Dodophobia

Happy New Year!!

2012-01-08T16:16:00.000Z

It's been a busy old time. Susan arrived in August, we got married in October and then into the festive season. Not had much time for anything else, but I have been feeling guilty about leaving Dodophobia alone, so here's a post.

On 19th August, myself, my mother and my two sisters headed out to the airport, clad in Susan's favourite colour, purple, to meet her plane. She was flying in from Iceland, but I found out just before leaving that they were landing first in Manchester, so we headed for Domestic Arrivals, bought a coffee at Starbucks and sat down. I immediately got up to have a look at the arrivals board and Susan's flight was listed as "landed". So I stood and waited. And waited. People came through, but no Susan, must be a different flight, so I kept waiting. And waiting. After about three quarters of an hour I was getting truly worried and started texting her; half way through my text, my phone rang. It was Susan, with a panicked "WHERE ARE YOU!?!?!?!?" For some reason, her plane had landed at International Arrivals despite having just flown from Manchester, so I warned the troops and headed more rapidly than I have walked for a long time to the other end of the airport. There was my Susan. We hugged. And hugged. And hugged. Susan hugged the three others and they hugged her. I held Susan and she held me. Then we all headed for my sister Karen's car and drove to our flat. My other sister, Lesley, had put a Welcome Home banner across the door, so I handed Susan the keys and she broke that and opened the door. She loved the place, OUR place, and tripped jollily from room to room. After a diplomatic five minutes, Karen left and we were alone in our home. To tell you the truth, it had felt to me like Our Home from the moment I first saw it, and I had made sure the choice of colours and furniture and so on was a joint effort between Susan and me to make it even more so for both of us. But now it was whole. And that's how it has remained.

The wedding was in October, but that's a post all of its own, which I will be writing in the next few days. There is going to be a bit of a rush of posts in the next wee while, and I hope to keep up a more regular flow after that than I have done recently.

Welcome back, me!

Things are getting exciting.

2011-06-27T21:00:00.000+01:00

Oh yes they are! Susan is, as previously noted, coming home, and it's getting more real by the day. She has her flight booked for 18th August, arrives here on the nineteenth, and the wedding is booked for 14th October, which will give us a week of married life before the world ends, if Harold Camping's calculations are correct. The reception's booked too, food dude and disco dude are re-engaged and it's all systems go.

We have a new flat to go with our new status; I will have moved in before she gets here but it is OURS, and we are making decisions jointly regarding decor and so on. It's one bus stop from where I am now and is in an ideal location for us, AND it's rented from the local council, so we have a secure tenancy, no problems with repairs etc, and a better flat than we could have got for the same money renting privately, not to mention central heating and laundry facilities including driers in the building. I have been out just today and bought us a suite for the living room, with couch-bed and easy chair. I will make a phone call tomorrow to arrange delivery of that, and also expect to speak to a painter and decorator about our walls. I'm feeling more married every day, and it is absolutely wonderful.

And then, if all that weren't enough, this week came the exciting news from Albany that New York state has passed a marriage equality law: all our gay friends there will now have the same right to marry as we would if we were there. As that includes at least one couple who have been together for over thirty years, this is in truth merely correcting a nonsense that has existed until now, is just putting right a long-standing social wrong, but it is also another sign that we are in the middle of a civil rights revolution that matches the great victories of Martin Luther King and his allies in the US in the fifties and sixties. Of course it also means that Anthony and Bob might now be married before Susan and I are, but hey, you can't have everything, and it would mean they were dancing at our wedding as husbands legally and officially as well as in reality.

Well, anyway, I just felt I had to get that lot off my chest. And besides, it's been a while and I've been neglecting my dodophobiacs.

A visit from the moos.

2011-04-20T02:05:00.000+01:00

This was actually written a while ago, its seed first planted just over a year ago on my first visit to Susan's relatives in New Jersey, including my new (in at least two senses) niece.

HAZEL
She was eight months old and had
never seen a beard before. It
bewildered her, scared her, she
shied away from this furry monster.
But a week of my silliness made
her curiosity overtake her terror,
and she finally reached out a tiny
hand to touch and examine this
extraordinary thing. She performed
a small act of science, and got her
first lesson in the truth that different
does not equal bad.

A post among posts

2011-04-15T16:53:00.004+01:00

I was in Glasgow a couple of weeks ago, on 23rd March. In Bothwell Street. Number 215. Stayed at mum's the night before because she was coming with me and it seemed easier than any alternative we could think of. Had to get there for 0945 you see.

215 Bothwell Street is where immigration appeal hearings take place. Susan had taken all the documents, made copies of them, collated them, indexed them, sent them to the appeals bods and the Entry Clearance Officers who have repeatedly turned us down. She did a fantastic job; she's a brilliant organiser, my woman. I/we had spent a lot of time racking our brains to try and work out how it might go, what might be our top points, how to counter what we thought they might say to keep us apart. I was going to be there, Susan naturally enough not, as she has no visa to get into the country to do so. We had no lawyers supporting us. I had mum for company.

We got there on time. Fifteen minutes early actually; well it's not the sort of thing you want to take chances with. There was pretty tight airport style security to get in, which I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by, but it helped to rack up the pressure. Most of the people there seemed to be strangely happy considering where they were and what they were there for: maybe they were all as confident as I was about the rightness and historical inevitability of their cases, or maybe they were past caring. I don't think either of those applied to the wee boy, about three I would guess, who was merrily going around the room high fiving everyone. He was the most popular person there, bar none. There were people wandering around who seemed to be lawyers or officials of the Immigration Bods, as I believe they're correctly known. I was sitting there feeling relaxed but tense (I know, I know, but believe me, it's possible). We had been told we might have to wait all day because they couldn't be sure how long each case would take, so they were doing their best to make us all feel as uptight as possible. But Susan and I had done everything we could and just this one performance was left to accomplish, in defence of a case we thought was unimpeachable and unanswerable, just as we had done the previous times we had been rejected.

As it turned out, it was only eleven when my name was called. I got up, being careful to need my stick, and followed the name caller to a door, which she opened and beckoned me inside. It was a proper little courtroom, with a judge's bench and everything, and up went the pressure again. I hadn't expected that. A few minutes later a white haired, white bearded man came in followed by a courty dude who shouted "RISE". He must have been smart, because he did not shout "ALL RISE", which would have been incongruous as there was only me in the room, but then, why did he think he had to shout rather than just speak?. By the time I got to my feet, the judge was motioning me to sit down, apparently not being one to stand on ridiculous and redundant ceremony.

When he spoke, he had a Northern Irish accent. Susan and I named him "the honourable right honourable Lord Ulster of the kempt hair". His hair and beard really were VERY well-kempt. When she told her friend Anthony about him he immediately said "or His Kemptness for short", so that's what he has since become. Anyway, His Kemptness asked me to explain the history of our case to him, and let slip that he had a bit of a downer on the Home Office for refusing too many immigration applications-- "some of them seem to want to stop all immigration". WE HAD DRAWN A LIBERAL!!! Guess what aspects I concentrated on? "Well they seemed to reject that without even READING the documents I sent...", "we had sent them everything they asked us for but they seemed to ignore that..." accompanied by an irritated shake of His Kemptness's head. At one point he asked why we wanted to live here and not in the States. I answered that with my medical history I'd have to be insane to live in the US. "Yes," he replied, "it says here you had spoken about your medical history but there was no evidence of it". With blank-eyed innocence I told him that was odd and there should be a letter from my doctor among the documents... "is it this one from Abbey Medical Centre?" His Kemptness asked. "That's the one ", I wearily answered. He started to read it out, I helped him pronounce "craniopharyngioma", and he shook his head again and made another note.

Well, at the end of it all, he told me, not that we had won or lost anything, but that he would have to go away, weigh all the evidence, that he sometimes had to literally juggle it ("Not LITERALLY literally...?" I suggested, feeling good by this time and imagining how difficult it would be to juggle pieces of paper). And as he was more or less leaving he said to me "good man". A Northern Irish colloquialism. Hell, I thought, if he's getting colloquial on me it MUST have gone well... Anyway, he also said it would be about two weeks before we heard anything, so it was to be another nailbiting fortnight.

We both felt we had done everything we could and that no reasonable mind could look at us and say we shouldn't be together, that there was no way we could be considered likely to be a burden on the state, or anyway more so because of Susan's presence. As I told the judge in my summing up spiel, by being here and supporting me, she's likely to reduce the need for professional assistance, so if anything she should SAVE the British state some money. I even told him "she will be" (WILL, not would; got to get that positive reinforcement in) "the first immigrant here since about 1793 to be looking forward to the weather". He answered laconically "God help her". Anyway, we knew there was no more we could do except wait to see what His Kemptness would decide.

Well, two weeks and three days later my phone rang. It was a tearful Susan. She garbled and yelled down the line "WE'VE BEEN ACCEPTED!!!" to which my thoughtful response was "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!". Then she hung up. I called her back. She read the entire decision letter to me, and oh it is wonderful. Slams the Entry Clearance Officers for ever rejecting us, points out that you can't get much clearer evidence of employability than an offer of employment (which she has had from my niece and which point I had made at the hearing), and rules that they had disproportionately interfered with our right to family life under the Human Rights Act. I had a grin on my face by now to put the Cheshire cat into retirement. And then she read the bit that said the Home Office had five days to appeal. So we had even more waiting to do.

Five days later I called the number at the top of the letter and gave them our appeal number. I asked what we should do now, what was the timeframe, and so on. The first words I heard were "the Home Office has NOT appealed".

All we have to do is wait for the letter that Susan will receive telling her where to send her passport to get it stamped with her visa. There's no specific timeframe on that but apparently it CAN take up to twelve weeks. Which means if it takes that long something has gone terribly wrong. On past experience, that should mean maybe a couple of weeks.

It's over. The waiting and worrying are over. We have won. Susan's coming home.

Manhattan, chapter two.

2011-03-29T00:27:00.001+01:00

Okay, okay, it's been a long time since Strawberry Fields: three and a half months in fact. My bad (as they say in the colonies). Was having such a wonderful time I just wasn't taking time out to write anything. But the Beatley feel continued for the rest of the trip. First of all, we went to BB King (no 's on the end of the name, oddly) for their Beatles Brunch. The food and drink were distinctly mediocre and the band didn't QUITE sound like the Beatles, although, who knows, maybe that's what the boys sounded like live. "John" and "Paul"'s speaking voices were spot on, though, and of course I got right into the music, and the occasion, and the atmosphere. Before long I was belting out song after song right along with them, oblivious to what anyone around me might have thought; although, as the band were nicely loud, I could barely even hear myself, so other people surely couldn't either! I almost tore my throat on Twist and Shout, which is as it should be, in honour of John's unrepeatable performance (literally; the version on the album was the first and only take, partly because it was utterly brilliant and partly because he couldn't sing any more after it and they only had one day to complete the entire album) on Please Please Me if for no other reason. Mind you, it feels electrifyingly good to throw yourself at it like that; left me a little breathless though. The whole occasion was Susan's treat, her Christmas present to me, and I felt almost tearily good afterwards and had Beatles songs flying non-stop through my head for days after. More even than usual.

The bad news was that the following day at the River Edge Diner, when we'd had our meal and I went to pay, I discovered I didn't have my debit card. It had got lost at some point and somehow during the Fab Four. Bad news as I didn't have any other card I could use. Checked my bank account as soon as I could and nothing had been taken, so no loss in that sense, but I called them and had it cancelled and a new one sent to me. The second bad news: they could only send it to my home address. So I got my sister to post it on to me at Susan's and we just had to have a frugal week while we waited. I tell you, it was a struggle to think of something we could do indoors other than watching commercials for medicine on TV. Fortunately, the cousin's wedding we were at the day of the discovery was a free bar all night and I'd had enough cash to cover our magnificent breakfast, so there hadn't been an immediate emergency, although I did eat too much at the diner and ended up unable to take fullest advantage of that free bar: I'm a disgrace to Scotland, I am.

ANYway, on 9th February, Susan had taken the evening off work because she said she had arranged a special date. And boy, she wasn't joking! It was a Wednesday matinee performance, at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, so spelt, on 47th Street, of Rain-- A Tribute to the Beatles. It's in a theatre, so it's a concert setting rather than a nightclub brunch. Also, they have set up a complete multimedia show, including giant sixties style "TV"s on the proscenium arch, where the performance was "broadcast" in black and white. The concert started with a reproduction of their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show-- which, coincidentally, was on 9th February 1964-- complete with a reproduction of the set and even a reproduction of Ed, as well as a reproduction of the performance, of course. I was very close to tears and was far from alone in that audience. Later they moved on to the Shea Stadium era (and a few days later I met a new cousin who was actually AT that legendary gig), and then of course Sergeant Pepper, before finishing with a short, partly acoustic set, which included a gorgeous rendering of Give Peace a Chance complete with the entire audience on its feet waving peace signs. Jesus, man, I'm nearly crying again sitting here typing this. What a show, and what a day. I bought some merchandise (no, really): a Rain t-shirt with a big peace symbol on it, a fridge magnet with the same and a CD called The Concert That Never Was which postulates a Beatles reunion in 1980 where they played old numbers they had never actually got to play live before as well as solo songs by John, Paul and George. And a programme of course. And a baseball cap for Susan.

And then we went next door to the Edison Cafe, where I devoured a large matzo ball soup, a reuben and a sundae of some kind. And, miraculously for me, did not finish the reuben but took almost half home with me, where I finished it later. And while we were there, Olympia Dukakis came in and ordered a takeout or a delivery or something. I didn't pester her, but silently thanked her for her Mrs. Madrigal in Tales of the City. Mind, she was dressed all in black and so could not possibly have looked less Anna-like. Oh, and Estelle Parsons, who played Roseanne's mother in, um, Roseanne, was at the next table to us. End of starfuck.

End of post.

Love, peace and slippers.

2010-12-14T03:56:00.000Z

On Wednesday evening, I took me down to Strawberry Fields, where everything was real. It was the thirtieth anniversary of John Lennon's murder, and Strawberry Fields is the memorial area of Central Park, right across from the Dakota Building in 72nd Street (or ON 72nd Street as US English has it), where he lived and was shot down, and where his widow Yoko Ono still has apartments.

Susan was working, so I went on my own, riding up on the subway on the A Train. There were hundreds of people there, some lighting and holding candles, all singing Lennon and Beatles songs. The age range was from teens to seventies: John and his band have universal appeal. There was a minute's silence at 10.50pm, the time he was shot, and another at 11.10pm, the time he died, or anyway round about the time he died; a couple of people had turned up by then whose idea of fun was to disrupt things by yelling. There were those who wanted to do some damage to the people shouting. I thought "right; if they won't give peace a chance, split their heads open..." and a woman behind me said, surely rightly, that John would have been with the disrupters. But more or less a minute of more or less silence we eventually got, which is an achievement in itself in Manhattan.

People were relaxed, calm and peaceful, talking to one another about John, the Beatles, what the lyrics meant (I know, I know, but it's inevitable), the history of it all; and singing, always singing. Everyone seemed to know all the lyrics and we were all singing along with great gusto. We sang Imagine (of course), Strawberry Fields Forever (of course), A Day in the Life, which was the moment I choked up-- well, okay, one of them-- and many others. It was at that point that I looked down at my feet and realised that I hadn't changed out of my slippers before I left the house. Well, do you know what? My feet never felt cold or sore, so they must be damn good slippers, well worth the twelve quid I paid for them, so that's a result really. I'm glad I went, glad now that I was there, glad that from now on I can say I was there, that after thirty years I've finally been at a Lennon memorial at Strawberry Fields. And that I have a fine pair of slippers.

Not long now...

2010-12-03T23:17:00.000Z

It's Friday evening. On Monday morning in the middle of still Sunday night really, I will be off to the airport, where I will board an aeroplane bound for New York. And when I get there, I will see my Susan, hold her, and spend eleven wonderful weeks with her, her family and friends.

She's been writing list after list, of things to do, things to eat, things to see, things to buy, things to cook. She's a list maker, and also a folder user, which will benefit me greatly in the years to come: no more wondering where the hell that electricity bill has disappeared to! No more panicking because I can't find the prescription the doctor gave me just that morning! I will learn to live with her organisationalism (don't care, it's a word NOW), she will learn to live with my scatterism (ditto), we will reach amicable accommodations together. We do so already, mostly without rancour or unpleasantness, although there is on both sides the occasional dropped jaw or raised eyebrow, and sometimes both at once. But most of the time there's only ONE side, called Us; Cameron and Susan; Susan and Cameron.

We're an And now. As in John AND Yoko, Romeo AND Juliet, fish AND chips, bagels AND more bagels. I have never been more certain of anything in my life, and I know, not just feel or think but know, that nor has Susan.

They say that relationships, marriages, take work. They're right. And we're working on this one, out of a shared Love and a shared determination to succeed. Sometimes it takes surprisingly HARD work, and when that's the case, there's a satisfaction of enormous proportions in it when we come out on the other side of it knowing we've done a good job together and put another potential obstacle behind us. We joke and laugh often, talk about films and art and culture, and language, often; discuss serious issues frequently and share always. We don't always agree about everything, but we have a set of shared assumptions that means major conflicts are rare to the point of non-existence.

Sound idyllic? Does it? Well, sorry, but it is. I am hugely happy. It's odd being so happy while still being aware, inside my head, of suffering from depression. Most of the time the depression is fairly distant, more than a memory but less than a spectre. Sometimes it looms larger, when I become aware of still living on a different continent from her or when we have a fight (they're inevitably about really silly little things, all sound and fury but signifying nothing, but they hurt terribly). On occasions like that there are still clouds above my head; but they're little grey ones, not at all the thunderous black devils that used to be there.

Wow. I started this post just because I wanted to write something and wanted to tell you all how exciting it is to be me, here, now. It's taken itself in unexpected directions. Probably not unpredictable ones though. I love it when a piece of writing does that, when I start with a vague idea of what I'm about to write and then the words themselves take over and I end up writing something completely different. Sometimes comedy turns into tragedy or whimsy turns into nostalgia, or nostalgia into feminism. Sometimes even the form changes, and a poem becomes a fairy tale. Once, a poem about a paragraph long got sculpted down to four words, while on another occasion one which felt just not quite right was studied and worried over for two days before I realised that what it needed was to start with a comma. With the comma in place, I felt like baby bear.

I think this post is done now.

It's been a long ole time...

2010-11-16T16:39:00.001Z

My puter blew up. It has now been buried with full honours, but the new one has four times the memory, twice the disk space and cost less than half the full price of the old one. So, onwards and upwards, dodophobics.

But my, things have been happening! In the United States, Repuglicans have taken control of the House of Representatives because millions of Democrat voters, sick of the timidity of the Obama government, stayed at home rather than voting, and as a result have convinced themselves that everyone loves them. And their plan for power is to do absolutely nothing other than shut down the government of the country they profess to love, purely to try to ensure that Obama is able to get nothing done. They have nothing new to offer, nothing but the old, tried, tested and failed policies of giving as much as possible to the rich while preventing the poor from ever having anything. "Trickledown" has never worked before, but they still promote it as though it were a startling new idea that they've just this minute thought of. Americans will suffer for it. In the end, we all will.

And on the Cameron front, things are also moving on. On the small scale, I am finally rid of TalkTalk, the phone and broadband company which is totally unbeatable if price is the only criterion but which has frighteningly bad customer service. Within a week or so, I will have my broadband with Orange, who also supply my mobile phone service and whose customer service is (almost) beyond reproach; and within a week or two after that, I will also have my landline with them. The phone service will be about three pounds dearer but, as just over a year ago I had got so pissed off with TalkTalk's customer service that I switched my broadband to Sky (at a cost increase of first £10 and more recently £12.50 a month), I will actually save money. I'll also be getting half price Sky TV for the next six months for a total saving of £72. So I'm pretty happy.

Visawise, things have not been as great. I got together all the stuff that had been demanded and sent it off with guaranteed 48 hour delivery. Parcelforce promptly lost the lot. That caused us to miss our deadline and even though they had been told what had happened, the visa bods slapped us with another rejection and told us we will have to go to an appeal hearing in the UK (but no idea exactly where yet). We already have everything they told us we needed to get the visa, so we'll have no problem there, especially when we turn up with a sheaf of letters and affidavits promising support and pointing out that Susan's presence will if anything EARN the British state money. The hearing itself will cost the government quite a few pounds, which they could have saved by waiting a week or so before issuing their hasty decision. And of course, it puts the wedding date in more doubt; we may have to postpone it for a second time. None of this is going to stop us finally being together as husband and wife, but it is very irritating. It has already been almost seven months since we saw one another, and it's hurting.

BUT...

I got a letter from the Inland Revenue recently (if you're American, you won't be remotely surprised to hear that this is the British equivalent of the IRS). It informed me that I had paid the wrong amount of income tax in 2008/09; uh oh. But reading on brings the discovery that in fact I had OVERpaid, because my employer at the time, Hilton International, had put the wrong tax code by my name and taken more than they should have throughout that tax year. In a separate envelope, they therefore also sent me a cheque for £1211.62, which will be put to very good use indeed. Once it clears I will be booking a flight to New York, where for the second year in a row I will be spending Christmas and New Year with Susan, her friends and family. New Year's Eve Susan and I will spend in the Sheraton Hotel at JFK Airport, my birthday celebration will be at an Italian place in Manhattan called Carmine's which I believe is quite famous but in any event sounds wonderful, and who knows WHAT we'll get up to for Valentine's Day, shortly after which I'll fly back to the UK a couple of months older and personally happy and sated. Of course, on 2nd January we will repeat last year's trick (or should that be this year's trick?) of getting up at 6am and taking a cab to The Blue Room to watch the Rangers-Celtic game complete with early morning beer.

We have plans to catch up on some of the things we missed last time. Ground Zero is top of that list, and the Stonewall Inn is not far behind it. We'll also catch the Olympic Diner and the very famous Sylvia's in Harlem, as well as at least one bus tour and at least one Broadway show (suggestions welcome). We'll get to see Susan's sister's new place in upstate New York, at a place called Highland Mills, and most importantly get to spend one hell of a lot of serious quality time together (how's THAT for a euphemism?). And at just over two months, it'll pretty much let us see what married life is going to be like.

Not too shabby, eh?

PS the spellchecker on this thing has just gone mad and highlighted words like "get", "which" and "taking". Most bizarre.

The beliefs of a right wing repuglican.

2010-08-27T00:42:00.009+01:00

I believe all life is sacred. So doctors who do things I don't approve of deserve to die. And "life" doesn't include anyone who is a criminal, unless they believe in my god and my holy book and shout it loudly enough, in which case they aren't really criminals but tragic, good people who have been corrupted by Democrats.

I believe absolutely in freedom of choice. Except for pregnant women. And poor people. After all, God will provide, so if they were better Christians they wouldn't be poor. And the women would have penises, because Jesus had a penis.

W is a genius. I mean Hell, I can't even SPELL misunderestimate.

If you said "Hell" like that, it would make you a blasphemer.

I believe every word in the bible is literally true. Now, there are lots of bits I haven't read, like that one that says pi=3 (whatever that means) or the one where God says insects have four legs and bats are birds. And there might be something about slaves having to obey their masters and the rightness of raping female prisoners of war. But my pastor hasn't told me about any of those, so they don't exist.

I believe in freedom of religion: everyone is perfectly free to believe all the things I do.

I believe in freedom of speech. So if I say something it's my right and if you criticise it you are denying me my rights. And when I criticise the stuff YOU say, well obviously it's my right under freedom of speech.

Everyone should speak English. If it's good enough for Jesus it's good enough for everyone else, and I know Jesus spoke English because I've read what he said in my bible.

All men are equal. But women aren't men. So they're not equal to men. And Jesus was white (I've seen the movie) so really it means white men.

Love thy neighbor. All my neighbors believe exactly the same stuff I do, so of course you don't have to love anyone who doesn't believe exactly the same stuff I do, in fact if you do you're a pervert.

You're probably a pervert anyway.

Allowing people who aren't like me to get married to just anyone they want to marry would mean millions more people getting married, and obviously that would destroy marriage.

Getting shot never did anyone any harm.

Sarah Palin and Dr. Laura are honorary men.

THOU shalt not.

Raoul Moat

2010-07-21T19:35:00.002+01:00

Raoul Moat was a human being. He is now dead.

I have no sympathy for him, but an awful lot of empathy for a mentally ill individual in whom the switch got tragically flipped. I felt the same way about Thomas Hamilton after the Dunblane massacre. Predictably, there are now large numbers of people shouting and wailing about what a monster he was, how he was a beast, an animal, not human. And they are all spectacularly missing the point. Something has gone disastrously wrong for these people, something massive and, fairly literally, mind-blowing, in order for them to do the things they do; and it is something for which the potential exists in every one of us, because we are all human beings just as they were. The same is true of the Nazis in Germany in the thirties and forties, from Hitler down. They were not subhuman in any way (and how ironic that people sometimes use that particular word to describe them, showing their complete obliviousness to what was wrong with Nazism).

The human mind is enormously complex, perhaps the most complex thing in the Universe, certainly one of them. And cases like Raoul Moat's, or Thomas Hamilton's, should encourage us to try and find out what went wrong in theirs, not simply to condemn them and try to distance ourselves from them by pretending it couldn't happen to us. The whole, tragic point of these cases, and of that of the Nazis and many others, is precisely that they ARE human, that they are exactly like us, and that therefore the potential for that behaviour exists in each and every one of us. We ignore that at our peril.

It's been a while.

2010-07-12T00:54:00.003+01:00

Well, that's the World Cup over for another four years. Or two years if you count the qualifiers. Spain won, as I had tipped from before the start of the tournament (not fishing for compliments, almost everyone did).

For the last month I have done precious little else. Not only Dodophobia but all my other online activities have been neglected, well other than my online grocery shopping, which has suddenly stopped being neglected and been restored to its previous prominent place in my life, on a temporary basis. I have seen lots of football matches and heard many a vuvuzela, while supporting ABE, or in other words Anyone But England. And ABE in fact won the World Cup a good fortnight ago when Germany took England to the cleaners and left the English moaning about the unfairness of not being given a goal when the ball crossed the line. Well, a little bit of delayed justice there as they were given a goal when the ball didn't cross the line in 1966, which led more or less directly to them lifting the trophy.

SOME other stuff has happened, though, mostly (I'm sure to no one's great surprise) involving Susan. My niece, Karrie, is over in New York City right now visiting Susan for her summer holidays. And today, they went to church (!), along with my other niece, Cheri, to listen to some gospel music. A damn good excuse, I feel. Karrie has had her first reuben sandwich, at the Edison Hotel. The reubens are truly vast in there, so they ordered one and halved it, and Karrie ate her entire half, which as she has the appetite of an unhungry mouse tells its own story.

Susan recently found something online which suggested to her that she could not get a marriage visa if I was receiving benefits. As I am, that would mean we would be unable to get married. So I headed to the local Citizens' Advice Bureau to ask them about it. They cleared things up very quickly: she cannot stay permanently IF she causes any FURTHER reliance on state funds. In other words, we may not claim any benefit for her or because of her. That will mean a couple of phone calls once she is living here, because I have to tell them about any change in my circumstances, such as having a wife live with me, and that would normally lead to an increase in benefits. So I will have to call them to sort that out somehow, so that they know she is here but don't give us any more money. She is not allowed to work for the first six months-- logical and rational they ain't-- but once she is she can get a job and we can stop claiming benefits at all, other than my Disability Living Allowance which is not income related. And as my total benefit amount is just marginally below what I was earning in my last job, there is no doubt that we can live on it for those six months without any difficulty.

My wee nephew Robbie had his seventh birthday today. I was delighted to learn that on their recent holiday in France, he declared himself to be "feeling creative" and worked a bit on the book he is writing, which it turns out is about five cheeky monkeys. He's a bit of a wordsmith, that lad, loves language, bought a French phrasebook before they travelled out there. For the last two Christmases, my present to him has been a thesaurus. When he received the first one, he was astounded and amazed to discover there could be a book about words and it rapidly became his favourite book, which he would take to bed with him and read before going to sleep. Not your average five, six or seven year old, our Robbie. He's a normal wee boy other than his love for and ability with words, his wonderful level of vocabulary; he's not being hothoused or anything. He has the attention span of his age group, for instance, had difficulty staying with it for very long when I played him at Scrabble recently (might well have had something to do with the fact I was ahead of him-- just barely, to stretch him a bit) but his behaviour was totally normal for such a young 'un. He adores his language, though, adores words. And his uncle couldn't be prouder of that.

Lena Meyer-Landrut

2010-05-30T02:17:00.004+01:00

Okay. Yesterday ended up being quite an extreme day. NOT unusually, I woke up late, took a long time to get out of bed, knew I had to go out and do some shopping, ended up not quite following the previously worked out plan. Instead of my previous idea of going to my regular supermarket and doing some grocery shopping as well as buying some beer to drink while watching this year's Eurovision Song Contest, I went to a different, smaller supermarket and bought much fewer groceries and some beer. Then I took a cab home, because what I had bought was heavier than I had planned. In the cab, I told the driver that the contest was going to be crap (well, crapper than usual) because I had watched the second semi-final two nights before and all the songs which were classic, traditional Eurovision fare had been knocked out, and the bloody contest had lost its sense of humour. I wasn't expecting much.

Later, I spoke to Susan on the phone, just as the broadcast was starting, and I told her no, I couldn't turn the volume down because the Eurovision Song Contest was starting. I said I would call her when it was over and we hung up. Well, there were still a couple of fairly eurovisiony songs in there (from Rumania and Denmark (you can always rely on the Scandinavians)), and a couple of surprisingly good, astonishingly credible ones, from Ukraine and Germany. I had never heard songs of that ilk nor calibre in the contest before, and I voted for Germany. Beforehand, there had been some talk about the German song being a bit like Björk, and I dismissed the possibility as ludicrous, because after all it was Eurovision. And it wasn't really LIKE Björk, but it wasn't as UNbjörkish as I had expected, and I really liked it, and voted for it, as I said.

Then the voting started. I was pleasantly surprised that the first two maximum scores went to Denmark, and that Germany also got a few points from each of those votes (the songs I vote for generally crash and burn from the beginning). And then, what do you know, after a few more rounds of voting, Germany was in the lead. Well, it wasn't going to last, but I enjoyed the rare thrill. Then it went a bit further ahead. And before I knew what was happening it was 34 points ahead and I was cheering every score it got. Not too long after that it became clear that the song I had voted for was actually going to win. And it did; just the second German winner ever (after Nicole in 1982), and the first ever really quite credible sounding Eurovision winner in the history of the Universe ever. Here it is on Youtube, the winning performance taken from German TV. For reference, HERE is Nicole's reprise after winning in 1982, and here is Guildo Horn's (still amazing) 1998 performance in Birmingham, England, the previously most talked about and loved German entry.

Yeah, Lena...

Ode to Mount Unpronounceable.

2010-05-15T21:08:00.004+01:00

Okay, so Susan had a direct flight from JFK to Glasgow. Naturally, it was delayed by two hours. Which meant she only got in THREE hours ahead of her originally scheduled time rather than five. Boo bloody hoo. We had a wonderful time together for a week and a half, including a stunning meal at Raeburn's which, remarkably, was entirely Scottish, including the wondrous cheeseboard. And I got a cheese shop recommendation from the owner's daughter, Melli's in the west end of Glasgow, which of course I shall have to try out. That cheeseboard had the most insanely fabulous cheddar I have ever tasted, as closely related to the average supermarket version as I am to a shrub growing on the side of an Icelandic volcano.

We got most of the marriage documents filled in (or out if you prefer), Susan got a look at the venue for our reception and approves mightily of it, but best of all we got to spend some time together. At the end of her stay, we went down to Glasgow Airport in time for her flight, couldn't check in immediately because no desk number was listed, so we went and had breakfast (which itself was a recurring theme of the visit). Once we had devoured that, there was still no gate showing so Susan went off to try and find out what was going on. It turned out the flight had been cancelled, along with all the other flights that day, due to a return of the sainted ash cloud. She rebooked and got a flight for two days later, on the Friday. So we got an extra two days out of it. We LOVE Icelandic volcanoes! That meant she got to be here for the general election to the UK parliament, and she was very game about it on the basis that in a few months she'll be living here. However, compared to a US election, it was all much too complicated for her: all those parties all over the place, some only standing in Scotland, some in Wales, some mainly in England, and then Northern Ireland has a completely different set of parties, at which point she gave up trying to understand it all, sensibly I think. She was confused also because of the two biggest parties, the most right wing one is blue and the slightly further left one is red, exactly the opposite of the US. And when all the votes had been counted, the winner was no one at all, only there were no court cases and no corrupt practices leading to that outcome. The Daily Show, which is available here on More 4 (but WHY no Colbert Report, hmm?), has been having enormous fun with it all, and Susan has been hugely appreciating their stuff about it. As have I.

Anyway, we are now separated again, communicating much more often than daily by phone, text message and internet. The difference this time, though, is that when she next comes here, we think in September, it will be forever; so I can now say to her "when you get back home" rather than "when you visit next", and we get to try to feel that she is just on an extended holiday in New York. Since her visit, my divorce from my first wife has been finalised, so there are no obstacles in the way now, well other than UK Immigration of course. Mind you, when she got here this time, an eager beaver decided she walked like an actress (I'm not making this up), interrog... sorry, interviewed her on the basis that he suspected her of being here to work and eventually phoned me on my mobile as I sat at international arrivals waiting for her. Oddly enough, our stories matched, mainly because his suspicions were bollocks. So he was kind enough to let her in. But Susan was rather excitimicated by the time she reached me, and it took her several days to calm down completely. In the circumstances, she is doing amazingly well with the visa process, although she is terrified at every turn that she will be turned down, even though she knows there is no reason for that to be the case.

So, in October we get married. We are both looking forward to that rather a lot, in fact we are being completely pathetic about it all. Watch this space.

Oh, yeah, I've written a poem, inspired by this most recent visit. Here it is.

AND
And cups of tea and breakfasts and free baby food
and salads and scones and fruit loaf and bin bags and
toilet roll and buses. And drunks on the bus and tramps
in the street and junkies at the chemist's and news in the
paper and Jon Stewart on the telly and standing in the
rain and looking at trees and sitting on benches and
shopping for sandwiches and Indian takeaways and
Chinese prawn crackers and deep fried pizza and pints
in the pub and nothing is dull or everyday if you're there.

The Scottish weather

2010-04-18T15:48:00.002+01:00

Aye, I know, it's a crap topic: talking about the weather and all that. But the weather here has been very odd in recent times. Usually, as Susan has said, I describe the weather to her in shades of grey. But in the last week or two, it's been consistently... well, sunny and... warm, and... well, I'm not quite sure how to put this, but... blue.

I don't trust it. It's up to something. I've been saying so since it started. There's this big yellow bastard in the sky and it looks evil, it looks dangerous. That's what I've been telling people, anyone who would listen, and none of them would but I've been telling them anyway.

And what's happening now? We've got chunks of ICELAND falling on us! The bloody SKY is falling on us!! Cars are getting covered in black, grey ash, planes can't take off or land, people in the north are talking about the nasty, sulphurous taste of the air... I TOLD them, I bloody WARNED them. But who's got the last laugh now, eh? EH?

Not me.

Because Susan has a flight booked via, yup, Reykjavik. The capital of Iceland. She's due to land here on Saturday afternoon. As it stands, though, things are kind of up in the air. Unlike the planes. We think she'll get in okay, because SURELY the volcanic ash cloud can't hang about not moving for a whole further week. Can it? But, it seems likely that Scottish airspace might be the only airspace in the UK with flights taking off and landing, which will mean lots of flights for other places, in England basically, will land at Glasgow and coaches will be booked by the airlines to take their passengers to their destinations. It's happened already: two flights landed at Glasgow the other day which were actually for London and Manchester. Which means there may well be flights landing here next Saturday, but there will equally likely be lots of delays. So Susan will probably get here, but she might not be in the happiest of moods by the time we see each other. Mind you, once we do any bad mood isn't going to survive. It'll be yet another fantastic visit, and we have a table booked at Raeburn's for the following Friday evening. I might well post about that.

The US Healthcare Bill

2010-03-24T23:54:00.006Z

Well, the House of Representatives eventually passed the bill, and estimates are that over thirty million Americans currently without health insurance will get it and that only 15000, rather than 30000, will die each year because they don't have it.

In all honesty, the bill is still pretty damn weak and is nowhere near the universal coverage enjoyed by people in this country and in fact every other developed country other than the United States. But, considering how horrendously painful its passage has been, as well as the lives it will save (it will also save money, but that isn't enough to persuade the repuglicans that it's an acceptable idea, because insurance companies will make slightly less obscene profits as a result of it), it is a vital first step. Most Americans wanted the bill passed, indeed the majority wanted a better, stronger version, despite repuglican outright lies claiming the opposite-- and more will come around when the apocalyptic consequences disgracefully, disingenuously and dishonestly put forward by opponents don't come to pass and when their friends and neighbours as well as themselves find life just a little bit easier because it has passed. Fewer Americans will lose their homes or their lives as a result of having no health insurance, maybe it will even stop being the number one cause of bankruptcy in the country-- a simply unimaginable fact in the rest of the world, in what I call the civilised world, where countries take care of their citizens.

It's a start. For the American people and for President Obama. It gives his administration, which was born among so much hope and optimism, a chance to come good after more than a year of mostly disappointing events.

The League Cup Final

2010-03-24T23:36:00.005Z

Not one for my north American readers, this, but my team Rangers won the Scottish League Cup (officially known these days as the Co-operative Insurance Cup) on Sunday with a 1-0 win over Saint Mirren, the local team in Paisley, where I now live, and the team supported by my brother-in-law and all three of my Paisley-living nephews, and one of my nieces. In my defence at not supporting the local team, I wasn't born here and Rangers, as well as being the biggest and most successful club in Scotland (and reigning champions and probably about to be again), play their home games just about three miles from where I was brought up and were my local team as a boy.

In the game, though, Saint Mirren were by far the better team. They had possession of the ball about two thirds of the time, an amazing statistic in any game, especially by a small club playing against Rangers. And Rangers had not one but two players sent off (thrown out of the game and can't be replaced) so Saint Mirren were playing for quite a while with eleven against nine. But they didn't have the quality of goalscorer to put the ball in the net, and with seven minutes left Rangers broke forward and scored a beautiful goal with an excellent cross and wonderfully accurate header.

The Saints fans were gutted, of course. I have it on good authority that it was the most galling defeat they've had since a game some years ago against a Swedish team whose name begins with H (out of courtesy to family and friends I'm not actually going to name that team), and indeed Saint Mirren forums were discussing urgently whether this one might be even worse before deciding that it wasn't, quite. For probably the first time in my life, when I saw the inevitable shot of a wee boy in the other team's colours crying his eyes out, I didn't laugh immoderately but felt my heart go out to him, and to all the Saint Mirren supporters.

For that reason (well, okay, not ONLY that reason) I was delighted when, this evening, the Saints went out and won 4-0 against Celtic, the second best team in Scotland and Rangers' historic and eternal bitter rivals, the other half of the "Old Firm" who have utterly dominated Scottish football over the years and decades. That result also means that Rangers would now have to lose six of their last ten games in the league to have any chance of throwing their title away, having lost just one of about forty eight in the last year and a bit. So I'm probably twice as happy as the Saint Mirren fans.

Ach well, it's only a game. Apparently.

Tea trays, washboards and skeletons

2010-02-20T16:24:00.001Z

The British skeleton bobber Shelley Rudman said on TV the other night that the skeleton is not, as some people think, a tea tray. And she's right. It's more like a washboard. Shelley won a silver medal in the event at the last Winter Olympics in Turin, and Amy Williams got a gold last night in Vancouver, Britain's first female individual gold in a Winter Olympics since 1952. Their event is exciting and excruciating to watch, but rather than "skeleton" it would be more accurately called "throwing yourself down a mountain lying face down on a washboard, head first". It's insane, which may be why Britain does so well at it. A country which is not exactly the strongest at the winter games has won at least one medal at this sport every damn time it's been in the games, culminating in last night's completely dominating performance by a woman who twice smashed the track record, once broke the record for fastest start, and eventually won by well over half a second, an eternity in terms of the skeleton.

I've also enjoyed the snowboard cross, or "throwing yourself down a mountain side by side with some other people while standing on an ironing board". This is also exciting and features people diving arse over tit on a regular basis (those two things are not, in all honesty, entirely unrelated). And short track speed skating is likewise, for essentally the same reasons.

It's the curling that I'm really watching, though, as usual in the Winter Olympics. Scotland (as the officially "Great Britain" team would be more accurately named-- when England once amazingly qualified for the World Championship, all four of even THAT team were Scots) is doing fairly well, especially in the women's event, where they yesterday took the reigning European champions, Germany, to the cleaners (no washboards in sight though) by a margin of 7-4. They've won three games so far and lost one, while the men have won two and lost two but are looking okay for a place in the semi-finals. I've been staying up until five and six in the morning to watch this, and will not be stopping until the medals are presented.

BUT, the event I'm thinking of entering next time (along with Susan, but she doesn't know it yet, so keep it to yourselves) is the ice dancing. Marks are awarded in this for degree of difficulty, and as absolutely anything at all would be insanely difficult for us, especially bearing in mind our size and shape, all we'd have to do to win the gold would be to stay on our feet for more than five seconds. I reckon that in four years we would probably be able to master that.

And if she doesn't want to do it, I'll go to a jumble sale and get myself a washboard.

More New York stuff

2010-01-25T12:08:00.005Z

I've edited the poem I sent in the last post but one.

MANHATTAN
There's a car that isn't yellow.
Hail it anyway; you never know
what might happen.

Quite a dramatic edit by my standards. Anyway, there's more stuff to tell you about from the trip. We'll start with Sunday the third of January.

There was a football match in Glasgow that day, between Rangers and Celtic. The New Year Old Firm game, one of the big events of the year. And I was on the wrong continent. But modern communications are a wonderful thing, and I looked up the North American Rangers Supporters Association on the internet. Sure enough, there was a pub on 2nd Avenue showing the game: The Blue Room. It's a Rangers bar, seems to be owned by a Rangers fan, and it is also the home of the Big Apple Bears, New York's Rangers supporters' association. Now, the game was kicking off at 1230 British time; that's 7.30am New York time. So, we got up at 6.30, went out and hailed a cab after buying coffee and muffins to go. We were there by just after seven. Went in the side door, as advised on the website, took breakfast in with us (the kitchen isn't open at that time in the morning, but they have no problem with people bringing food and hot drinks in with them), paid our $20 a head and sat down. The place was jumping, with a wondrous mix of accents. My favourites were the broad New York accents shouting Scottish football insults with Glaswegian terminology, presumably belonging to Scottish guys who had lived there for decades. Susan and I were both wearing Rangers shirts, it was her first ever game, and we had a great time. At half time we each had a beer with our free meat pies, at around 8am, which tickled Susan no end. She got really into the match, which bodes well for the future of course, and even avoided saying anything daft or embarrassing while joining in heartily. I think she even understood when I explained the offside rule to her, which is one for me to boast about.

After the game we headed to Port Authority and caught a bus to New Jersey to visit the family again, to wish everyone Happy New Year and to have a pretty impromptu engagement party. Not many people showed up-- it was very impromptu and they'd not had any notice to speak of, 24 hours at most-- but we had a lot of fun; it was another deeply pleasant family occasion. Actually we had been out there on New Year's Day too, back to the River Edge Diner for the traditional family New Year lunch. I had a plateful from the salad bar and a turkey leg with veggies and coleslaw. That leg was BIG, man! I couldn't eat it all and took some away with me.

I first visited New York in 1999, for two days on the way back from Pennsylvania. It was my first trip to the US and, as I was nearby, I wanted to verify that New York really existed. Also I wanted to visit the Museum of Modern Art to see Vincent's beautiful Starry Night, but when I got there the museum's workers were having a strike, the cause sounded reasonable and I didn't cross the picket line. So I had waited another ten years to finally have the opportunity to see it in the flesh. It was worth the wait. MOMA is wonderful. We might have spent a lot longer in there, but we were using a wheelchair and it was hard on Susan; still it was a great day. We saw Starry Night, of course, but much else besides. She wanted to see the Jackson Pollock room, and there was a wonderful energy in there; it was a very pleasant surprise for me. Got to see some Andy Warhol, including the famous soup cans and a Marilyn head, some Roy Lichtenstein (not a favourite of mine but always worth seeing) and a lot more, as well as having a pretty decent coffee on the fifth floor. After leaving we bought ourselves some gyros from a street vendor, and it was absolutely delicious and very warming in the cold weather.

But the best middle eastern food we had (well, kind of middle eastern, north African really, but hey, it's a link) was at a Moroccan restaurant on Ninth Avenue, called Tagine. Tagine is also a traditional Moroccan dish, well THE traditional Moroccan dish, and we had one, as well as a sort of vegetable stew, and some Moroccan spring roll like things as a starter. Before even the starter, we were given some very fresh, very warm bread with dips, one of which was a sauce called harissa. This was one of the hottest foods I have ever tasted, truly beautiful, but so hot it would have completely killed the flavour of the rest of the meal had I eaten more than a couple of small spoonsful of it. It was Great food (note the capital G), and Susan had a $25 voucher, so it wasn't as expensive as it might have been.

The only movie we saw, other than on TV, was Crazy Heart, starring Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal. It is an excellent film, grabbed a couple of Golden Globes and will surely have a fistful of Oscar nominations. Jeff's performance is stellar, he is absolutely the centre of the movie and everyone orbits him to great effect. I heard Maggie describe it on The Daily Show as "a tiny movie", which is about right, but in this case tiny doesn't mean small. It is well worth your time and money to see. After it we crossed 42nd Street to a Mexican restaurant called Chevy's, the queue at the Dallas BBQ having been too intimidating in the cold, and it was pretty damn good. Mexican isn't my favourite cuisine, still isn't, but it was well prepared from fresh ingredients and you can't complain about that.

All in all, we had a long succession of wonderful days, some wonderful experiences, and an awful lot of wonderful, wonderful time together. I do believe Eliza, the cat, loved her daddy, which is just as well as she'll be moving over here with Susan come the autumn. Mainly she just thought it was a really cool idea to have TWO humans to pet her instead of just the one, but the one with the hairy face didn't seem to mind petting her more or less constantly, and she was well happy with that.

Finally for this post, and probably for this New York trip, a poem. I wrote it in a cafe on 42nd Street just before we saw Crazy Heart, while waiting for Susan to come back from her apartment with the movie voucher she had. I like this one.

TEA
When I was a boy, I drank cup after cup
of tea, hot and welcoming and satisfying.
Then I had an Earl Grey. It had no milk,
but it smelled of beautiful flowers, heady
and exciting. It was like Times Square on
a good night, bright smiling and fierce, at
once bewildering and innately understood.
A few hundred gallons later, feeling bloated
and streamlined, wise and indescribably
foolish, I found a woman who was in the
same place. We sat down together, put the
kettle on, and watched until it boiled.

New York, New York

2010-01-21T16:07:00.007Z

What a month. The longest time Susan and I have spent together so far, and we are now wearing engagement rings and have the wedding rings tucked away ready.

One of the first things that happened during the trip was, sadly, that Susan's mother died. It happened during the night just before we went out there to meet the relatives; it wasn't unexpected as she had been very ill for a very long time, but a shock for Susan anyway of course, and I was just glad I was able to be there for her. The upshot was that I met every relative this side of Alaska. I have never felt so warmly welcomed or accepted, and within a few days of arriving in the US I was suddenly a family member at a family funeral. It was quite an experience, for all of us, and quite a burst of humanity. I never met Nancy physically, although we had spoken on the phone and by Skype and were friends, but I felt so much love for her from relatives and from everyone else we met, and it was obvious that she was a very special woman.

We were in New Jersey for over a week, taking in Christmas, which was very beautiful. Again I was surrounded with family love, and I owe a great debt of thanks not only to Susan but to her sister Donna and all her family; I hope they know the thanks are given and the love returned. Christmas dinner was cooked by Susan's nephew John, who is a qualified professional chef, and it was truly magnificent. Rather than turkey we had an amazing roast beef joint and a ham, of which I felt compelled to take photographs. We had started with Italian hors d'oeuvres of cheese and cooked meats and sundried tomatoes. It was incredibly difficult not to eat far too much, but I just about managed it although I had to sit very still for quite a while afterwards. On Boxing Day (or December 26th as it's called over there) we went to some other relatives in Connecticut for White Elephant Day. This is a family tradition in which everyone sits around and regifts something. Everyone takes a number and the somethings are distributed on a more or less random basis, although there is also the possibility to "steal" something that someone else has already taken rather than pick one of the still wrapped objects. It was a lot of fun and another state to add to my collection.

After we got back to the City, there was still my entire list of desired destinations and experiences to go through. And we got through almost all of them, at the same time meeting friends of both Susan and myself (I have friends from Munich who are born New Yorkers and now live there again). We had cheesecake at Junior's, as well as at the River Edge Diner in NJ, and I have to tell you that, good as the famous Junior's version was, the one at the River Edge Diner is the greatest cheesecake on the planet, my niece's vote for a bakery called New York New York notwithstanding. We also ate at the Edison Hotel, where I had an absolutely reubenrific sandwich experience as well as my first ever matzo ball soup; and had a New York diner breakfast experience at the Westway Diner on 8th Avenue by 43rd Street, eggs sunny side up, hash browns, ham, bacon and sausage, pancakes, bottomless coffee and all.

I had my photo taken at the Dakota Building, right by the spot where John Lennon was killed, just before we visited Strawberry Fields and the Imagine memorial circle. The Chrysler Building and Empire State Building were visited on one morning, and the view of Lady Chrysler from a telescope on the observatory on the 86th floor of the ESB was worth the price of the trip all on its own. To see that wondrous art deco architecture so apparently close up was breathtaking to me, AND I got a fine beer at the Heartland Brewery back down on the ground afterwards.

On New Year's Eve, we went up to the roof of Susan's building, but thanks to a new building we couldn't actually see the ball from there and there was no one else up there, so we eventually went back down and watched it on TV like everyone else, despite being in Times Square and able to hear the crowds from her apartment. Still managed to get one of those daft blue Nivea hats you saw everyone wearing on TV though, so I can prove I was there...

All in all, it was a fantastic trip, most memorable, especially for all the time I was able to spend with my Susan, holding hands, watching TV and movies, playing with the cat, seeing and sharing her city, her family and her friends-- now MY family and friends, too. It was magical, and there were many tears from both of us at JFK as I was leaving. A wedding is expected later this year, and you're all invited to Paisley for the festivities. Just tell them Cameron sent you.

Canal Street and New York

2009-12-16T19:19:00.009Z

Yeah I know there's a Canal Street IN New York, but there's one in Paisley too, just down the road from my flat, and I was crossing it on Saturday about noon, in a mobility scooter, when I got hit by a car. It was something that had long been on my "I wonder what it's like to..." list, so now I can tick it off. It was weird; I had loads of time to think to myself "oh, so THIS is what it's like to be hit by a car. I wonder what it looks like to other people. I wonder whether I'll be badly injured" before I hit the ground. As it happens, I wasn't badly injured, in fact apart from some muscle bruising I wasn't injured at all, so quite a result really. An ambulance came, the police came, it wasn't the driver's fault (had I known the bloody filter lane no longer existed, meaning cars can turn left there from the middle lane, where I got hit, it would never have happened), end of not terribly dramatic story. I made it to my sister's pantomime, Cinderfella, that night. The stairs up to the performance space were a challenge (and getting down them for a pee even more so), I had taken no pain killers, but the show was very funny and I had a great time. Got very worried though, concerned for my visit to the large fruit that is New York City.

I made it though, had a wonderful flight from Heathrow to JFK, great seat right next to the toilet and with no seatback impeding me in front (I was over the wing). The woman next to me had an accent I couldn't figure out, so I asked her where she was from. "Originally Jamaica" she replied, "but been in Britain since my teenage years, first in Manchester, then London, then Peterborough". So no wonder I hadn't been able to identify her accent: she didn't HAVE a readily identifiable one! We had a good chat, the people on either side of me were friendly too, so were all the cabin crew, so it really was an excellent flight.

The bus from JFK took about twenty minutes to get out of the bloody massive airport, only about another twenty five, Susan told me, to then reach Port Authority. There was some confusion regarding suitcases and then seconds later I was standing in exactly the spot from which I first saw NYC ten years ago (unless you count the New Jersey Turnpike view of the skyline). About ten minutes later, only two blocks away but I was walking with sticks remember, we reached Susan's building, well not HER building exactly but the one she lives in. It is a lovely building, the former Times Square Hotel which is now a social housing project owned and run by an organisation called Common Ground. It is, as Susan described it herself, like a microcosm of the city, with all its life, its quirks and its quirky citizens. Haven't left the apartment since, until now, when I am sitting in the basement in the building's computer lab. But my poor bruised muscles have been healing nicely as I rested while getting plenty of exercise in the apartment moving around it and even exercising my legs while I sat. Watched the Colbert Report last night for the first time in many months and it was a wonderful episode, saw Jimmy Kimmel Live for the first time in over four years. Tomorrow we will be going to see Shrek the Musical, on Sunday we will go to New Jersey for the first time to meet her family (except Eliza the cat, whom I have already met and am getting along famously with), and then on the visit goes. It is wonderful being together again, we are feeling relaxed and happy in one another's company, with the sticks my walking is almost back to its normal level.

All is well in my Universe right now. I have even written my first poem; actually it got written in my head about five minutes after arriving. Would you like to hear it? Okay then.

MANHATTAN

There's a car that isn't a cab.

Better not hail it.

2009-12-16T19:19:00.001Z

Good news and bad news

2009-12-03T19:42:00.005Z

Well, the good news is that I'm going to spend Christmas and New Year with Susan in New York and New Jersey (where her family lives, in River Edge). The bad news is... well, I suppose I've not been sleeping too well lately.

My flight is happening thanks to a mightily generous Christmas present from my mother. I fly out on 14th December (a week on Monday as I type this) and back on 11th January, so it gives us almost a month together, during which, as I mentioned in a previous post, I can meet her friends and family, not to mention Eliza, Bailey and Stella (her cat and two dogs who live with her relatives). And she will get to meet friends of mine who live over there, too.

We have tickets for Shrek the Musical on the 17th, so that'll be me turning into instant wee boy at least for a few hours. Ground Zero, Strawberry Fields, the Empire State Building and Lady Chrysler are on the agenda, and who knows what else. And the last time I was in New York, for a couple of days in 1999, I got six or seven poems out of it, so I'll have to make sure I have a notebook with me.

The readers of Dodophobia will be the first to know what happens there (well, other than Susan and me obviously, and you won't be getting any gory details either), so stay tuned.

Kat, Tom and Will

2009-11-24T11:49:00.006Z

In London this morning, Tuesday 24th November 2009, Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle will give "notice of their intention to form a civil partnership". Nothing strange about that, you might think, but, as their names suggest, they are of opposite genders. And, just as marriage is not allowed for gay couples, so civil partnership is legally not allowed for straight couples. It is for precisely that reason that Kat and Tom are taking this step: they do not believe in discrimination on the grounds of sexuality; they do not want to be part of an institution that is closed to their friends because the bigots say so. They registered for their ceremony by giving only their initials (want to bet THAT won't happen again?) and at 1030 UK time this morning they will be there at Islington Town Hall, along with the great civil rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, to make their statement in support of this great cause.

Meanwhile, over the pond in Arkansas, just a few hours later, a ten year old boy named Will Phillips will sit down at school, and seated is how he will remain while his classmates are reciting the pledge of allegiance. He refuses to make an oath about "liberty and justice for all" while homosexuals are denied liberty and justice in the form of marriage. Now, Arkansas is one of the reddest of red states (in other words, dominated by repuglicans), and Will has been subjected to abuse, taunts and teasing over his stance. But he has refused to give up and insists he will not do so until his gay friends have the same rights as he does. What a moral giant of a young man.

Gay equality is our modern day civil rights struggle, arguably the last great such struggle, and it is important to all of us, gay, straight or bi. Until we are ALL free, none of us is completely free, and until we are all granted the same rights under the law, including the right of marriage, we are not all free. Why should it be my business or yours who someone falls in love with or chooses to spend their life with? No one tells me whether I should have a life partner with blond or dark hair, blue or green eyes, light or dark skin, so why the hell should they be allowed to tell me they must have a vagina and not a penis? As it happens, my intended is a brown eyed, brown haired, light skinned woman from New York, and that is my choice (and hers of course). We will get married; and we see no reason why all our friends should not have the same option. It is ridiculous to tell people they must go through this or that door depending on the dangly bits of their lover, as offensive as telling them what lunch counter they can sit at on the basis of their skin colour. What the religious do in the privacy of their own churches, mosques, synagogues or whatever is entirely up to them, but they have no right to dictate to the rest of us what happens in public spaces or the public realm-- and homophobic bigotry is primarily religious in nature. I will not willingly put up with bigotry against my fellow citizens, and nor will Kat, Tom or Will.

Respect to them all, and congratulations and a long, happy life together to Tom and Kat.

Update: To no one's great surprise, Kat and Tom were of course turned away at the town hall and refused their civil partnership, as detailed here: they are now taking legal advice and intend to take their fight all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.

Lights, cameras, action!

2009-11-09T15:34:00.015Z

I'm a member of Sofa Cinema (for US readers, the equivalent of Netflix but associated with the Guardian), and my latest three DVDs are Disc One of I, Claudius, the bonus disc for This is Spinal Tap, and King Kong vs. Godzilla. These have delighted me no end.

For those unfamiliar with the Godzilla movies, I am not talking here about the abysmal nineties Hollywood monstrosities (which had proper special effects and therefore immediately lost any sense of understanding the point of the exercise), but the glorious Japanese originals. The monsters are VERY clearly guys in suits (hell they even fight, almost, according to Marquis of Queensberry rules), the mouths keep moving long after the speech has finished, the dialogue is painfully stilted-- apparently translated by Japanese people without recourse to any professional assistance-- and the plots are utter nonsense, despite having their hearts very much in the right place: these were pro-environment movies, albeit really badly made, DECADES before inconvenient truths were generally noticed. If I've made them sound awful, well they are, but SO awful that they are glorious; they are absolutely hilarious. Very much in the manner of the great Ed Wood.

Ed, of course, was an American film maker and dreamer. He somehow dreamed that he was capable of making watchable movies; he made movies all right, but spectacularly incompetently, and tripped over backwards into genius. His most celebrated film-- rightly-- is Plan 9 From Outer Space, which was also Bela Lugosi's last film. He died two days into shooting. Ed cast his wife's chiropodist as Lugosi's double, despite the fact that he was about a foot and a half taller than him and bore no facial resemblance to him whatsoever. So Ed cut some of Bela's early rehearsal footage into the movie, regardless of whether it actually fitted anywhere, and had the chiropodist walk around with his cloak covering his face at all times. This caused him to have to take bizarrely roundabout routes from one side of a room to the other at times to make sure his face wouldn't be towards camera, but hey, who cares, right? The film has some classic lines like "flying saucers? You mean the kind from up there?" and "one thing's sure. The captain's dead-- murdered-- and someone's responsible!". It also has a retired wrestler called Tor Johnson, an American schlock TV star called Elvira, and of course Ed Wood's wife's chiropodist. It is often cited as the worst movie ever made-- the stock footage from a dinosaur movie randomly spliced in no doubt contributes to that estimation-- and it is still available on DVD to this day. I recommend that you try to see it. I remember seeing it once in a glorious fleapit cinema in Munich called Neues Arena. It was a late night showing; the kiosk sales person was also the ticket taker and the projectionist; and there were about twelve people in the audience. I had smoked a great big joint before arriving there, and I swear everyone else in the place had done the same thing, because every time one of the superbly incompetent lines was uttered, or sometimes without that reminder, one person would giggle and gradually every other person in there did the same thing. It was absolutely the perfect way to see an Ed Wood movie. You won't be able to replicate that, but you can still see the movie. And King Kong vs Godzilla, and other Ed Wood and Godzilla movies, with or without herbal assistance. If you know what's good for you, you will: you should never underestimate the power of "so crap it's good".

Poems.

2009-11-07T17:04:00.006Z

I told you there would be occasional poetry infesting this blog, so here goes. Some new works.

SALMON
That's the last time I smoke a salmon,
he promised himself as giant multi-
coloured pink swirls adorned the wall
that way and this, swishily and swervily,
shrinkily and growily. Sometimes he
wished vaguely that he had taken the
builder, whose name was Barry, for
his word and added the other three,
but tonight he just enjoyed the show.
Until Anita the average anteater
started nibbling the wooden chips in
his paper, rendering the article about
those Moldavian decorators illegible
except for the word "EXCLUSIVE",
which on its own was of limited value,
as Anita solemnly agreed with an
uproarious grin. Then she hid behind
the surprised old man on the pavement,
who stayed where he was to avoid her
blushes.

WORSE
How awful to live in the World of Better,
where people always say "well that could
have gone better" and measure their
distance from perfection, rarely knowing
satisfaction. Surely preferable in the World
of Worse, where it could always be worse,
where people are aware of their distance
from total disaster, where there can be true
joy at its aversion.

APPLES
People said the old woman downstairs
was a witch, and they also said that blue
apples and green apples were different
to the core.

Yankees.

2009-11-07T17:01:00.002Z

THEY DID IT!! The Yanks won game six by the fine score of 7-3, having dominated from start to finish, and the Phillies, especially Jimmy Rollins, have cheesesteak all over their faces and ain't waving their daft bloody towels any more.

Sorry. Couldn't help it.

Go Yankees.

2009-11-03T15:32:00.005Z

Susan is a New York Yankees fan; she was born in the Bronx, where the team plays. And right now they are in the World Series, playing against the reigning champions, the Philadelphia Phillies. As I write this, the Yanks are leading by three games to two in the series, and so need just one more win to win the series, which we hope will come in tomorrow night's game at Yankee Stadium.

I say "we" because, in the spirit of romance and partnership, I decided to take an interest by watching the deciding game in the Yanks' previous series against the Los Angeles Angels. And blow me down if it didn't get me hooked. So hooked, in fact, that I signed up for ESPN so I could watch it live rather than the minute or so behind I was getting with the streamed broadcast. And we've been watching the games together three thousand miles apart, by phoning as the game starts and hanging up shortly after it ends.

Baseball's exciting stuff, not at all like the borefest that is cricket, which many people on this side of the Atlantic imagine it resembles. It is complex and fast-paced-- to the extent that I often am unable to keep up with what has just happened and have to wait for an explanation from the commentators or from Susan, or whoever might happen to be in the room with her as she also falls behind occasionally-- and has one hell of a lot of specific terms which I will have to learn to keep following it. For instance, it's damn hard for me so far deciding just what's a strike and what's a ball, sometimes, although I'm already getting better and was able for instance to laugh right on cue when one poor opposition player started jogging to first base after only three instead of the required four balls, and before Susan had caught on. I have even begun screaming in delight when a Yankees player unexpectedly reaches base or more expectedly scores a run, or when a Phillies player drops the ball or misses a catch. I still fall behind reality a lot though (nothing new there, I suppose, but watching football it rarely happens. And by football I mean football, not gridiron: the clue is in the word "foot"). I've also started being abusively sarcastic about Phillies fans and their silly towel-waving. In short, I'm having a great time and have discovered a new sporting love. Now I just have to decide which player I want on the back of the shirt Susan's going to buy me. At the moment I think Joba Chamberlain is in the lead, because he is closer to my own body shape than any sporting hero I have ever seen. Which is another thing I love about baseball: some of those athletes look decidedly unathletic and could never in a million years cut it in any other sporting discipline.

Of course, Susan's end of the deal is to return the compliment when she moves over here, and watch and try to learn football. I can't wait to teach her the offside rule...

Labyrinthitis.

2009-10-23T16:41:00.005+01:00

Sorry for my absence. I've been suffering from the above illness, which is an inner ear infection, leading to dizziness, nausea and lack of balance. I'm on antibiotics now and it's getting better, but I had two days of not daring to move, not eating and not really drinking anything because if I needed to pee I would have to move. It hasn't been pleasant. However, the antibiotic I've been prescribed has the glorious name "prochlorperazine", which just about makes up for it as far as I'm concerned. And I did get lots of excellent sympathy and told I had yellow skin, which worried the doctor enough that she came out to visit me at home, by which time the drug was kicking in well and I was vastly better and looking close to (my) normal.

All in all I got to spend two days doing nothing but drowsing in my chair and my bed and being sympathised over; I got to be a wee boy again for a short while, which can't be a bad thing!

Thinking about prochlorperazine... is that as opposed to antichlorperazine or to dilettante amateur chlorperazine?

Susan.

2009-10-13T16:28:00.009+01:00

These are the first two poems I wrote for her:

NEW

New York. New York. New York.

There. Now it's been named

THREE times.

AIRPORT

There was some tension and some
teariness, some coffee, toast and
bacon. With ketchup. She laughed
and said she had never seen such a
thing in New York, and what with
that and the deep fried pizza we
talked about opening a Scottish
health food store there. Then we
took photos of each other on our
mobile phones and went to her gate,
spoke silently with hands together;
we held and kissed one another, and
parted. I stood and watched her
until she turned a corner, and
dreamed about her coming the
other way on her next visit as tears

thought about it.

She's visited here twice now, we're engaged and wearing betrothal rings, which you can see in the picture there. And now the plan is for me to go over there for Christmas and New Year, spend the festive season with her and meet her family and friends. And buy engagement rings together, of course. It all just depends on finance (not the rings, which needn't cost much, but the flight), which is why a DONATE button has suddenly appeared here. I am scrimping and saving, have a tin (which once contained a bottle of fine malt whisky) for spare change and contributions, but that isn't going to raise the £500 we need to reach. Please don't feel pressured, but any small amount you feel able to give to send me to another continent for a couple of weeks to be with my Woman would be gratefully received.

Sorry to seem so mercenary on Dodophobia, but needs must.

The Nobel Peace Prize 2009.

2009-10-11T00:37:00.000+01:00

Some people are saying Barack Obama has won the Nobel just for being Not George W Bush.

Well, what's wrong with that?

He is not, and has declared himself repeatedly, emphatically and credibly not to be, a religious maniac who rejects scientific truth because it wasn't written about in a 2000 year old book by some primitive middle eastern tribesmen; a racist who despises everyone who is not from his own country and clearly and visibly considers them all beneath himself; a semi-literate silver spooner who has earned nothing he has but rather inherited it all and then lectures everyone else about hard work; a man who betrays all of his loudly declaimed religious principles by lying so that he can bomb some brown foreigners, and also by swearing before his god to uphold the American constitution before waving a bible around and saying "THIS comes before the constitution"; who shouts loudly about democracy and then steals a lost election with the corrupt help of his brother's henchmen (and women), including denying votes to many thousands of people who did or would have voted against him, but nevertheless going on to preach to the rest of the world about his and his country's democratic superiority... and much much more, but I don't want you to get bored and stop reading.

Instead of all that, Barack Obama has begun engaging with the world, showing us all the smiling side of his country's personality, talking to other nationalities with respect and as an equal, made it clear that reality rather than religious prejudice will be his guide, started working to try to undo some of the eight years of further damage wrought by Bush and Cheney's refusal to have anything to do with Kyoto and the fight against climate catastrophe, and again, much much more besides, not least his attempt to bring the United States to civilisation by letting all or most of his fellow citizens have decent healthcare, like most of the rest of the world, which would allow them to stop being so terrified all the time, to stop having to be so self-absorbed out of fear for their medical and financial futures (because most US bankruptcies are at the moment caused by huge medical bills), to relax into a more peaceful and less aggressive frame of mind knowing that they and their families will at least be able to go to a doctor if they're ill, or for that matter change jobs, without having to worry about collapsing into abject poverty due to sickness.

If you ask me, that adds up to a greater contribution to world peace than has been made by any US president during my lifetime. And yet some repuglicans are reacting as though not being hated by foreigners is somehow unamerican; which is surely another reason why this award is justified and welcome.

Once unto the breach...

2009-10-10T17:32:00.000+01:00

Well, here we go, my first ever blog post. I suppose a self-introduction might be in order for those who don't know me who might one day accidentally stumble across this.

I'm 44, Scottish, Atheist, engaged to Susan, have a heart condition and am suffering from depression (Prozac and half a pharmacy help wonderfully), have in the past suffered three strokes (I thought it was only two but the other day I discovered that the first one had in fact been two and was massive) and two heart attacks, and have a non-malignant brain tumour which is doing absolutely nothing and so is really quite friendly as brain tumours go. It is "probably" a craniopharyngioma, so it has a very friendly and wonderful name, too, which I would love to use in a song, but there could conceivably be scansion problems with it. ("Oh sweet craniopharyngioma, how I love your internalistic aroma..."; you'd have to be Paul Simon to sing it properly, although if he wrote it at least it would be better).

I tend not to write songs, but I do write poetry, and this blog will on occasion be a vehicle for new pieces, and even more occasionally for old ones, such as the one that has inspired the blog's title. Which is Dodophobia. Would you like to hear it? Oh all right then, as you've twisted my arm.

DODOPHOBIA
I bet I suffer terribly from dodophobia.

Now I know some of you are sitting there saying "THAT'S not poetry!" but it is, and I shall tell you why; because I say it is. Poetry has nothing to do with rhyme or scansion, it is simply a way of using words artistically to create mood and image in the mind of the perceiver. In this case, the mood is mostly just humour, but with a thoughtful aftertaste, I hope. That is, I hope you will continue thinking about it and its possible meaning after you have moved on to another webpage, after having had an initial giggle or snigger.

Actually, not just poetry but all art forms are art if their creators say they are (or if they don't but the thing has an artistic effect on you), and for the same reasons. All it's about is the provoking of thought or feeling, so if a pile of bricks (to choose an entirely random example) makes you angry or causes you to ruminate on the nature of art (for instance) then of COURSE it's bloody art! And art of all kinds, including poetry, is everywhere around us, occasionally deliberately created.

Also I will share with you, whether you like it or not, my thoughts and feelings about whatever enters my mind to mention. Could be anything, anything at all, because my brain goes off on all sorts of tangents at times.

And I think that's quite enough for now.

Enjoy.