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Yes, this week I am going to talk about dreams and then I’m going to have a massive rant. Run with me, there is a kind of connection between the two.
A few days ago, I had a dream about Lord Vernon. In case you are unaware, Lord Vernon is the bad guy in my first series of books. He is a gargantuan shit. I went for love-to-hate with this guy. Kate, who edited the books, loved his vileness. For some people, he’s a bit much.
The dream went like this. I was outside at Mum’s and someone gave me a laser pistol and said, ‘see that bloke there, that’s Lord Vernon. We’ve captured him and we’re just off to get the Black Maria,’ (prison van) ‘Don’t let him out of your sight.’ Then they bugger off, leaving me alone to guard an invincible green bastard who makes Hitler at his worst look like your cuddly uncle.
Lord Vernon is sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall of the house, apparently unperturbed.
I look at him.
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He looks at me, his expression one of sneering condescension, with a dash of mocking amusement thrown in. Jeez. A few seconds in and already I want to punch the smecking bastard. Nothing is said. I throw a clod of earth at him. I have no idea why. I mean I have a laser pistol as far as I recall. The logical move is to stun him so the idiot who left me guarding him can just chuck his limp, unconscious form in the van upon their return. But this is a dream so logic is not an abundant factor here.
The clod of earth I’ve thrown falls short because throwing in a dream is like running in a dream, natch. He laughs and asks if I really think I can keep him there. I say, ‘yes,’ obviously and try to sound as if I’m convinced. I fail. He just shoots me his best ‘as if’ smile, folds his arms, leans back against the wall and relaxes. Except he’s also staring at me.
‘I will kill you,’ that stare says. Smug smecker.
So we’re sitting there, and every now and again I lob a clod of earth at him, which does fuck all except prove even more conclusively how weak an opponent I am each time I do it. Arnold knows why but it still hasn’t occurred to me to use the chuffing gun. I’m really pissed off now because a) he’s quite clearly not taking me seriously and because b) he’s going to kill me any minute … hang on. While my mind has been wandering, Lord Vernon has quietly stood up and made off without my noticing.
Shit! Civilisation as we know it is relying on me to keep that bastard where he is.
But wait.
It’s OK.
By this point, the laser pistol seems to have completely slipped my mind because when my mind turns to a weapon it turns, not to the pistol, but the penknife in my pocket. It has a two inch blade … like this one.
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I take it out and start stabbing him in the arm so he will let go of the carer, who is not appreciating being strangled and is now saying, ‘grk’ a lot and pointing to the arm round her neck in the universal sign language for, ‘can you get this off me?’ the world over.
My efforts are a partial success. Clearly I’m doing some damage in that my hands are now covered in blood which appears to be Lord Vernon’s rather than mine or, heaven forbid, the carer’s. I suppose that’s progress. There are also a lot of rips in his uniform through which I can see that I’ve made some holes in his actual arm. On the downside he appears completely unaffected by the experience. Not much progress then. Indeed, now he’s just laughing at me. Laughing and bleeding at me. A lot. I renew my efforts to get stabby on him. I have to. I must maim him enough, not only to let go of the carer but also, so that he can’t hurt Mum either.
At this point, I woke up, greatly relieved that I didn’t have to dream the bit where Lord Vernon killed us all and the incompetent buffoon who left him in my charge came back and discovered our lifeless bodies.
Obviously, I awoke, sat up and thought, ‘what the fuck was that about?’ But actually, in this case, I think I know.
At the moment, I feel as if I’m living in the version of the world in Back to The Future where Biff has nicked the sports almanack, made loads of money at the bookies and taken charge. It’s like everything that is fuckwitted, moronic, and morally bankrupt is in control. Where reason and science are ignored. Where the Far Right; Steve Bannon and his friends have successfully eroded people’s confidence in researched news and are winning the war of hearts and minds hands down.
A video popped up on my Facebook feed the other day. I can’t remember where from but I think the gist of it was supposed to be that sometimes when we let people settle in Britain, they turn out to be rum’uns. Well no shit Sherlock. That will happen because humans are not perfect and the administrative process of the state should be as blind as justice. If someone has the right criteria and ticks the right boxes they are chosen. Sometimes that doesn’t work out or they aren’t as they are painted.
However, the tone of the vid was a bit, these foreign bastards are all the same, we are letting everyone in (which isn’t true, it’s chuffing difficult to get into Britain these days and ever more so as we abandon our British sense of fair play and move to a more American, winner-takes-all, losers-lose-because-they-were-weak-and-deserve-to attitude). It was a similar argument to the one Farage posited over Brexit; vote leave to get rid of the brown people, a sentiment to which, as a direct descendent of one of the brown people, I take great exception.
In this video though, it was very clear that the narrator despised immigrants, asylum seekers, victims of torture, migrants and any others who seek refuge in Britain. There was a lot of effing and blinding about this, while film footage played of a Spitfire flying over Beachy Head. I dunno how that has more credibility than thoughtful researched journalism but apparently it does. And how dare they appropriate another icon like the Spitfire. They’ve already taken our flag. That’ll be fair few downed RAF pilots spinning in their graves then. Bravo.
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When the aliens come, or Lord Vernon and his Grongolian hoards invade from a parallel reality, our donkey leaders will be too stupid to defend us. At the moment, if you’re looking at the news the way I do, and I must really try harder not to, it’s as if natural selection has decided the human race has had it’s day and it will seal our fate by ensuring that only the most gargantuan tossers end up in charge of anything. Who thought it was a good idea to put the dumbest fucks who shout the loudest in control?
Then there’s all this ‘real news’. Real my arse. Some struck off doctor in Alabama or somewhere says it’s dangerous to wear masks. It probably is for some people, and they have exemptions but for the rest of us, well… if wearing a mask stops me spreading Covid to others, that’s grand. When I see some information about the criminally high numbers of surgeons, doctors and nurses who died in their droves, before the pandemic, from the PPE they wore? That’s when I’ll worry. Or when I see articles about the huge death rate among the thousands of people in South East Asia who have been wearing masks in cities for years, yeh, when I see that those are higher than, or equal to, pollution related deaths, I’ll be concerned.
At least smokers got that when they exercise their freedom to smoke indoors, the rest of us in there with them have to smoke, too. If you don’t want to wear a mask, stay home, you know, like the vulnerable people are doing, the ones who have to stay home because you won’t wear a mask.
Meanwhile the idiots in charge set an example by wearing masks when they feel like it and then expect us to do as we’re told ie wear them all the time. I do see that side of the conspiracy theorists’ beef.
All this batshit crazy shit, flat earth and the rest of it, science is WRONG because it’s the establishment. Jeez who thinks humans are that malleable. I mean we are but to pick one at random, how could they have faked the moon landings. Seriously did they kill every single person involved? Because they would have to. Because that’s the only way they could get everyone to shut up. It just looks, to me, like the far right – as in the Putin influenced ones – flexing at the democratic world.
‘Hey world leaders! Look how fucking stupid we can make your people be. We own you, weaklings and we will destroy you.’ And I look at the apparently rational-minded and sensible people falling for this shit and I think, ‘yes, Mr P, it looks as if you will.’
Meanwhile they think I’m the sheep because science is part of the establishment and therefore part of the conspiracy. Oh yeh and don’t forget, if you take a knee you’re following in the footsteps of that famous Marxist, Martin Luther King and that’s bad. Oh and if you do anything kind or wear a t-shirt supporting a cause that’s not endorsed by the far right, I dunno something principled and an obviously good like comic relief, you’re virtue signalling. If you say, ‘hey, let’s be kind to one another,’ that’s also virtue signalling. Let’s stop people from doing anything pleasant. Let’s make it shameful to own up to a sympathetic or kindly action. We don’t want it catching on. Way to fucking go you absolute spunk buckets. I’m sure that’ll really help make the world a nicer place and hasten on your utopia! Arnold’s socks! Stop already, Mary.
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This isn’t true. I know that, but I’m feeling it. And I guess part of the reason I’m feeling it is because good people will keep dying.
This week, a lovely lady who goes to my church died of many and varied cancers. She hadn’t been to the doctor, she wasn’t well but had celiac’s disease so the symptoms were very similar.
I was talking to her just four weeks ago. She always sat in the same place and throughout the Pandemic I’ve walked past her after communion most times and we would exchange conspiratorial winks, grins, waves etc. If something funny happened, she was one of the people whose eye I’d catch.
She was one of those people of quiet, unassuming, steadfast integrity who just got on with things. If it looked like there was tea to be made and I cottoned on, I’d go to the kitchen area to sort it and she’d already be there, putting out the cups, urn plugged in and well on the way to boiling. She was just one of those rock steady people who is utterly solid in a crisis. I went round to tea at hers just before lockdown and was looking forward to inviting her back but then … Covid. We never will have that cup of tea now and it’s a pisser. But I think one of the biggest pissers is that every decent, balanced, kindly disposed person who checks out means there are less of us and more of them.
And I guess my dream was about this; how a couple of good people have left this world and I feel more than ever that it’s down to me to throw my increasingly ineffective clods of logic, facts, kindness, decent behaviour earth in a desperate attempt to hold back the tsunami of stupid and/or evil completely invincible Lord Vernon as it he laughs in my face. I think I’m probably having a bit of a bleak one at the moment, or perhaps that’s how I’m processing my grief at my friends’ deaths. I dunno.
Goebbels, I think it was Gobbels, said once that, ‘the art of propaganda is to convince one group of people, that another group of people is less than human.’
Maybe it’s time we looked or behaved more like the Chuckle brothers, not the comedy duo, the other ones (look it up) because where the far right do have a point, even if they are being disingenuous in making it, is that prejudice does go two ways. It’s hard not to be prejudiced against them the way they are against … well … pretty much everyone who isn’t a white, straight man. It’s hard not to despise pointless bigotry and hatred (it takes a lot of effort though, Arnold’s socks where do they get the energy for all bile and vitriol) but actually that’s just being like them and doing what they do. The rest of us have to be better than that. Because if a person believes they stand for what is good and right, they have to be as good and right as they can. The thing that makes us good and them bad is that we don’t torture prisoners and- oh hang on. Less of the Vernon then and more of the Vimes, perhaps.
Crikey but it’s hard work sometimes, though, isn’t it?
</rantmode>
Well … I definitely went off on one there and now I feel a lot better. If you need to go off on one too, please help yourself and have a rant in the comments about anything you like! Get it off your chest the way I’ve just done.
Now then, shall we all relax with a lovely free audiobook? Yes. I think that would be a good idea.
Small Beginnings, K’Barthan Extras, Hamgeean Misfit: Part 1
Destiny called and everyone else was out.
When your very existence is treason, employment opportunities are thin on the ground. But when one of the biggest crime lords in the city makes The Pan of Hamgee a job offer he can’t refuse, it’s hard to tell what the dumbest move is; accepting the offer or saying, no to Big Merv. Neither will do much for The Pan’s life expectancy.
This is free to download from most of the major ebook retailers for August and also in audio from my store, the exception is Amazon, I changed some keywords last night and now they’re dicking me about. Also, I can’t make it free from the book vendors in audio so if you’re after that one, it has to be just from my store, you can get it from my store if you normally buy from Amazon too.
If you’re interested in the ebook, click here.
If you’d like to give the audiobook a go, click here.
If you aren’t interested but you want to help, feel free to copy and paste either of these links into the social media thingy of your choice and share away:
Audiobook: https://payhip.com/b/ubYs
Ebook – free from all the main vendors: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/infosb.html