John Walker's Electronic House

Coming live from Baltimore. Well, clearly not live. I’m not writing these words at the very moment you read them. It’s impractical.

I’ve so far failed to solve any Homicide: Life on the Streets style murders. But I did see the court to which the characters in the show are so often visiting, and squealed like the pathetic fanboy I truly am.

I arrived into the States on the opening day of the baseball season, which made me very happy. And saw ‘my team’, the Cubs, win their opener. However, I can’t seem to avoid the things of England that I expect to be safely far away. Turned on ESPN2 today to see if there was a ballgame on, and discovered Arsenal vs Chelsea, with British commentary. So watched a quiz show presented by Donny Osmond. Now tonight, I turn my hotel room radio on, and hear a British accent. Then realise they’re telling me British news. Currently the sport, hearing about cricket. I’m a little confused by this, unsure if I’ve uncovered a mistake in some elaborate hoax. Perhaps America is a giant version of the Truman Show, elaborate and complicated scrolling sets, on an island, probably off the coast of Scotland. Someone has left a radio behind that hasn’t been properly doctored. It’s BBC news! They just said. It must be true.

It would explain the overacting of one of the characters in this giant creation. The cab driver this evening decides to take us on an unofficial tour of Baltimore, announcing random facts about buildings as we passed. He then stopped at the top of a hill, and told us we should get out as were a few hundred yards from our restaurant, and there was a great view here. Perhaps we might want to take photos. The view was fne, but did reveal that the few hundred yards between ourselves and the restaurant was made of water. So we then had to get back in and go back the way we’d come, 45 minutes late for our meal.

Journey back, after about 50 yards, someone reverses into his van at some lights. There is a long and complicated kerfuffle as the two drivers attempt to communicate. When we finally leave, our half hour journey home is a constant recollection of this event, over and over, ever more painstaking and emotional. That we were all in his cab while it happened didn’t appear to prevent the need for this. And then as we’ve nearly arrived back at the hotel, the very best description:

“It’s like a cake. A really beautiful cake, that you’ve made. And then someone sticks a finger in it… It’s tragic.”

It’s hard to disagree.

I’ve just written a feature for PC Format on the lies that have been told about CD sales and the effects of file sharing.

Obviously one of the topical things that I looked into was the advert ran by Pepsi and Apple during the US Superbowl last month. However, it’s apparent that this news hasn’t gone far enough, so here’s an attempt to spread it further.

Pepsi and Apple iTunes Music Store ran a commercial during America’s most watched event, in the most expensive advertising slot money can buy, featuring – and please don’t read this lightly – children who have been charged with illegal file sharing by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), bullied into advertising Pepsi and iTunes, by stating their crimes, and then having them swig the mouth-rotting liquid as they are tricked into whoring Apple’s nasty, DRM infected files.

I have never seen anything so repulsive, so immoral, and so depraved. It is the lowest stoop for all of commericial broadcasting, the most foul advert ever devised.

Watch it here on Quicktime

And here on Media Player

If anyone has a link to the file that isn’t on proprietary software, I’d much appreciate it.

Also, please read this article from The Register that explains exactly what is happening.

These aren’t actors, or winners of some competition – these are the children that the RIAA illegally sued for downloading music, an act which is legal under the US Fair Use law, which can be read here.

I fear that my overwhelming rage about this event will colour people’s perception. That people will assume this is another over-egged rant. Please don’t judge this on my word. Read the Register article, and watch the advert. And never in your life buy a single thing from Pepsi or Apple iTunes again, because this shit must never be allowed by a thinking world.

I have been feeling dizzy recently. I’m not drastically ill or anything, and am not exhibiting the early signs of a wretched tumour devouring the cellular tissue of my brain. I’m just a bit tired, and sleeping crazy patterns. I’m sat in college as I write, again feeling a strange swerviness in my gait. I’m not against feeling dizzy – there’s something quite romantic about it. Romantic in the period of classical music sense, rather than the pink-gilded Valentine’s schmaltz.

I fainted yesterday. Well, by the time I’m at my computer to post this, the day before yesterday. I had no idea about this, but apparently everyone else does: getting out of a hot bath too quickly can lead to fainting. I had been in the hot bath for an hour, adding more hot water all the way, reading Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. The phone rang – land line, the mobile had already rung once during this bath – and I leapt out, dripped torrentially across my bathroom, dashed wet and horribly naked for the phone. I had the conversation, brief and arranging, and then found I was unable to put the handset back on the plastic base. I was suddenly incapable of this task. I couldn’t see it, because the right hand side of my vision was no longer with me, consumed by a swirl of the world to my left that was rudely attempting to encircle me.

I’ve felt dizzy before, and had that intrusive black cloud appear, but normally from getting up too quickly. It goes away again as soon as I stand still. But this time it didn’t go away, and instead took over. I realised all at once that this wasn’t going away, that I was fainting, and that there was nothing I could do to stop it.

And then I collapsed, landing on a pile of magazines and a chair in my study, that was sporting a sharp-edged DVD drive. During this moment of collapse, in complete darkness, I dreamt. It lasted no longer than a couple of seconds (so far as I know), but during the fall, and in the eventual landing, I was dreaming. That’s fantastic. All this nonsense that we need to have entered a deep REM sleep before dreaming can take place was proved as such. I’ve long maintained that this isn’t true, perfectly aware that I am capable of entering a dreamstate in those moments of drifting off to sleep, semi-awake. We all know this, in fact. Because we remember when we stayed over at a friend’s house, when a teenager, and we stayed up until 2am chatting, and that moment arrived when we couldn’t remember whether it had been seconds or minutes since someone last spoke. And then the other person would speak, and you’d confuse what they were saying for the dream you had started having. You were in no REM sleep. So let’s all dismiss that for the nonsense it is.

There were two very clear thoughts. The first was “this is really happening”. I remember thinking that a lot. It was an extraordinary detached moment, as I dreamt on my feet, and in a wet, naked heap, and my brain kept reminding me that it was really happening. It fought back against this, pointing out that everything was unreal. And then fought back the other way. The other thought was realising how detached we are from our bodies, when it comes down to getting out of a hot bath too quickly. As I fell, I was still partly aware, and what I was aware of was that my body was now of no use to me. My brain was still going, going in all manner of directions in fact. But my body had given up, and embraced gravity with full submission. My path from standing to lying was entirely science – the physical pull of the earth’s gravitational pull on my body’s mass, a predefined path, calculable by those with big enough calculators. Me – I had no input. My body was not me – it was useless meat. It’s more useful meat now, but just meat.

The reason for all this, what must appear remarkably self-indulged toss over such a minor and common incident (hell, this is a blog, that’s a given, surely?) – partly because I have wanted to write it all down since, and mostly because I’m fascinated by how much I thought in this time. I don’t imagine I thought any more at this point than at any other moment of the day, but I was far more aware of my process, and delighted by it.

The feeling afterwards was not comfortable, and I have no real desire to repeat the moment, if at all possible. But it was a remarkable reminder of what fantastically creative beings we are.

I have finished Slaughterhouse 5. I feel angry and useless and want to cry.

We are such fantastically creative beings, and less than sixty years ago, we murdered Jews and Gypsies and gay people and Communists and anyone else who didn’t match, and melted their bodies down and used the fat to make candles and soap. We murdered civilians in efforts to end wars. We dropped bombs on Japan and Germany to make them go away.

We are such fantastically creative beings.

There is optimism, though in my anger and uselessness and desire to cry, I am weak to its charms. But there isoptimism. This becomes a Big Robot column from now on. Probably to be written now. Jim will be satiated, about that at least.

A friend asked me about whether I thought self-perception could be affected by others, and about the issues of asking for help. With permission, I’ve put my response up here:

I believe that our self-identity can be greatly formed by those around us. We can recognise ourselves in the reflection shown in other people. A lot of who were are is defined in this way. So if this is true, I think other people can greatly help you with your self-perception.

I have a theory that most people disagree with, but normally because of semantics. I don’t think it’s possible to love oneself. I think instead it’s about understanding that you deserve to be loved, and learning to accept love. The pursuit of self-love seems to me to be a red herring when it comes to what it is that we need. We need to be loved, and not because we are weak, or sappy, or clingy, or whatever, but because we DESERVE to be loved. It’s believing that, and accepting it, and accepting the love, that is the difficult part. And the part that I think most people would label “learning to love yourself”, hence the semantic tangles.

If someone can accept that other people love them, and that they deserve to be loved, then that builds and defines self-perception.

In my opinion, everyone deserves to be loved. I believe that we’re all created by God on purpose, and that He loves us completely. And because God does, so should we. But obviously that’s not immensely helpful, because that’s not something that everyone believes.

But it drives me to recognise that people deserve to be loved. And if other people deserve to be loved, then I cannot escape the logic that therefore, so do I. Even me. And I struggle with this a great deal, because no one knows the bad things about me better than me. None of my friends has a grip on how crap I can be, what an idiot I am, and how much I fuck up. So they must be wrong to love me, right? Because they don’t understand how undeserving I am? But this doesn’t work, because I still love them, and the same applies for them. So it seems that being loved isn’t something you earn by being a certain way, or getting things ‘right’ consistently enough. If my love for my friends is valid, and as far as I’m concerned it is, then they deserve it, *and* receive it, despite how crap they might be/think they are.

The impact this has on our self-perception should surely be realised. It doesn’t entirely define it, because someone else could be wrong. Someone else could dislike you because they are mistaken about something, or because they have been told a lie by someone else. And so we can’t entirely rely on others’ perceptions to define ourselves. But if people love us, people who know us well, then we can’t ignore that either.

More simply, in my own experience I know that I began to hate myself in a horrible way, really loathed who I was, when I cut myself off from accepting the input of others. I’m biased against me, and the things I get wrong seem far bigger than the things I get right. As I write this now, this still appears true to me. But what I have to counter that are the testimonies of my friends – people who know me well, people who recognise my faults and flaws, who love me very much, and say praising things about me. To them, my crap things do not out-weigh my good things, and in fact, more than that, SO much more than that, they aren’t interested in whether my crap-to-good ratio is correctly weighted before being my friend, before loving me.

So the challenging process is the acceptance. To slowly, and painstakingly, take on board that my friends aren’t wrong to like me, and that despite my own perception of myself, their perception is valid. We’re communal beasts, herd-creatures. And according to my God, we’re meant to work together, as a team, supporting one-another all the way.

Individualism is the fashion, the norm now. Post-modernism expects us to be individuals, and therefore needing others, to rely on others, is to be weak, to have failed. But I think this is complete bollocks. The reality is, we need others. The results of the Great Individualist Experiment has been to learn that we ARE weak on our own, and we’re strong alongside others. And there’s nothing wrong with being weak! It only helps to prove the case really – we’re designed to be working as a team, supporting each other, playing our part within that team, that one collective made of fantastic and fabulous distinct individuals, combining their uniqueness with others’ uniqueness to change the world.

I find this within Christianity – the well known bit where Paul talks about ‘one body, many parts’, each part different and unique, each part essential, all making up one body that works together, that stands together. But I believe that it’s evident in the world today, as well. It’s not a nice theory in an old book, but something that appears to be true from my own personal experience. On my own, I’m capable of some stuff, but I’m weak, and my self-opinion and self-perception is too vulnerable and pessimistic to be as effective as I could be. But with others, working together, I can be so much more.

So asking for help: If the above isn’t nonsense, if we’re to be that team of humans, looking after each other, working together for one another, then asking for help would be just about essential. And in the ideal team, it’s made clear that help is on offer before it’s ever asked for. Asking for help isn’t “admitting weakness”, it’s “accepting strength”. That sounds horribly corny, but I think it’s true.

Here is an error it is possible to make.

If you were to get up in the “morning” and realise that you needed to put a wash on, what you would do is pick up the large pile of slightly steaming clothes from the “Clothes Pile” on your floor, and lug them to the washing machine in the kitchen. You would then push them inside, add the plastic bubble of washing liquid magic, close the door, and turn it on. “Yes, we know how to put a wash on”, you say, out loud, which is weird of you. Ah, but I’m not telling you How To Put A Wash On. You’re being impertinent. I’m telling you what you might do. You might do all of this in your pyjamas.

Well, not pyjamas – does anyone actually wear pyjamas? But the clothes you wear in bed – the t-shirt and hideous cotton trouser-things if you’re me. Which you’re not.

And you see, while it all may seem Innocent Enough, you’ve forgotten one very important thing. You’ve left doing your washing for so long, that you’ve not any underwear left.

And you’ve done this in your pyjamas.

You’ve no pants.

Not even yesterday’s dirty ones. They’re all in the wash. It’s too late.

If you have to go to Bristol in the evening, that means you’ve no pants to wear, and they’re never going to dry in time. Especially if you leave them in the machine for some hours after they’ve finished washing. Especially if you do that.

So it’s 6pm, I need to leave in half an hour, and I’ve no pants. None at all. Apart from the clean pair in the carrier bag in the back of my car I don’t know about yet but that would have solved everything.

And an idea occurs to me: I could try microwaving my pants.

I’ve heard rumour of such a thing happening. I’ve even seen it give swimming trunks magical properties on Round The Twist. But it didn’t only bestow super-human powers upon them – it also made them dry.

Microwaving your pants Does Not dry them. It makes them hot AND wet. And it doesn’t give them magic powers either.

I wore swimming shorts under my jeans to Bristol. There’s a hole in the jeans in a Bad Place, and there was to be no not wearing swimming shorts under my jeans to Bristol.

I’m going on holiday tomorrow.

I’m going here:

Welcome to Fuerteventura!

with Sian and Richard.

HOLIDAY HOLIDAY!

Water the plants for me.

The moment when you realise you are witnessing a perfect band is beautiful in so many different ways. So many moments of happiness and contentment are fleeting, lost within the echo of their recognition, transient and elusive. Rather than being something you enjoy, they are something you can only regret the loss of. But as you witness live music that lifts your soul, you know that the moment is going to be with you for the rest of their set, and you can bathe in it, warm and absorbing. And even better – you can find it again, either in their CD, or far better, seeing them again.

Moles tonight was very different from the night reported by Kieron Gillen a fortnight ago (Thurs 7 August). That was a night about the crowd, the people filling the floor. We all argued about the various merits of the various bands, and despite Kieron’s nonsensical statement that The Fake Ideal were “the future of rock and roll”, I think we all knew we’d seen no one that important that night. It was about the dance floor after the paid entertainment.

Tonight, it was about the bands.

As is a time honoured tradition, we arrived to hear the closing bars of the final track of the first band. However, I realise now that I must point out that “we” is not Kieron, Chrissy, and the other regulars – all were absent but for a lone Rev Campbell – but myself and my friend Kat. When the second band came on the place was beginning to fill beyond the embarrassing numbers the first band had been playing to, and we stood to see what “The Schande” would offer.

It was the most awesome, beautiful live music I have ever heard. This is not to say that they are the greatest live band ever, by no means, but that they are the live band that played the music I want to hear, the way I want it to be heard, at the moment I most wanted to hear it.

The guitars were screamingly distorted, the drums obnoxiously loud (the high-hats still own the majority of my eardrums), and the warm, liquid voice of the singer rippling underneath, a siren call to a powerful current. By the third song I knew.

A song later the lead singer looked me straight in the eyes, and held my gaze. For a few seconds, it was my eyes she locked on to. And for that time, she was singing just for me. My feet hovered two inches from the ground. She looked away, and I hit the floor again.

I turned to Kat when they had left the stage and said, almost winded, “That was awesome.” She shrugged, “It was alright.” It was my moment, it seems.

Later, I saw Jen Schande standing on one side, and decided to be the sort of geek I normally hate. I asked her to sign the CD inlay of the album I’d just bought. She said, “Do you really want me to?”, surprised. I told her how fantastic their set had been. Two other members of the band signed the inlay, and we talked. A few minutes later she had to go and get her guitar to leave, and so said goodbye, and surprised me with a hug, and a kiss on my cheek. I kissed her cheek. She further surprised me with another kiss on the corner of my mouth, and then she was gone.

The next band, The Gossip, were fabulous. Pure punk joy. The place was packed by then, and people’s spirits were bouncing. An amazing atmosphere and an amazing band.

Headliners Milky Wimpshake arrived too late, really. They were good end-of-evening lightness, gentle and air-headed, calm and ideal for finishing the bell-curve of the evening. But they performed to a dwindling crowd, burned out by The Gossip’s frantic energy.

And it was during their set that the final division between tonight and two weeks ago arrived – a large group of drunken annoyances, drawn in by the late bar. They ‘danced’ in a manner that drew nothing but annoyed or angry glances from the rest of the floor, loud, stupid, not of the night we’d all shared. They were outsiders, tearing down the curtains of acceptance that Moles offers on a Thursday evening. At the Purr night, you can be who you are, without need to match trends, dress ‘fashionably’, or behave in the way pubs and clubs demand. These people burst that bubble so much so that when the DJ came on at the end, everybody just walked away. It’s a fragile and magical place.

So this probably isn’t the blog update anyone was expecting. And after so long, I doubt anyone was expecting a blog update. But this evening needed writing down before it went away.

If you’re interested, Jen Schande’s band sounds like (and please forgive this tiresome means of conveying the sound of a band – I have yet to find a better one) Throwing Muses meets the Red House Painters. The beautiful guitar majesty of the latter, with a voice that captures the very softest moments of Tanya Donnelly’s.

Well, actually there is a better way of conveying it:

The Revolution Wears Fairy Wings

Today I am wearing odd socks. But to look, you wouldn’t be able to tell. One is longer than the other. But due to the nature of how socks bunch up around the ankle, you’d have to look extremely closely and carefully to recognise their oddness.

Of course, I realise that by wearing socks that go past my ankles means I’m horribly out of fashion. Or is that just girls? Those scare me, those teeny tiny socks that barely sneak over the toes, so that you can wear socks, BUT!!! look as though you aren’t wearing socks. Incredible. I’m not quite sure why this would be desired. But it does seem that fashion is currently absorbing all the most uncomfortable things footwear has to offer.

Probably the second most uncomfortable thing that can happen to a foot is when the sock slides down and gathers underneath, all bunched up, and digging in. These new ‘invisible’ socks seem to adopt this as a starting point.

But now, having tantalisingly stated that there is a more uncomfortable footwear related discomfort, I must embellish upon the number one.

There is no worse feeling a foot can feel in everyday, non-injury based, walking, than when one’s shoelace is somehow inside the shoe, and underneath the foot.

Like the princess of legend and her pea, there is no way to find comfort in the stray lace. No amount of shuffling, concentration, yoga, self-hypnosis, or hammer to the head distractions can remove the soul-scraping agony of that stringy torture. Japanese prisoner of war camps in the 1940s would take the captured soldier’s boots, and glue one lace to the sole, then force the prisoner to march around the cages until they broke down in tears, threatening death if they attempted to adjust the lace in any way.

Which strangely is the attitude taken by so many today when someone realises that they need to rearraging their foot furniture while walking down the road. In any group of more than two, it is near guarenteed that if someone requires stopping to remove a stone, tug out a lace, or control a bunching sock, someone else will find this invasion of their civil liberties so offensive that they will have to insist upon carrying on walking. What on earth is this about. How important is an individual’s need to reach a destination, and how fragile is a friendship, that a person cannot wait the, what, thirty seconds it takes to sort that shoe out? But you can be sure that if you need to lean on a post, bend down, pull of that shoe, tip out the shards of broken glass and barbed wire your so-called friend would rather be shredding your skin, and then get the shoe back on while struggling with the folded in heel, someone will keep on walking, probably picking up their pace, putting the pressure on you to hurry in your life-saving operation, and then initiating that most embarrassing of walks – the half-gallop adopted by the individual still pulling on a shoe as they try to catch up with their new-found enemies.

So why is it that now all shoes must have their laces tucked in on the inside? I bought some new walking shoes-cum-trainers, and they have been built in such a way that the final loop of lace goes over and in, rather than under and out, with the intention that the bow be tied underneath the tongue, and then worn on the inside of the shoe. This is the same person who designed the non-socks – you mark my words.

Which is to say that my jeans don’t fit. The truth is, I’ve put on some more belly. But the problem is, I’ve not put on enough belly.

Jeans come in waist sizes increasing in two inch increments. TWO INCHES. Who gets thinner or fatter in two inch sections? I’ve put on one inch of belly, and am now living in that barren wasteground that lies between the jeans one can buy.

That wasteground pun is very clever. I wish I had done it on purpose.

But there isn’t an option as to which size you buy – you have to buy the size up from the one your waist offers. But this means that my jeans are one inch too big for me. And this means I have to tug my jeans up about seventy-three times an hour, or risk baring the attrocity that is the valley entrance to my bum-cleavage to the world. And no world, no matter how rotten, deserves that.

So I have two choices. I have a pair of jeans one inch too big, and one, older, one inch too small. I can either lose the weight that shaves and inch from my girth, and be able to climb back into my old, worn, tattered jeans. Or I could gain the weight to have my new jeans fit properly.

Does the Spar sell decent ice cream?

The story of my being pulled over by the police:

Now, in my time, I’m committed some fairly henious crimes, but none moreso than that fateful November night in Bristol.

I was driving back from having dropped off some friends from college. I dunno, maybe we’d been robbing old ladies, or planning our next big bank heist, but it was late. It was about 2 am, I was tired from a day’s hard criminal activity, and wanted for a break and some sleep.

So tired was I that I didn’t even think to break a single law as I drove back, and entirely failed to speed along the really tempting stretch over the Bristol downs. (Here I have edited out a joke based on “really tempting stretch over the Bristol downs”, but I’m not sure if this is because it’s distasteful, or because it just doesn’t quite work. Well, it’s not likely to be the former).

Anyway.

I have wondered in the past how you can tell if a police car approaching behind you with lights flashing, sirens blazing, fireworks launching off the roof, etc, is after you, or wanting to get past you. As you notice the whirl of red and blue in your mirror, there’s that stomach-worry that you’ve committed a terrible offence (“Could I have murdered someone without remembering? I’m sure I’d remember… Or maybe I ran someone over earlier? Did I feel a bump? I mean, the radio is on awfully loud. What if I ran someone over?”) by which point it’s gone sailing past you at fifty million miles an hour, probably chasing after a cup of coffee they’ve decided they want.

But the thing is, like other things that are like this that would illustrate my point brilliantly if only I could think of them at the moment, when it’s for you, you just sort of know. Noticing the flashing headlights in my mirror, and then seeing the flashing top lights, I entered into the mode of someone on television.

Like wet shaving, no one teaches you to be pulled over by the police. They only way anyone can possibly know what to do is thanks to watching television and films. I don’t know what life must be like for people who don’t have televisions. The sorts of families that shun the “goggle-box” or whatever equally repulsive pseudo-denegrating name they may have adopted, and instead all read books, but proper ones, not any of that nonsense fiction, apart from fiction from more than one hundred years ago, because that’s Proper Fiction, and not the mind rotting deviance that is wiping our childrens morals from them, with their Harry Pulman and the Philosopher’s Spyglass. What do these people do when they look up and see the flashing lights in their mirror? Get out a notebook and write about being pulled over?

So there I am, pulled over at the side of the road, and something in my head decides the correct course of action is to “stay in your car”. I have no idea if this is what you’re supposed to do, or if this is only relevant when you’re on the side of a freeway, coccaine spilling out of every door, being approached by over a thousand armed cops and an armoured tank. So I adopted by role in the movie, and sat still, and the gracious police woman (WPC) adopted hers.

I unwound the window, and she stooped to look in, and said (after briefly glancing at her script),

“Do you know why you’ve been pulled over sir?”

I always thought that this question was reserved for those moments when it’s blindingly obvious why you’ve been pulled over. When you’ve been driving down the wrong side of a dual carraige way, in a car with two missing wheels, throwing recently emptied whiskey bottles out of the window at passers by, naked. But I genuinely had no idea why I’d been pulled over, and could only reply, feeling like I was ruining the script, “actually, no”.

Then she said it. Then she told me my crime – the wanton madness I had been consumed within. One of my… one of my headlights wasn’t working.

Yes, look disgusted.

I was then told that a part of the Highways Act of 1454 or whatever, said that I was required to participate in a breathalyser test, and that I needed to step out of my vehicle.

In all fairness, the WPC was really nice, and was very friendly about the whole affair. Behind my car was stood a police man, (PC. Not ‘MPC’, which strikes me as a little strange. Since it stands for ‘Police Constable’, does that mean that if you aren’t a girl police person, you are genderless? Or maybe both genders?) who had been writing down my registration number, and other such official duties. He went back to the police car (which would also be ‘PC’) to get the breathalyser, while myself and the WPC had a bit of a chat. She asked what I did, and I told her I was a youth worker and a student, ooh, what are you studying, youth work and applied theology, ah, and do you work here, no, near Bath, ah, yes, until we were once more joined by the hermaphroditic police officer.

His job was to attach a small plastic tube to the top of the black box. Her job was to comment on how cold it was, being November, and two in the morning. He wasn’t managing his job. It kept falling off.

To fill, she explained that it would measure to see if there was any alcohol in me, and I commented that this seemed somewhat unlikely as at that point I hadn’t drunk any alcohol for over a year.

Eventually he managed to clip the thing on, and then explained to me to meaning of the various lights. “These will measure the amount of blood in your alc…”

WPC snickered.

John, without pausing to think, said,

“The amount of blood in my alcohol? Perhaps you should be blowing into it?”

And that’s the story of how I came to be in prison.

No, not really. Thank the shiny earth, WPC laughed, meaning that PC had to just look stony-faced, and repeat the instructions properly.

Oddly enough, I registered no alcohol on the thing, and was then I would assume free to go.

But no, actually, there was something else. They read me my rights.

WPC asked me for my driver’s license, registration documents and MOT certificate. I told her I did not have them in my car. She said, “it’s an offence to not present [those documents] on demand by a police officer, and so I’m going to have to read you your rights.” I asked, “Should I carry them around with me in future then?”, to which she said, “it is an offence to not present them on demand to a police officer, but, no, I wouldn’t if I were you.”

Bemusing to say the least. And then I got that whole spiel, “you do not have to say anything, but anything you do say will be written on a baseball bat and beaten into your face just as soon as we’re out of public view”, and then I was told to take the documents into my local police station within seven days, or I’d be shot dead.

So there it is. My criminal record laid bare before you.

It’s an incredible tale, and one that quite a few production companies are showing a lot of interest in, with a view to perhaps franchising the story into a series of major motion pictures.

What the flipping heck?

My blog appears to be going backward. I’ve had to time travel to 2003 to write this post.

Can anyone tell me how on earth this could have happened, and how to fix it?

I’m using WordPress 2.0.5, and cannot find an option.