Full of Shit

Does your partner ever leave notes lying around for you to find? Mine does, although the children may have seen this latest one before me. It read:

I don't know if I can keep loving you. You are so selfish and full of shit.

This is a fairly typical comment from Persephone; what is rarer is the fact that is written down. Makes the sentiments more official, harder to deny. I'm full of shit and selfish; there, I've admitted it, I'm ready for my therapy group. ' Hi, I'm John and I am...'

The thing is (here it comes; the justification) I don't have any friends or hobbies. I don't have demands that I insist on having met; like blow me now, feed me now, mend my clothes, be like my mother but without the guilt. So I'm not sure about how I'm selfish - it's probably mental selfishness. Deep down inside I like the idea of a woman who is bright and also wants to fuck me. Is that selfish or just unrealistic?

As for being full of shit, I'm always admitting my many shortcomings in a sincere fashion. If someone thinks of a new one I hadn't thought of I'm only to happy to take that on board as well. I think the shittiness aspect is probably that I don't hate myself. Early on in my life I figured that most people don't really like you, not consistently anyway, so you better rely on yourself. I might be wrong here, but I think most women are insecure and they don't like the people they are with to be kind to themselves. I don't mean kind by buying presents, lap dances or wasting money on really stupid gadgets like a electric cider pourer. I just mean kind, inside.

The War to End all Wars

No, not my marriage; our trip to the graves and battlefields of the Somme, Ypres, Paschendale. We went this half term for 3 nights as some sort of themed break. As someone pointed out, when your children are younger you take them to EuroDisney, as they get a bit older then it's the turn of that World War 1 'circuit'. The killing fields of Sassoon, Brooke, Owen, celebrated in a never ending pageant which is by turns moving and exploitative. Let's face it, the tourist boards of Northern France and Belgium don't have much else to offer apart from the senseless slaughter of nearly all the healthy young males in Europe 91 years ago. In some places, the Ypres Flanders Fields museum for instance, this is tastefully done. In others, The Hill 62 Bar/Coffee shop/trench/museum/experience as an example, the tone is money grabbing, sick prurience.

At No 62 a fat loathsome specimen takes your money (25 Euros for a family of 4) close to a sign informing any relatives of dead soldiers that it is not possible to visit the museum or trenches free of charge. You then enter a large room filled with War junk... and pictures. Photographs on the walls and in banks of old What-the-Butler-Saw machines showing war porn. Men and boys with faces blown off, intestines hanging out, maggots coming out of their rotting eye sockets. Simply tons of this stuff. You then step into a garage filled with tons of rusting ordinance, obviously scavenged from neighbouring fields which leads to the fat mans back garden where he has created a trench system with old barbed wire and corrugated iron sheets. When we were there gangs of Belgian schoolkids were shrieking about in the mud and I didn't get the impression that anyone was building up to a 2 minute silence.

This was one of those revelatory times when you are reminded that bad shit should never be used for the purposes of gratuitous entertainment. Car crash videos, porn, 9-11 documentaries and any private pay-as-you-go war musuem. All of them should be avoided.
Subsequently sticking to the official trail, I would reccommend the big German war cemeteray near Ypres. With its trees, black marble blocks and weeping dark stone figures it conveys far more effectively a sense of overall loss and mourning. Us Brits seem to love this stuff. You can go to the most obscure, off the beaten track cemetary, and you will always find at least a couple of British registered cars parked up nearby and some geeky father/son combo stomping around in walking boots. Train spotting became too recherche - now we collect war graves!

If it helps you plan where to go, I would say that Belgium is friendlier, cheaper and has better food than France. And everyone speaks English there.

Sex - Oh God

Fucking is fucked again. I've got a great anti-sex combo going at the moment which comprises:

1. A totally crap filling in my mouth which feels like I've got a golfball wedged in my top molars.
2. Killer Piles. Something I thought I'd sorted a couple of years ago has popped out again. When something is wrong down there, everything is wrong down there.
3. Queenie has informed me that sex is now simply a trade between us. I shag her; she gets something in return. Money, white goods, childcare when she goes away somewhere. I previously had thought that as a married couple we shared and co-operated but I am in fact simply a cog in the market economy.

Hell. I suppose most wives are defacto prostitutes. If you don't enjoy sex then you become a sex worker. Men get off , women don't, take it from there. It's made me think about how crap I am at sex. When you're younger you don't think about that (well, I didn't anyway). All you think about it having sex, never mind riffling the pages of the Kama Sutra. All those girls/women who never made much noise when I did it - what were they thinking? That old cliche, the shopping list? Some sort of sense of duty; this is just what one does?
When a woman did appear to have an orgasm it was quite startling and a real turn-on novelty. Queenie used to have them all the time back in the old days when I was unreliable, feckless, unfaithful and completely selfish. I used to be disturbed and jealous, so powerful were her feelings. As I committed more completely to her, and tried to do what she wanted in bed, her arousal grew less and less. In that classic man-woman way, she loved me more in the beginning, then as I loved her more, she loved me less.

She would deny this of course, but it is true. She says that things have got worse because of the damage done through the years. I'm not sure it isn't simply a combination of tiredness, old age and simply not having to put on a good show.

Why aren't friends electric?

We went over to our friends the Friedkins the other night. They're a decent enough couple and are unusual enough in that they are people we do socialise with. It was pretty boring. We see them and we drink wine with them and I don't think anyone cares enough to be self-conscious or awkward but it is ultimately dull. The one comic highlight of the evening was Fooey (despite being long castrated) getting impressive erections whilst sitting on the laps of the unwilling Friedkins. David works as an illustrator from home from morning to dusk - he has lots of projects and each one requires lots of drawings. A single drawing being something that needs hours and hours to do. Consequently, he doesn't go out much and has even less social grace than I do.

I like him, but what our relationship should be is going down the pub and talking about cars, freaks of nature, stories of great bravery and lists of pop facts. My wife might let me out to do this, but it would be a hard won concession and ultimately the cause of grief. David's wife would ostensibly not mind but would headfuck him until he agreed to stay in - working. He'd probably anticipate this and simply say that he has to work.

Whatever, the result is that we have another couple lowest common denominator situation. I.e you hardly ever get a couple that you like equally. Either the man is better, or it's the woman. Only our friends Tim and Maz (the unreliable, wont always call you back ones) are truly complementary, and better together than separately.

And tonight we saw the Bulls. Very bright man, Mr Bull, an architect with all sorts of issues stemming from a fairly warped childhood (like having a highly fanciable stepmum who is only 5 years older than you when you are 15 - Yowsa!). Used to beat his wife and kids but then grew out of it, or simply got too weary to do it; not really sure which. Being both architects they are good poster people for the current recession. Yes, it really is the end of the world as we know it. 6 years, Mick reckons, minus this first one. Other people he knows who used to do well out of property are even more apocalyptical. This one chap, Chris and his wife thinks that this is no less than armageddon; The End of Days. They want to do one last property deal, ha ha, converting their back garden into an underground dwelling in order to finance an escape to Scotland where they'll hunt, fish, burn peat and probably shoot outsiders. It's a super plan, only spoiled by the fact that the site for this project is the middle of the most conserved street in this most conserved of towns. If they went to Bath Town Council and suggested knocking down one of their boring Crescents to make way for a super sized carpet warehouse, they'd probably have more chance.

This in itself is quite interesting but it does make me wonder about my £41Ks worth of Vodaphone shares, er make that £35K. That's down from an original stake of £50K which was put into Prudential just before they tanked. Of course, if I'd hung on I'd have hardly lost anything, but then everyone was shorting financial stocks and as far as I knew the Pru was about to go down the Loo. It's seems I have a gift to pick shares at an absolute high point; like pushing a pin into a balloon. Pop! Thus was it back in the late nineties when I lost a few shirts dabbling in dot coms. One after another my top tips came crashing down then; all bar a little firm called Staffware. I bought at £3 sold at £1.50 and forgot that I had mistakenly held back 10 shares. A couple of months later those 10 shares were worth £500 - I was glad I still had them then but it was a poignant what-if moment when I sold them. A £150,000 what-if moment.

Essentially, if you are a bloody idiot you won't make money out of shares unless it is a rising market. I'm a bloody idiot. Maybe I should start betting on shares falling with Options or CFDs. As soon as I'd do this prices would begin to rise and the recession would be over. I'd be broke but I'd know that my actions had saved the country.

Peggy is Micks wife who is his rock in a stormy sea. He could be unfaithful to her, beat her, starve her, be nasty to the children and she will never leave him. It's great in a way but one might be forgiven for taking her for granted. A woman that pleasing just couldn't be that good in bed. Could she? I suppose you could just brief her: Blow me for this long, wearing this outfit, make noises like a wheezing stoat, then get on all fours and cry out 'Fuck me like the dirty pig I am!'.
Hmmm. It's just so crazy it could work.

James their oldest is a bit of a wild card. He seems very mild but there is a fearsome deranged intelligence there, unfettered by the sort of guilt his father has. We always worried that he would get Johnny to do something lethal as part of an experiment or jape. Once we were with the Bulls when James dropped a rock from the high bridge we were on to the dual carriageway below us. No car was hit, but it was startling and disturbing. Not least of all because his parents thought it was a bit of a joke. Sort of, Hey, this is what bright children do for a laugh. Where's the harm in it?