UNLUCKY LIPS

Lips. Lips are wonderful things: useful, decorative, sensitive, erogenous. Many of the best things that life has to offer are experienced through the lips: fine wine, fancy cakes, a consensual kiss, crack cocaine. They are marvellous, fabulous devices, like sculpted scar tissue, like little chipolatas, like a soft seagull of sensual promise. Parts of the lips have evocative names like the vermilion border, and the cupid's bow. They are also full of nerves and blood vessels and muscles, and the skin there is thinner, making these perfect, pink protuberances extremely vulnerable to twisting, pulling, scratching, pinching and tearing. They don't like being bitten either.

In body part terms, they are weak, effete, as if their epicurean life has made them weak and decadent, like swooning dandies. Punish them, test them - they will not stand up to any great scrutiny. Oh, and sometimes lips have hair attached to them, in the form of a moustache or goatee / standard beard. This hair can be pulled, causing eye watering discomfort. A most effective technique.   

SIGNS AND PORTENTS

VERSE THINGS HAPPEN IN YORKSHIRE

ARTS-GOV North has released this charming prototype verse from one of their Poem-Plex 2000s. As you will recall, all Northern machines are set to write poems about old things that remind you of other things. This particular verse is from unit TED26 although, to be honest, it’s all the same, really, they’re just machines.

CHURNED UP IN A FIELD

Held in the hand

An unearthed oval of ancient gold

A strong head, recalling my own

What thoughts there? What complications?

It does not matter, what cannot be known

A millennia and a half of dirt wears such cares smooth

Poem-Bot has encountered a problem and needs to close.

We are sorry for the inconvenience.

HIPPOCRATIC OATHS

I have a friend. There is more to that statement, but I thought I’d just let that basic fact hang there for a while as I’m rather proud of it. My friend, who I have known for almost forty years, is a man who, within my hearing at least, has never ever referred to a qualified medical professional as anything other than a ‘quack’.

To him, quacks aren’t just general practitioners, the phrase encompasses the entire sphere of medicine, including all of the NHS and, latterly, the elements of private health care he has engaged with. Whether free at the point of contact or paid for in advance, they are all quacks: back quacks, foot quacks, tooth quacks, blood quacks, gut quacks and, in the late eighties, clap quacks. In summary, he has no respect for any kind of nurse, doctor, medic, surgeon, dentist or healer whatsoever, despite his frequent utilisation of their skills and expertise, particularly the antibiotics.

It’s an inherited condition. His father, Geoff, now sadly deceased, was a man in the classic mould of the English naysayer, the sort of timeless moaner and iconoclast who would have stood behind the catapult at Agincourt moaning about the higher wages the Longbow blokes were on, or critiquing Henry V’s speech. Two hundred odd years later he would have been chafing the collar of his New Model Army uniform, complaining about Cromwell cancelling Christmas.

As a man mainly of the 20^th century, he spent an inordinate amount of time cupping a crafty roll up and detailing what he would do if he were to ever assume his rightful mantel as the ruler of everything. His manifesto was, of course, the absolute opposite of what those who actually wielded the power were doing. He was a tremendous character, and he is greatly missed for his wit and wisdom, as well as his ingrained, endless chippiness. He was often spectacularly incorrect: politically; factually. He called a spade a fucking shovel and to him, all solicitors were crooks, all policemen pigs, all male dancers poofs, all footballers pansies, and all doctors quacks.

Geoff’s distaste for professional people was, again, a family heirloom, a legacy of a working class background that stretched all the way back to serfdom. His race memory clearly included bitterness carried over from when sawing peoples legs off and causing them to die, not of gangrene, but of trauma and infection, became the preserve of specially trained people, putting the ordinary bloke who had simply invested in a saw out of business. His distrust of these interlopers was lifelong, and he spent his final hours mocking them for trying to save that long life. According to Geoff, his doctors were quacks: amateurish, ridiculous, dangerous. They did everything they could to keep him alive; he did everything he could to die – just to spite them. Just to prove his point. He most likely died without knowing that he was both part of a long and honourable continuum of working class subversion, and ahead of his time. Geoff, and his son, my friend, and the generations of English men and women like them, will be ultimately proven right as, in the unpleasant aftermath of The Crisis, the quacks will reign supreme.

Seven years of training and countless hours of experience will be of little value in a world without medicine, a world without equipment, a world where surgery is a lottery, and therapy an impossible luxury. Professional medicine will become like visiting a fairground gypsy: a crossing of silver, a crossing of fingers, guess work. It won’t be their fault. Even if their diagnoses are as sharp as ever all that will be left in terms of treatment is stuff that they definitely did not train for: homeopathy and butchery - in short, quackery. In a generation’s time, those that retain any vestigial training and knowledge will most likely be burned at the stake for witchcraft, and the avaricious, ham-fisted artisans that take their place, with their clumsily adapted and rarely cleaned instruments, smelly poultices, reliance on superstition and almost total lack of accountability, will be quacks in the purest possible sense: pretenders, charlatans, bunglers, frauds, killers.

Geoff would have loved The Crisis, fucking loved it, even as he went unanaesthetised before some gap toothed yokel with a talent for divination and a large, dirty knife, giving the thumbs up to oblivion in a world that was finally working on his terms. 

POST-CRISIS SIGNING

Sign language is a hugely important communication tool, yet there are currently only around 25,000 users in the UK. This will change post-Crisis, when everyone still alive will be able to quickly learn the only four words that will still have any meaning. Which is a sort of good thing when you think about it, just don't think about it too much, because it becomes an awful, terrible thing.

REMOTE VIEWING

I used to work for a large city council, one of the largest in the UK. I did various project related things and, as is my modus operandi, I also interfered in areas I had no right or reason to be involved with. One evening, I was poking around in the central CCTV room, the ten floors up eye in the sky where a kaleidoscopic monochrome summary of the daily drama of the city was played out on fifty flickering screens. All human life down there was up there, constantly monitored for flash points and flare ups, traffic accidents and human collisions. Mostly, people drifted silently around, floating past the various cameras like flotsam, the unintentionally discarded rather than deliberately jettisoned. 

After about twenty minutes, I turned to the silent operator and, half-invigorated by our God like view of the world and half-appalled at the pathetic diorama, decided to ask a question:

'Where is it?' I said.  

'Where's what?'

'The vaporise button', I smiled.

I expected him to either laugh or to look at me as if I were an idiot. He did neither, instead, his mouth an unrelenting line, his eyes never moving from the screens, he put his fingers to his lips and said ‘sssshhhhhhh’.

LISTEN IN

If you don't recognise what this is immediately, then don't bother asking. It's not FOR YOU.

THE JOY OF STICKS

This blog started with a flurry of posts about poking people’s eyes out and killing them with Smatchets. I don’t regret that, but I do concede that they were perhaps indicative of the anxiety and pent up rage I was feeling at the time. I’m still angry, of course (I wouldn’t do anything at all if I wasn’t permanently semi-pissed off), but I have being thinking about my attitude and doing some research and have learned something very important: self-defence is not the same as fighting, and I need to be clearer about the distinction.

I started with the assumption that, post-Crisis, there will be a lot of violence, and I stick by that. Sometimes, however, it is a matter of containing this violence, not escalating it, and this is the difference between self-defence and a fight. A fight is a contest, an all-out battle in which the object is to win. In the post-Crisis climate,this could, ostensibly, mean that lives are at stake. Self-defence is about protecting yourself against the violence of others: the object is to stop it becoming a fight, to not make it a matter of life and death. With the right discouragement, an attacker may re-evaluate you as a target and decide to leave you alone. Naturally, this might involve you employing quick and definitive action and high levels of nastiness, but the intent is very different. A strong ‘do one’ message is often a much better solution than killing someone, and a lot cleaner and easier on the torn patchwork quilt you call a soul.

With that in mind, let’s talk about sticks. Sticks are good. In post-Crisis terms, they are Mother Nature’s miracles, as they are plentiful, and, if chemical weapons have been deployed, you won’t even have to strip them of foliage. A stick has a number of uses, of course, but it’s worth reflecting on the dual purpose that will be of most use in the tiresome days to come: a stick is a weapon that you can burn, something that will keep you safe and keep you warm. A stick is perfect for defence and offence, protection or all-out attack. In the first instance, a stick is a clatterer of knuckles, a whacker of shins, a poker of ribs, a prodder, a dissuader. You can be a nuisance with a stick, it’s a very irritating and ‘ow’-y sort of weapon. But a stick can also deliver a smack to the head that will knock your opponent’s eyes out – literally - although you shouldn’t expect this result every time, this is real life, not a Roadrunner cartoon.

Advanced students can practice all sorts of grips and holds and spins – you can get tactical, almost balletic, but do be prepared to smack yourself in the face a few times until you master the art. There is no more magnificent sight than a person expertly wielding a stick and, with lots of hard work, that person could be you. Or you can just twat people with it and wait for them to either run away or fall down.

Once your opponent is on the ground, it’s up to you to decide the outcome. In self-defence terms, you’ve made your point, so perhaps you could let them scurry away, lesson learned. In a fight to the death, however, the stick becomes a club, and your opponent becomes your victim. In this case, the key is to inflict enough immediate damage to render your target unconscious, so you can then quite happily beat them to death without being unduly disturbed by their facial expressions. Make it quick, and don’t go on beating whatever it is you are beating once it has popped, burst or split into pieces, i.e. it may be a mad world, but you don’t have to be a fucking psycho.

Later on, when the long night sets in, build a fire and burn the stick. There will be no justice or formal law and order post-Crisis, of course, let alone any forensics, so the destruction of the stick is purely symbolic. Fire is cleansing, and the act of burning will delete the incident from your hard drive. It’s also practical: the stick will be dirty and bent and battered. There might be brains on it. Get a new stick, and huddle around the warmth the old one provides. Believe me, these will be the good times. Tomorrow is another day, and might very well require more stick related decisions. 

RURAL IDYLL

Unless you are a heavily armed psychopath, there’s very little to look forward to post-Crisis, although those interested in what could be elastic banded together as 'green issues' will be delighted to know that the world will ultimately become more ecologically balanced than it has been since the Industrial Revolution. The word ‘ultimately’ is important, as there will initially be a horrible period of collapse, where unattended factories and facilities will first go off piste, then off line, then, finally, just go off, blowing up and throwing filth and foulness miles out into the air. When the smoke clears, things will be pretty grim: no light; no heat; no water. Your American style Fridge Freezer won’t work. Everything will start to rot, and disease will come, like a huge, dirty scythe cutting enormous swathes through the weakened populace. Cities will be hellholes, open sores where the rats will reign supreme, so it’s time to get that place in the country you always talked about – and quick.

One of the main benefits of The Crisis is how deadly it will be. Under normal circumstances, moving to the country would be a massive pain in the arse requiring time, money, patience, money and more money. Post-Crisis, three out of five picturesque cottages will simply require sweeping clean of human remains before becoming perfectly habitable dwellings. There will be no estate agents or solicitors fees, nothing to sign or register, you will simply move your shit in, shore up the windows and doors and defend your new home day and night from others with the same idea as you.

Country life will not be the cakewalk you may have seen in thick, glossy magazines. There will be no poncing around in designer wellies. On the plus side, much of the pointless, spiteful cruelty of rural living will have been eliminated, as hunting things that taste like shit will be considered a massive waste of resources. Foxes will still kill chickens, and we will still kill chicken killing foxes, but this is equitable. It will be a war again, not a pogrom. Badgers will still be at risk, though, as we are likely to give them Tuberculosis.

Life will be almost impossible at first, a hard, endless grind of wet, brutal days, long, cold nights and desperate survival. But the countryside will be the only place where you can survive, an oxygen tent in a dark world of unspeakable horror and toxic filth, so you will at least be able to persevere, to keep going, to stay alive. At first you will work like a hamster on a wheel, exhausting yourself to little or no profit. In time, though, there will be progress: the windmill and the water wheel will begin to turn again; the river will run relatively clean and corpse free; the ground will relent and begin to yield misshapen root vegetables, which will be great delicacies; a cup of acorn coffee in a chipped enamel mug will be luxury; every drop of milk squeezed from a cow or goats teat will be a delight, a triumph - a victory.

Life will not be easy, and it will not be better, but it will have more value - it will mean something, precisely because it is so difficult to hang on to. Family life will be of the utmost importance once again and, eventually, a social system will begin to tentatively reassert itself. There will be friendship, kindness, co-operation – even charity. In the evenings, there will be music and laughter and companionship. Life will be more than just existence. Then the Plagues will begin.

MISSING PERSONAGE

This is 'Stuart somebody or other'. That's my tankard he's holding and I want it back. If you see him, do let him know that regardless of whether he returns my property or not, I'm going to bang him on the clavicle with the pommel of my Smatchet. That's not a threat, as I fully expect the action outlined in the statement to take place, but I can't actually promise it, so I'm hedging my bets to a certain extent. If it’s in my power, I will totally Smatch him. Because I really miss that tankard. And all that it represents. 

What it mainly represents is continuity. That tankard has hung behind the bar of my local pub for the last nine years. I may not go in the pub every day, or even every week, but, when I do, the tankard is there, and Brian the landlord has it filled with Bacardi before I’ve unzipped my anorak. Post-crisis, I will make my way to that pub. It will be a pilgrimage, of sorts. If the pub is still open, and a type of life still goes on, I shall enjoy a drink from my tankard and think that, no matter how bad things might be elsewhere, there is always this place, this drink, this moment, an oasis of pre in the post, a parcel of the past.

If the pub is closed, or if Bob’s naked body is nailed to the door, even if the place has been burned to the ground, I will retrieve my tankard, bloodied or blackened though it may be, and take it with me on my onward journey. Then the tankard would serve as a relic of a time never to return, a world that is lost to us all for all time. It would hold no Bacardi, then, only a thin, colourless gruel made from things that we would have previously jet washed from the drive. Every sip would be a stark reminder of how low we had been laid but at least I'd have my memories - and my tankard. 

So, yes, it meant something, Stuart whoever, you dirty thief, you robber of dreams, and I will have my revenge upon you and yours and theirs. Enjoy your beer, fucker! 

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED IN 47 YEARS

Never lift anyone you care about above your head.

THE POWER OF NATURE

I recently had an interesting discussion with a friend about Power Animals, an animistic feature of some neo-shamanistic philosophies. Each whole human being apparently has a spirit or power animal within them, a symbiote that reflects elements of its human host’s personality as well as imparting its defining characteristics to them and providing protection. With training, a person can access their power animal in times of need and commune with it in order to find extra reserves or, indeed, a cool, calm place of inner safety. Other outcomes may ensue. I’ve done some research and discovered that my power animal is The Hawk, a creature which represents vision and intuition, perspective and observation. It’s not a particularly tight fit, if I’m honest, but I’m okay with that, hawks are cool. 

I’m not sure how I would feel if my power animal was from a species I didn’t like or admire. For every jaguar there is a yak, for every shark, a baboon. I hate and fear baboons, and have done ever since I watched the film The Sands Of Kalahari as a child. Unbelievably, earlier this year, I had to attend a corporate thing at a local wildlife park, what we used to call a zoo. The ‘treat’ of the day was to feed a troop of thirty or so baboons. I’m an intelligent, rational man in my forties, so was not prepared for the sickening rush of paranoia and dread that came over me as I thought of having to hand feed some hideous, dead eyed ape, its unspeakable yellow fangs bared for food, for fun, for sport, its stone age mind pondering whether to humour me or to rip me from throat to groin and drape key bits over a branch for later. Naturally, the illogical fear turned out to be illogical: there was a Perspex wall between humans and baboons at all times. Of course there was: it seems preposterous that I ever thought otherwise. The monsters’ keeper, an enthusiastic lady who was clearly enthralled by her animal charges, gasped in horror and shook her head slowly when I asked if she ever went into their enclosure. As I suspected, baboons don’t play nice, and that sort of cross-species interaction would be short and bloody. 

The walls of their enclosure were covered in a matt black material that stopped them from climbing out. It required constant attention, as the baboons spent a great deal of their time trying to escape. It occurred to me that, post-Crisis, these unattended bastards would be messing around with my satellite dish by tea time. An involuntary shudder rippled through my body. One of the juvenile male baboons noticed the movement, and stared blankly at me. As instructed by the keeper, I lowered my gaze. My human ego was furious; the wise hawk within me felt relief.

The most interesting thing I found out was that the alpha male, the boss, the one with the reddest arse, the most fur, the biggest muscles, the most prominent snout and jaw and brow, the one that swatted the kids and bullied the women and pushed all the other lesser males around, that guy – the one I feared the most – had a secret. His secret was that the colourful bottom, the coat, the bulk, the face were, technically, on loan, like the hat and coat and chain of a Civic Mayor. When his time as the boss was over, when his dominance was challenged and he was deposed, he would just go back to normal, just another beta schmuck. It struck me that this was exactly the same in the human kingdom: leaders are often physically pumped up by power, diminished by returning to ordinary life. Look at Bush and Blair, two men who looked in the prime of life when leading their respective countries, but now look like the desiccated corpses they left scattered around the world - one foot in the mass grave. With anyone else, it could be a question of conscience, but I hardly think these gentlemen are troubled by anything quite as obvious as that.

  

Post-Crisis, who knows what genetic marks of authority will eventually evolve, what physical characteristics will come to identify the warlord, the magus, the enforcer, the dictator, the high priestess, the fixer, the mandarin, the general, the lawmaker, the slaver, the God? Will these accoutrements of authority be new, or will they simply be half-remembered signifiers from lost stereotypes, mosaic memories of cinema and television, folkloric flecked tropes of what once constituted a man or woman of distinction or difference, whether elevated by intellect or force of will, natural talent, hard work or hard fists and feet? Make no mistake, the post-Crisis hierarchy will need to be savage, as dangerous to its fellows as a tightly wound king baboon surrounded by rivals it must fight, fuck or flick away. Who knows how this will manifest itself in the faces and arses of the chosen ones? Who dares imagine it? Certainly not this Hawk Man hybrid.

A BOWL OF GRANOLA

It's three minutes to three on a Monday morning. I'm sitting in my dressing gown having just eaten a bowl of Granola. I went forty years without knowing that Granola even existed, and I still don't have a really deep understanding of it, but up until a few moments ago it seemed invested with almost magical powers.

At 2.30 am, I was laying awake, listening to the general low hum of non-specific anxiety trying to force itself to the front of my mind. This whine of worry immobilised me, but not to the point of unconsciousness, that would have been too easy. It occurred to me that I should get up and go downstairs - not to shoot myself, or start writing a novel, not even to draw up some diagrams and make detailed plans to get me out of the mostly bullshit existential hole I was looking up out of. Instead, I decided that a bowl of Granola would sort me out, that a bowl of Granola was just what I needed, a bowl of Granola would help. But it hasn't helped, it hasn't helped at all.

I don't blame the Granola, it doesn't make any claims for itself as a solution to anything, not even on the box. But my faith in it as something other than a sweet, high calorie breakfast food is indicative of the way we live now, where everything buyable and gettable comes charged with a meaning and purpose borne out of desperation, like a quest for the missing piece that will complete your jigsaw. And, yes, that's how it is with Granola: I didn't have it before, I don't need it now, but I somehow feel that eating a bowl of it will make me feel better about myself. The Granola is a smartphone, or a big telly; it's a holiday, or toast rack muscles; new shoes, new car, new car smell. In my head, it's ambrosia smothered in nectar and served in the Holy Grail. In reality, it's a bucket of distraction, with a cold glug of real life poured over it. The fact is that it will not complete me, or make me a better person, nothing will: I'm already fully formed; for better or worse, this is it.  

I've got to be up at 7. I normally have Granola first thing, so now I'll have to think of something else. More problems. Yet another new day ruined by unrealistic expectations.

MY BABY SHOT ME DOWN

PEOPLE ARE NOW BEING SHOT BY TODDLERS ON A WEEKLY BASIS.

This is not a joke, or a dark, subversive fantasy resulting from a twisted mind and an evening class in Photoshop, so please look very hard at this very genuine infographic that recently appeared in The Washington Post, and feel cold, then warm, then cold again terror. This is obviously an awful portent of The Crisis to come. It may even be The Crisis here and in action, smoothly running through the gears until it hits Turbo Apocalypse. There are only two micro crumbs of personal comfort to be had:

1. This is currently very much an American problem, and clearly the result of letting ridiculous people have guns and toddlers without first explaining how important it is to keep them apart, and -

2. statistically, at the moment, the kids are mainly a danger to themselves.

I'm so glad that we don't have inalienable rights in the UK, even if it does mean that when I look out of my window I can see Michael Gove giggling and fracking the fuck out of my back garden.

Right, time to get back to worrying about this, even though none of them actually have their finger on the trigger -

THE POETRY CIRCUIT

Post-Crisis there will be no time for poetry. Don't be ridiculous. Pretty words are all very well but, unless they can be eaten or used as fuel or a weapon (an actual weapon that hurts faces, not a metaphorical one that hurts feelings) then they will not be on the list of things that people should be making.

Yet, no one in any semblance of power is against poetry per se, in fact they used to dabble a bit in their youth: song lyrics, stuff like that. Nothing published, of course, they never had the right connections. But, yep, they GET IT, so it has been agreed that poetry production will be ramped up pre-Crisis, in order to ensure that we have the luxury of lovely but utterly impractical language for the hundreds of years of long, dark, freezing, frightening nights to come. Human poets have promised to do their best to write more, but they are an unreliable lot, always waiting for inspiration whilst wasting hours and hours embroiled in complicated affairs with the wives, husbands and teenage children of other poets.

The POEM-PLEX 2000 is a custom built computer specifically designed to write poetry all day, every day. The software is currently undergoing final testing, but is already producing work that is empirically better than 94.8% of human poetry.

Full production begins next year, and will be organised on a regional basis – the South will specialise in Love poetry; the East, Nature; the West will produce verse about human existence, and the North about old stuff that makes you think about other stuff when you look at it.

Here is an example from one of the Poem-Plexes currently hard at work in the ARTS-GOV complex in downtown Bournemouth.       

LOVE by WORDSWORTH2

There used to be a hundred words for this feeling

Now there is but one:

Love

The love of not giving in and simply

succumbing to death, no matter how sweet it would be

We are all so very tired

but love is the fuel substitute 

that keeps our half-empty bodies semi-functioning

Go to Line One

POSSIBLE FUTURES / PROBABLE CAUSES

There is no doubt that telekinesis and other psychic abilities will be of immeasurable value post-Crisis, not least because they do not require any external power source. The strongest mentalists will be ‘recruited’ by the makeshift government / council of elders and will be coerced into using their strange, frightening powers for what passes for the common good. Ironically, it is more than likely that in all other parts of the country there will be a frenzied backlash against such powers, with old women, comely unmarried women, half-witted boys and middle aged men with large collections of things being persecuted for their alleged involvement in ‘witchcraft’. The crackdown will be cruel, illogical and obsessed with sexual torture. Central government will not intervene, as this activity will take the place of telly for a population who, otherwise, might notice that all of their hair is falling out and the milk has a green tinge, and so is preferable to the mass hysteria that a true understanding of the situation would inevitably bring.

Psychics will be used for all sorts of things, indeed, it will take careful management to ensure that their other worldly talents are not used for trivial matters like entertaining kids and saying who is at the door. Divination will be vital, particularly with regard to weather conditions and uncovering vital commodities like water, coal and edible roots. All skills are honed by practice, so the house psychics will flourish in a climate where their abilities are encouraged and valued and used rather than distrusted and suppressed. Over time psychic networks will develop: locally, regionally, nationally, internationally. Eventually, perhaps five or six years after The Crisis, there will come a time when the psychics, bolstered by years of practice and soundless head conferences, decide to make their move. The King will tell a psychic to do something and the psychic will instead raise their fingers to their temples and stare intently, and the King will fall back in agony before being hoisted into the air by the power of the mind alone and then flung across the room. Guards will enter the room to intervene, but will be frozen in their tracks by a quick hand movement from the now imperious psychic. This will happen all over the country, all over the world. The psychic will be King then, and they will be cruel and unkillable overlords.  

THIS IS WHY IT IS NECESSARY TO TAKE PRE-EMPTIVE ACTION.

If you are a psychic, a mystic, someone who regularly experiences premonitions or déjà vu, someone who is unnaturally lucky, someone who says ‘I knew you were going to say that’ or texts someone as they are thinking about you; if you wear a non-faith based turban, or have a white streak in your otherwise jet black hair; if you have ever felt psychic vibrations, or smelled someone’s aura; if you see ghosts; if you can remember a time before you were born; if you can sense visitors, or hear vibes; if you can commune with cats; if you have ever considered looking into Eastern religions; if you like the smell of joss sticks and eschew footwear, if your kids creep you out and stuff in their room moves of its own accord, then contact the Ministry of Low Intensity Operations immediately. Or the Police, you could just call them. There is no cause for concern, but it is better to hand yourself in than be hunted down. You will be treated humanely, as there are now experimental methods to render you acceptable.

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED IN 47 YEARS

There is always someone watching, but they are not necessarily looking at you. 

SMATCHET JOB

The Smatchet was invented by Captain W.E Fairbairn during World War 2 and is a cross between a machete, a hatchet and a fat, angry knife. It is also heavy enough to be used as a face smashing bludgeon. Fairbairn was clear about the ‘confidence, determination and aggressiveness’ such a heavy weapon inspired, believing it the next best thing to a rifle and bayonet.  The Smatchet is not essentially a stabbing weapon, although it has penetrative capacity. Instead, its main application is as a swinging, slashing blade. Wielded with sufficient force, it will slice through most things, especially flesh, which is eminently sliceable.

The Carotid artery and the Sub-Clavian artery are perhaps your best bet for a swift conclusion to your fight, as a strong severing blow here will disable your opponent immediately, and kill them soon after (twelve seconds for the Carotid; up to two hundred and ten seconds for the Sub-Clavian). Other targets include the arteries at the inner junctures of the wrist or elbow, but this weapon is not an epee or a stiletto, so do not expend too much thought on a cultured technique. Put simply, The Smatchet is a hacking device that causes serious and unsubtle damage, so make sure it’s either in your hand or your opponents guts. Naturally, don't draw this weapon for anything less than a duel to the death, it will not calm a minor disagreement, only escalate it. 

The following film demonstrates some of its uses. A word of warning, the Smatchet featured is a product of an American company called Cold Steel, and those demonstrating the weapons are Americans, so expect some unseemly facial expressions and a certain amount of celebratory whooping and ‘hell yeah’-ing. Ignore this childish exhibitionism if you can, and instead concentrate on the very high levels of carnage caused by this great British invention. Of particular note is the way the Smatchet effortlessly slashes through the toe of a cowboy boot revealing the meat within, an essential prerequisite for the inevitable Transatlantic war that will start the moment the Yanks realise just how vulnerable we are.  

WOUNDED KNEE

After The Crisis, there will be a great deal of fighting. I'm not looking forward to it, but that is how it will be. People who have been kicked forcibly in the knee will know how painful and debilitating it is to be kicked forcibly in the knee. Those among you who have not experienced it will only be able to imagine what it feels like, but the very act of thinking about it is likely to cause a speculative ‘ow’. The fact is that the knee is a perfect target, forming as it does the junction between the upper leg (or thigh) and the lower leg and foot. This nobbly nexus is required to be flexible to allow full movement and, as such, can be pushed out of place with the right amount of violent coercion. A displaced knee does two things: it really hurts, and it limits mobility / ability to hurt you. A disabled assailant is easier to kill - or you may simply retreat from the scene without the risk of your enemy chasing after you.

Do not use the toe of your boot or foot, use the insole or outside. This allows much more force, and will limit jarring. The object is to hurt your opponent, not yourself. Once you have made contact, drag your foot from the knee down the shin. This is excruciatingly painful, as the fibula bone is near the surface. Complete the move with a heavy downwards stamp. Remember that the foot contains a number of small bones that can be smashed easily. So smash them.   

A sincere and committed kick is highly likely to signal the end of any meaningful resistance from your foe. It is then a matter of deciding how the rest of the now rather one-sided fight will go. Not every battle has to be to the death, but then taking prisoners is always a pain, and there is some paperwork involved, so let your conscience be your guide. If your opponent is recumbent, i.e. sparked out, a forceful two footed jump onto their sternum is usually enough to kill them quickly and without wasting ammunition.

Yes, it’s brutal, but in war as in life, it’s better to be the stampee than the stamped upon. The moral high ground is a steep climb, those without functioning knees won't make it. 

REMEMBER!

IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU'D BE HOME SOON

Home Bargains House, Southampton

It's not all doom and gloom! Here's one of the new breed of budget supermarket sponsored apartment blocks currently being thrown up in the disenfranchised sinkholes of the UK. Residents are entitled to 5% discount at any sponsoring store, as long as they do not buy alcohol or food. Other terms and conditions will definitely apply.

The plan was to have architects, psychologists and sociologists design the buildings using the pin wheel chart above to ensure that the most important requirements for health and happiness were all included. Unfortunately, the numbers add up to 1027%, which makes no sense whatsoever, so the flats have instead been built to the most basic of specifications and, as such, just about provide partial cover from the elements and a chute to shit down. Post-Crisis, they will be the most sought after properties on the market, so start hoarding barter goods now. 

In actual right now paper money, a one bedroom flat will cost you £275,000. Please don't humiliate yourself by asking about London prices.

THE CRICKET SEASON IS ALMOST OVER

Britons are the most civilized people in the world and we absorb concepts like charity, compassion, understanding and fair play as we suckle on the proverbial teat. Yet scratch the surface, throw in some mild peril, and you will quickly discover a steaming cesspool of inequality and horror, populated by savages that either want to kill us dead or steal all we have created, and then kill us. In some cases, they will also rape us. Then kill and rob us. In the worst of all case studies, we may one day even be subjugated and diminished until we fit snugly under the stack heel of a foreign aggressor. These will, inevitably, be lesser people than us, but, by animal cunning or dirty deceit or some sort of collective national balls up, they might just make us their slaves for a temporary period of time. To this end, anticipating the sort of shit storm The Crisis will bring, it is essential that we put away our innate kindness and decency and replace it with a steely determination to brutally kill all those who threaten our existence. Harden your hearts, they will not be needed for the nasty non-people who would seek to take our way of life and smear it with dog dirt. These will not, of course, be exclusively foreigners. But let's say that they are, and look at this graph to make it seem like a legitimate and pressing concern.

Britain's next potential enemy, in descending order of threat.

In a good, clean fight, there is no substitute for British nerve and sinew. But the fight ahead will not be good, and it will not be clean. It will not be cricket or, indeed, any well defined, carefully organised and impartially adjudicated sport. Our enemies can be expected to behave abominably, and no amount of stiff letters or representations to their corrupt puppet government will make them change their wicked ways. If you meet the enemy, know this: they are cheats who will do all they can to straight up murder you. Now, with this in mind, and your children’s weeping, wailing faces in your head, what will you do to them?

Not everyone can be an expert in martial arts, not everyone will have horny hands or spikes in the toe caps of their shoes. But everyone has a chance to live if they retain a positive mental attitude, lose their innate reserve and immediately mount a shockingly aggressive attack, following a few basic tenets of self-defence:

• All eyes pop if poked hard enough;
• Nobody likes being kicked repeatedly in the face;
• Men and women both have genitals in roughly the same area;
• Guns are for people who know how to use them;
• Nobody will tell you off if you kill somebody, we'll be past all that.  

Remember, you will probably be fighting to the death, so, in the crass sporting vernacular of the Americans, either ‘GO HARD, OR GO HOME’ - in a box.

Stay tuned for more guidance you really shouldn't follow.