If you screw your eyes up really tight, this could be me

Mel Gibson, ladies and gentlemen. A phenomenally successful actor and director, with a seriously acute sense of humour, immense charm, loads of money, yet is a complete and absolute nutter. He’s almost exactly four years older than I am, which accounts for the fact that he is old and wrinkly while I retain my youthful good looks and general lack of baldness.

Lovely Mel who, in our younger days, was often compared to me in the looks department (shut up at the back, I now who you are, bitch) and who for the longest time I wanted to be. The picture to the left is him in his mid thirties. Take a look at him now and you see the toll that the drinking, smoking and general screwed up living has taken on him. He isn’t ageing well.

Remember “Gallipoli”? Fabulous movie. I never saw the Mad Max flicks but the Lethal Weapons and his gig as William Wallace, though as historically inaccurate as it’s possible to be, is a flamin’ ‘tour de force’ at getting the blood up after a couple of beers. Or in my case, a claret or two!

But what the fyck is going on with the plonker now? Married to the same woman for, how long, 28 years or something? 7 or 8 kids? Up to now a fairly private man, with a particularly strange brand of catholicism which is clearly anti-semitic and, anti gay. Now, as an aside,  the bible has fairly clear  guidelines about people who don’t conform to the “norm”, for example the gay community. Strong views are held on both sides, if there are only two sides, but unless a firm theological point is being made then a person should keep their gob shut. Telling a magazine that one’s arse is only for shitting didn’t do him any favours. Personally, I think the whole God/gay/ Christian thing is between God and the people involved. The important part of active Christianity, for me, is loving people, no matter who the fyck they are. Unless they they are wilfully ignorant and have big nostrils. That’s not totally biblical but we all have our faults.

A few years ago Mel admitted to suffering from manic depression (now known as bi-polar, which sounds far more adventurous). That fact has been missed in his whole recent character assassination, in which, to be fair, he played a major part. He is also clearly mental when he has a drink in him, then it’s all “Jews are bastards” and “what are you looking at sugar tits?” to a POLICEWOMAN? I think he’s admitted his battle with the booze quite openly now.

I think it's clear from this picture that Mel is no longer in the same league as me or Clooney

OK, he went over the line in some of the shit he came out with. Most even. But as a man with a tempe,r I know only too well how easy it is to say all sorts of bollocks you don’t mean, in the heat of the moment. Which of us hasn’t said something out of order in a fight, who hasn’t called names or huffed and puffed like an idiot? OK, maybe it is only me, but I can honestly see what is going on and I can understand the upset (not about the BJ before the jacuzzi though, that’s went too far, as Greg Hemphill would say).

Certainly he is culpable for what has gone on, but I think his “mail order” Russian girlfriend knows ec=xactly what she is doing and why she is doing it.

Gibson’s crazy. He’s an alcoholic, religious nut-job with a God complex and a huge fear of getting old and ugly. Oksana appears to be a gold digging tart with fake lips, tits, teeth and who knows what else. Maybe they desevre each other, but I don’t think Mel deserves the shit he’s getting for having anger issues (which his family agree with).

If we looked into the private lives of all our Hollywood heroes I suspect we’d find much worse stuff going on. Read the biographies of the actors of the 40s and 50s for goodness sakes, they certainly won’t be any calmer or less crazy these days.

Feel free to hate on me, I’m just in the mood for a fight!

Then there’s the

SO anyway, this type of blogging, the interesting type of blogging as I like to think of it, opens little windows into the lives if the writers. Even if the writing is poor the spirit is strong, and that shows a certain enthusiasm for life, doesn’t it? Telling everyone how lousy (or fabulous) your sex life is, explaining in detail the process by which you drain your beloved chihuahua’s blocked anal gland, exposing the world to your immense poetic talent, all of these things take guts.

The truth of the matter is that we all have needs of various sorts, my needs tend towards a desperate craving for attention and, if ladies choose to send me pictures of their breasts, so much the better. I’m sure that drew a serious grue from my younger readers, but I am what I am and I have always been, take me or leave me. Actually, for the most part the choice is “leave me”.

Which leads me to the events of this year. Any of you who were at my birthday party (fabulous cake) will have heard me announce that this was going to be a BIG year, the biggest of my life. I was looking forward to it with a hunger and an enthusiasm that I hadn’t felt since I was 16 and in a park in Meikle Earnock for, let’s just say, lessons in life.

So here’s the list of BIG things I’ve encountered this year:

1. Amber isn’t sure if she wants to be married to me;
2. Friend chooses this exact time to pay me a “surprise” visit in Brussels and gets pissed off when I use the phrase “bunny boiler”;
3. I discover that my crushed vertebra (T10 for those of a medical persuasion) and broken back muscle are not fixable;
4. I discover I have osteoporosis and a “high risk” of further spinal fractures;
5. I become addicted to narcotics and develop an unhealthy fondness for Diazepam;
6. My three year contract extension is reduced to a sixty day contract extension;
7. Amber chooses to divorce me (I honestly can’t blame her, considering);
8. I discover this morning that my 60 day contract extension has now become a zero day contract extension, i.e. no job, AND I have already booked my flights;
9. I am fatter than I have ever been and therefore a an ugly portly curmudgeon (thank you Susan);
10. Friends are concerned for my mental well-being which, all things considered, is fair, because I have suffered from depression since I was seven but didn’t get treatment until a scary episode in 1988;
11. My house renovations are “almost” finished. Note, “almost”;
12. I will now have to sell the house, unfinished, and in the worst possible market conditions, and will probably lose money because I’m utterly desperate;
13. I am too much of a fucking nutter for anyone to remain friends with me for any length of time;
14. I am as stoney broke as I have ever been;
15. I’m barred from speaking to my closest friend.

On the upside, the head pain helps distract me from all this shit;

But there have to be good things too, right?

1. My kids are amazing and smart and beautiful and talented (that includes the informally adopted ones);
2. My eyes are still blue (though I do need glasses now);
3. I’m not bald;
4. I can write better than most people I know (including Marting fucking Amis);
5. I don’t actually have an anger problem;
6. Sex, in all it’s many guises, doesn’t seem quite so important any more;
7. Pasta is cheap;
8. I have lots of toys;
9. I have learned (the hard way) that I don’t need anyone;
10. I can still take most of you in a fight.

SO, big year it has certainly been. I still have a sense of humour, which when combined with despair just makes the poo jokes all the funnier… and I still care about you. All of you.

More will come, this is just an update, OK?

Love

it's not *my* plane, but you get the idea...

I’m on a plane.

Actually, by the time you read this I will no longer be on a plane, I will be in an office, at a desk, under fluorescent light and looking at a computer screen. However, let’s not allow reality to intrude. I’m on a plane and I am enjoying the ride, for a change.

Perhaps it was the weather as we took off but, something in the way the sky looked this morning, gave me the wonderful takeoff thrill that I used to get, all those years ago, when I started throwing myself about the planet.

There’s a definite chance that this could be my last trip for a while and I’m not completely  sure how I feel. Obviously it will be nice to be home more, to be able to help with the things Amber has had to manage on her own for the last few years. It will be great to be able to say goodnight to my children every night and it will be nice to be able to schedule a weekly class of some sort during the week. But what about my itchy feet? After all, I’ve been traveling, doing the rounds, in one way or another, since I was 16. That’s almost 20 years, people.

It isn’t so much that I don’t like being in the one place as that I feel a sort of hunger for change.

When I was growing up we only moved house once, but in those two houses my mother would change the furniture around, have us swap rooms, change the decor all the flamin’ time. It became almost a family ritual, my mum would decide a change was needed and the three of us (she, my sister and I) would set to for the day and see how we could lay out what we had in different, creative and exciting ways. Maybe that is where this hunger came from.

Or maybe it’s that, before I was born, my parents lived in East Africa. Moshi in Tanganyika, to be precise. I spent a large part of my gestation there and my mother only moved home when my father died. My uncle lived in East Africa too, he had farms in Tanganyika and Kenya and he lived there till he passed away, just a few years ago. I had relatives all over the world and a cousin who traveled to, and lived, in various exotic locations, Mauritius, Khartoum, Oman, all (to me) exciting sounding places, but the only person in my family who had never been anywhere was me (I was also the only person in my entire family who had never met my father, bat that’s a whoooole ‘nother set of issues).

I also wonder how my perpetual presence will affect Amber and the kids. Will they get fed up with me and wish I was off somewhere else, doing something else, with someone else? Will the dogs start to feel that I am a tiresome owner if they don’t get to greet me enthusiastically once a week, to practice their leaping and smiling?

There’s always the chance that this won’t be my last ever trip. We’ll see.

I’m not on a plane any more and I’ll soon be back in Kansas.

The few of the guys I’ve met have been delightful… proper gentlemen, if a little scary. Our entire family has an open invitation to join in the shenanigans. I have to say I am sorely tempted. I still don’t have my bike license so I can’t talk shop with them, but I am really good at motorbike noises, so maybe they’ll let me join their club and I can let my beard grow, get a few more tattoos and forget about the diet.

UPDATE: 20:22
There is a woman biker, recently arrived, who has a very shrill voice and a vocabulary like a scouse sailor. I am confident that we shall be hearing from her later.

So, any thoughts, ideas, suggestions? You know me, I’ll listen to anybody… but I only pay attention to you, dear reader.

I have only ever heard snippets of her songs, so I don’t really know what she sounds like but she is a breath of fresh air in a pop world where everyone is manufactured to fit a “type”, as determined by marketers, to generate the highest revenue. She came along in her plastic underwear, sporting a telephone as a hat, brandishing a teacup and saucer, and she took over the world.

I remember when Madonna did something similar, but Madonna’s various façade’s leant very heavily on her sexuality. She brandished her sex like a club and she smashed British pop culture to smithereens, all by herself. Anyone who says different clearly doesn’t remember. But Lady Gaga is barely sexual. Despite the outfits that show off her female body parts in a variety of ways, not always flattering, she isn’t using her sex to conquer.

For me, the music is secondary, if it even gets that high in the priority list. The exciting thing about her is her singular desire to be exactly who she wants to be in exactly the way she wants. Once again the pop culture is being shaken and kids are seeing that star quality, the X-factor, isn’t something that fits into TV talent shows. Creativity, drive and belief in yourself are much more important than paying attention to what Simon Cowell says.

Anyway, I fancy Lady Gaga quite a lot and I am happy to say that she is on my list.

Any of you have secret crushes?

rhubarb

We have a new government in the UK that partly fills me with dread for the future, but concurrently gives me hope that things are really changing. Maybe even for the better. I think Cameron and Clegg may well be just what the UK needs at this point in time. Certainly conservative rule from London will stimulate the Scots to think about the Maggie Thatcher years and consider our future as part of a nation that has completely different needs and wants from its bigger sister, and so it should. We don’t think for ourselves nearly enough. Independence? I think it’s a viable option. I think it may incur temporary hardships for the citizens of our new nation, along with confusion and the pain of change, but I firmly believe it would ultimately help us to stand again with pride as Scotsmen and Scotswomen and reinvent the world in our own image, rather than the other way around. But that’s just what I think.

Twitter, what’s that all about, eh? At first I dismissed it as a fad but it really has taken over the world, hasn’t it? I am @zzzeno for anyone who wants to follow ‘my’ Twitter feed. I must say I have been sucked right in and have been exchanging tweets with all sorts of luminaries from Carrie Fisher to Rosanne Cash, Simon Mayo and millions more. I know that it’s all lighthearted nonsense, but it really does make me feel like I am hobnobbing with the luminaries. Restrain me someone, please.

In my absence from the blogging world I have been thinking loads, talking even more and having all sorts of crushing blows delivered. I turned fifty this year, in January, and since my announcement that “This is going to be the BIGGEST year so far”, I have discovered that I have a spine like a corkscrew thanks to a crushed T9 vertebra and osteoporosis (I’m an honorary old lady) and I just ran out of job, unexpectedly.

“How could that happen?”, I hear you ask,
“What, the osteoporosis?”, I answer,
“No, the job, you twat!”, you reply with genuine bonhommie.

Well, it’s a long and complicated story that involves several immense egos, a crushing political regime, more acronyms that you can shake a stick at and a disappointing lack of respect for human beings. Suffice to say that two weeks from now I shall be unemployed. Or I shall have a new job. Or something in between. Or maybe the old job, who the fyck knows?

Did you notice my new word up there… “fyck”? I rather like it, “fyck”, “fycking”, “fycker”, “fycked”, it has a sort of Norse elegance about it, doesn’t it?

I could go on, but I know your patience is limited and I know you now have other fish to fry. I’m not your “significant other blogger” any more. But I promise, dear reader, I promise I shall win your heart once more…

I’m not a mind reader; I just notice things, little items that other people gloss over and ignore. I notice small changes in posture, in vocal tautness, in skin colour. I notice changes in surface temperature and in smell. Really tiny changes.

Perhaps the ability to see like that is common, perhaps what is uncommon is being able to read the changes, to analyse and interpret. But I know what the changes mean. Always.

And I am always right. I know when you are angry or frustrated. I know when you don’t like me or when you want to get close to me; when you need to be held and when you need solitude. I know when poetry is touching your soul and I know when nothing short of physical assault will change your mind.

So never imagine I am anything less than intent. Don’t for a second believe I am not aware of your presence in the world, near or far. My senses are so attuned to yours that I would feel a sigh at ten thousand miles.

I know what you are thinking, believe me.