Got Milk?

As I mentioned in the last post I went along to see War Horse with He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named as he made his way to York from D***** we had the following text conversation:

Him: Dear alex, i should be getting to york about ten past one. Shall i come to yours for lunch, or do you want to meet in town? Lots of love, ****

Me: Dear ****, I'm sorry to tell you I'm in Basingstoke today. So your journey is wasted. I hope you die. Lots of love Alex.

Me: Actually, i didn't check cinema times, did you?

Him: Yes, there's a show at 4pm. So you're not in Basingstoke? Was that some kind of fucking joke? Did you think you were funny, clown boy? Did you?

Me: I don't even know where Basingstoke is. Do you want to come here, but buy some tickets on the way over? We can have lunch here. What do you want?

Him: I'll eat whatever you put in my face, you know that. I'll get tickets on the way over. Basingstoke is in Hampshire.

Me: OK, I might get us a pizza! I don't know where Hampshire is. Or give a fuck for that matter.

Him: Hampshire is somewhere south of sheffield, that's all you need to know. I fucking hate pizza, and if you get pizza i'll throw it in your FUCKING FACE.

Me: Then I'm certainly not interested. What flavour do you want on your pizza. I know you love pizza.

Him: I don't mind. Get avocado ice cream flavour if you can. Or margherita.

Me: Pepperoni? Only gays eat gay flavour pizza.

Him: Yeah that's fine. Thanks petal.

Two hours later

Him: I'm at D***** station, i just bought my ticket to york, now i'm sitting on a bench waiting for my train to arrive.

Me: So?

Him: I just thought you might like to know that everything is going to plan so far.

Me: Fuck you and fuck your plan.

Five minutes later:

Me: In light of that, I'm changing dinner plans. We're having Mexican wraps instead.

Him: You can't fuck with the plans like that, it was all arranged. Now you've fucked everything up. And you probably expect me to pick up the pieces, as usual.

Me: Yeah.

Him: I just got on my train. At least i'm following the plan. Let's see if we can salvage something from this shipwreck of a sunday.

Me: Make sure you get good fucking seats at the cinema or I will set the dogs on you.

Him: Where would you like to sit?

Me: In the middle, you know where.

Fifteen minutes later

Me: And can you get some milk, please, I love you.

Him: For fuck's sake.

Me: I love you.

Him: Fuck off. You're only saying that so i'll get you some milk.

Me: No, I do.

Him: Right i've got the tickets. I'll pick up some milk. anything else i can get you? The golden fleece perhaps? The holy grail?

Me: Actually, I've decided i don't want to go to the cinema after all. I'm gonna stay in and paint some tanks. So don't bother coming over.

Him: Okay. I guess i'll see you around at some point.

Me: Don't count on it. Actually, will you put the milk on my doorstep? ring the bell so i know it's you, but fuck off immediately.

Him: If you let me in i can put the milk in the fridge for you. I wouldn't want you to over exert yourself by going all the way to the front door to pick it up.

Me: But I'd still have to get up to let you in. And I'd see you. No dice.

Him: I've left milk on window sill, i'm going back to d*****

I looked up and there was a pint of milk on the window sill.

Who's Horse? (In a Northumbrian accent) Why, It's War Horse!

Von He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named rocked up his white stallion on Sunday afternoon to deliver my monthly thrashing and to drag me to see War Horse, the film he's been raving about all year. He hates horses and war, so this was the perfect film for him. I wanted to see it as well, because I'm SUCH A MASSIVE FAN OF THE BOOK, YOU KNOW, THAT BOOK THAT IS FOR CHILDREN. CHILDREN, NOT 37 YEAR OLD MEN.

Read an adult book, you slack jawed cunt...

I actually wanted to see it because Dr David Kenyon and TV's Andy Robertshaw had done the military advising on the film and Andy appeared as an extra. It became a game of 'Spot TV's Andy Robertshaw'. I won it outright as Herr He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named doesn't know what TV's Andy Robertshaw looks like.

That's one nil to me

There will be spoilers from here on in, so if you want to go and see this film then don't read on, though why you would want to spend your hard earned cash on this lump of shit is beyond me. I wasn't expecting greatness in the first place and I certainly wasn't disappointed. The film is full of the usual World War One tropes, but that is not the worst thing about it. We were supposed to empathise with the horse but He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named and I were talking about what was so special about the horse and we couldn't work out why everyone human seemed to want to have a love affair with the beast. Sure, it was a good looking animal, but it was patently rubbish. Despite being able to plough a field like a modern mechanical tractor it couldn't jump. What kind of fucking horse can't jump? A shit one, that's what kind. I guess this was a plot device in order to allow the fucking dumb animal to get tangled up in barbed wire in No Man's Land so Tommy and Jerry could have a bonding experience whilst freeing it and demonstrating how futile the First World War was. This last scene was supposed to be tense, with threat of the horse being blinded or dying during the rescue, but all tension was lost when you realised that the film is about the horse and there is no way on God's green Earth that the producers will allow an animal to die on screen. It just became a farcical and over long scene.

Otto Dix was thrown off the production after the unveiling of his storyboard

Speaking of dying, there was another unfathomable factor in this movie. The human 'star', Albert, is given his father's cavalry pennant and this finds its way onto the horse's tack as the horse is taken off to war as a good luck charm. It actually does the exact opposite and brings black luck on anyone that happens across it. The young officer who first buys the horse is killed during an attack, the two young Germans who go AWOL with the horse are shot at dawn without a trial (give me fucking strength...) and then the young girl who seemingly spends two years (as dated by the German soldiers helmets...) trying to teach the fucking useless horse to jump ends up getting killed. Even Albert is scarred for life with a gas attack. What kind of luck is that?

 Where's me pennant?

The final scenes really wound me up, when Albert is reunited with the horse it is at an Advanced Dressing Station. The doctor on duty has been pulled out of dressing station to have a look at the horse which is wounded. Now, my first question is, why didn't the Private take the horse to the Veterinary Corps rather than a fucking human doctor? He would have known they existed as the British Army of 1918 was dependent on animals. Secondly, why was the doctor pulled out of the Dressing Station to look at a horse when the men he was supposed to be treating were dying? Why would a single horses life count more than humans? This is the main premise of the film, that we supposed to care more about the life and death of one horse over the thousands of injured and dying men.

Leave those men, a horse somewhere is injured!

Anyway, the horse is injured and the doctor declares it cannot be healed so recommends that it is to be put out of its misery and a Sergeant steps up to the task. This is when Albert reappears, does his stupid owl hoot call and everyone is happy and joyful that the horse is actually his and not just some random horse. But what everyone seemingly forgets is that the horse is still injured and should be put out of its misery. But this fact is conveniently forgotten and the horse miraculously survives its injuries! This is literally scratching the surface of what is wrong with this film and I neither have the inclination or energy to detail everything wrong with it. Modern conception of the First World War is as a futile and senseless waste of life. I would argue that War Horse was a futile and senseless waste of my life.

Anyway, I was actually told off by a woman sat next to me for laughing so hard at the film. She told me to get myself an Airfix kit, I told her I already had some. I'm not really sure what she meant by that insult. He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named suggested the film would have been better had it been filmed by Ken Loach and I can't help but agree with him.

One on Ten.

Bible Basher

The Education(!) Secretary Michael Gove wanted to implement a move to ship out thousands of King James Bibles to British schools to a tune of £377,000 at the taxpayers cost. Probably as part of the ongoing Tory Crusade against the Infidel amongst us (for Infidel read: Muslim, Jew, Sikh, the unemployed, anyone that doesn't earn over 50k a year, students, etc, etc). Thankfully the Government has seen sense and his plans have run aground (probably in the yacht he wanted to buy for the Queen the other week...). But my friend, let's call him Mr GB, wrote an email of disgust to Gove in light of this news. I present it below in full (with his permission):

Dear Mr. Gove,

I recently read in the press about your plan to send a single copy of the King James Bible to each school in the country at a reported cost of £400,000 of tax payer's money.  While I recognise that the Bible is a beautiful and important book and although I am personally very fond of the King James version, I find myself baffled and upset by this project.  At a time when frontline services are being cut, why would you want to allocate a large sum of money to a vain and obviously unpopular symbolic gesture like this?

How would a school use a single copy of the King James Bible?  Is it to be placed on a lectern at the front of the assembly hall like a copy of Mein Kampf?  If your goal is to give children the experience of there being a weighty and important book they are not allowed to touch, why not go for a spin around the charity shops and pick up a few copies of Moby Dick?  If you want children to actually become familiar with the content of the Bible, why not organise the distribution of an e-book copy of the King James Bible?  These can be read on computers, Kindles and smartphones, and there are a number of versions available freely in the public domain.  I'm not sure how effective this would be as I remember that every child in my school was given a Bible by the Gideons:  our response (which I very much regret now) was to graffiti them, actually wipe our arses with the pages, and finally see who could kick theirs the furthest across a wheatfield.  If you are hoping to instill Christian values in our
young people, I feel this is a naive way to go about it.

If I can be of any assistance to you in future, please let me know. 

Yours in anticipation of your response,

Mr. GB

PS If you have a warehouse full of unused books, I may be able to take a crate of them off your hands for no fee.

Did you know that 'Education Secretary' is an anagram for 'Cunt'?

The Autist

I went to see The Artist with Sam last night. It's a silent movie, so here's a silent review:

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8 on 10

An Ecstasy of Fumbling

Yes, what did YOU do at the weekend? I bet you spent your weekend on your fat can shovelling jelly babies into your gaping maw. I bet you lay like a sloth ensconced on your sofa drooling at the latest idiots to parade across the screen in X Factor. I, on the other hand, spent last weekend in a replica First World War trench dressed in the Service Dress of a Great War soldier.

Now, I have made my opinion on re-enactors quite clear at this stage, I think, and you could level the accusation that I spent the weekend re-enacting, but this was certainly NOT re-enactment. Re-enactment involves a bunch of fat men dressing up like nineteen year old soldiers fielding questions from the public at stately homes before pretending to advance as a six man pike block and finally getting pissed up on mead at the campsite. Re-enactment is basically camping in period costume. This, on the other hand, was a tough challenge that was an attempt to understand a little of what the men of the Great War went through. TV's Andy Robertshaw is the luckiest man alive in that he has a patch of ground that he has constructed a Great War trench system in, complete with two fire bays, officers dugout, other ranks dugout, kitchen area (before it collapsed) and latrine.

Yes, that's me...

Andy was writing a book based on our experiences of being in a front line trench for 24 hours carrying out the trench duties that a soldier would have done in 1917. OK, so we weren't under the threat of death from artillery or snipers, but we certainly lived in the trenches pretty much as they would have been in 1917.

It was good fun, but beyond this there was a lot to be learnt. For instance, just the shear weight of Service Dress makes doing even the simplest job a drudging chore. even passing one another in the trench was a bloody hard job and led to argument and fighting:

The plan was to stay in the trench the entire night and although I almost made it, I knew I had a four hour drive back home the next day so made sure I got a few hours sleep at least. The problem was, in the firebay we were posted in the water had risen and taken away any space to sleep so by 4.00am the exhaustion was really kicking in:

Justin managed to stay out for the entire night however and sat on guard in our firebay:

The next morning after breakfast we got to write letters home, these were then passed on to the Lieutenant to censor. For some reason, mine passed censorship:

What we did get out of the experience was how much comradeship and laughter counted to keep us going through the night. The good humour of the British Tommy is famous and we were no exception. All in all, it was a great experience and I'm not going to relate everything that went on in that 24 hour period, you'll have to wait for the book to come out.

All photos by Dr David Kenyon and Martin Stiles.

Miserable New Year

I hope everything you've strived for in 2011 is dashed on the rocks like a ship wreck in a stormy ocean. I hope every new venture you attempt in 2012 is doomed to miserable failure. I hope your fate involves being strung out on the meathooks of dreary fortune. Fuck New Year and Fuck You.