Month: January 2008

It’s still a bit early in the year for the British public to concern themselves with who is likely to win the biggest steeplechase in the racing calendar. The Grand National is usually run on a Saturday in early April at Liverpool’s Aintree racecourse, and attracts millions of punters, most of whom will not place a bet again all year.

The race is something of a national institution, though it has its share of critics, most voicing concerns for the safety of horses and riders given the punishing nature of the course and the unusually high fences.

Over the years, many horses have been injured or killed in the Grand National, and frequently less than half the field make it to the finishing line.

The Grand National has much in common with the run-up to the United States Presidential election. For months now the runners have been cantering towards the first fence. At Iowa, Obama and Huckabee jumped it neck and neck, followed by Edwards just leading the favorite, Clinton, by a short head, and Thompson and McCain bringing up the rear. Iowa took early casualties, with Dodd and Biden both falling at this first fence.

Obama has settled nicely into an early lead as they head for New Hampshire, but one has to wonder if this inexperienced forty-six year old can hold off the competition in a race renowned for its unpredictability.

Among the leaders as they round the turn, Huckabee, owned by the Evengelical Right is well placed, having come from nowhere to lead Romney over the first fence. Romney, bred and trained by the Mormon stables, has been well placed in other races but has never won this major US steeplechase. That old war-horse, McCain, is battling well against the odds having gained on the leaders after Iowa, but there are question marks regarding his stamina, particularly given his penchant for suddenly turning about and running in the opposite direction.

To recap, then, as they enter the short straight before New Hampshire, Obama leads Huckabee with Edwards and Clinton neck and neck on the stand side. Behind them Romney is well placed, and two lengths back Thompson and McCain are battling it out for sixth and seventh position with a long gap back to Paul, and way back – at least ten lengths behind Paul – is Giuliani showing signs of distress. Giuliani could be in trouble, he looks like he’s limping badly. He took a bad knock at Iowa and I’m hearing reports he is definitely injured and may have to be shot.

So, on that positive note we’ll leave the race for now and return you to the studio, and the much more exciting news that Britney Spears is back, once again, in hospital!

Filed under: No stone ginger

Excuse me for being British, but the media circus whipped up over this impending Iowa Caucus is just too baffling for words. I’m a simple guy. For me, democracy means electing a national leader by choosing which candidate is best, and then voting for him, or her.

So why all the hysteria over Iowa?

200,000 voters cast their ballot in Iowa. That’s around 0.1% of the US voting population (in rough figures), so why is Iowa so important to the presidential election to be held in nearly a year’s time?

The answer, of course, is that it isn’t.

Iowa is a dull, flat, uninteresting place that gets stinking hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter. It’s populated by rural farmers who have very little to do these long winter nights, so are happy to spend one of them playing a political party-game with half the world’s media hanging on their every action.

So important to presidential politics is the Iowa Caucus that many of the major players won’t even be there. Giuliani is in New Hampshire, and names like Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill Richardson are never mentioned.

So why all the fuss?

I’ve reached the conclusion it’s all part of the mass media entertainment process. Americans are totally bored with life. Outside of the major cities like New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco and others, there is absolutely nothing to do except eat and watch ballgames on TV. This country is so huge it’s not possible to take a day out and visit a scenic beauty spot, or the beach. The American Heartland is just one vast, flat, expanse of fields punctuated by the occasional township.

There’s no point driving to another town for the day, as the one you arrive at will be identical to the one you left. Each will have its Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney clothing store, Sears hardware and general store, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, and a few other national chain stores, a host of protestant churches of every conceivable denomination, one Catholic church, and a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall. If it’s a biggish town there may be a social security office, a post office, and a library. Each town has its own water tower with the town name painted on it in big letters. This is useful, as given the similarities, it is often the only way to be sure you’re in the right place.

The Heartland of America, of which Iowa is a part, extends for thousands of miles in each direction. There are no beauty spots in the American Heartlands, unless that is, huge cornfields give you an orgasm. There is very little entertainment. Outside of Chicago, there are no major theaters, opera houses, art galleries, stately homes, or grand places of interest worthy of one’s perusal.

To the average Heartland American, ‘culture’ is the Sunday night ballgame, followed by a Giant MacBurger with double fries and a large Coke. After spending five years in the Heartland, I’ve found the words ‘entertainment’ and ‘internment’ to have remarkably similar meanings.

After a hard day at work, the average Heartland American finds his only amusement from cable television. With top ten favorites like ‘American Idol’, ‘Heroes’, and ’24’ to go at, Heartland’s America is spoiled for choice, and should these shows eventually pall there’s always a stormy disaster somewhere on the ‘Weather Channel’, or a fanatical preacher on any one of twenty other cable sources, to raise the adrenalin level and remind us life in the Heartlands is a truly wondrous experience.

Good, reliable, stalwarts of the American media like NBC, ABC, CBS, and XYZ, always determined to keep the needs of the viewer above that of the sponsors, delight in providing the occasional diversion from their otherwise bounteous selection of programs, by adding the odd titbit of additional delight to titillate the audience and remind us what amazing corporate creations they truly are.

What better festival of delight to lift our post-holiday blues than the rampant excitement of the Iowa Caucus?

Americans throughout the Heartlands are consumed by election fever, knuckles blanched from gripping their settee arms, as Iowan farmers and their families decide the fate of the nation in one night of white-hot, voting passion.

And in the unlikely event you happen to fall asleep and miss it, there’s no need to feel overwrought. Just wait six days and they’ll air the repeat – in New Hampshire.

Filed under: Too much excitement

I’m not sure if it was a surfeit of Christmas turkey, or a dram too much of that Glenlivet Malt Whiskey I discovered cowering in one corner of the locked liquor cabinet at our local supermarket just before the holidays, but I’ve felt decidedly lethargic about doing anything remotely creative over the last couple of weeks, as readers of this internet tome will probably have noticed.

There’s been the odd occasion I’ve advanced on the keyboard, determined to punch some eye-catching, intellectually stimulating, thoughts onto the screen, but usually I’ve tiptoed away again, to the kitchen or drinks cabinet, after ten minutes of futile thumb-twiddling.

It was then I remembered Uncle George.

Two or three years ago, during a period of similar mental torpor, I conducted an experiment. Experts are divided over the very concept of writer’s block. While some agree that writing is an art form requiring a degree of intellectual stimulus at best diffuse, and frequently absent, others mock the idea and insist it is never more than mental laziness.

I determined to discover which of these opposing viewpoints was accurate, so on a day I felt nothing but a totally blank and unproductive mindset, I sat down and began typing individual thoughts as they staggered back and forth through the portals of my mind.

The result, dragged from Sparrow Chat’s archives and barely more than blown free of dust, is set out below:

“WRITER’S BLOCK”

I’m confused.

According to the ‘experts’, who are supposed to know about these things, “writer’s block” doesn’t exist. It’s just an excuse for a lack of self-discipline. They say if one sits down at the keyboard, punching away at whatever comes to mind, eventually something worthwhile will appear on the page.

I’m not sure I agree with that. After all, that’s just what I’m doing now. But, is it worthwhile?

Having completed one book this year, and close to finishing another, I’m keen to plan a third; or, at least get some thoughts down on paper. But try as I might, the ideas remain seductively closeted in the far recesses of my mind, stubbornly refusing to vacate the shadows and venture forth into the sunlight of inspiration.

So, I look for reasons not to write, for what is the point if I have nothing to say? Sure, I owe Uncle George from England a letter, and I have outstanding emails clamoring to be answered, but that’s not what real writing is about. Is it?

Uncle George was never ‘into’ computers. I wish he was. Somehow, it’s so much easier just to type a few lines and click on: ‘send’, rather than laboriously print-out, search for an envelope, remember the address, – “What the deuce was his zip code?” – then realize the last airmail stamp was used three months ago to post that pension return to the British Inland Revenue, who really ought to have amended their records by now, but still insist I live at 66, Waterworks Road, South London, despite my being a U.S. permanent resident for the last two years.

Uncle George was always considered a bit peculiar by other members of the family. Of course, they were all very stuck up and traditional – church every Sunday morning and don’t use the front parlor except on special occasions – you know the sort. Uncle George would have nothing to do with them. He always insisted he only went to church once, to be christened at the age of three months, and that was only because he had no choice in the matter. Not that he was an atheist or anything. He just despised clergymen. All clergymen. And the higher up the official ladder, the more he despised them. You soon learned not to mention the Archbishop of Canterbury when Uncle George was around, unless that is, you wanted a right ear-bashing.

The relatives all said it was being a bachelor that sent him peculiar. Aunt Bessie – she’s my mother’s eldest sister, who wore her hair pulled back in a bun, so tight my father used to say it was the only thing that stopped her teeth falling out – said it was no wonder he never married, as no decent woman would be able to stand him for longer than five minutes at a time. But then, not six months after she married my Uncle Percival he ran off and joined a bunch of mercenaries fighting somewhere in Africa and was never heard from again, so perhaps she wasn’t the one to talk.

Of course, when Uncle George sold his house and moved onto a canal boat, that really set their tongues clacking. It probably wasn’t one of his better ideas, given that he was seventy-six, with a gammy leg and one eye that could only discern a brick wall from two feet away in bright sunlight. His other eye was alright though, and Uncle George reckoned he could see as well with one and a bit eyes, as others could with two. Even when he fell off the gangplank and into the canal for the fourth time, all within three weeks of moving onto the boat, he was still insisting his sight was impeccable as the two burly men from the social services department were carrying him up the canal bank to the waiting ambulance. Not that he’d hurt himself, you understand. It was the relatives again; interfering, as always.

Aunt Bessie worked for the social services before she retired, and still knew a few people in the department. Nothing embarrassed the family more than Uncle George living on the canal, and I once overheard Aunt Bessie telling my mother that, ‘…it reduced us all to the level of gypsies and tinkers.’ Consequently, when the local police rang to say Uncle George had been hauled from the canal for the second time in a week, Aunt Bessie went searching for her ‘professional contacts’.

That was all ten years ago now. At the time, I didn’t think Uncle George would survive long after being forcibly removed to the nursing home. He was always so independent, and hated the idea of being penned against his will. He always said he’d die in his own home, and if he couldn’t do that he’d jump off a cliff, or into the nearest river, rather than fade ignominiously away in a hospital bed.

In the end, he did none of those things. Instead, he married the woman who owned the nursing home. That was one in the eye for the family, especially when he started taking the other inmates for trips on his canal boat.

The relatives never mention Uncle George now. Aunt Bessie still hasn’t forgiven her ‘contact’ for recommending that particular nursing home, though my father once hinted it was only envy, because the woman Uncle George married was very wealthy, and Uncle George once let slip that, after their deaths, all the money was willed to the RSPCA, and the family would see none of it.

Still, I always got on well with him, and just so long as he’s happy, I guess that’s all that matters.

Perhaps I will write the old boy a few lines. After all, sitting here staring at a blank page isn’t very productive. I think I’ve proved the so-called ‘experts’ wrong.

Huh! No such thing as “writer’s block”.

Blah!

Now, what the deuce was his zip code?

Filed under: Happy New Year