John Paul Mohammed III

In the beginning there were the gods and the humans marvelled at their majesty, trembled at their power and shat their pants when something unexpected happened. When we couldn’t explain something we blamed it on the god of this or the goddess of that. The early gods were simple primeval beings the sun, the earth, the moon and alike. Later on we gave them areas of responsibility, nice names and even made up little stories about their parents and how they seduced fit looking mortals. It was a loose relationship which seemed to suit everyone involved.

The root of all evil is of course money and the humans burgeoning desire for wealth and power was a real turning point for religion. When mere subsistence was the be all and end all, the ways of the gods seemed far removed from your every day goat herder or dung eater. The regional wandering vagabond zealot had very little to offer the man in the street. When the amount of gold in your cellar became important suddenly the god troopers had something for sale, the salvation of your mortal soul. This was a sweet operation; no stock issues nothing to go mouldy, nothing for anyone to nick and everyone needed it. For the right price a holy man could guarantee you entrance to heaven and the killer was no one could prove otherwise.

At about the same time people decided to start writing things down and this was really good news for your religious types. Once things were on papyrus people had something to reference and if it looked old enough and official enough then it became the truth. It even got mistaken for factual history from time to time and if you’re a Looney Alaskan governor/ soccer mum it still does.  When it got really old it took on a mystical property and it became the word of god. The god squad now had a winning combo. No one could do anything without god’s say so and only the priests could give you access, but it would cost you. Usually a shed full of cash, posh frocks, somewhere nice to live with a constant flow of hot totty to keep you warm on cold starlight nights.

As life became more complicated so did the religions. They took all their little stories and put them into great big books. These books then became the corner stone of the religions. Now you would have thought that this would help make things more stable. Everyone would know the rules and following them would be a piece of cake. No such luck, there was no way this kind of power could be given to the masses so the priests pulled out their trump card “interpretation.” Only the religious big knobs could understand and interpret the word of god. Only those that were divinely blessed or who knew someone who knew someone were bequeathed with this gift. The scam was stronger than ever.

At this point in the story I think we need to clarify a few things. Faith is a beautiful thing, for someone to have absolute confidence that someone or something is looking out for them, be it a god, a friend or public body with no facts or evidence to base a reasonable decision on is both amazing and humbling. Religion demands that of its followers, but it’s run by human beings that more often than not fail the faith test with monotonous regularity. Power corrupts and absolute power is like having 12 blind men try to cross the M25 in thick fog. Impending chaos with wanton death and destruction thrown in for good measure. Science, while not a religion per say has all the characteristics of one. Flashy books, mantras and dogma, very impressive people saying complicated things that you don’t understand and a personal aversion to sexiness. The two sections of society that seem to repel the opposite sex the most are definitely priests and geeks. Science is an anti-religion but that Dawkins bloke (Not the one in the chair) is frankly the biggest plum ever. He doesn’t believe in anything unless he can prove it in an experiment. Get a life and live a little mate.

Back to the story, for the next two thousand years the world’s religions held the whip hand, wars were fought and people died on the back of warring faiths and hateful despotic leaders. Wars in general are fought for two reasons, gold and religion, both are the power to control others, the power to live in a big house and have people do stuff for you so you can get fat and get sexually gratified by whom ever and what ever you want.

The control of your mortal soul was supremely important and the religious leaders would go to any lengths to keep that power. Religions split and splintered as different factions grabbed as much power as they could. More Christians have been killed by their fellow Christians over the centuries than anyone else. The Muslims are the same, they have different factions and in Iraq and Afghanistan they spend much more time blowing up each other rather than the infidel crusaders. Why is this then? Simple - it’s all complete bollocks.

Over the last century science has gone from strength to strength and now all bets are off when it comes to religious control. Okay science has invented ways to kill millions in a single press of the button, but we at least we don’t go to war because some bloke in Rome with the silly hat on had a bad dream and he says so.

Gods were in place to explain the unexplainable, the need for us to feel we were part of something bigger and better, to reinforce our need to be the centre of the universe and to give us something to look forward to when we die. Science has replaced or dispelled a lot of this and religion is becoming more and more marginalised.

Religion is just the god system that got out of hand crossed with the human desire to get rich and lazy as fast as possible. I admit that sometimes good people got entangled in this mess. They try to do selfless generous things but they are swamped by the mire of complete tripe and rubbish. Also contrary to what they tell you godless people are just as good as anyone else. They are two completely separate concepts and being holy doesn’t make you a nice person. Religion just complicates things. If you believe in a god and an afterlife then treat others as you would want to be treated, look after the weak, help others when you can.  Do that and I reckon you should be all right.

Hercules you're going to hell for that

December marches on and everyone is focused on the best holiday of the year, you know presents in excess, drinking to excess, food to excess followed by more cold meat and pickle than you can shake a stick at. With the odd hang over and family fight thrown in for good measure obviously. The original reason for this frivolity, back in the day, was to celebrate the winter solstice, a pagan ritual; basically a bit of a party to say thank god we survived till now and any chance we could make it to spring please? Then along came Christianity and before you can say turkey and cranberry sandwiches they’d nicked it, moved it a week and got 3 clever blokes with posh presents involved. They started banging on about mangers, angels and shepherds with not a single flake of snow in sight.

All this because of the one true god rather than some plank of wood that looks like a crow, but why do we have gods, what purpose do they play? It really is much more straight forward than we make it today and I’d like to share it with you. I call it my practical guide to mythology, theology and gobbledygook.

In the beginning we were mere monkeys who picked our bums and the bugs off the backs of anyone that would have sex with us. Life was simple then; contentment was derived from blissful ignorance born of massages, cheap nookie and an abundance of fruit.  Then one day evolution brought three ingredients together that would change things forever. Opposable thumbs, a big brain and a single word, WHY? (Not sure about the question mark, but you get the idea) From that day forward everything we did was driven by the need to know, the need to understand, explain and control. This is when the gods slipped quietly onto the scene and took control.

For your average caveman who could just about fashion crude flint tools knowledge was fleeting and without any kind of language or means of communication any inspirational leap in understanding or thought was lost when the hide clad genius was either eaten by a roving beast or when he drowned in the nearby lake. There were a lot of whys then and very few answers and to bridge that chasm of unknowing, people basically made it up, blaming everything on a strange magical higher power that controlled everything. The sun was a good start and it was worshipped and feared in equal measure.

For the next few millennia people all round the world started to learn some stuff, rudimentary cooking, looking after sheep and what berries not to eat, but they didn’t amount to that much. They continued to ask lots of whys. So we continued to make shit up and why not. Hey presto the gods took major control and religious dogma was just around the corner. We started to write bits and bobs down so we didn’t forget it, but if some bloke (women weren’t trusted) who looked vaguely clever, think Charlton Heston in a beard, said something that kind of sounded right people believed it to be so. If something else happened then it was blamed on the gods. Things often went badly and death and famine stalked the land like two large stalking things (yes, I know it's Blackadder but it’s a classic). So the gods were very busy. The unclean lived in fear and would do just about anything to stay in their local god’s good books and the more bizarre the better. Nothing like sacrificing a virgin or eating cow dung just in case.

Then in areas around the world pockets of clever people appeared, in China, India, Greece and Central America to name a few. On top of asking why people started to prove why. The people in charge didn’t like being questioned and they tried to stop people asking why. This simply didn’t work because some people would still ask why even if the devil was going to stick sharp objects in their butt for eternity. Sometimes this proof was embraced and sometimes it was seen as upsetting the gods, but it often turned out particularly nasty for someone in the piece, usually the so called non believer.

This was the sign of things to come and ever since science has battled religion for the hearts and minds of the masses. Reason versus faith, proof versus dogma. In the early days religion had the upper hand, but as the science improved so the need for faith has reduced. The gods had a big head start and it took a long time for common sense to catch up. The problem was the people running the religions usually ended up with all the money and so the power because people who were about to pop their clogs would do just about anything to get into heaven. Strangely enough no matter how many peasants you had slaughtered giving all your money to a church turned out to be the sure fire way. No surprise there, but what a great scam, no one came back to disprove you and the science lot couldn’t prove anything either. So faced with three options either, A) never ending agony with the devil roasting your wedding tackle over the fires of hell. B) Rotting in a box in the ground or C) eternal bliss with your every wanton desire serviced by half naked goddess' guess what people chose.

Gods were invented to help us explain the unexplainable, to slate the unquenchable thirst for knowledge and the give us something to look forward to when we die. Nothing more than that, but like all good ideas it got completely out of hand because humans by nature are greedy, selfish and self-absorbed. These are basic animal instincts that should have been overcome by our civilisation, but I fear we have a ways to go yet

Next Religion ……

Physics, Kola Bears and Beer Goggles

November is over and as with every December thoughts turn to Christmas, you know that religious holiday, the one that worships at the altar of the great god consumerism. It’s supposedly a time of joy and good will to all men, but if that’s the case then when is the time for us to be unholy arses and horrible to a bunch of women. The universe has to have balance, there has to be a counterweight to everything, it’s the way of the world. For every good a bad and a couple of uglies thrown in for good measure.

Everything we do is based on balance, good v evil, day v night, east v west. It’s the struggle that keeps us from flying off into oblivion. They say that opposites attract and nothing could be more true. Without Darth there would be no Luke, without ying there would be no yang, without the devil there is no god, without a hole there would be no polo and without zig zag would just be another line like all the rest. Balance is so important, especially for tight rope walkers and garden Jenga players and I see this equilibrium everywhere I look.

Newton’s first law of motion states that a body will travel in a straight line and at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force. Which is all about balance, positive and negative, this is important for many circus acts especially those with high falls. The positive being if the tightrope walker stands still he won’t fall off unless something pushes him off, the negative being if he does fall off then gravity will ensure it hurts when he hits the ground.

Take Australia as a perfect example, the country has the best weather, it has great outdoor sports, the beaches are great, it has stunning natural beauty, the standard of living is good and people are warm and friendly. What could be better? But which country has six of the ten deadliest spiders? Some that even live in your toilet! You can’t go swimming in the lakes because the crocodiles eat you, you can’t go swimming in the sea because the sharks eat you. If you don’t get eaten by a great white then be careful as they have 2 types of jelly fish that kill you and not even pissing on yourself helps. If you decide that swimming is too dangerous and you just want to paddle in the shallow water you would think you would be safe, but no, they have a fish that looks like a stone and if you tread on it you’ll be dead in 2 hours. If the stone fish doesn’t kill you then the blue ring octopus will, it's small and quite pretty, but when it bites you all your muscles stop working and you’re toast. Get this - they have a killer shell fish that shoots you with poisoned darts.   The snakes kill you, 1 is aptly named the Death Adder, the spiders kill you, the scorpions kill you and if you annoy a kangaroo it can kill you with one kick. There is a good reason god stuck it at the bottom of world around the back. It’s where he put all his maddest creations he just gave them nice weather to make up for the awful company.

Look at Saudi Arabia, it's a large sand dune of a country that doesn’t have a single river to help sustain life. It’s unbelievably hot during the day and freezing cold in the night. In fact it’s so hot during the day that most of the animals live under ground and their snakes have devised some strange wiggling crawl thing because the sand is so hot. You can’t drink beer and if you touch a woman in public they get to give you a proper whipping for the pleasure.  Not very nice at all but to ensure balance is maintained they’ve got a stack load of oil that they sell to the rest of us to support their camel and Bentley addictions.

France is another point in question and I know I’ve mentioned it before but it needs to be said. It is a great country, warm weather for the beaches in the south, skiing in the north, good farming land in the middle, great food to eat, the best wines, cheeses, fine art, culture, history (not as good as England though, calm down) and beautiful places to visit and see. Unfortunately the people are horrible to you, unless you’re French as well. They are so beyond superior that I can’t even find a word in any language to describe them, they think that the European way is basically the French way, if not then they are out on strike. Just because they’ve got their own kissing they think they are better than the rest of us.

You see this balance in the smaller things in life as well, medicine being one. The plus side is that it makes you better, but to work it has to taste nasty. This holds true for food as well. Chocolate and alike taste nice but is bad for you, food that is bad for your waistline tastes lovely and makes you feel good but makes you look like a certain French tyre advertisement. This is why vegetables taste bad; if they tasted good then no one would have invented toffee popcorn. There has to be balance so anyone who thinks vegetables are nicer than chocolate is probably nasty to puppies all the time.

I know women are complicated creatures, but they still have to live within a balanced universe, their counter balance is of course men. Women usually have a wardrobe full of shoes, men just the ones they need. Women have an outfit for every occasion; men only have shirts and ties that match because they can buy them in a set. Women buy a house because they see the potential and how it can be changed and improved. Men buy a house because they like it. Women don’t want men to ask them what they want; they want men to surprise them and do the hoovering without being prompted. Men are just confused. Men ask for what they want, women are playing some strange opposites game that men don’t know the rules to. Beer makes women more attractive and makes men less attractive. Those are the rules and who am I to say otherwise.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction Newton said and that is just the way of things. So just remember for all this happiness in December there is a cold, wet, miserable day in April when your car will breakdown in the middle of nowhere. When the battery on your phone dies and you miss the series finale of your favourite TV show just remember you were happy before and this payback means the universe doesn’t explode in a massive fireball of death and destruction. 

Snow balls and Sangria

So as I start to pen this tome I'm a little short of things to say, basically I've been stuck inside for a few days because we've had an early winter bout of snow. The media was all a buzz with stories of freak this and abnormal that, strange sights and miracle like events, the earliest snow fall since, wait for it, 1993! I mean it's not exactly a long time is it. I haven't played an LP since 1993 and come to think of it the last time I let my hair grow long was about then as well. Perhaps there is not a lot going on in the world, one of those no news days when a cat stuck in a tree in Swindon gets on the local BBC news at 6. Perhaps not, frankly there's enough  bad news around to keep Natasha Kaplinsky at her desk for hours on end. Where do you start?

 Well south Asia is on the brink of war, the Koreans have got the hump with each other, again. You ate my dog, you ate my goat, my mass synchronised dancing is better than yours, I've got high speed broadband you haven't, ner nerdie ner ner, you shelled your town, I've invited the Yanks around with there big boats to shout "My dad is harder than your dad" over the fence. Slightly more important than the average snow fall in Essex in the 90's.

The fact that the Irish economy is about to implode and if it does then the whole Euro-zone adventure is going to come crashing down around our ears is a bit more concerning than welly high snow drifts in Dover. Now I know we are not in the Euro, but we need to get a few things into perspective. The Euro-zone is our biggest export market and if the rest of Europe doesn't have any money then who's going to buy our jet engineers, sports cars and spend £10 on plastic Beefeaters outside the tower of London. If the Celtic Tiger gets mange then Britain will be awash with  Boy bands, ditch diggers and cheap labourers. What are all the Eastern Europeans going to do, there'll be riots at Nettos across the country, you'll be able to get a plumber around on the day you phone them and the cross rail project will be completed 2 years ahead of target and at a cost of £18.47. Basically chaos.

I'm sure that most people would agree that the fact that the country owes around £1 trillion is a touch more vexing then black ice in Basildon. The numbers are so big as to make no sense what so ever. If you counted to 1 million and you counted 1 number every second it would take you 11.5 days to finish. To count to 1 trillion would take 32,000 years. The government has cut £80 billion from the budget and this is just to claw back what we overspent this year. We've maxed out our Barclaycard, got one of those MBNA ones as well and done that one too. We've had a knock on the door from the bailiffs and if we don't pay up now they're going to take our Wide screen TV, X Box, IPod and the BMW.

Apparently 24 FIFA officials pocketing $100M is less important than comedy snowmen in Scotland. A bunch of corrupt officials that hold the key to around £3 Billion of profit and just because Mr Blatter wants it to go to Russia then it will. The fact that if you win the bid you have to agree to not levy any tax what so ever on FIFA, FIFA's mates and their related football businesses. Plus you have to suspend any workers rights including the minimum wage. They are so bent they can see round corners, if you can get Jack Warner to agree to your bid then you get his two mates as well. I wonder how much they charge.

Now I know weather is a national obsession but come on we have snow every year and we arse it up every year, the roads will jam, the trains will run but no one will be able to get to the stations, the airports will be slightly put out, people will panic and buy loads of bread and milk but lets get it into context, we had a bit of snow in November big deal.

Also what happened to global warming? I thought I was set to enjoy Mediterranean type sunshine, eating dinner on the decking sipping Chianti, eating olives, having long afternoon naps and having my sons chase forgein skirt around the local nightclubs till 4am every night. Guess they'll need to rethink that won't they. Oh that's right they did, after things didn't warm up overnight and the evidence didn't add up, the so called experts decided that global warming didn't mean it would actually get warmer, but we would just get more extreme weather phenomenons. Not so bloody expert after all.

Just like the ever so intelligent astrophysicists who told us the universe started with a big bang (I've seen the proof and it's as flimsy as a hookers underwear) and that this happened 13.7 billion years ago. Now they are happy to tell us that nothing can travel faster than  the speed of light so how do they explain the fact that they found a star system over 20 billion light years away. Easy, they make up some new theory that things did expand faster at the beginning of time in some strange bullshit made up expanding hot air bollocks event due to stupidity and ego theory.

So in summary
The Koreans are having a tiff and that makes us all nervous because one has nuclear bombs,
Ireland has spent all its pocket money and has asked it's parents to buy it more chocolate,
Britain has maxed out its credit card and now can't buy a new sofa every month,
FIFA is a bunch of self righteous thieves and the world cup is going to Russia, Blatter said so,
People have no real idea about global warming they are basically guessing,
Space geeks aren't quite as clever as they thought they were and girls like muscle better,
And snow is fun but not quite as important as the other stuff.

Christmas Carols in Moscow

Christmas is now on the horizon and it's time for us all to focus on the ritual of present transfer. Now being of a certain age, i.e. over 40 (but only just mind you) and I'm getting to the point where I find myself saying stupid things that show just how old and untrendy I've become.  The classic old personism is “When I were a lad!” you even get to affect a rather crappy northern accent as if you actually delivered Hovis bread at 5am every morning.

 It’s one of those slightly patronising things you fall into when you have kids, things you promised yourself you wouldn’t do or say because they sounded so stupid when you were on the receiving end of them.  Some of the things you heard were more inane than others, my all time favourite being “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” or “I’ll wipe that smile off your face.” The mental imagery for those two are just exquisite. I’m happy to say that I have managed to resist most, but while my two boys are under 10 there is still a wonderfully innocent look of amazed incredulity when you tell them that there were no such things as playstations back in the day and phones were very immobile if you had one at all. When you tell them that the nearest you got to a curry was a boil in the bag Vesta meal for 2. Which was basically 4 lumps of chicken in a yellow sauce that resembled nothing else on earth I can think of other than cat bile. They just stand there slack mouthed like fish in a tank.

Looking back things were pretty boring, so the next time you hear some old fart tell you things were so much better in the “Good old days” then you have my permission to flop out the old boy and urinate on his shoes. Ladies you can just smack em in the chops, I can’t condone any woman squatting in the street Paula Radcliffe stylee, it's not nice and any moral high ground you were about to hold has been immediately relinquished.

Things were not better in the good old days and when exactly were these so called good old days, mi ol’ china cocknee sparra. Let’s take a little look at exactly when these Utopian Edens were shall we? Let’s discount the 80’s and 70’s as I’m 40 and I lived through those times. They were basically crap, my Walkman ate both tapes and batteries for fun and the hair cuts were rubbish.

The 60’s were how shall I say it, a pretty mixed bag. The cold war was in full affect so life on the wrong side of the iron curtain was particularly rubbish, living on bread, gruel and lies. The Germans were building a great big wall through Berlin; I reckon that wasn’t too good for morale. The rest of the world were left wondering if that bloke with massive eyebrows in Moscow was going to push his big red button this week. Somewhat tense you might say! The Vietnam War was on the rise and the bay of pigs was a complete cock up as well so the Yanks weren’t too happy either, especially the black ones that weren’t even allowed to sit on the best seats on the bus. China was using its little red book to be very nasty to its poor people. The Israelis’ had a war which lasted 6 days. The Cuban’s had a missile crisis and the whole world shat its pants.  The feminist movement went into full affect in the early 60’s so by definition half the world had the hump and we all know how bad that can be. We had TV, but only 2 channels, how was that good! On the flip side, the music was good; we went to the moon, Barbie got a boyfriend (Ken), the first Lamborghini was built, there were some quality movies  - Spartacus, Jungle Book & The Dirty Dozen and things were a lot more colourful than the grey 50’s. Everyone had more fun, but you still died of some basic stuff in hospitals, a lot of people still didn’t have an inside toilet and if you lived up North there was a good chance someone you knew had died down a coal mine. That doesn’t sound much like the good old days does it?

How do the 50’s shape up? Well badly if you ask me. We still had rationing, i.e. not enough food. There was no world war, but we had a spin off war, something on the side, a cheese and biscuits war in Korea, with the Americans itching to use their H bombs again. The Russians were very grumpy and shot lots of rockets into space to annoy the Americans. We had the Mau Mau in Kenya chopping up white people, China running out of food and millions starving, that wasn’t so good. Basically everyone was skint and tired from the war. You were lucky if you lived till you were 60, no heating, no plumbing, minimal electric, everyone in the north lived on lard, the music was rubbish, the films were poor, the King died, the Ruskies were nicking countries Hitler Stylee, the French started the Vietnam war which they deftly passed to the Americans when it went a bit Pete Tong, the cars were death traps, Africa was revolting, the airplanes kept crashing, someone nicked the Suez canal, posh spies nicked all our secrets and only rich people could drink champagne. Rubbish.

The 40’s had a war and the 30’s had a depression so they were not even in the running as the good old days. The 20’s were completely screwed, the yanks banned booze, the rest of us were either having a revolution, a communist uprising, a fascist take over, a neighbourly war or a disintegrating empire. Then to top it off the world’s finances crashed and the poor couldn’t even afford lard.

So the next time someone says the young haven’t had it so good you shake their hand and tell them they are so right. Then remind them its not just the nippers, that yes we’ve had a few ups and downs but everyone has never had it so good, everyone has a massive tele, a mobile phone, heating, continuous electricity, Fridge freezers, hospitals that do amazing things, TV with 100’s of channels, knowledge on tap, books, science, music on demand, films at their finger tips, freedom of speech, the vote, a mind blowing array of foods and tastes brought to our shores by people from around the world. Holidays, travel, more food than people know what to do with, the right of ownership, emergency services, more cash in your pocket than ever before and those hand warmer things that you use at golf. If anyone tells you it was better at any other time then they are idiots.

Armageddon in high heels

So we run full steam into November and being British the most important thing now and always is the weather. It’s got rather cold and that means my whole early morning routine has gone out the window. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t mind mornings, I don’t like them per say, but as long as I have my routine and everyone stays in bed or out of my way then I’m happy enough. For the past 8 months things have been ticking along quite nicely, but now things have definitely gone to pot.

The clocks changing was fine I could handle a little more light, but the cold is all together different. There is nothing worse than having to get out of a lovely warm bed and into an ice cube of a bedroom. The problem is the wife loves our warm bed and spends a lot of time in it, but she doesn’t like to get too hot?? So what to do?

 As the temperature had dropped appreciably the Central Heating Utilisation Management Steering group held its first meeting and as with all joint home decision making apparatus it’s made up of two groups, those with the power and the men. The men wasted a lot of time in debate before agreeing with the non men in the group that they were right again and that whatever the women wanted was obviously the best solution.

 Now I’d like to clarify here and now that there are certain truths in this world that are universal and no matter what arguments are put forward, by men, they will remain constant until the end of time or until we somehow manage to introduce a third gender into society that everyone can blame. Men need women for a whole stack of stuff, some too obvious to mention, some are painfully apparent when the wife spends more than 18 hours away from home. Women basically need men for heavy lifting and going downstairs for strange noises in the night and not a lot else. If women went on strike society would crumble in a matter of days. If men went on strike the main issue would be no car tyres would get changed.  A general female strike would be catastrophic, the chain of events would be like so

Day 1 (9:00am)

Global removal of all carnal privileges, tensions rise in all areas around the globe, especially the Middle East. Life in a refugee camp on the West Bank is hard enough, take away nookie and well you’ve got a powder keg on your hands. Diplomatic efforts around the world begin to experience problems.

Day 1 (noon)

Fast food outlets and supermarkets experience a massive spike in demand for hot food and cut sandwiches as packed lunches are found to be empty. Men turn to kebabs without a beer starter.  A general malaise begins as the increase in fat and salt in our diets causes bloating and bowel issues. Toilet paper supplies come under pressure.

Day 1 (3:00pm)

Phone networks start to fail as schools find thousands of kids uncollected from the play ground and start ringing their emergency contact numbers. In a desperate bid to manage this crisis Police are dispatched to all schools to handle the control of hyper children as many of the teachers leave their posts in an attempt to collect their own young ones.

Day 1 (4:00pm)

With no one walking home from school the number of cars on the roads steadily grows, this is then compounded as a large proportion of working men leave work early in a frantic effort to reach their kid’s school. As tension rises so does the accident levels causing grid lock all over the country. With very few Police on hand these accidents remain unmanaged and tailbacks reach record proportions. Those fake motorway policemen are hounded into hiding and all accident investigations are suspended.

Day 1 (8:00pm)

Road congestion starts to ease slightly, but with no home cooking in sight McDonalds everywhere start to run out of food. Congestion begins to climb again. The McDonald's collapse causes a chain reaction and a systematic failure of one fast food chain after another until the only place selling hot food is the Nut & Tofu Parlour on Kensington Boulevard.

Day 1 (11:00pm)

Breaking news the government announces all school and colleges will be closed until the resolution of the women’s general strike. Men everywhere start to face the fact that they will have to entertain their kids for days to come. Tension grows more acute and hospital admissions start to rise.

Day 2 (2:00am)

Men are still stranded on the road and local councils everywhere are forced to start setting up crisis centres and places to sleep all around the major road arteries. A sense of community starts to grow as men everywhere start to take on the parental control for families in their street with fathers stuck in the road chaos. This is short lived as it starts to damn on them that they will have to start watching Ben 10 rather than babe station. Hypertension, stress levels and heart conditions are exacerbated and the hospitals and doctors start to come under renewed pressure.

Day 2 (6:00am)

Absence rates and impromptu holidays reach record proportions as the child minding sector completely breaks down. Businesses are crippled and the supermarkets start to experience panic buying, with the focus on ready meals, chocolate and pot noodles. Roads remain impassable and all McDonalds remain shut.

Day 2 (10:00am)

The stock market starts to crash with the focus on the retail sector. Costa shares see 75% fall along with all the coffee producers as no women are out after the school run and no one has time to nip out of work for a skinny latte. All clothing retailers take a hit especially the shoe shops. Card shop stocks also take a pounding as the realisation dawns that men never remember birthdays kicks in.

Day 2 (noon)

Paper manufacturers and all companies relating to wrapping paper, cards, bows and those posh present bags start to see their share values tumble. IKEA announces the closure of nearly all its branches. The only sector to be up are the florists and flower growers, people are anticipating a lot of making up to do. Pubs start to fill as thousands of men attempt to drown out the pain. Beer gardens come under extreme juvenile pressure.

Day 2 (2:00pm)

Banking stocks also come under sustained pressure as home budgets are ignored and men start paying £14 for a hot dog because the only place they can get food is the cinemas. All transport networks fail; no beer is delivered to the pubs, all sporting events are cancelled until the foreseeable future. Credit card companies start to panic and credit facilities are withdrawn, the whole banking sector starts to implode. The army is called onto the streets as rioting breaks out outside Warner Brothers and the smaller branches of LIDL.

Day 2 (5:00pm)

Western civilisation starts to completely fail, no food in the shops except for pine nuts and star fruit, money markets suspended, hospitals full, Police and Army on the streets, anarchy through out the land, no beer in the pubs, nothing to watch on TV, basically a complete shit tip. Cut to the White House. Barack Obama is playing with his little ones in the oval office while trying to work. The Israeli prime minister is on the phone and things are getting stressed. Mr O doesn't see little fingers playing with his special key and big red button and before you can say intercontinental ballistic missile we just became a foot note in history and all this just because I wanted the Thermostat turned up 2 degrees so I don't freeze my butt off in the mornings.

Anyone for Tennis

So Tuesday last week was Call of Duty day, basically it's an excuse for all the men between the ages of 16 (yes I know it's an 18 certificate, but that's the facts) and 45 to spend the whole day neglecting just about everyone else on the planet to play a silly little game on whatever console they can lay your hands on. Now if you had any brownie points or goodwill vouchers in the bank then today was the day to cash them in. Just be careful not to overspend and have to fall into hock on said vouchers. Always stay in the black, never play catch up. The repayment terms are always very steep and you never know when the debt will be called in. It's usually somewhere near a shoe shop, with matching handbag, obviously, but you have been warned. The day itself really paled into insignificance so I won't bother to recount the parts that were even remotely worth mentioning, as they were few. To break it down it goes something like this, did as little work as I could get away with, got home as early as I could, played the game for a lot of hours, upset the wife, yes I was in the wrong, eat too much crap food then went to bed late. The end

Swiftly on to Wednesday

Wednesday, where the hell did the name come from? Well it’s based on the Old English Woden’s day which derives from the Germanic for the day of Odin, the top dog when it comes to Norse deity.  Now if Odin is the Mac Daddy when it comes to Northern European gods then why is his day stuck in the middle week surely it should be at the weekend? So basically the naming of the days is nearly as inane as the naming of the months, which comes from our Italian friends. December is supposed to be the 10^th month of the year from the Latin “Dec” which means yes, you guessed it 10. Which follows on from the 8^th month “Oct”ober and the 9^th being “Nov”ember, which also derive from the relative Latin terms. So basically it’s a mess, but no-one’s going to change it now. No-one questions things they believe whatever they are told.

There is a reason for this wittering on as it’s something that really annoys me. How people’s ignorance and stupidity make them look like such spanners, but then other people listen to them. It’s like the whole British or being English thing. Why do people say idiotic things like England should be an Anglo-Saxon country again with no foreigners’. Hang on a minute the Angles and the Saxons where both Germanic tribes from Northern Europe that popped across the North Sea when they heard the Romans had finished building straight roads in Londinium and buggered off home to kill each other and watch their once mighty empire fall to bits. How can that be classed as being “English?” What they are saying is to be English means you’re German! You know the place where Adolf Hitler came from (yes I know he was Austrian)

OK let me show you just how crazy this is. I’m going to give you the history of England the abridged version. The bible in three lines last time and now the history of our fair Isles as well aren’t you lucky. Here goes, 500BC the country was in the Iron Age and after around 6 thousands years of living on berries, grass and anything we could kill with spears our first visitors arrived, the Celts. Mainly from France but also from across other parts of central Europe. Our Gallic friends took over and we all started eating garlic, but no one had invented the beret yet so not all bad. The French were in charge for around 500 years until the Italian’s popped over the channel for their turn. The Roman’s gave the Celts a good whacking, sent half of them back to Italy as slaves and moved in togas and all. They did build some nice towns, roads, viaducts, sanitation, under floor heating and the odd high wall though.

After 4 centuries of eating spaghetti and drinking olive oil, the Romans finally ran out of slaves and other Roman’s to fight and all buggered off back to Italy. That left the door ajar and who stuck their toe in the gap, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. The armies of modern day Holland, Germany and Denmark took their turn. The usual wanton rape and pillage ensued, but after a short struggle they moved in their big dogs, popped their slippers by the fire and got down to bleeding the locals dry. This went on for about 300 years until the Viking landed their long boats on the east coast and started having some fun; they took the whole pillaging thing to a whole new level and took over much of the North.

1066 saw the French back again and this time William the Conqueror or William the bastard as he was known at home, completely remodelled the place, setting up all his mates with nice big chunks of land as long as they built him great big stone castles with which he could bleed yet more tax from the local serfs. The Normans hung around for just under 100 years until passing crown to another bunch of lovely Frenchies, the Plantagenets. The likes of Richard the lion heart, who in his 10 years as King spent just 8 months at home, hung around for the thick end of two and a half centuries before being replaced by Kings from the house of Lancaster. Northern monkeys in general, but their first king, Henry IV, spent most of his life in, you guessed it, France. Which is where all his buddies and hanger-ons came from, by the way! The crown was then passed around different northern families for 150 years until they managed to unite themselves and we then had Tudor kings. These Tudors were short lived and within 100 years Lizzie the first decided she didn’t fancy having kids and the crown was passed to a Scot. Not lost in battle or hideously robbed in the night. No handed to them on a plate. The old enemy were now in control and low and behold everything went to pot.

Over the next 100 years we had a civil war, cut off the Kings head, didn’t bother with a king at all for 10 years, but still found time to be horrible to the Irish. Then we invited a King back again (from France). Then after no one could decide whether we wanted to be Roman Catholic or Church of England we told the Scots to bugger off and invited in the Dutch.

That didn’t really work either so we then asked the Germans to have a go; I’m sure hoping their renowned efficiency would be good for a country of beer drinking lunatics. This actually seemed to go quite well and everyone became rich, except for the poor people obviously and we ruled the world. When this line of monarchs ran out of steam we passed the mantle onto their German friends the House of Saxe-Coburg. We then changed the name to the house of Windsor, when World War I broke out and it became very unpopular to be German, and that’s what we have right up until today.

Half the stuff that marks us as English has come from alien shores.

The Queen – German

The Tower of London – built by a Frenchman

Fish and chip – Jewish for Portugal

Tea – from the Far East

Strawberries & Cream – Strawberries first imported from France

Tennis – first played in France

St George – Muslim or Roman from Asia if he ever lived at all  

The Ritz – designed and open by a Swiss businessman

Marks & Spencers – started by a Jewish Pole

Tesco – Jewish son born of a Polish dad

Isanbard Kingdom Brunel – French Dad and educated in France.

So to be honest if you class yourself as truly English through and through then you are basically saying you are a fur wearing, berry eating, deer chasing, unclean, mindless, Iron Age thug.

Actually I might have just hit the nail on the head there?