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DAYS iN: Home – F-F-F-flippin’ F-F-F-freezin’!

I put all this lot on upon entering our home!

We just got back home, from childminding duties at my sister’s. As we occasionally do, we stayed a second night. I was exhausted after an evening shift delivering for Amazon, and then sharing a bottle of wine with Teresa and Hannah.

Amazon were taking the piss royally yesterday, on two fronts: first I arrived a few minutes late (2-3, or thereabouts) for a midday shift. The crappy Flex app then proceed to load so slowly that by the time it was up and running I’d ‘missed your [my!] slot’!

So I returned later the same day, and did an evening sesh. I try not to do these, on account of it being harder and more stressful in the dark of winter evenings/nights. And herein was the second Amazon piss-take:

Actually this was a double-barrelled piss fest: first I had an order ‘to be delivered no later than 4pm’. Yet it was the second delivery of about eight or so, and I didn’t start collecting the items, never mind delivering them, until 4pm, when my shift officially commenced!

I told the recipient that I’d have bent the laws of physics to deliver to him by 4pm, if it lay within my powers. And, if he was unhappy – fortunately he was a jovial and understanding chap, and was absolutely fine – please take it up with Amazon, and don’t blame me!

But the real piss take the second, was the sheer distances they had me travelling. I started in Cambourne, then went to Royston, then Potton, then Sandy, then home. I reckon that the fuel costs of this run will prob’ have accounted for half my earnings.

Lobster, a very hirsute, handsome and charming chap!

But my main prompt for this post was returning to our frigidarium home. Our car was plenty warm en-route home. With two of us in the the confines of a little MX5, plus the car heating, we were very cosy. The house was 8°C, according to our wall mounted central-heating doodad (thermostat/controller?).

The pic atop this post is how I got myself up to brave a trip to our littlest room! Which used to be an outside privy, when the house was built. And today feels like it still is! I was worried my bowels would refuse to open, so damn chilly was it!

I’m now enjoying that most plebeian of pleasures, a pot noodle. Pornography for the palette, granted. But warm and flavoursome. It maketh me happy!

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HEALTH & WELLBEiNG: Taxed For Being Ill.

I have chronic conditions – psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis – that require ongoing medication. And to pay for this – in addition to the taxes we all pay* – I pay a monthly direct-debit towards a prescription pre-payment scheme.

*Or ought to, and by and large do. I my view it’s those wealthy enough to dodge such joint responsibilities that are our biggest problem.

On my last visit to the chemist, to pick up my regular prescription meds, after 5 or 6 years of never being asked for any proof, I was asked. I told them I had none, as I’d never been asked before. They told me I’d have to bring some proof next time.

I’m not sure what constitutes proof? There’s no physical document or card anymore. There used to be a card. But that’s been scrapped. Toryism shaving off another small fraction from the public purse, to give the fat cats further scope to skim off more cream. So I guess I’ll just have to print out an appropriate email, if I can find one.

The Tories have always disliked the NHS, and for decades they have been systematically butchering it. Tragically the Blair/Brown Labour govt. colluded in the expansion of rapine capitalism within the NHS, making an already dodgy situation even worse. In many ways New Labour was Tory Lite. Tragic!

There are so many layers and levels to all the ramifications of the Tory ‘only money matters’ attitude (I won’t dignify it with the term philosophy!). One of these is to make parking at NHS facilities another opportunity for parasites to drain money from NHS workers and patients.

So not only am I taxed ‘at source’, to fund all our public services, including the wonderful institution that is the NHS. But, as an ill person – something that at its rotten core (I can’t say heart, Toryism has no heart) the right equates with ‘sin’* – I have to pay two more times: once more for my prescriptions, and again, to park.

Healthcare Tory style.

* There’s a barely disguised eugenicist Spencerian thread at the base of such ideologies, itself heir to the far older superstitions of religions, and dark pre-scientific (mis)understanding, which equates illness (and even ‘ugliness’) with sin and evil; outward manifestations of inner un-Godliness. Conditions that – rather than being understood and treated with due sympathy and care – are to be denigrated and punished.

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BOOK REViEW: The Wild Boys, William Burroughs

Just finished reading this. It’s a short and fairly easy read, albeit the prose veers between normal and ‘cut up’. Luckily there’s enough standard English to make it readable.

I’m fascinated by Burroughs. I think he’s prob’ a bit nuts, and possibly a bit of a huckster/charlatan. But he has a great command of language, and an amazingly vivid if somewhat twisted imagination.

In essence, a great deal of Burroughs writing – at least what I’ve read – is autobiographical. But rather than straightforward documentary narrative, Burroughs serves up a postmodern bouillabaisse of fevered drug-addled eroto-fantasy, interwoven with crumbling memories.

Burroughs wandering life as a trust-fund dilettante, globe-trotting in search of, essentially/frankly, thrills, and being both gay and – by dint of the latter, to some extent – Bohemian, lead him to live in all the places that crop up here: St Louis, Mexico City, London, North Africa, New York, etc.

Burroughs’ unusual outsider life – involving crime, drugs, and a sexuality that meant living not like but as an outlaw – all conspired to fuel a pretty weird fantasy world. And so The Wild Boys (and other writings) veers towards being his kind of heir to the Marquis de Sade’s vision of ultimate freedom in a melange of sex and violence.

Depending on the reader’s tastes, it can make for quite compelling and entertaining (or off-putting) reading. What it’s real merits may be, I’m very uncertain. In some ways I enjoyed this book. In others, I was disappointed.* As with much of Burroughs’ work, it’s like the somewhat choreographed dredgings of a disordered and fairly warped mind.

In some of his writings all of this is filtered through very standard prose, in others – particularly when he employs his cut up style – it’s practically unreadable. Here it’s a mixture, thankfully erring on the side of comprehensible. But the visions it describes are, well… read it. See what you think!

The book signs off ‘William S. Burroughs, London, 1969’. This was an interesting time in his life, about which you can learn more here.

Pop group Duran Duran’s hit song is named after the novel (more on this below). And I’ve read that cult gay film maker Fred Halsted was in discussions with Burroughs about making a pornographic movie of The Wild Boys. But that never came to pass, alas.

* The titular Wild Boys don’t really come to the fore till very near the end of the book. Making many of the ‘plot’ synopses of this work I’ve seen seem way too glib/conventional.

Notes

I made the following notes as I read the book. I forgot to do so for two chapters, so those are in [brackets]!

CHAPTER / Remarks / score 
Tio Maté Smiles - Cinematic surrealist Mexico City sleaze… **1/2
The Chief Smiles - Moroccan death sleaze … ***
Old Sarge Smiles - St Louis nun-sleaze, with a sprinkling of racism… **1/2
Bury the Bread - Audrey moons, Old Sarge rants; a psychedelic melange… ***
Penny Arcade Peep Show #1 - Funfair surreal gay sex dreams ***1/2
Le Gran Luxe - Big swanky party surreal gay sex dreams ***1/2
[Penny Arcade PS #2 - I forget!]
[Miracle Rose - … er? Something to do with anii… & ‘rectal mucous’!?]
Silver Smile - Frankie & Johnny gay sex dreams ****
Frisco Kid - Klondike gay sex dream ***1/2
Penny Arcade PS #3 - Cinematic cut & paste
Dead Child - Golf course gay sex dreams morph into shaman jungle dream ***
Call Me Joe - Defection from the straight army to the Wild Boys **1/2
Mother & I - Perverts vs Police State: ‘Our aim is total chaos’. Wild Boys eroto-horror… ***
Wild Boys - The title finally addressed… more of the same [gay sex dreams]… **1/2
Penny Arcade PS #4 - Tree-house-boat gay sex dream ***1/2
Penny Arcade PS #5 - Assassin gardener **1/2
Wild Boys Smile - Arrival, more of the same [gay sex dreams]… The End ***

FOOTNOTE:

The Duran Duran song, The Wild Boys, is of little or no interest to me, particularly musically, in itself. But it is a little intriguing inasmuch as it was supposed to be the theme song to another mooted attempt at making the book into a film. The ‘songfacts’ website says:

‘Duran Duran recorded the song because Russell Mulcahy, who directed their videos, bought the movie rights to the book and planned to make it into a film. The band wrote the song for the movie, which was never made. At the time, this was the most expensive video ever made.’