayings, I made my own “comfort zone”. Ah but that was not to last.


The pain would be a little easier if the mechanism for my personal toppling was by stealth, but it was obvious and without camouflage. Here’s the missing part of my comment:

Funnily enough my last employer re-employed all the outsourced people, including myself. Then (as most people predicted) made them redundant after a year or so. The outsourced people spent their time handing stuff over to people far away in Asia, and once they were done, chopped. Digging your own grave is the best analogy.

I wish I could be like Edith Head.

Our Lips Are Sealed

What made me think of the Go-Go’s, somehow I got there via Jane Wiedlin and before her The Bangles cover of Hazy Shade of Winter. Which sort of started with Simon and Garfunkel, who recorded that song and Scarborough Fair.



This is one of those trawls through youtube. When fishing, you have the big nets that let the smaller fish go, and the little – that catch everything. I was using the little net, its holes are small, and so nothing gets through.
I started with Scarborough Fair, and because of that. Here’s Simon, Garfunkel and Andy Williams doing that song:







The Go-Go’s song is a love song about a break-up. Jane Wiedlin had a brief affair with Terry Hall of the Specials – so far back in the 80s it’s almost Neolithic. Terry sent Jane some lyrics, and she composed the song. And going by the lyrics there must have been a lot of talk about the
two and their liaison. Terry also recorded his version, which is worth a spin too !

Scarborough Fair bookends (sorry Simon & Garfunkel pun) the Go-Go’s song, because it’s also about a break-up. And it’s poignant, because it featured in a brief but significant meltdown of my current relationship.

During a dark night of the soul I sent my (then former) girl a link to Scarborough Fair. And I’m certain she was perplexed (it may have been a clip from the Graduate that accompanied the song); but she gave me the benefit of the doubt. And despite Simon or Garfunkel, she sent me an e-mail.

The rest as they say is history ……………………

Blown’ in the Wind

This is not really about America. It’s got nothing to do with the dust bowl. Except maybe, in Economic terms, that’s where we are heading. Because with an austerity budget, I see dust bowls in a lot of places.

And because were not America, and because just at the backend of the City there are no areas where homeless people push shopping carts full of their possessions. And because there is now a £400 cap on Housing Benefit, which translates in London as a three bedroom flat, we have a hell of a lot of people squeezed into tiny spaces.

Just the other day I was told that my waiting time for my hospital appointment was guaranteed. There was no more waiting for hours to be seen. And I was glad, because I had a dole appointment in the afternoon.


So the new budget removes targets for waiting times at doctors, interesting. So what is blown’ in the wind is a hell of a lot of waiting, maybe until you die. Well unless you’re privileged, and so can bypass all of the waiting.


I was never a fan of a lot of the New Labour targets; the educational ones were nonsensical, because learning happens in such an un-empirical fashion. And some of the hospital targets just encouraged a slap dash approach to patient care – get them in, get them out. But waiting around, that’s concrete and manageable. Just get a good appointments system and don’t let those loudmouths (I’ve seen it happen) jump the queue.

So you’ve got what you voted for. I do really wonder if those Tory voters (in the South, because every where else people voted Labour) wanted all their luxury goods to rise by another 5%. Ah well I suppose they can afford 20% VAT. But ask a poor person the next time they pay their BT bill (expect the toffs don’t think a phone/internet is necessary for the poor!)

I’m still trying to figure out what the true Liberal Democrats are thinking, because their boys in power appear to be Tory lapdogs.

The answer my friend is (truly) blowing in the wind.

Paper Sun

Paper Sun is a Traffic song. It’s got a tenuous, link to my day; it’s a terrific sitar driven piece of pop psycadellia; and it’s got Jim Capaldi playing drums – who I will come to later.


Today was one of those big days, an appointment with the Cardiologist in the morning, an appointment with the dole in the afternoon. Both with the potential to pull me under like the undertow (thanks John Irving).

I decide to run to the Royal Free, because it gets me there quicker and sandwiches in a bit of exercise. I’m early, sweating like Jabba the Hut, but sitting outside a toilet with ample supplies of paper towels. In twenty minutes I’m dry, and not really that smelly.

The Cardiologist goes like a dream. He takes me off one of my pills, decides not to increase the dose of another. He says I can go back to the way I was before; run a marathon if my body says so. He hands me a discharge note that means I don’t have to go back and move among the sick.

I throw him a curve ball on leaving, telling him a story about a couple of Pharmacology professors I once worked with, who took beta-blockers before making speeches. But he misses the point, and says there great for people with heart disease. What I meant was they were perfectly healthy and taking them like a sedative. Suppose I was a little high.

Appointment two is even sweeter. I talk about my one day’s consultancy work, and my possibility of working in Europe. And I’m being truthful, because sometime next week I will get paid my first wage in more than a year. But I do give it a lot of spin, so all the usual stuff that constitutes my monthly interview is dispensed with in a flash.

And now I’m so high I almost punch the air leaving the dole office. There’s the lyric of a terrible Chris De Burgh song (which Word for some reason has in its dictionary) going round in my head. All rolled up jacket sleeve and pleading voice. I’m high high on emotion he’s singing; and if I cackle I could almost be the psycho in American Psycho. But I’m getting carried away with myself.

Later in the evening I watch a documentary about Steve Windwood (now he’s not in the Word dictionary) on BBC4. There’s a lot about his time with Traffic; hence the inclusion of Paper Sun in this blog. And there’s lots about Jim Capaldi who drummed/sang/composed with Steve Windwood in Traffic. And for those who don’t know much about Traffic, they were a quintessentially English pop/rock psychedelic band; formed in the late 60s and active into the 70s.

After the programme was over, I watched the video attached to this blog. And I thought about an afternoon during the last recession. I was unemployed, doing a little work for the Brother-in-law on the side. At the time he was successful in the property business and friendly with a few celebrities of the day. One happened to be a famous Chef.

So one Sunday we go south of the Thames to eat at his restaurant. The idea being, my accounting skills are going to be pitched at the chef; who is looking for someone to do his books.

But when we arrive, we are made to wait, just like ordinary customers. We wait a while, and while we wait my Brother-in-law focuses his attention on a man sitting next to us. He’s middle aged and decked out in outlandish cowboy regalia. He sports an El Gringo style moustache, and my memory assures me he was wearing silver spurs.

El Gringo amuses my Brother-in-law no end. He was the type of man who liked to mock people, and I suppose it distracted from his loss of face. Big important men aren’t supposed to be kept waiting. Except his friend the Celebrity Chef had an ego the size of Luxemburg, and liked to keep people waiting.

Eventually we ate, I had part of a Pigs Head – it was pretty cutting edge back during the old recession (before every man and his uncle copied the Celebrity Chef). And at the end of service, the Celebrity Chef joined our table. We spoke for a while; the job was mentioned, but not exactly discussed.

By this stage most regular diners had left. The Chef then asked if his friend could join our table. Brother-in-law obliged, and ordered another bottle of wine. He showed no surprise when El Gringo sat down, and no recognition of the mans name when he was introduced as Jim Capaldi.


I knew who he was, even remembered the name of his solo hit. But by this stage the wine was kicking in, so I kept quiet. Celebrity Chef encouraged Jim to do a couple of party tricks. Keeping time with a spoon, while playing a different melody on a glass.

And I would be a liar if I recalled much more than a blurred impression of that afternoon. And I would be a liar if I said I got the job. But I did meet Jim Capaldi, one Sunday afternoon in South London, and shared a few glasses of wine with him. And I’d like to think we talked about his song Paper Sun, but I just can’t remember.