Gez Walsh, an inaccurate autobiography: An Innacurate Histories Special!

I was born in a whorehouse in downtown Huddersfield, to an obese, one-eyed belly-dancer called Tahoola Yahoola. It was the time of the great Yorkshire depression, 1560 to 2013.

Tahoola was doing a private dance for three blind business men from Bangkok. It was said her act was much better when you couldn’t see her! Her act was not as much a belly-dance, but more a tsunami of fat. The men had just ordered a round of pork pies and brown ale with a side order of onion rings when I slipped out like a chicken from a cannon. This was a shock to Tahoola, who didn’t know she was pregnant, but not to the blind business men, who thought I was the side order of onion rings being delivered.

A doctor was quickly called and gave Tahoola the devastating news that I only had seventy to eighty years to live. I have had to live with this time-bomb ever since.

Tahoola saw the light and realised that a whorehouse was no place for a child to grow up, so she left me in a basket outside the local Catholic Church. The local priest found me and thought I wouldn’t be of any use to him for about another ten years, so he loaned me out to a local Irish family who were having trouble with fertility. They only had nine children and were viewed as modern thinkers within their community, as they were more or less childless with so few children.

The family were wonderful, and helped me to develop an inquisitive mind. They did this by hiding my food. So well was the food hidden, that on many days none could be found anywhere in the house. This started my life-long love of hunting, and my taste for cat and small invertebrates!

I was a lonely child, except for my nine siblings, two parents, four grand parents, thirty-four aunties, one hundred and sixty uncles, and my one thousand, two hundred and forty cousins. The loneliness was hard to bear, until I met my life-long friend, a six foot four dwarf called Stumpy Longlegs.

We would wander in the local countryside, watching the farmers play such games as "Pin the donkey on my tail" and "Whose sausage is this?"

It wasn’t long before we had to go to school. I have to say that I got on with school like a house on fire, except it was a much bigger building and burned far better. While at school, I excelled at arson and espionage, things that would come to fruition when working for social services later in life.

I left school when I came of age, which for the local priest was ten years old. Both Stumpy and myself left with a travelling family known locally as "Get off my land!" The travellers taught us everything we need to know about tarmac-ing and trespassing. These skills stay with you for the rest of your life. When the mood takes me, I often sneak onto someone’s land and tarmac their drive.

I eventually grew into a man, because the hormones didn’t work, and found myself a wife. She was hiding from me under a lorry, but I found her, and took her back to my caravan screaming and crying. She eventually grew to love me after her drug dependency kicked in, and we have been together ever since.

I found, after being arrested by the police so many times, that I had a knack for telling tall stories, or "lies", as they are commonly known. This led me to try my hand at writing stories. At first it was difficult. I wrote a story about a young wizard who attends a wizard school but it didn’t work so I gave it to a young woman from Scotland. I have never heard from her or the story since. I often think of her and wonder what she’s doing now, probably working in some bar or other!

I stuck with it, and eventually got my big break when I was interviewed by Radio Leeds, I still look back at that heady day with warmth and happiness. From then on it was all downhill, as my books were selling in their tens! Some weeks up to thirty books were sold. With this amount of fame, it wasn’t long before I lost all sense of reason. And soon developed a dependency on Bonjela and gripe-water.

I hit rock bottom when I awoke one day in my bed. The shock was terrible, as I hadn’t slept with my wife for sixteen years. I knew I had to go into rehab.

I have now turned my life around and spend my life warning others about the dangers of drugs and the Catholic church.

This is a true and accurate account of someone’s life, but names and events have been changed for no reason at all!

Born To Teach!

I have just witnessed something that I have for years been telling the world, most teachers are a special breed.

I have just watched a programme on TV called Educating Yorkshire.

It’s a documentary set in a school not a million miles away from where I live. This school is not located in a leafy suburb with students that come from middle-class backgrounds; it’s in the middle of a council estate and is very multi-cultural.

Tonight, on the final episode, we watched a young man doing his GCSEs and had to do a spoken exam for his English. This is hard enough for most students, but this young man had a very bad stutter and found speaking in groups nearly impossible.

His English teacher, who I’m sure could walk on water if it was required of him, worked tirelessly with this young man to enable him to achieve his goal. Nothing seemed to work, but then when, out of desperation, the teacher, who had recently seen the film The King's Speech, asked the young man to wear ear phones and listen to music as he spoke, just as he had seen it the film. The results were nothing short of miraculous! This young man not only passed his exam, but went on to read to his year group! There wasn’t a dry eye in the house (including mine).

Other teachers in this school worked against the odds to help young people gain the results and the start in life that they deserve. Often with long hours with no thanks and often with a sense of banging their heads against walls but they still carried on. One teacher was so ill that the Head teacher had to order him to go to hospital because he wouldn’t have time off, because exams were looming.

I see people like these all the time, I work in schools all over the country and abroad; it doesn’t matter what type of school it is, more often than not it will be staffed by people that chose a profession because they wanted to make a difference.

Yet they are constantly blamed for the failures of young people, when the blame should be levelled at crap parents and crap governments! I’m not saying that all teachers are brilliant at their jobs, but the majority are.

I have written before on this blog about the unfair treatment of teachers. One thing that really angers me is when I read about politicians defending wankers, sorry bankers, and their large salaries! They say if you want to keep the best you have to pay the wages or they will go elsewhere. Well if they are the best the banking industry has, then I wish they would all piss off somewhere else!

Yet, after making this bizarre claim about bankers, they try to rob the teaching industry of their pensions and give them crap wages with long hours and cut funding! These people are the best, so applying the same logic that they use with the banking industry, where are the large wages and bonuses for the teachers? Because lots are leaving the profession!

They must have one of the hardest jobs, often giving hope and encouragement to young disaffected people who everyone else seems to have turned their back on.

I think that most people should give up a bit of their spare time and volunteer to do a couple of hours in their local school. This, trust me, would alter the views that lots of people have about the teaching profession.

And maybe your experience and skills can be passed on to make a difference.

The only problem that I have with this school that has been featured on TV is that they haven’t ever booked me!

It must obviously have been an oversight?

Obama Care(s), Cameron Doesn't!

The world has just witnessed the myth called "American democracy".

Now I must admit, before I start, that I’m not an expert on American politics. I’m just a mere foreign spectator. But this is the way it looks to other countries around the world.

President Obama had his bill passed for health care for the poorest and most in need in his country, this became known as ‘Obama care’.

You would have thought that such a powerful, wealthy nation, which purports to be a true democratic and civilised country, would have had this measure in place for years, but no, this is not the case. Not only did they not have a system where the most vulnerable were cared for, but a large proportion of the people actively didn’t want this to happen.

The Republicans fought against it, but, luckily, common sense prevailed, and they lost, not just once but three times! So, this being the land of democracy, they wouldn’t accept a vote where their ideology had been defeated. So they tried to force their ideology on the country by nearly not only destroying it, but also taking the world's economy down with it, in the process.

This has to be one of the worst cases of spitting out your dummy (pacifier) in the whole of human history!

I am not in any position to comment on whether Obama is a good or bad president. I don’t live in America. But I would rather have a man who has the courage to pass a bill that is not going to be popular, but will help the most vulnerable of his people, and has the balls to stand firm against tyranny to ensure that it goes through!

Here in Britain, unfortunately,we don’t have such a man in power. We have the spawn of Thatcher running our country! The Republicans would be proud to see their ideology put into practice.

When Thatcher privatised our nationalised industries, back in the day, people applauded her, I don’t hear them cheering very loudly now!

There was no doubt that most of those nationalised industries needed a kick up the arse! They were over-staffed by apathetic employees who were just sticking around for a pension.

But heating and water should be basic human rights, not commodities that are used to bring us to our knees while a few make millions out of the misery of the poor.

Thatcher wanted to go back to ‘Victorian values’. Well ‘Dodgy Dave’ and his crew have done just that. We now have not only the poorest in society going to food banks but also people who have jobs!

A few fat cats own most of the country, our gas and electricity is the most expensive in Europe. Our food bills are rising way above wages. 

Everything is in the hands of people whose only aim in life is to make a profit!

HS2 will be built with mainly tax payers' money, but investors will reap the rewards, while the people of this country are starting to rely more and more on charities.

WHAT A BUNCH OF DONKEYS! Why do we just accept all this crap? We do like to moan, but we don’t want to rock the boat!

Why don’t we state that the party that renationalises the water, gas, electric commodities and the railways is the one we will vote back into power!

British gas have made two billion pounds profit last year and raised their prices by ten percent. They paid their MD £3.6 million in bonuses! We could have invested all that back into the company to make it cheaper for us all.

We shouldn’t fall the same crap that we did with the banking crisis! Over-profiteering by selfish arseholes who didn’t care who they took down as long as they made money. Then we paid the price, and bailed them out. Not one of them was taken to task for their greed, and the same is happening now, with the gas and electricity companies.

It’s about time that, like Obama, we stood up for what is a basic right and put the heat on our politicians to serve the people of the nation and not themselves and friends!

It’s time to act like  lions, not donkeys!  

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Testicles!

I think my wife is becoming worried about my sexuality of late. No I haven’t got a new friend called Guy and started singing ‘I am what I am!’ But I am fascinated by a programme called ‘Ladyboys’.

If you are not aware just what a ‘ladyboy’ is, well it’s what it says on the can; it’s a boy who dresses and acts as a woman. I’m not talking Lily Savage diva type here, I’m talking about young men who have been taking the contraceptive pill before they reached puberty. This boost of female hormones makes their bodies develop as female; well female with extras!

Some do look very feminine, and if you were to see a photo of them you could easily be fooled into thinking they were just regular women. But as soon as you see them on film, you can tell they are ‘ladyboys‘. This is what is fascinating me, why can’t they blend in as female. They have the figure and face of a woman. Some have lived their whole lives as a female, but, for me, they don’t pass.

The other weird thing is the girls/boys on the programme have British boyfriends, who claim they are not gay! Sorry lads but if your girlfriend has a penis then you should be thinking long and hard about your sexuality! (No pun intended). The boyfriends themselves seem more than a little odd, with a hint of creepy.

I’m a great believer in people living whatever life they choose, as long as no one gets hurt. And I do hope these people are very happy together, but the whole subject has turned me into a Jeremy-Kyle-type spectator, wanting to know the whole nitty gritty, then hardly daring to watch, as it gives me the creeps.

What is up with me? They are just two people who have chosen a lifestyle, so what?

I think it’s because I see it as self-loathing and self-mutilation, because I don’t think most of them are transgender. I think it’s a very seedy industry that has grown in Thailand over the last thirty years.

"Ban-cock" [see what I did there?] is famous for its clubs and prostitution, and the ladyboy scene seems to be just another aspect of this. The poverty in rural Thailand is never seen by the tourist industry, but the poverty is what feeds it. People with no hope willing to do anything to survive.

I used to be a kickboxer and many years ago I sparred against a couple of Thai boxers, these men were small and slight and probably the toughest men I’ve ever encountered. They trained day and night. They fought against drunken tourists in tournaments that were set up for a small amount of money. The men they fought were often up to ten stones heavier than themselves, but the Thais always won. If they lost, they didn’t get paid.

These fighters were very gentle outside of the ring and gave me a brief insight into the seedy world that they inhabited. One of them shocked me by telling me that he had thought about becoming a ladyboy at one stage, but changed his mind when he got a local girl pregnant! I know, it’s hard to get your head round it all!

He was hoping to earn enough money to one day open his own bar, which seems to be the dream of most people in the ‘industry’ in Thailand.

He told me that quite a lot of the ladyboys are not even gay! Surely this can’t be true? If  it is, then it makes then industry even seedier than it already is. These people usually end up with incurable sexual diseases and drink and drug problems but it doesn’t matter as there is a stream of others quite willing to take their places in the grubby little bars.

Maybe me watching this Barnum-esk type piece of titillation (no pun intended) is just as macabre as the sex tourists that spend a small fortune to go and pretend they are not gay while having sex with men dressed as women?

It’s a strange old world, isn’t it?

The International Family

We have all heard of the international community, surely? But the other day on TV, a strange little man was ranting on about this week's middle eastern crisis, when he said, “Why the don’t the international family do something about this?”

I don’t know if this was just a slip of the tongue, or if he really does think of the world as one big family! If it is one big family then it’s the mother of all dysfunctional families! But it did get me thinking; if we are a family, who is who? We need a mama and papa and all the other components that make up a family, so here is my take on each role.

Germany

Has to be papa. I know most people will not agree with this choice, but think about it. They are good at making things, just like papa. They hold on to the purse strings and do a lot of shouting. They like to be in charge and tell you what to do, but no one wants to listen to them, they have strange ideas about things and they want things done their way.

America

Has to be the wayward teenager that spends his time playing war games! They are loyal but over-emotional, being polite and caring one minute then telling the world they hate them the next. They don’t know about anything that doesn’t affect them. They overeat on all the wrong things. They like to pick fights, but hate to tidy up the mess they have made!

Canada

Is the sensible sister of America. She went to university and passed with a B.A. Honours. She likes things neat and tidy and doesn’t like a fuss. She doesn’t want to be the centre of attention like her brother, she just wants to get on with her life. She is the one in the family that thinks things through before she acts, and she doesn’t like family parties!

Britain

Is the old great Aunt who has had one hell of a life, but is now quite irritating. She was quite a girl in her time but now she’s old and frail, though she still likes to be heard.She thinks that her opinions should still count, but the world has moved on since her glory days and fewer of the family have time to listen to her any more.

India and China

Are the geeky cousins who are loaded but look as if they don’t have a penny between them. They don’t really say much and have very strange habits. The rest of the family are not sure where they got their money from or how much they are worth. But some of the more financially challenged of the family try to see if they can swindle them out of money, as they have done in the past, only to be shocked to find that the geeks have turned into quite astute businessmen!

France

Is the grand daddy; he is a toothless charming old boy. He was quite a catch in his day, but his appeal has long since diminished. He still likes to think he’s in charge and the rest of the family let him have his say, but papa Germany always has the last word. Great aunt Britain hates him because of the things he got up to in the past!

Italy and Greece

Are the two uncles that have just been released from gaol! They were sent down for fraud and embezzlement. They are fun to be with, as they have very laid back sunny dispositions, but they are not to be trusted with money!

Russia

Is the uncle that has never been same since the war. No one is quite sure what happened to him as he doesn’t speak to anyone but small children and animals give him a wide berth. He’s quite frightening when he’s in a bad mood, but he’s bloody terrifying when he’s trying to be nice.

Africa

Should be the mama of the world but she’s treated like the baby. We don’t want her to grow up, we like just the way she is, sickly and undeveloped. The rest of the family like to pat her on the head and ignore her. But now she’s starting to get growing pains and her cries are starting to be heard.

Australia

Is the older brother that everyone loves. He’s laid back and knows how to have a good time. Although he went off the rails a little in his teenage years, he seems to have turned out into quite a nice lad.

I have thought long and hard about who should be the mama. This would have to be the country that held the world together. The country that helped and loved the rest of the family. This would have to be a country that didn’t stand in judgement on the others and offered a helping hand when needed. This country would need to do all this without any recompense, it would have to nurse through the bad times and laugh with the good times: this country doesn’t exist. Maybe that is what is wrong with the world,

THE WORLD NEEDS A MAMA! 

The Myth of the Marie Celeste

When I first started to write a blog, I decided to talk about anything and everything. I thought that my views on politics and religion would cause people to write to me telling me just what a low-life, ignorant halfwit I am. This, of course, could be true. But it seems I’m not as radical as I thought, as people can’t care less about what I think on these subjects.

But strangely, they do get quite angry with me when I have a go at mythology (religion falls into this category for me, but not for most others, it seems.)

I have, this week, had a chat with a young man who got quite irate with me for telling him there was nothing strange about the Marie Celeste, except the ship was really called the Mary Celeste.

What is up with these people that believe in conspiracies and myths? The facts are quite easy to look up! So for the record, and for my aggressive little conspiracy theorist, here are the facts.

The Mary Celeste would have slipped away into obscurity were it not for one Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of none other than Sherlock Holmes.

Doyle was an occultist (he verified the Cottingly Fairies, another myth) and he also knew a good story when he heard one.

He changed the name of the ship to the Marie Celeste, and wrote a short story about it. The story tells of a ghost ship found floating and abandoned with tables set for dinner and no sign of any struggle; all was well, except there was no sign of any crew.

Many explanations have been put forward about this, from pirates (none of the belongings was missing) to ‘Ergot’ in the bread, but the food was found to be safe and free from contamination. Ergot, by the way, is a fungus that can cause LSD-like hallucinations.

The facts are that the Mary Celeste set off from New York with a hold full of alcohol, a cargo the captain, Benjamin Briggs wasn’t used to hauling. Also on board was Sarah Briggs his wife, and his daughter Sophia, along with ten crew.

On the 4^th December 1872 the Mary Celeste was spotted 600 miles west of Portugal by the Dei Gratia, which reported that the Celeste was ’yawing’ - its sails were flapping in the wind. John Johnson of the Dei Gratia said they followed the ship for up to four hours but the Mary Celeste made no attempt to hail them, so they decided to board the ship.

They found no sign of a struggle, and the plates were not set for dinner, but they thought that there was blood in the captain's cabin (it turned out to be rust) so they decided to tow the ship back for salvage.

The Admiralty held a full enquiry and found nothing other-worldly, no evidence of piracy, or violence. What they concluded from the evidence was that nine of the barrels of alcohol were empty; the fluid had leaked into the hold, owing to bad storage methods. The Captain and the crew could smell the overwhelming smell of the alcohol and opened the hatch to be confronted with vapours and steam rising from the hold. Thinking that the ship was about to blow up, the captain gave the order to abandon ship (the lifeboats were missing).

The captain took nothing with him except his sextant, and it is thought that with the currents the crew would have been taken miles off course and probably died of hunger and thirst. As far as the Admiralty was concerned, the case was closed, and it wasn’t that unusual, because in the age of wooden sailing ships, things like this did occur from time to time.

But as I have already said, when Conan Doyle wrote his short story, lots of people started to speculate and all sorts of ideas were put forward as to what happened to them. As with all myths, things were added to the story and facts were removed, until you now have the story of the Marie Celeste "ghost ship".

I have to say, though, he truth about the Titanic is much more interesting. The government want you to believe that it hit an iceberg, but there is startling evidence to show that it hit an alien spaceship, the facts have been covered up, and the spaceship was taken to Roswell and put in hangar 59! Some of the bodies found from the Titanic had radiation burns on them! The ship went down nearly a thousand miles away from where it was claimed to have sunk; it was found in the ‘Bermuda Triangle!’

I Was A Vampire And Werewolf Hunter!

I know the above title will come as a shock to those that know me, or to those that read my blog. But it is true: I was once a vampire and werewolf hunter. Admittedly, I was only ten years old at the time.

It all started when some friends and myself were introduced to the camp Goth horror that was ‘Hammer’ If you’re not familiar with the Hammer horror films, I do urge you to seek them out. They are wonderful, over-the-top camp Goth masterpieces, that scared the life out of a bunch of young lads from Huddersfield in the late sixties. What made this situation worse for us was the fact that one of our friends knew a lad whose dad was a headmaster, and he had a book that could prove there was such a thing as vampires.

The book turned out to be an incredibly old, and incredibly rare and expensive, copy of Vampyre by John Polidori. I had to look up the author, and was shocked to find out this novella was written in 1819!

We believed it to be true and took it in turns to read it; I have to confess that my heart started to race when I first picked up this ‘tome’ but quickly found that I couldn’t read or understand the archaic text, so, like my friends I presume, I lied and said that I had read it.

This led us all to form a club, to find the werewolves and vampires that walked among us, and report them to the local priest for exorcism. Little did we know that, as young boys, we were in far more danger from the local priest than from any vampire or werewolf! 

For years this obsession with the occult gripped my fertile young mind. I read many books on everything from life after death, ghosts, and vampires to the ridiculous Erich Von Daniken. If you have not read any of his books, don’t bother; they are a pile of bullshit. He claims to have proof of aliens living here on earth.

I later became interested in Colin Wilson’s books, as they purported to answer the questions (they didn’t).

Strangely it was one of these books, Windows of the Mind by, I think, E. G. Glaskin, that got me interested in psychology. The book was a pile of ‘tosh’, but I became very interested in why we believe such things, as the book told of so called psychological experiments such as the ‘Christos experiment’. I told you it was a pile of ‘tosh'!

Vampires are, of course, very ancient mythical beings  - some claim the idea goes back to the Stone Age. The Greeks called them ‘Vrykolakas’, but it was the eastern Europeans that really took the vampires to heart and their take on it is now what we base our ideas of vampires on.

It has to be said that the ultimate book about a vampire is Dracula by the Irish writer Bram Stoker. This is said to be based on Vlad the Impaler, but I can’t find any reference that Stoker claimed this. Vlad, by the way, was real and quite a guy.  He watched people being tortured and killed while eating his meals. He also had the turbans of some visiting dignitaries nailed to their heads for not removing them in his presence.  Not one to bring home to meet Mummy and Daddy, girls!

  

If you read any literature of the time you will find the British distrust of all things foreign. Such as Willkie Collins' The Woman in White, where the evil Count Fossco preys on the innocent  pure British woman, whose name escapes me now. So I think Dracula was just another of these British "Johnny Foreigner" stereotypes.

It is believed that the vampire legend came about because people who were thought to be dead suddenly returned to life with an unquenchable thirst; this was probably a hypoglycaemic coma or other medical condition at play.

Werewolves are also an ancient belief from the Greek,s but the middle ages saw the rise of the witchfinders and werewolves were linked to these and the myth resurfaced here and in America. It is believed that the myth started because of bodies being buried in shallow graves and wolves would find them and dig up the bodies and eat them. The locals would see the body the next day removed from the grave (albeit half-eaten) and see the paw prints, and believe they had come back to life as a wolf.

My sister had a morbid fear of werewolves when she was small, so one night, armed with a furry hat and gloves, I decided to enter her bedroom, to scare the life out of her. That was the night I found out that her fear was to her so real she slept with a Rounders (Baseball) bat, under her pillow. I lost a tooth in the resulting onslaught.

I’m telling you all this because Halloween is creeping up on us, and every year The Nemesis and myself like to go to Whitby, where the Dracula story starts, to watch the Goths who turn up in the hundreds, most of them believing that Dracula exists.

Last year I did a ‘Gezzy’ on some of them (see previous blogs) and told a few extreme eye-liner types in a pub that a body had been found at the back of the abbey, but, instead of taking it away to the morgue, the police had taken it into the church. This resulted in them forming a posse to find out why. I want to go back this year, and I need a spoof that will get hundreds of them all hot and bothered. I want to see if I can make the national news - any ideas?