The Pope Walks into a Bar...

There's an old joke that goes:

A stranger walks into a bar and gets talking to a guy who's sat on his own in one corner, he asks him why he looks so down and why he's on his own.
He says "none of these people will talk to me anymore."
The stranger says says "Why's that?"
The man replies, "Well last year when I saved the Barmans family from a fire I was Bob the hero but do they remember me for that?  When I rescued that dog from the river last winter do they remember me for that? And when I gave all that money  for those school kids to go on that trip did they remember that?

"So what happened?" asked the stranger

And Bob said "You shag One sheep..."

The Pope's coming to visit.

Growing up Clever.

I was one of those kids that if are great if you're a middle class parent of an only child, and horrific to anyone else. An uncanny child that appeared to have been born old.  My mum loves to go on about how far ahead of my age I was in terms of intelligence when I was little.  I know that many many middle class parents do this that they tell everyone that their kid is special, that they're intelligent, that they have a talent.


Turns out though, I did.

AV, irritants and illness.

I'm an irritable bugger at the best of times.  I try not to be, I like to live my life by the words of Gandhi and "be the change you wish to see in the world" which I think makes me a bit culturally than Peter Jones of Dragon's Den who this week said he tries to live his life by the words of Michael Jackson, specifically "If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change."  It's difficult though because I've got a bunch of autistic traits that makes getting on with humans quite difficult.

Liberal Guilt

As the New Order song title goes, and oddly my mum's advice to me most of my life: Guilt is a useless emotion.

My mum's reasoning was simple, "guilt is about something you've done, now you either did it on purpose in which case there's no need to feel guilty because it was a calculated decision, or you did it by accident, either way you can't change it you can just make sure you don't do it again."

She's pretty smart my mum. Though admittedly some of her advice does read like it comes straight from the mouth of Hannibal Lecter.

"Liberal Guilt" though that's a weird one, It doesn't come from something that you've done, it seems to come from something that "we've" done to "them" whoever "them", it's a collective guilt that in spite of our best efforts to not be bigotted, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic etc etc we still find ourselved occasionally falling foul to our natural instincts.

Older, but not wiser

I keep abortively starting and then stopping writing a blog. Rosanne tells me I should keep one, "for your fans" but I suspect that's because when we first met she'd already read every one of my incredibly personal blogs over and over, and it made for a couple of awkward first dates. Especially as she's very quiet and very very shy around strangers. In fact I was 10 minutes late for our first date and apparently she'd nearly been sick with nerves. We then went on a date and as I'm a gobby cow I thought I'd do the talking, but thanks to my blogs telling all my best stories and the deeply personal first hour long show I'd done I had nothing she hadn't already heard.

I want to keep a blog, it's handy for me, and it was always fun to do, though I suspect now that I don't die on my arse nearly as often, nor do I take copious quantities of story enhancing narcotics I'm never sure if my stories are too tame these days. but ho hum.

Also these days I'm getting angrier with stuff in the news, I suspect it's because although I don't appear to age physically the portrait in my attic's starting to look pretty fucked, I'm now doing all the things my dad used to do and still does. I shout at Question Time, get angry at Any Questions (and more so at any answers) and the other day I had a discussion with a woman in Sainsbury's about how Nat West had managed to send out my new cash card to the wrong address TWICE with a pin number. Apparently it's procedure if your card's been stolen to reissue a PIN number. For Security. A security feature that's over ridden if they send it out to your old address EVEN THOUGH YOU'VE ASKED THEM TO KEEP IT AT THE FUCKING BANK FOR YOU. Anyway the most sure fire sign that I'm getting old was that after the woman behind the counter tutted "bloody banks" I said "Yeah, yeah! It's not wonder we're in the bloody recession we're in is it eh?" she laughed and I walked to the car whilst experimenting to see if I could actually eat my own fist.
I'd change banks but it turns out I've got such a bad credit rating I can't do that. I should have known, I can't even get a contract phone. A friend of mine can and he was declared bankrupt last year, so I should have realised.