Hate is the Problem, Not the Answer!

After the recent referendum over whether to leave or stay in the EU we find our country deeply divided. To be honest, Britain has always been deeply divided. I keep on hearing from the media types down in London just how we have experienced unprecedented growth over the last fifty years of being a member of the EU. This just shows the divisions in the country! The last fifty years have seen all the traditional industries here in the north being decimated, leaving wastelands. Everything from our fishing fleets to our coal and steel industries have been almost wiped out!

I know that industries change and demands for certain products change, but no government has put anything else in place to replace these industries. They have left these communities to rot. The economic rise, if there has been one, is down to successive governments pandering to the banking industry and the rise of right wing politics with everyone from Thatcher to Blair, to the bunch of greedy selfish creeps we have now. Here in the north we have been told over and over about just how the EU has pumped money into these communities. To do what? I work all over Britain in schools mostly in socially, economically deprived areas. The Westminster claims about how the EU money has helped these communities is a myth! Building a park or a leisure centre or cleaning up a river doesn't solve the social problems of these towns and cities.

The fact that Cameron allowed the referendum to take place shows just how out of touch he is with the people of this country. He thought that everyone would follow what he said and vote to stay. He hadn't learned his lesson from the Scottish referendum where he was lucky to survive. Now the press are trying to make out that the people that voted leave are just a bunch of racists! Well it is hard to dispute that there is a group of people who voted out because of the stupid immigration argument put forward from the equally stupid Brexit campaign. I wrote many times saying that people should not listen to these halfwits and make up their own minds. The idiots running the campaign had no credibility (and still don't). But that doesn't mean that remain side were any better, they ran a hate- filled, fear-filled campaign as well, and they are still running it!

I have noticed that the media are quick to point out that lots of the areas where the out vote was the largest were in the more rural and industrial areas of Britain. But to say that the vote was stronger in the less educated areas of Britain, which happened on the news the other evening, is an insult! The vote to stay was stronger in the richer parts of Britain, so draw your own conclusions. The press have gone out of their way to interview fully-paid-up members of the knuckle dragging brigade! They just want sound bites from people who hold extreme right wing views or others are just not wise enough to know that they are being manipulated and are not eloquent enough to express how they feel. One guy when asked why he voted leave announced the the camera proudly, “To get rid of the Muslims, as simple as that!” Now I'll give you that one, he was a fuckwit!

What has happened is that the ignorant, bigoted, inbred racist retards now feel that they have a mandate to come out and claim that they are the voice of Britain. They are not! They are just imbeciles who fail to understand that a human being is a human being no matter where you happen to come from or what colour you are, or what belief system you hold. I wish all the people who seem to think that Islam is a race of people and not a religion could be deported to some jack-booted, swastika-festooned utopia, away from all humanity. That goes for all the religious racist cavemen as well!

If you think that immigration is a bad thing you are delusional. If you think that you can have free trade without free movement then you don't understand the idea of free trade. Britain has been built on immigration, I'm a product of immigration. I want to be part of Europe, travel and meet people, work with them, trade with them, I just don't want to be in their club! We can do a free trade deal with the EU with free movement and pay reduced tariffs. What's wrong with that?

The government now need to start investing back into the areas that they have long neglected, and they need to build an infrastructure where the next generation have not been neglected like my generation has. They need to invest more into schools and industry, not just call centres and supermarkets but real industries. Politics should be a subject on all schools' curriculum, that way future generations will realise that it's the fault of the government and not an immigrant for the way their lives are being run. People also need to take care of their own lives and not expect everything to be done for them. You are in charge of your own destiny! Rather than denounce a lot of the people that have moved here you should applaud their courage and determination to ensure that their children have a better life.

Finally, we have to realise that hate is a cancer, it multiplies, and blinds its victims. It rots the mind, having you believe any old bile that a hate-monger sells you! Meeting people from all walks of life with many different ideas is the only way we can move forward as a species. Last week, after many years of abuse, my body decided to submit. After years of contact sports I have done some damage to one of my internal organs. To test just how bad the damage is I had to go to hospital and have a tube put up through my nose and down my throat. The offending tube had to be left in over night and a monitor had to be strapped to my shoulder to read the signals sent back from whatever it was that was nestled down my gullet! The end of the tube had to be taped to the end of my nose so I looked like I had a vacuum cleaner attached to my face. I decided to carry on my business as usual and went shopping etc it did draw quite a few looks but being cool is no longer one of my priorities, whereas getting much-needed provisions is!

That evening my son and his family were coming round for dinner. He, of course, found it highly amusing to see this 'thing' strapped to my nose. Little Harleigh, however, ran into the house as usual with some important piece of news that she must tell us there and then. Usually, she runs up to me and jumps in my arms shouting. “Babbo, guess what?” then tells me her life-affirming news. This night she ran in shouting, “Babbo...” then stopped dead, on seeing the tube and apparatus that was strapped to me. She then ran and hid behind her father. I smiled and asked what was wrong, but she recoiled in horror away from me (I have that effect on women). She wouldn't speak to me and wouldn't come near me or Nonna who is her favourite person in the whole world. She just sat holding on to her father in silence. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't bothered, as it did upset me a little. I talked to her and assured her that I was still Babbo and the thing up my nose would be removed the day after.

About an hour later, while we were all talking to each other, Harleigh, still silent, kept staring at me. Then, without warning, she got to her feet and ran to me, throwing her arms around me. She burst into tears and asked, “Are you ok, Babbo?” I assured her I was fine. She then asked, “You not going to die?” 

“Not just now love, I hope” I replied. I then spent the whole evening having lots of hugs and kisses from this beautiful, fragile little strength giver. The next day we all went to Leeds shopping as I had to go into the hospital to have the tube and apparatus removed. On walking out of the room having it removed little Harleigh cheered and dived into my arms and wouldn't leave my side for the rest of the day.

I couldn't have had a better tonic than this beautiful little girls love, it was pure innocent concern and love for my well-being. And that's what we need just now here in Britain, ignore the hate-mongers, the doom forecasters. There's going to be lots of challenges ahead, forget what the idiots running the campaigns said during the campaign, most of them were not true. Lots of promises made by people who had no right or authority to make will have to be broken. Accept that hate politics and neglect are the problem, not immigration.

We Burnt The Witch!

I have to admit that, even though my son likes to call me the 'old man', I can thankfully say that here in Britain we did away with the gross stupidity of killing harmless old women to obtain their lands and properties years ago by claiming that they were witches. So I have never witnessed a real witch hunt. Even if we did have such barbaric practices today I wouldn't want to have any part of it and would certainly be doing all in my power to help such people. The pedant in me needs to point out that here in Britain our preferred gruesome method to dispatch these innocent ladies was to hang them, not to burn them! This doesn't make the practice any better though. I cannot think of anything worse than going to see a public execution but having witnessed daytime hate TV here in Britain such as the Jeremy Vile show I can see that they would be quite popular among lots of our population.

The reason for the above title is that having noticed the mood among the sensible people of Britain on awakening to find the news that we have voted to leave the EU. I can imagine that it was the same among our ancestors after a public killing. The night before they could have easily been whipped into a frenzy with tall stories of heinous acts been committed against the public by the victim. They will have been promised that if they killed the witch the crops will grow and you will finally get to marry off the ugly daughter. Then the next morning after the act had been done most people awoke feeling quite sick, wondering just why they went along with such a folly. On Friday when we all awoke to the news that Britain had voted to leave the EU I'm sure that there were lots of people who had voted to leave that felt this way. They are probably worried about the future as the market vultures swooped in on the currency and the market sending both crashing!

Before you start wearing hair shirts and spending your lives in a monastery eating nothing but bread and water as a penance, look at the facts. First lets put the myth to bed that the EU was the big bad witch., it wasn't. But it was big and it is getting bad. There are lots of benefits to being part of one market. I would say that the original idea of a trading agreement between countries where people and goods can travel freely is a good idea, and if don't agree, then go to the monastery now! Laws passed to protect the people and trade are also a good thing. But the Common Market as it was originally known was set up as a trade deal with pretensions, it was always going to lead to Europe being one big federal state. If you get chance to look back at the debates of the time in the 'seventies please do. People like Tony Benn were pointing out to people what was going to happen and that it wasn't just a trade deal, he was of course correct. The EU, will, if it survives, become a huge faceless bureaucratic machine that will churn out dictates that will work wonderfully for one region while being devastating for others.

The myth that immigration is causing problems here in Britain should also be put to bed. There is nothing wrong with immigration if it's controlled correctly and we make provisions for it. We need others to work and bring trade and ideas to make us a bigger better more tolerant country. The problem is and has always been a cartel of people who have run successive governments. They are not in touch with real people, they live in a different world where they talk down and patronise the great unwashed. That is why Cameron agreed to have this referendum; he genuinely thought he could bully us into voting the way he wanted us to. Why on Earth do you think he and his evil side kick Osborne made such stupid remarks about us going to war with Europe or the evil budget they would impose on us if we left? The whole campaign wasn't about whether it was better for the British people to leave or stay in the union it was about old school friends trying to get the better of each other!

If governments had spent more time building houses, investing in schools and hospitals, and here, I'm saying really doing this, not just manipulating statistics to look like they were going to do it, then the outcome of the referendum would, I'm sure, have been different. People are fed up with with not being heard by politicians on all sides. They are fed up with being patronised and ignored, being told what is best for them. They are fed up of seeing their communities being dismantled as old industries die and nothing being put into place to replace them. They are fed up with seeing the obscenely rich becoming even more obscenely rich while we, the great unwashed, become poorer in real terms.

I have visited schools where they had under a hundred pupils one year, only to have over seven hundred the year after. The classrooms were makeshift cabins that were placed on what were once the children's playing fields. These small rural towns were engulfed by European workers coming to work picking fruit and veg. If there had been proper provision set in place for these people to come to work it would, I'm sure, have been a harmonious situation, as the workers were needed in these industries. Instead chaos ensued, as such an influx of people caused tensions between the locals and the new arrivals. It is not the fault of the migrants that there aren't the correct provisions put into place to have them work here, it's the fault of Westminster, which ignores the pleas of local government for help, telling them that they need to save money! Funny thing is, I don't remember them saying that to the bankers when they brought he world to its knees!

The people who voted out are sneeringly being called, 'Little Englanders', and 'Closet Racists'. They are made out to be ill-educated idiots. Well, if they are, they are all very angry ill-educated idiots! They voted against being marginalised, against being ignored and bullied. The government are looking for someone to blame for things not going their way, so they are pointing out that most of the Brexiteers come from the labour heart lands in the north. This is not true, but if it were, then it proves my point that Westminster is to blame. They can spend billions on a useless project such as HS2, but can't be bothered to build houses for people who are already living in cramped squalid conditions. They can't find a way of revitalising whole towns that have been left to suffer a slow lingering death. Where work has dried up and drugs and apathy have taken hold. This is not fantasy, this is fact! Towns such as Barnsley in south Yorkshire are quickly becoming ghost towns. The town centre is now just row after row of charity shops. This was once a proud, hard-working mining town, but now is just a shell of its former self.

People are now worried that the markets and the currency seem to be going into free fall; don't! The vultures that prey on commodities are the faceless billionaires who can destroy a country's economy with the swipe of a pen. The pound and the markets were always going to crash if we left, I thought everyone knew that? That is what happens with these people. If they think they are going to loose money, they panic! The market and the pound will stabilise and when we start to negotiate new trade deals things will become more settled. Cameron made things worse by spitting his dummy out and claiming he wasn't playing anymore! This is the thing that most worries me, as this will leave a vacuum that I'm sure will be filled by the... I can't be nice, sorry. This is a vacuum that will be filled by the arse holes that are Johnson and Gove! These, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, are far more evil than anything that Lewis Carroll could ever dream up! They will bring nothing but right wing politics to the masses. Then we have the loathsome little Farage who now has notions of grandeur. He has served his purpose though: he was good at arguing the stupid contradictions that happened in Brussels, but other than that he is just a pompous little wannabe.

So for those of you that think that we burnt the witch, we didn't! We have made changes, we have given ourselves a chance to renegotiate with our partners in Europe and again work alongside them in trade. It will be difficult for a while because of the faceless vultures that prey on economies but if we get clever sensible people to do our negotiation for us, I believe we can become a powerful trading nation again. Don't listen to Johnson and Co, they are in it for themselves, and they are a danger to the country. For the people who claim that our working laws will be changed for the worse, then vote in a government that will protect people and their rights, and stop voting for tax cuts that don't benefit you, only the rich. Make Westminster accountable to you, change the system! In truth if we left or if we stayed, it wouldn't make a big difference to most of us.

Don't fall for the con about immigration being bad for the country, but most of all start to become interested in politics. Take control of your lives. I for one always look forward to change as long as it's positive, lets hope we get a government that can negotiate this for us!

Mad, Bad, Sad World!

It's easy to see the bad in the world, just turn on any news channel. Anywhere in the world. You will usually be shown some sort of propaganda from some political/religious point of view. This, I'm afraid, is inevitable. But why do we never get told the reason behind the news?

We still have a situation in Europe where we have a massive influx of middle eastern refugees/migrants. They make a perilous journey across the Mediterranean crammed into boats that are unfit for purpose, where lots of people perish along the way. These people are being trafficked by unscrupulous people traffickers. Why is this allowed to happen? I don't believe for one moment that the relevant authorities don't know who these people are! If the people who are fleeing find it easy to contact these people, then surely the authorities can find them?

People don't uproot from their lives and flee with little or no money and nowhere to go to without good cause. You do not make the decision to take your family away on a dangerous journey with an uncertain outcome unless you are terrified. Why is this situation allowed to carry on?

Everyone who knows anything about world politics knows that the middle east has always been unstable. So why are governments from all over the world trying to make it even more unstable? 

OIL!

The middle east is where the next world war will start. It already has signs of this now, with the mess that Syria is in. We have the old east meets west philosophy banging heads together again. We already have Putin, who makes Hannibal Lecter look like a chorus boy. Now we have the chance of another lunatic getting into power and making things far worse: ladies and gentlemen, I give you the hairstyle that no one wants, Donald Trump! These two will be like two playground bullies fighting over the little fat kids' lunch money! They will, I'm sure, push the situation to a point of no return between them.

After the horrible shootings in America we now have one of our politicians here in Britain being murdered in cold blood. Jo Cox was an MP (Member of Parliament) for Batley and was murdered in Birstall. These small northern towns are not far from where I live. I have even written a blog about the splendours of Batley before. I have been told that I have met Jo in the past, but I'm so disillusioned about politics now that I pay little attention when I meet politicians, so I don't remember her unfortunately.

Jo was giving a talk about battling the practice of sending young girls from the Asian community over to Pakistan to marry some old guy! I find this appalling practice unbelievable, yet another case of abuse masquerading as tradition or culture. It's your job as a parent to ensure your child is safe, loved and educated, they are not part of someone's passport application! I have since found out that she was a tireless campaigner for many causes and was what a true politician should be, a person that fought for the rights of the people they serve. She will be missed.

Many people have been saying that if the gunman had been Asian, people would be claiming that it was terrorism. It is terrorism! It doesn't matter what your background is, if you use violence to force your will and views onto others then it's terrorism. Doesn't matter if it's one lone lunatic or a collective of lunatics. The outpouring of genuine love from her constituents, though, has given an old cynic like me a little hope for our political future.

Having faith in our political future is very difficult at the moment as we have the referendum on whether to stay or leave the EU. There have been lots of claims and counter claims from each side. If you want to leave you have been painted as a ignorant racist, so lots of people have become closet Brexiteers. The truth is no one really knows what will happen if we stay or if we leave, that is the only true fact we have! Though we do have lot's of 'experts' telling us everything from we will have a bright utopia if we leave to we will have a bright utopia if we stay. We have had warnings of everything from war breaking out to being over run by migrants in-between. While I'm on the subject who told the loathsome politicians on the Brexit side that they are in charge? I don't remember voting for them to represent me! I watched Johnson in a debate the other evening, and the man's a moron! Another thing is how can they make promises about what will happen if we leave? They are not an elected government! I do worry about who will do our negotiating for us if we do decide to leave, and I shudder to think that Johnson and co will be our representatives!

On a lighter note a young man this week told me that he would love to live in Moldova. I asked him why, as it is my understanding that this country is part of the former Soviet bloc and has lots of social and economic difficulties. The young man burst out laughing, saying that I 'didn't know anything'. This may well be true, so I asked him why he had formed this opinion of me, “Moldova, doesn't exist!” he laughed. This statement, I'm sure, will come as a shock to the people of this eastern European state which borders Ukraine and I think Romania (I should check that out). They have been going about their business for years, not knowing that they don't exist.

I asked this young man why he thought there was no such place as Moldova and he replied, “Coz it's in The Lord Of The Rings!” then laughed some more. I have to admit that, though I have read the Tolkien books many years ago, I don't remember him mentioning Moldova in them. It was then when I worked out just what he was talking about, because of his Goth appearance. He was trying to be radical by saying he would like to live in a scary place (he should move to Batley!). 

“Do you mean that you would like to live in Mordor?” I asked.

“Where the fuck is that?”

“It's nearer to The Lord Of The Rings than Moldova for a start.

“I don't know what you're on about?”

I can't believe that these people can be so stupid. This lad was on the internet on his phone all the time, all he had to do was type in both these names and his education would improve a little. Instead he said it with a straight face, as he stood in front of me, with thick eye makeup; his lips had red lipstick on them, and he had dyed his hair jet black. He wore a long leather coat with chains hanging from it and on his feet he had what can only be described as Frankenstein boots!

“What are you some sort of wierdo?” With that he walked off

It's a mad, bad, sad world at times!

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

I think it is quite apt that the gay community have adopted the rainbow flag as their emblem. I suppose it symbolises that it takes all the colours of the rainbow to make the human race - and various shades as well. I watched the news this evening about the senseless killing of innocent people just having fun in a gay club in America. I do think the word "senseless" is appropriate here, because this loss of life makes no sense.

I have written many times before about how I fail to see just what business the sex life of two consenting adults is to anyone else except those two consenting adults. I don't care if they are the same sex. I would much rather see two people happy and in love than one bitter individual with a machine gun! The fact that the killer was apparently so incensed when witnessing two men kissing that it turned him into a homicidal maniac makes me doubt his sexuality. This seemingly macho man seemed to hate his wife: if reports are correct he abused her on a daily basis. Was the sight of two men kissing reminding him of something he felt he was unable to achieve? Or was it, as I suspect, the mind of a deeply disturbed individual, the type of person that only an idiot would give a gun to?

I don't want to make light of this situation but it does remind me of the Wizard of Oz. The gay community have long referred themselves as “friends of Dorothy”.  (I don't know if this term is still PC or not!)  But most of my gay friends just want to live a normal life, and why shouldn't they? I suppose their Kansas is where they are accepted for who they are, where they can live without threat and fear. Why someone's sexuality should be a concern to anyone else is beyond me, as long as they are with other consenting like-minded adults.

The murderer of these innocent people is the Cowardly Lion.  If he only had the courage to question his own beliefs. We have seen a lot of these lately.  You know the type: they kill in the name of something. These people call themselves soldiers but they only go after unsuspecting, unarmed, innocent civilians. This is not soldiering, this is cold-blooded murdering!

The Tin Man is the ideology that spawns this intolerance. If it only had a heart. The ideology that claims to be about love and higher awareness is in reality crude and bigoted. All religions are based on fear: if you're not like us, you will suffer. The problem is, what is normal? All religions have members with different likes and dislikes and their hatred and bigotry stop people from really achieving true love and understanding.

The Scarecrow is our old friend Donald Trump. If he only had a brain! The fact that he sent such a gloating tweet when hearing the news of the massacre shows that he has no understanding of how to be a true statesman. Telling people that his inane comments about how Muslims should be barred from America are proven true by the act of this one individual! What he failed to mention was the gunman was born and bred in America.  He was brought up in a middle-class family in New York.  How could Trump ban an American citizen from living in his home country?

I think the actual Wizard has to be the American gun lobby, as Moses (Charlton Heston) said, guns will have to be taken “from my cold dead hands.”  Well the Orlando gunman is dead now! What, he wasn't really Moses? The fact that such an unstable individual found it so easy to purchase an assault rifle shows that something has to change with the American gun laws. But the lobby is just too powerful.  After the last massacre that took place in a school in the States, there was an ad campaign from the gun lobby offering guns and lessons on how to use them for teachers in schools! The bizarre logic behind this was next time a gunman breaks into a school the teachers can forget about their students and turn into Rambo! They can seek out the gunman and shoot him dead in front of the young people they are trying to educate away from such violence. Statistics have proven time after time that armed civilians do nothing when confronted by a determined gunman, they just run and hide like all the other victims. But the gun lobby, just like the Wizard of Oz, makes false claims and gives false hope.

My heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones through this mindless act. I know that people all over the world have come together to show their solidarity with the gay community (and it's about time). I do hope that not only the gay community in Orlando but everyone in the town gets together and rebuilds the nightclub. I hope that the whole community stands as one and shows that it will not stand such intolerance. I hope that everyone affected by this heinous crime can themselves show restraint and respect. This was a sick individual, not a group of people whom he purported to represent. I hope that the American people can now see the stupidity of their gun laws. This will not be the last massacre, though, because if you let insane people hold guns, they will do insane things with them! Somehow I think all these changes will only happen “somewhere over the rainbow”.

How Did You Discover You Could Do That?

I was talking to someone this week who likes to holiday in Thailand. If I'm honest, I don't think he goes there each year to discover the culture and architecture of the country. I guess the story he told me this week gives away his main reason for visiting the place, which is really sad!

He said that while on holiday in Thailand, he visited a bar - and I'm sure this wasn't the kind of bar where you take your wife for a night of romance. One of the women on stage in this bar was firing ping pong balls from her vagina. Then she produced a harmonica and proceeded to play a tune with it using the same body part. I hope that she cleaned it before she let anyone else have a go with it!

How on earth did this woman find out that she had these unusual talents? How bored must this woman have been to sit at home one day and think, “I wonder if I can fire a ping pong ball from my fanny?” What on earth then possessed her to buy a harmonica and try to play Whip Crack Away? How did she find out that she could do this?

I remember watching the brilliant Idiot Abroad with Carl Pilkington once. He had met a fakir in India and the fakir found a small stick and wrapped his penis around it as if he was rolling up a hose. He then proceeded to hang heavy weights from his testicles. For Christ's sake, get a job!

What sort of hunger, greed, need or attention-seeking causes these people to even try such things? It is a statistical fact that eleven people die each year in Britain through testing a nine volt battery with their tongue! Just what did they think was going to happen? I have heard that in Australia and America people lick certain toads to make them high. I know for a fact that you can buy alcohol in these countries, so what's with the toad licking?

I once saw a circus act where a young man stuck hooks through his nipples then was lifted off the ground by a winch! It would take a full frontal lobotomy and a case of whisky for me to even think of such a thing, so how/why did he? There must be some way of training your nipples to take such a weight. But how the hell do you train a nipple?

I know that boredom and alcohol are not the best of bedfellows. Under the influence, my friends and I have done some very stupid things when we were younger. I have also witnessed some incredible one-off things while out of my tree on best bitter. One very late night after a full day of celebrating the beginning of the weekend, I was sitting in a friend’s kitchen. Another of our group walked in, and it is safe to say that he had put his brain to bed a few hours earlier, after drinking tequila slammers. As he walked into the kitchen someone the worse for wear picked up a raw egg and threw it at the guy, shouting “Catch!” as he threw it. The target for some unknown reason opened his mouth and caught the egg without breaking it. I cannot tell you the number of times since then that we have all tried to repeat this amazing act of dexterity - all to no avail, I must add. Though I have to admit the sight of so many people with literally “egg on their faces” is a very strange sight indeed.

Another drunken evening one of our group decided to light a fart. Now I know that lots of men reading this may think “done that!” but this guy decided to do it in style. Why he decided to do this is anyone's guess. He got a can of hairspray and lit the spray from the canister then proceeded to light his fart with what can only be described as a home-made flame-thrower. The resulting back draught saw a mushroom cloud not witnessed since Hiroshima! This cloud of high intensity fire took off his fringe, his eyelashes and his eyebrows. The flame also set fire to the sofa he was sitting on. As the rest of the group doused the flames and checked to see if this idiot needed any medical attention he just lay on the sofa and said, “Wow, neat!”

Leaving aside the ping pong woman, I haven't ever come across a woman who gets drunk and does such stupid stunts. As teenagers we would stand on a car and go car-surfing and all the girls would walk off in disgust at our stupid infantile high jinks. I have never seen a woman light her farts, though I'm sure that there must be some women out there who have tried it...

So if you have a strange talent let me know, but not if it involves hurting/harming anyone else. I would also be interested to find out just how you discovered that you could do that!

I May Just Be The Angel Of Death!

I think 2016 will go down as the year the stars died. It has been a strange year, when lots of celebrities have passed away. It seems that every time I turn on the TV another celebrity is gone. Some of them were quite old, so it wasn't much of a shock, such as Ronnie Corbett, but others, like Victoria Wood or David Bowie, were certainly unexpected.

On a personal level, I too have lost a friend this year, plus there was a death in the family of my son’s partner, so what is it that is causing this unusual amount of doom and gloom?

I have to make a confession. Up until this week I had nothing to do with any of the deaths of all the celebrities mentioned. Now, before I go any further I must point out that I'm in no way physically responsible for any death ever, except... I seem to have some sort of curse put on me.

It all started back in 1997 when my first book The Spot On My Bum had just been released. I was attending my first book-signing (something I have grown to loathe) and as a first-time author I was quite excited. Earlier that week I had done an interview with The Sun newspaper and even had my photo taken with my son to be shown in the paper. At the end of the book-signing, Steve Rudd from my publishing company, King’s England Press, said as a parting shot, “You will be in The Sun on Tuesday and should get quite a good spread, unless something stupid happens, like Princess Diana dying!”

That night, which was a Saturday, was spent out drinking with my brother and his wife. The next morning I awoke feeling groggy and made my way downstairs to put the kettle on to see if a cup of tea would ease my poor banging hung-over head. As I waited for the kettle to boil I put the TV on for the news. Can you imagine my horror when the first line the newscaster spoke was, “Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris last night.”

I sat there opened-mouthed as the words that Steve had said the day before reverberated around in my head. I blame Steve for that one, as all the media for the next two weeks covered every aspect of this boring woman's life. Needless to say, my fifteen minutes of fame in a national newspaper got moved to a small column.

Since then it seems that every time I release a book someone famous dies. I have seen off Nelson Mandela, Michael Jackson… and even the atrocities in Paris coincided with me releasing a book.

On Boxing Day 2015 floods swept through Calderdale causing dreadful damage to property and untold misery for the inhabitants. The people of Calderdale were only just getting over a previous flood. Lots of them could not get insurance cover which only served to compound their misery. I'm actually the poet laureate for Calderdale and decided to try raise some money to help with the flood appeal. Although I did not write the book, I got the young people who had witnessed the flood first-hand to do that; my name is on the cover of the book as the editor. The book was released last Thursday but we had plans to do the publicity for the book this week. I woke on Sunday (I shall have to give Sundays a miss from now on) to the news that arguably the most famous man on the planet had passed away, Muhammed Ali!

Unless you have just written a book about Muhammed Ali, I can't begin to tell you just how difficult it is to get a book publicised right now. But if you are reading this, no matter where you are in the world, please log on to www.kingsengland.com and purchase a copy of the book Floods of Tears, Floods of Laughter. All profits go to the flood appeal.

So I'm giving fair warning that I do intend to release a book called Cooking With Babbo and Nonna in a few months’ time. If you are very famous, or if you are a friend of someone very famous, can you please warn them? If they are feeling unwell, even if they just have a little sniffle, tell them to seek urgent medical help.

Who knows who will next fall to the Walsh curse? Whoever it is will be a good person; evil little creeps seem to be immune to the spell!

Walking A Different Path

I received the very sad news this week that an old friend of mine had passed away. I have to say that it didn't come as a shock, because I knew that he was suffering from both cancer and a terminal lung complaint. But having said this, it still upset me immensely on hearing that he had passed.

Bob was a proud Scot who didn't suffer fools at all. He either liked you, or he didn't! Trust me when I say that you would know if he didn't like you, as he made it as plain as can be. Lots of people didn't know quite how to take him as he just said whatever he thought, and if it upset you then that was your problem as far as he was concerned. I know that I'm not painting a good picture of him, but he was a good, honest man who was loyal to his friends. Now is not the time to go into the antics that we got up to, but my memories of him are all fun-filled. He had a very dry sarcastic wit that could cut stone which was good as he was a bricklayer by trade.

But having said all this, I hadn't seen him before he died for many years. The strange thing is that my son's partner's mother is a friend of Bob's wife, though we found this out by accident. It was her that told me how ill he was. When I found out, I tried to go and see him, but he said he would love to meet up when he was having a good day. I knew what he meant. He was a proud man and didn't want me to see him in such a frail state. He never had another good day.

There was never any reason to stop meeting up with Bob for a drink and a catch up. It was impossible to fall out with him, as we both said what we wanted, so we could never offend each other. The thing that happened was something that happens to all of us of a certain age, we walk different paths. Think about friends from your youth. The ones who you regarded as brothers or sisters, how many do you keep in touch with?

I left the building trade where I worked as a joiner, and Bob also moved on, to work for the local council. I travelled a lot and became self-employed, which meant I had to chase money all the time with having a young son and a mortgage to pay. Our paths took us both in different directions, When they crossed again it was too late, which was sad.

I think this is also the cause of many marriage breakups. Couples slowly start to get different interests and friends, and one day they wake up and don't really recognise the person in the bed next to them any more. They have become two strangers who share a house together, and when they split, neither can really say why it happened.

The news about Bob caused me to think of other people over the years that I have known. Working in the building trade in the seventies and eighties in the north of England caused me to know quite a lot of eccentrics. I once worked with a man who had everything but could keep nothing. He was the same age as my father. They said that 'Dickie', as he was known, was a good looking man when he was in his youth. But he would have been in his late forties when I knew him, and the looks had well and truly gone! It was often quoted that Dickie had a face that had worn out two bodies. This was true, because, for someone who was only in his late forties, he had a face that resembled an old man's scrotum! His wife was supposed to be quite beautiful, but she left him. He lost nearly every job he ever got, because of his love of a good time. He once confided in me that he had been caught drink driving and that it was the third time this had happened and he was scared that he may go to prison. His anguish on the run up to his court procedure was plain to see. But against all the odds, he was acquitted on the day because of a technicality. So the first thing Dickie did was to go to the pub with friends and get pissed out of his mind. That night the police pulled him trying to drive to the local fish and chip shop which was only down the road from where he lived he could have easily walked it. He wasn't as lucky this time, as he was sent down.

I also remember a man from my days on the building sites who drove a digging machine. He was a large man who worked seven days a week and seemed to live in his overalls. I tried to keep away from this guy as much as possible because we both annoyed each other. He was a Methodist or from some sub-sect of Methodism, and spent all day singing hymns. He spouted whole chapters from the bible to anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck in his company. He was like all the holier than thou brigade, he was a bigoted arrogant bore. But the thing that surprised me the most was when the news came through that he had been arrested. It turned out that he was a bigamist, with two families who knew nothing of each other! No wonder he worked seven days a week. How did he manage to fit in two families? I heard later that he did what all the evangelist preachers in America do when they are caught shagging some eighteen year old chorister or when they find two million dollars of the churches money in their personal bank accounts, HE REPENTED TO GOD, HALLELUAH! It seemed to work, as both his wives forgave him!

I often think about these people, most of them are no longer with us. But I decided to look up some old friends who have not seen for many years and who have walked down different paths to me. All I can say is that sometimes it's best to leave the past as just memories, and some paths are best left un-walked.