Killing for Pleasure

Kicking someone to death because she happens to dress differently seems a piss poor excuse. Not that there ever is an excuse. We don't hang people any more (quite rightly) and neither do we pillory people (again. . .) So, what condign punishment fits this crime?

Take these lovely young people and have them appear on the And & Dec show, where they can have their legs broken for the cameras that broadcast their every squirm, their every scream, their every soiling of themselves. They can be medically fixed up straight away, injected with painkillers as soon as the baseball bat hits, I don't want to be cruel.

Drastic stuff, but I can't think of another way of getting through to them that just because they think they are worthless little pieces of shit doesn't mean that everyone else is (or that they are, either)

You know how it is, a friend asks if you have read such and such a book, and you fake knowledge, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's okay, and you've never heard of it.

Have you read 'Ash' by . . . by . . . Oh bugger, I forgot who wrote it. It's about . . .

It's by Mary Gentle, and she's good, almost as good as our mutual friend, Manda Scott. I not only enthuse guinely, but am able to recommend a couple of others from the ouevre.

Oh joy.

Another one bites the dust

The seeming suicide of the Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester Police has made me angry on several levels.

If it is suicide he has chosen to deprive his family of himself and his chosen method has put others at risk to recover his body. To my mind, neither of these is acceptable.

But, and what a but it is, unless there is something behind this that we will never know - and we can never be sure we will know the full facts of this - the immediate impression is of a man who has taken his life because the black dog had him in its jaws. This was a man in a position to be responsible for the welfare of colleagues doing a demanding job and being aware of the help available to them. Help he was unable to understand was available to him. But that is what the black dog does.

So, I am angry. I am angry at an illness. I am angry at a man who was no more able to seek help than I could. I am angry because there is a widow and three children without a father. My anger is no more rational than my behaviour before I realised the black dog had his teeth into me.

He was a one in five, like me, and I think I am entitled to rage against the waste of another life.

Tale of the unexpected

As a writer, I try to temper my instincts - which I know will lead my up and down every garden path that suggests itself, not to mention taking me off at an infinite number of tangents - with planning.

I am 'inbetween' long works, having completed the first drafts of two noves since Sept 1st last year, due to the ministrations of those nice people at the NI90 community (on LJ) So, my mind is open to a ideas. In the last week I have three times walked into the office with first lines in my head, but that was all - just a sentence, no idea what was going to happen in the story or who my characters were. I now have three short stories I didn't have this time last week.

Are they any good? How should I know, I only write them. I'll find out when I commit them to the black sea of submission. They will now be left on the corkboard for a suitable period of maturation, rest and reflection - hopefully forgetting all about them. Then we'll see.

My brother and I were discussing the latest bile to pour from the mouth of Sepp Blatter, this time demanding that my namesake be banned for ever for his foul on Eduardo. Well, the rights and wrongs of the footbaloling disciplinary system are always good for debate, butv we decided that this is one area where the Swiss windbag ought to zip it.

This trespasses into another area that has my passionate interest. Like any other occupation, football is governed by the laws of the land - each land in which it is played. FIFA is responsible only for the rules of the game (and its ruination by endless, meaningless international competitions for tv consumption, but that is another matter) As Dwain Chambers has so recently shown, a sport's governing body has no legal power to prohibit a professional sportsman from plying his trade once he has served the due penalty for any misdeed.

I'm not a fan of blood sports, but I think I might even pay to see Sepp Blatter argue this before three gowned and be-wigged judges in the High Court.

One of the pleasures of life is to sit somewhere watching other people going backwards and forwards about their business when you don't have to be about yours, be it a railway station - where I was today - or a bus station, or maybe even an airport. I used to have to commute through Heathrow when there were staffing problems on the railways (when were there ever not?) I'm glad I don't have to do that these days - I'd have to buy a decent laptop as the battery on my pda wouldn't last that journey - but people watching has endless attractions.

Newcastle on a Friday afternoon sees the cocks and hens assembling for a weekend of rowdy partying in the party capital of the universe, and the air is filled with the rumble of tiny wheels and the jolly cries of men and women who are determined to enjoy themselves, even if it kills them (the amount some will drink - even of the well watered wine served in most of Tyneside's watering joles - makes that a distinct possibility) Matching tee shirts and pink fluffy hats are almost de rigeur, but today I saw a man in a complete Robin outfit (the Boy Wonder not the bird) and was reminded of the time I saw the Green Cross Man emerge from Camberwell police station in his full silver and green costume. Nobody paid him any attention either.

Cool or blase? I watched them both, and I know I am not cool, and I hope I am not blase.