Benefit Street, Brighton.

The thing about totally losing your mind is that it takes so damn long to find it again. Even when you think you may have finally rounded it all up, it's really difficult to know how to put it back again neatly.  Like trying to stuff a double duvet into a single duvet cover. I never thought I'd find myself blogging about  this, because I had so many other fish to fry. I wanted to start tilting at windmills once again, and fighting the good fight, and speaking out  But I couldn't. Because I couldn't admit that actually, I couldn't. Because I haven't been fixed yet. People were tactful and supportive when, in May last year, I finally lost the plot completely, But no-one can go on being tactful and supportive indefinitely. It is a very finite state.  Making Allowances wears a bit thin after a while too. So you try to remember who you were when you were well. Then you remember that while you may have switched off all the lights last May, you'd ...

I expect it would sound suspiciously like conspiracist nonsense to link the current climate in America to the education system? Yet, deconstructed from  an historical perspective, it becomes an inevitable outcome. Because from the beginning of civilisation, education has always been a jealously guarded tool by which and through which, the elite rule. In our culture, it led  to the marginalisation of women, the power of the Church, both absolute monarchy and democracy, and a rigid class system. Because of our violent nature, we ruled through, and gained power by, violent means. Thus, keeping the lower sectors in complete ignorance ensured a steady supply of human cannon fodder; not merely quiescent but, when prompted, actually eager to make the ultimate sacrifice.  Universal education would lead to a questioning of this ancient system. It also led to various reforms and the eventual demand for education to be made the Right, enforced by law, of ...

I’ve been giving this some thought lately.  Mainly because I kept thinking that this man was surely a ridiculous chimera; or that  at any moment Michael Moore was going to appear and admit that the whole Drumph-bumph is merely a satire for a new movie. Then I realized that people were actually supporting this bombastic buffoon. And I started reading their posts on chat-rooms and forums. I’ve engaged with one or two in various fora  and realized that they were exactly the same kind of people as Trump. Thousands of little MiniMe Trumps.  They truly think he is America’s Great White Hope.  And they unblinkingly accept every ever word he says as the truth. So the big no-no which lurks at the back of every conversation with a Drumph-supporter is that they are, in great droves, badly-educated.  It would be tempting to write them off as predominantly working-class or dirt-farmers – except that, as the man himself tells us – some of them are real...

It’s not true, of course.  Making a generalization about an entire culture is never going to work.  Besides which, those who can afford to go travelling to other places in the world  have usually managed to fork out the odd few thousand in order not to make  children in foreign climes run from them in terror  when they open their mouth to say Bonjour. So it’s not travelling Brits who gave rise to our reputation as having the worst teeth in the world. (And yes.  We STILL have it.) It’s those one encounters inside the country that present sights not usually seen in developed countries. People with one lone, yellow fang dangling down from their jaw; those with mouths like old pianos – yellow-brown with black spaces in between; people you would hate to sit across from at a dining table; and those whose gnarled and twisted teeth seem to defy all logic and give rise to acute curiosity about whether they actually ingest all food through a feeding tub...

I've made it a rule, throughout my career as a writer, never to write something when I'm really angry.  Or, at least, not to send it until I've gone through it again with a cooler mindset..  But then again, I've never liked rules. So yeah: I'm angry.  And yeah - frankly my dears, I don't give a damn: I'm going to press the "Post" button as soon as I'm finished. Because I've just come from this site:  http://bit.ly/1nn0xLU   and the discussion concerning proposed further marginalisation of the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. The discussion centres around what   comes across as a rather flippant idea to further deprive the lowest sector of society - people who are unable to work because they are - either temporarily or permanently - looney tunes.   In Machiavellian terms we - the citizens of la-la Land, are a pretty safe bet.  We have no power.  We are not "organised".  We have no Voice. We are also conveniently...

To-day I gave a talk at the Sallis Benney Theatre. I had to.  It was the only way to tell if I was really getting better or if I was just on a temporary, manic, phase. Quite the conundrum. I explained in the first post of this year that I had had a rather long-drawn-out mental breakdown last year  (which was honestly earned!). It involved realising that I had to take on a whole new life. And I didn't know if I was going to be able to do that, or if it was even going to be possible. I was starting to write again - but did I have my mojo back? Or had it taken another turn? There was only one way to find out so I did it. And the answer was: - hell yeah! From the moment I got up from my seat it was as though all the events of the past three years had never happened: I was back in my skin. Because the brief had been to talk about something one felt strongly about, or had a passion about - and I was suddenly spoilt for choice! Women in the canon of English Literature? Chi...

The sounds of tweetering in the dovecotes for once drowned out the maniacal screeches of the seagulls to-day, as Britonians and Hove Actuallys waited for the local council - The Brighton and Hove City Council - to hand down its budget. Oh, it'll be debated and argued about for weeks to come so I shan't bother with what's in the budget.  What both delights and dismays are what isn't in the budget - for which everyone living on Benefits Street, Brighton, also gives 'umble thanks. What DIDN'T go in was the inhumane idea of adding to the current paucity of public facilities by cutting out even more. Obviously made by people who are never more than a few minut es away from their cars - and home. But rousingly cheered by anyone who has ever got caught short walking home through Brighton and Hove to get to the other side...before you even get to the road home. It can be agonizing; and accounts for the pungent smells that assail one from various walls, garden...