#HMHB

Someone set up a hashtag on Twitter recently, #lyricsyoulove.  I thought of all my favourites immediately, but as only as I reached the eighth or ninth I realised with a bittersweet combination of chagrin and regret: I hadn’t mentioned Half Man Half Biscuit.  They seem to be a band that everyone knows, a kind of musical equivalent to a nodding acquaintance. Few can claim to love them; many can claim to know of them.

What do I like? I’m from Liverpool, so I used to sing Beatles songs in school.  I love The Smiths, but recently fell out of love with Morrissey; since he became Nigel Farage with a quiff.  I adore the fact that John Grant can sing the most about the most harmful, toxic things to happen to a human; so mellifluously.  I love the lyrical puzzles of Donald Fagin and Walter Becker.  More recently, no-one is expressing the rage of a divided nation as articulately as Jason Williamson of Sleaford Mods. 

But Half Man Half Biscuit.  Named, allegedly after a portly employee of the late, unlamented Birkenhead record shop Skellington.  33 years in existence, on their thirteenth album (not including compilations). An incredible, intelligent band, which use biblical quotes, poems, the blues, and parodies of well-known songs to chronicle the sheer banality, frustration, and often (but not always) joy of human existence.  They are still, stunningly on the same label: Probe Plus.  An offshoot of the Liverpool record shop, where it was often a Scouse rite of passage to be insulted by Pete Burns.

And there are bands out there, which use humour to get their point across.  Carter USM, The Beautiful South, Shellsuit, The Lancashire Hotpots.  These all have their own evangelists, claiming that they use laughter to distract us.  We can argue forever about the psychological effect of humour, to mask horror.  Let’s leave it to the psychologists.  They know best.  Possibly. 

Perhaps the ire and the fire of HMHB come from the fact they are not a Scouse band (a common misconception), but Birkenhead.  For those who don’t know it, Birkenhead is the dark side of The Mersey, literally and figuratively.  Once through a looking glass of a tunnel, you are looking back on the Liverpool skyline.  If you support Liverpool or Everton, you’re a ‘tunnel rat’. Appropriately enough, the band are Tranmere Rovers fans, a club who have a song that goes ‘Fuck your cathedrals and fuck your Pier Head/Don’t call us Scousers/We’re From Birkenhead’.  The wrong word, the merest glint of a wrong look can lead to an altercation.  I should know, I lived there.

 

No-one does what they do: the day to day doledrum of living, the hope that there might; possibly be a better life out there, the ameliorative effects of bad TV, football and laughing at the foolish and banal concept of ‘celebrity’. Considering this process began in 1985; and it is easy to see why you can call them more of a working class prophet than any sensitive soul with a low grade in AS Level and within earshot of a Nick Drake album.

They are not often on the radio, sadly.  Joy Division Oven Gloves became the theme to the campaign to save 6Music from closure.  Having been successful, it’s only Gideon Coe; the erudite, phlegmatic soul of the station plays them on a regular basis.  I would urge you to put your tablet down and download some of their albums.  Or maybe go to Probe and meet with the holier than thou vibes of the staff. Another reason to do so:  you won’t get every line, every joke, straight away.  It’ll percolate down, like a nice, intellectual cup of coffee. 

We live in strange times.  The country is represented by idiots, careerists and ideologues.  The lights grow dimmer and the price of bread rises.  As things change, we should be angry: but thoughtful at the same time, laughing in the face of entropy, the use of your voice in some satanic plot.  We need to be mindful, but disciplined. Or, to use the title of their latest album: No One Cares About Your Creative Hub, So Get Your Fuckin’ Hedge Cut.

Travel:

‘Many a trip continues; after movement in time and space have ended’

-       John Steinbeck. 

I always liked travel as a kid.  I’m of a generation where I can remember trips to the seaside as a kid; myself and my brother, pushing against the wind of early 21^st century health and safety; by sitting in the boot of a hatchback car.  When I was older and a little less risk averse, I would stand in the departure hall of John Lennon Airport and gaze into the cerulean skies.

I didn’t travel far.  Into Central Europe, at a push.  A maximum of two and a half hours flying time.  20 minutes, if I went to Dublin.  With a further two hours on the airport bus, as it pushed and fondled its way along the M1 into the city centre.  I did the usual touristy things there, in Madrid, in Amsterdam and Berlin. In a way, this was me running away from reality. I know: a process as futile as it is facile.  I’d go to places that would make me cry.  The exhibition that surrounds Picasso’s Guernica at The Reina Sofia.  Putting my fingers in the bullet holes at Kilmainham Gaol.  Looking at the measurements of Anne Frank and her sisters, rise, rise, rise and then stop.  The corridor in The Jewish Museum, one side with cities where Jews settled, names of concentration camps on the other; that ends in a dark room with single point of light.

 

And then, things changed.  I fell in love with my wife.  Minor consideration was given to the fact that I lived in Liverpool and she lived in Devon.  Who considers minor, vitally important shit like that?  She visited me first; she’s that kind of woman.  When it was my turn, I had to undertake the 269 mile train journey.  If you’re not a British reader, this involves traversing the fractured, crazy, imperfect, antique lines of the British railway system.  Liverpool Lime Street, where the Scouse accent fades away along rusting, Victorian tracks.  Change at Birmingham, where my train was always at ‘the extreeeme end of Platform 9AY.’ The old spa town of Cheltenham. Through Bristol, a city a lot like Liverpool.  And then Devon, where both the eyes and the soul bleed green.  And it’s cream first on a scone, always.  It’s the law. 

Occasionally, we make a journey North.  I don’t drive, my wife does.  English motorways, both dirty and delicious at the same time.  The iPod; or the radio on.  Most of my journeys, alone or with my family have been accompanied by music. Time was, when I used to take a sleeve of CD’s abroad.  First iPod, my whole record collection.  Now: whatever radio I’ve downloaded.  My stepson is currently obsessed with Gary Davies’ Sounds Of The 80’s. I’m sort of obsessed with it too, secretly.  Don’t tell anyone. However, I will, constant reader tell you a secret.

I’m considering learning to drive. Those who know me, consider this to be something of a joke.  Living in rural Devon, on the top of a hill, with the nearest big town 45 minutes away… this has become somewhat of a necessity.  I’m my wife’s carer, this is another skill I need to know, and it’s not something I have much choice over.  Anyway, it plugs into my psyche, part of a dream I’ve had for a long time.  It’s time for me pump the metaphorical brakes and move on. And anyway: it sort of links into something I’ve always dreamed of. If I could live inside any of my favourite books, it would be On The Road.  It’s a beautiful, raw, honest piece of writing.  I’d dismiss the Capote quote, about it being just typing.  It’s more than that.  I’d also run down that it’s just dreamy prose for gap year teenagers.  Such criticism is that of the ignorant, usually those who’ve never actually read it.  Try it, you might like it.

As well as the book, I have the audiobook (beautifully read by David Carradine, Grasshopper).  The ‘mad ones’ quote is one of my favourite in literature.  I loved the film, even if anyone else didn’t. The book has been part of me, for just under a quarter of a century. I could dig; still do the intense, addictive loneliness of Dean Moriarty. Travel means seeing places you’ve always dreamed of… and often, being intensely disappointed by.  Case in point: for all the iconic threat of The Berlin Wall, the remains are just bricks covered by graffiti.  My favourite: ‘God is here’. Someone sprayed underneath ‘Where?’

Should you travel alone or with a companion?  That is entirely up to you.  Every Paradise needs a Moriarty.  However, Sal didn’t live on a Devon hill and faced walking down it on a Summer’s day.  I quite like sitting in the passenger seat, with my wife driving and my stepson in the back, singing along to If I Was by Midge Ure.  I think I don’t need the emotional relief that travel gave me; my mind appears to be a different, more wonderful place than it was thirteen years ago.  Conversely, travelling alone, gives you a sense of independence, freedom and lets the mind wander at the same pace as the road. 

My attitude to travel has changed from luxury to necessity as I’ve gotten older.  Falling in love, has made me a braver soul.  Brave enough to leave home, but with just the right hint of sickness to find my way back.  Dipping into my past, driving into the future.  Always moving, whilst staying still.

Routine:

“Routine, in an intelligent man is a sign of ambition”

-        WH Auden

I’ve been doing a lot of gardening recently.  Regardless of the weather, myself and Mrs McCready don our scruff, sort through the garden tools and get down and dirty with the Martian soil; in both front and back gardens.  Whether this is under Devonian sunshine, or Dartmoor drizzle; there is a need, an urge to get another portion of the Stakanhovite labour done.

 

It’s weird that something that involves such hard work, the occasional cross word and the consumption of tea in a tin mug has become part of our routine. Everyone on this earth, from Donald Trump to the person you’ve just passed in the street has them.  Routines can become a prison, a cage of bones that bind the soul.  Or: they can become the place you fly from, the place you can come back to and know its home.

Before I left the wonderful world of full time employment, I had routines.  Music, as you know, was a way of protecting me from harm.  However, I did need a long walk.  When I lived in South Liverpool, this was generally across Sefton Park, avoiding lines of schoolkids, in the general direction of the bus route.  Taking in air from green trees and budding, flowered, herbal dreams of students in their bedsits.

When I lived in Birkenhead, it was a straight line.  Away from the bus station, but still taking a linear direction.  I was limited by the river, but that little hint of green air from Central Park and Georgian architecture was enough to set me up for another dose of grim reality.  Sometimes.

 

My routine now is different.  If I’m writing, I have to be sitting at the living room table.  The notes have to be done in pen, in a notebook my sister-in-law bought me.  I listen to some BBC 6Music I’ve downloaded, generally Guy Garvey.  Occasionally, I’ll gaze out of the window. A Nespresso will be made, at about 300-350wds mark. That little kick of caffeine is generally good enough, strong enough to get me to the misty, magical heights of 700-900wds. I’m sure George Clooney would be proud of me.

Occasionally, I’ll buy into other people’s routines.  Sometimes, when my son is distracted (this doesn’t take much) I’ll go on his X-Box.  I’ll generally play an old copy of FIFA.  I’ll play as Liverpool and I’m getting back to where I was a decade ago.  Last result: 3-1 against Watford, coming back from a goal down at half time.  (Henderson, Can, Lallana).  That’s his routine: he gets itchy if he doesn’t go on the X-Box every couple of days.  I don’t, it’s something I can dip into every now and then.

See also: kissing my wife first thing, then getting up to make her a cup of tea.  I’ll generally potter – breakfast, radio, write my journal, get my thoughts clear as the day begins.  In this way, I’ve become part of my routine, she’s become part of mine. 

So: routines are something that is as much lethal as lovely.  They are something you can bounce off; or stop the soul from functioning. As a writer, routine is like spinach for Popeye.  It should be somewhere between Stephen King (six ‘good’ pages) and Jack London (six hours on Whisky). I know my routine, but I’m not going to buy a set of Brian Eno Oblique Strategies Cards.  Possibly.

As a human being, it is essential you filter through your day.  Be judicious, use the finest toothcomb.  What are you doing, who has become routine? What can you live without? Who can you do without? Life is as much a marvellous process as it is a mundane one. 

Perhaps at the end of the day, it’s all just a question of breathing.  Something that has become part of my day, since I moved to Devon.  As the sun is going down, I sit on the seat at the end of the garden.  I look down the verge of our garden, past the fruit trees we’ve just planted and into the valley.  If I smoked, in either sense of the word… I would be lighting up. I’m accepting the end of one day; as much as accepting another.  I breathe, ignore social media for a few moments and let the light dance across the fields. 

If this is routine, this is what it should be.  Essential, enlivening, comforting.  If it isn’t, kick it to the curb, the very edge of the peripheral. Some things you can live with, some you can live without.

Take a breath, ask yourself: is this routine?

Memories:

‘Life is the art of drawing without an eraser’

-       John  W Gardner

Sometimes household jobs take the right combination to be achieved.  It takes the right weather conditions, a gap in the day when I’m not having a light sabre battle with my son, or digging the garden with my wife.  I sorted our bookshelves out recently, getting rid of a number of books that I had neither the mental energy nor spiritual inclination to read again.  Out went the two Douglas Coupland books that aren’t as sublime as Girlfriend In A Coma.  See also, the two Chuck Palahniuk books that express the same ideas about the male psyche as Fight Club.

And then there is Guy Garvey.  I generally write this blog whilst listening to downloads of his show from BBC 6Music.  I’ve been a big fan of Elbow for the last ten years.  I’ve seen them live: twice with ex-girlfriends.  The mind twists and tries to accommodate the concept.  He played The Unthanks, whom I’ve adored for a similar period, but saw twice with my ex-girlfriend.  This got me thinking: how to do you separate the things you love; from the people that you don’t?  Which part of the universe do you separate; whilst keeping the soul whole?

There are some things I’ve always loved – I would say The Beatles, but being from Liverpool that’s more a contractual obligation than a matter of taste.  Shakespeare took a while, but I would postulate exposing teenagers to the greatest writer who ever lived is a difficult process.  It takes the breath of life to understand a man who wrote about every aspect of it.  I went off Star Wars for a while - the final straw was a large pile of merchandise that became another excuse for an argument with my ex.  Off to Oxfam it went.  Forgot about it, I did.  Hmm. Yes. 

The charity shops are filled with good intentions.  That and various copies of The Da Vinci Code.  But I do believe it’s possible to separate what you like; from the wreckage of your life.  What causes this process?  Time, I think.  It takes that, a space just to breathe and be you again.  When that song, a film, a TV programme stops making you think there is something in your eye.  When an anniversary becomes just another square on the calendar; or a note on your phone. 

Maybe too, you need the space in your life when that book isn’t there, that song isn’t on the radio, or that TV series gets cancelled.  In that divine, pure, dreamlike space; we feel comfortable enough to be alive, give ourselves permission to take another breath, trust another human hand or simply try again. And again.

But if you love it, it is part of you.  Great art is like that; it catches on the skin like pollen and takes on a new form as part of a human life.  Your life, to be precise.  No-one in history, ever has or ever will look or feel like you again.  That is not just new age bollocks, that is a bittersweet fact of life. Similarly, I think that Breaking The Waves is the greatest film of all time; because I saw it at the 051 Cinema in Liverpool in October 1996.  I think The Crow Road is my favourite Iain Banks novel; because I bought it when it came out in 1993.  My signed copy was lost by a so-called friend of mine. His later novels (let’s say from The Steep Approach To Garbadale onwards) aren’t as good as that.  The fact he died in June 2013 means I’m not going to get rid of any of them.  They are memories, part of my life and they’re not going anywhere. 

If it is about memory (and if you’ve been reading closely enough, you’ll know that I believe it is), then they are fluid, continually evolving things.  You create new ones, every second of every day.  And they link in with the eternal, ever shining ones.  I wouldn’t say Henry V is my favourite Shakespeare play. However, I know myself and my wife saw it at RSC on our first weekend away.  All You Need is Love isn’t my favourite Beatles song.  But we did play it at our wedding.

  

So: reject and gift aid the things that aren’t part of your psyche.  Accept and cherish those that are. 

Gardening:

‘The glory of gardening: head in the sun, heart with nature.  To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul’

-        Alfred Austin

It’s got that reputation, hasn’t it?  It’s something sad, slightly obsessive, middle-aged eccentrics do: like putting ships in bottles, collecting beermats, double bagging old comics or supporting Spurs.  Gardening doesn’t have the best reputation, but it’s slowly moving past baking as something everything right-minded, decent person does.  Which is appropriate really: nothing is ever fast or easy when it comes to gardening.

 

We arrived in Devon to the cold, slate bones of a late 1960’s council house.  The loosely termed ‘garden’; had both paving traced with weeds and plants that were on the verge of going to the big compost bin in the sky.  We started to get the vibe that this would require an almost equal application of both time and money.  Most things do. And yet, it didn’t really fit me yet.  It sorted drifted in and out as my soul rattled in my mind.  There was a sort of division of labour between my wife and I, both her and my stepson did the preparatory work as a mild Devon Winter set in.  I changed beds, hoovered, baked bread.

Relationship in a nutshell.

Once we’d had two late, but heavy snowfalls, the hard work could begin.  Equipped with a pair of rigger gloves my wife bought me, I was given a job that would require as much mental as physical strength.  There was a plant, left to us by the previous occupants.  The leaves of which, were growing brown. Mmm.  I can, thanks to Mrs McCready; now identify this as a Torbay Palm, genus Cordyline Australis.  We had vague plans to move Cordy into a pot.  However, this would not be as easy as we possibly envisaged it.

For a start, Cordy was well past her past.  In addition, she refused to move.  The best laid plans gang aft aglay in the green, palmy gaze of Cordy.  In addition, she refused to budge.  A hacksaw blade was applied to the trunk, which was relatively easy.  The hard part was digging the roots out of the ground.  I was instantly reminded of the quote by Seamus Heaney about working ‘to move a certain mass… through a certain distance, is to pull your weight and feel exact and equal to it’. However, Heaney was talking about ironing.  Feeling less metaphysical and more Withnailian; I started calling it ‘you fucker’. I called it the worst name I could possibly think of: that of my previous employer. 

This appeared to work admirably.  Dead fingers of black roots were lifted skyward by spade; from the heavy, argillaceous earth.  Or, to put it less eloquently, the fucker was finally loose.  I felt elation that Cordy was finally free.  Conversely, I felt something poisonous and noxious was ripped from my mind.  I had worked on something, both mentally and physically that had no place in my life.  Into the brown bin she went.  Gardening counts as good physical exercise, but it also counts as good mental exercise.  Maybe Cordy was emblematic of something that needed to be ripped from the psyche as much as the soil.  I certainly felt better after it.

This is not to say I’m the only one doing the work. While I’m doing these altruistic, almost Herculaean tasks my wife and stepson are pottering around: planting seeds, weeding, deciding which would be the best bed for planting; amongst a wide range of recently ripped up paving stones.

And, yet: I’m still seeing it as some sort of metaphor for, well everything basically.  Weeds and unwanted plants are things, people, places that need to be removed from your green little universe.  The hard work, the mental and physical effort needs to be applied, to feel alive again. Conversely the hard work pays off: the right plant, in the right place with the right care will; possibly produce results.  Sometimes that can be an immediate payoff, or some kind of delayed gratification. As metaphors go, it’s a pretty organic one; never mind an apposite one.

In short, gardening has re-wired my brain. It’s not put food in my belly yet, but it has certainly given me food for thought. It’s made me at peace with myself for the first time in a long time. It’s also made me look at things I took for granted, left behind or simply forgotten about in a different way.  Like most people, myself and my wife binge watch the odd boxed set.  When my stepson allows us to (current obsession: the Boss Baby series).  The other night, we found ourselves watching an episode of Love Your Garden we hadn’t seen, now the whole series is on Netflix.  For the moment, the fact that we’ve still got four series of current family obsession Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D to get through; wasn’t a major issue. 

So, this is the way I live now.  Separate trolleys in the garden centre, having split the purchases between us. Buying the odd garden magazine; for the bounteous serendipity of free seeds. Paying diligent attention; whilst inwardly groaning when Monty Don (my current guru) tell us ‘Here’s your jobs for the weekend’. Whistling the Gardener’s World theme at odd hours of the day. 

Gardening: you should dig it. 

#ynwa:

‘When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die’

-        Jean Paul Sartre

I have no direct experience of Hillsborough.  I’ll leave that to people who were actually there.  My experience is second-hand, shop-soiled by both where I live and who I am; both as a political and as a human animal.  There are a number of core things I believe in, as a result of what happened 29 years ago.

Firstly, it’s that The Sun is still the great, beating heart of darkness in the English consciousness.  Their headline, The Truth is still the greatest lie ever printed in a British newspaper. They’ve apologised several times, but as we say in Liverpool ‘they can shove it where Paddy shoved his ninepence’.  The Sun made us the enemy.  Thirty years ago, we were alongside other groups like Asians, gays and lesbians.  Now: this metaphorical ‘enemy’ is Muslims, transgender people, anyone with a mental illness.  

I believe Rupert Murdoch would regard this as progress.

It’s not the most egregious British newspaper.  I believe that is The Daily Mail, a paper which supported fascism; which both hates women and sexualises teenage girls at the same time.    But The Sun told a lie to sell newspapers.  It insulted a city and trivialised the grief of people to do so.  That is unforgivable.

I lived in Liverpool at the time.  I can remember the public burning of The Sun, the endless funerals, and the second-hand news of who had died and who had survived.  It’s a special city, Liverpool.  It’s like a column of Roman soldiers that closes ranks when one of us is attacked.  I saw this again four years later, when James Bulger was murdered.  I saw it again, ten years later when Ken Bigley was murdered by insurgents in Iraq.

It is still fashionable to insult our grief. Those who do, quite rightly suffer the wrath of our bombast.  Boris Johnson, a man with no principles, accused of us ‘wallowing in our grief’.  Billy Connolly was heckled off stage in London, after wishing that Bigley’s captors ‘would just get on with it’.  Alleged comedian Alan Davies played to a half-empty Liverpool Empire, after saying about Hillsborough ‘It gets on my tits, that shit’ on an Arsenal podcast. It seems that we are still fair game, even in the era of more minutes silence than you can throw a referee’s whistle at; fields of flowers sellotaped to lampposts and the oxymoronic phrase ‘thoughts and prayers’. To paraphrase Orwell: English grief good, Scouse grief bad.

On a side note, every time Liverpool plays Man Utd, Man City or Chelsea they sing songs about Hillsborough.  A minority of Liverpool fans sing songs about the Munich Air Disaster.  You do not fight shite with shite.  There needs to be a cultural change, a spirit of mutual respect.  It’s eleven humans against eleven, not city against city, class against class, death against death.

Ultimately, Hillsborough needs to be seen in the context of other English tragedies.  Five years prior to Hillsborough, Miners at Orgreave were beaten, attacked with dogs, arrested and charged for the mere crime of defending their livelihoods and communities. Again, South Yorkshire Police closed ranks to protect its members.  Last year, we had the fire at Grenfell Tower.  People died, at home, alone in the middle of the night.  I can already see the powers that be, closing ranks, mouthing platitudes and hoping it will all go away.

The over whelming message of Hillsborough, Orgreave and Grenfell is that if you are working class, you can be insulted, belittled, arrested, charged and ultimately killed by the upper classes. Your grief costs less than theirs.  You can be treated with impunity, simply due to the amount of zeroes in your bank account. On the bright side, we have our uses; the English working class.  We provide wealth and labour to the wealthy.  We can create convenient outrage for press barons.  We can be told that voting for Brexit - an act of economic and cultural hari-kari would be a good thing – by failed stockbrockers, insurance salesmen and overgrown public schoolboys.

However – we will not go away quietly, doffing our metaphorical cap. We are not as bovine as we seem.  We can stand together as one class, one group of people, in the face of almost insurmountable forces and odds.  #ynwa is not just a hastag; or even a song.  It should be a belief. 

Justice can be delayed, but not denied.