The rise and rise of the pseudo middle classes

Pseudo middle class existence
pseudo middle class dreams
selective memories of the past
from the council house schemes.
Racing headlong to the future
no more time to reminisce
now your roots are firmly ripped out
from a past that you dismiss.

The Trouserless Clown

First published in the Mudhutter Football Express Issue 17, April 2008. Buy it now by visiting www.mudhutsmedia.co.uk

Roll up, roll up you boys and girls
The circus is in town
So let me introduce to you
The Trouserless Scouse Clown

More scary than a Lion
A skill-less acrobat
But this time son you have excelled
In looking like a tw@t

He goes under a pseudonym
You may know him as Paul
You’ll recognise his face from SKY
But have you seen his balls?

The gathered crowd, oh how they laughed
As Paul got out his Jewells
And showed us how to Please Please Me
Michelle and Love Me Do

He rode her on a bonnet
He rode her in a bed
It must have been a while ago
He had hair on his head

So thank you for the good times Paul
And thank you for the laughs
Now put away your meat and veg
And go and have a bath

Fashionless Fashion

First Published in the Mudhutter Football Express Issue 13 August 2007

No matter which way you carve it up fashion is important to all of us. Even the scruffiest bastard mincing around your local area has at the very least a slight interest in their own sartorial elegance. I mean, there are choices to be made aren’t there? And with those choices comes a common acceptance of how you’ll be perceived. I’m sure even the most vehement anti-fashionlists (yeah I know the word doesn’t exist) would concede that they would end up looking a tad foolish by denying that their selection of attire didn’t say something of how they wanted to be viewed.

Now years ago I would have been in the “I don’t strictly adhere to fashion” brigade, but that has definitely changed. A strange thing happened to me recently and I suddenly found myself spending an inordinate amount of time in High Street department stores. I even ended up with a store card and found myself getting over aroused at the thought of looking right smart in my new clobber. It’s a funny thing when you have kids, but you feel duty bound to look half presentable. If not for yourself then at least for the kids, you don’t want your little Johnnies pals telling him that his Dad looks like he hangs around the bus station bogs do you? In fact there’s a definite element of competitiveness between parents. What you used to wear for a night out you find yourself wearing to do the school run. The school pick up is the new night out, Monday at 3:30pm is Saturday evening on the tiles.

There’s been some cracking fashions over the years and by and large there is an ideology attached to them. Take the Nazi’s and their Nazi Chic. Now I’m in no way condoning the atrocities’ of the 2nd World War, but you have to doff your cap to these lads and lasses, they didn‘t half scrub up well.. Especially the SS dressed in black from head to toe, now that was a sexy fashion. Their actions, although not exactly everyone’s cup of tea, were at least pro-active in trying to achieve their Aryan race dream.

To be fair the Germans aren’t all bad, who can honestly say they didn’t want to go there to be a brickie or a chippie after the first series of Auf Wierdersehen Pet? God bless Pat Roach, aka Bomber, not a terrorist Bomber I hasten to add, Bomber was his nickname, although I bet he could have turned his hand to Bombing. After all he went from wrestling at teatime on World of Sport, to acting. There would have been some mess if Pat had been a Suicide Bomber, he was, shall we say, a big unit, blood and snot everywhere.

Anyway back to the article. The fashion of the Nazi period has never completely died, take the Punks. Now as anyone worth their salt knows the Punks weren’t exclusively or even in the majority a movement about Nazism, they were about freedom of thought, kicking against authority, anarchy and being an individual. They did however take on at least part of the Nazi fashion in the form of the swastika, and didn’t they wear it well! Along with the swastika, they dressed to shock with their dyed Mohicans, chains and safety pins. Every component of their ideology and presentation were again trying to move things forward, trying to say something, trying to affect a change.

Whilst we’re on the subject of Nazis and Punks, what about those Adolf Hitler European Tour t-shirts in the early eighties? Not very politically correct, but very very funny.

From the hippies who championed sexual liberation, peace and love, psychedelic drugs and Eastern Religions whilst wearing ill fitting and over elaborate clothing. To the baggie trousered devotees of the second summer of love standing on the terraces pilled off their tits. The fashion and ideologies behind those movements went hand in hand, and all of them believed that they could make things better. Some of course were misguided, some, like the Nazi’s were just plain evil, but all of them had beliefs and hopes for what they envisaged to be a better future.

And so to the crux of the matter, the Chavs. I’m not sure that’s what this set of scum are called nowadays, but they’re the ones you see dressed in black tracksuits. As much as I championed the youth of Wigan a while back in ‘Memories of a Teenage Disco Dancer’, I can only pour equal amounts of disdain on this set of trash.

First things first, the black tracksuits. What’s the fucking script with black tracksuits? I know they’re supposed to form part of their identity but please, is that the best they can do? They look awful, there’s nothing redeeming about a black fucking tracksuit. Is the hood up meant to instil fear and intimidation into the hearts and minds of us, the unsuspecting public? Oooooh I’m shitting myself! And what would one find under their hood? A cap! A cap under your fucking hood! Is the weather forecast so bad that you need two pieces of headwear to keep you dry if it pisses it down? Or is it the dick under the hood is so ugly that it’s face is double bagged and hidden? As if that part of the image isn’t bad enough what do these pillocks wear on their feet? Shoes! Shoes with a tracksuit! Who thought that one up, because someone obviously did and it doesn’t end there. Have you seen what they do with their tracksuit bottoms? They tuck them into their socks! Fuck me fucking furiously, tracksuit bottoms tucked into your socks and then finished off with a smashing pair of shoes!

Now you’re talking, now you’re ready to show us what master plan you and your ill educated white homies are going to foist upon us dried up old hippies, punks and baggies. Go on hit us with it whilst you stand their cupping your balls down the front of your black fucking tracksuit bottoms!

Silence. . . .. . . . . . . . . . .zilch, nothing, zero, nought, absolutely fuck all.

They don’t have an informed opinion about anything. They have no industry, no aspirations to define a change and no sense of accountability for their actions or the consequences to themselves or the world they live in. They just want to drive about in the cars (usually blue Citroën Saxo’s) that Mum and Dad are paying for on the drip, smoking psychosis inducing cannabis and then when it all goes wrong blame everyone else and let the rest of us pick up the bill.

They don’t seem to stand for anything except apathy, the occasional mugging and a complete lack of manners. All of which aren’t designed to send a resounding message of positive youthful defiance to us elder statesmen.

Why do they all think they’re black as well? A black dude being a black dude is unbeatable in the cool stakes, but when some brain dead, scrawny white lad who is so pale you could read him like a fucking road map with his veiny blue body, starts wearing a black tracksuit and flicking his wrist shouting “respec” then I can‘t help but become a little cynical. Ali G isn’t real you thick bastards.

But as bad as their lack of a philosophy is, in pushing forward their generation, it’s their lack of a decent fashion which is totally unforgivable. “Clothes maketh the man” they say. But for the subscribers of fashionless fashion “Clothes maketh the twat”, and empty headed ones at that!

At Play

Sat in bulrushes,
watching newts,
catching tadpoles in nets,
hazy sunshine, bathed in innocence
from a time I can’t forget.

We ran and ran and ran,
I don’t know the reasons why
Rolling down steep grassy slopes
that reached up into the sky.

Lay laughing in lush meadows,
girls making daisy chains
Scruffy lads caked in dirt
muddied up from summer rain.

Clothes without symbols,
friends without labels,
classless, without status,
just kids sharing fables.

‘neath street lights at dusk,
tall shadows on pavements
Book us one way tickets back
and I’ll make the arrangements.

Scenes don't live in a building.

Scenes don't live in a building
if you want to find the scene
you've got to live here
to become part of it
It's in the estates
and it’s in the living rooms
It's stood in the crowd at the football
or the rugby
You wont find it in a single weekend
you wont find it in a travel guide
They don’t sell it on eBay
or as a snide off a lorry
It’s not in the Observer
or the Evening Post
Geoffrey Shryhane doesn’t own it
he can’t control it
It doesn’t come with instructions
or with a map
It’s in all of us
and it’s in all of you
Scenes don't live in a building
if you want to find the scene
you've got to live here
to become part of it

The Magic of Yeast

You can keep your nuclear physics
You can split your own atom
There’s a secret I shall share
As I pass my kids the baton

I’ve no interest in the future
Threw my cap into the past
For the real meaning of life
My experience is vats

It’s the magic of yeast
It’s the wonder of the grape
It’s the happiness it brings
As my head falls in my plate

I have studied since a young boy
Focused all my skill and craft
Some say that I’m obsessed
But I’m having such a laugh?

You’re my best friend and a rock
You’re forever near and dear
Help anaesthetise my thoughts
When my thoughts become too clear

It’s the magic of yeast
It’s the wonder of the grape
It’s the happiness it brings
As my head falls in my plate

So lets raise a glass to yeast
As I shit my liver out
And another withdrawal seizure
Splits my head, I gasp and shout . . . . .

You’ll be mine to the end
And my end will be with you
And I know that you wont stop
‘til my body turns blue

It’s the tragedy of yeast
It’s the blunder of the grape
It’s the misery it brings
As I lie dead, face down in my plate

Choose today’s Britain

First Published in the Mudhutter Football Express Fanzine February 2008

Choose today’s Britain. Choose income tax, council tax, does anyone remember the poll tax? Choose value added tax, inheritance tax and every other fucking tax under the sun. Just when you think the whole thing is becoming too taxing, don’t worry, the bastards will invent a new one. Choose chocolate puddings from that advert that is on TV and buying into it’s shallow depiction. Choose congestion charges, toll roads and parking permits to park on the roads you’ve already paid for with your car tax. Choose fermented urine as a natural fungicide next time you’re having coffee at your organic java hut. Choose global warming and being duped that it really is the biggest threat to humanity whilst the waters in the Persian Gulf are boiling over. Choose to let yourself be distracted long enough so you wont see what their left hand is doing whilst they tickle you on the belly with their right. Choose inflated petrol prices, domestic fuel charges and every other charge that they can link to Black Gold, Texas T, as the powers that be rename and repackage the war on terror as a moral crusade. Choose to join the armed forces and go half way around the world to fight a war against an invisible enemy with boots on that melt in the sun. Choose faulty weaponry. Choose to have your family back in Britain living in a shit hole that is imaginatively called a barracks whilst your local mugger resides in a 5 star prison. Choose the tail wagging the dog. Choose to conform to everything that you’re told is fashionable without further question. Choose premiership football. Choose to free all people from oppressive regimes except the ones whose oppressors have economies to trade with and whose armies are too big to defeat. Choose to join the ranks of the pseudo middle classes and forget your roots. Choose the NHS and to pay into a system that promises to deliver treatment to you at the point of contact. Choose to wait in a hospital corridor lay in your own piss soaked bed to see a Doctor who isn’t even there. Choose to have fought in two world wars for the privilege. Choose to live in a lottery postcode culture and hope to receive the treatment. You didn’t choose to die before the ruling changed. Choose to subscribe to a variety of overseas charities that you can’t remember the name of, but always remember to casually bring up at dinner parties. Choose to show no charity to the men and women you went to school with who just want to be paid a fair wage in their local low paid sweat shop. Choose to pretend you didn’t hear. Choose purple, as labour red and conservative blue meet in the middle and melt into each others arms. Choose the centre of the fence to sit on. Choose an ASBO and choose to wear it like a badge of honour. Choose the glamour of a mid-morning weekday show to display your ineptitude. Choose 3 litres of 7.5% cheap cider a day to mask the pain. Choose a lack of respect for your elders and a passport to unnecessary oblivion. Choose today’s Britain, a nation full of self serving, inflated egoed, vacuous, pseudo middle class pompous prats. But why would you do that?

Christmas 2007: The Trilogy

First Published in the Mudhutter Football Express Fanzine February 2008

Happy New Year readers, I hope you had a good one, I wish you all the best, out with the old in with the new, look to the future, peace prosperity and happiness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and every other tired cliché known to man.

26th December 2007 21:00

I should have been at work this evening but the cold has laid me low so I’m in the prone position on the couch. Feeling a bit peckish I ask our lass to knock me up some cheese and crackers to fill the gap left by a long day being sick as a parrot.

Now there’s several things that immediately get the alarm bells ringing. Firstly no spread on the fucking crackers, nothing, bone fucking dry.

"You always have ‘em like that"

"No I fucking don’t you lazy cow, get back in the kitchen and get it sorted or the weddings off"

So back they come fresh with a spread, Country Life butter. But what’s this before my eyes? Roulé cheese. Dirty, dirty French muck and she’s bought it from the European Market that visited Wigan just before Christmas, and that is supposed to somehow normalise this most distasteful experience.

Just as things couldn’t get any worse I clock the fact it’s those fucking stupid crackers with bits in and in all kinds of stupid fucking shapes. Crackers = Jacobs, simple as, no fucking fancy shit for me thanks. Oh and if you don’t mind I like the air bubbles in Jacobs that pop and crunch when I bite into the bastard. So when you do get me my Jacobs crackers make sure you don’t butter them on the wrong side and burst my fucking bubbles.

Finally though, the ultimate insult.

I love my pickles but I don’t want to choke to death on one. So why the fuck do you bring me my crackers topped off with a big pickle sliced into two???

It should always be two silver skin pickles cut into two (4 halves) and placed with equal spacing on top of my cracker. The fucking European Union eh? Bastards are even messing with my Cheese and Cracker Etiquette.


27th December 2007 16:30

Well I’ve just come back from the annual family ‘Christmas’ day out. I should be back in work but I’ve binned it for another day for the highlight of the social calendar. Fuck ‘em, it’s the time of the year for Britishness. And what could be more British than throwing a sickie. Especially as I’m a Public Sector worker.

Had a lovely day out today. Firstly the Uncle-in Law decides that it’s his turn to pick the location and then takes us through every back water to get there. It’s not even scenic.

This year he decided we would go to Formby Sands to see Antony Gormley's "Another Place", the statues looking out to sea. The same lad who did the “Angel of the North”. It’s Another Place alright, because this surely can’t be mainland Britain? The beach was fucking littered with empty bottles, used durex, etc. A fucking disgrace. The Scousers are living up to their self appointed title as “Every Scouser is a comedian la” as they’ve put Santa’s hats and beards on the statues.

To top it off we got back to the car park and the sister-in-laws car had been done. Luckily there was fuck all worth robbing as the boot was empty. Even the local AA man who turns up to repair the window tells us how he would never leave his family car parked here.

Still doesn’t stop me smiling gently at an American family who parks up as we’re leaving. Well, the fucking Yanks deserve it don’t they.


29th December 2007 14:00

Well Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t waste a whole day in IKEA. The meatballs and sauce in the restaurant are alright though, and the refills of coffee just about balance things out. Nice drop of strawberry cheesecake too.

Can there possibly be a bigger collection of non-descript, follow-my-leader bunch of people than the crowd that visit Sweden’s biggest export?

It’s took us nearly an hour to get here. An hour to get all the way to Warrington. I never realised Warrington was so far. Maybe that’s why our fat friends don’t travel too well. I’m sure Warrington is quicker to get to normally! Must be the Christmas holidays AGAIN! Where do all these people come from? Do they import them? Is this the influx of Eastern Europeans that we keep hearing about?

It’s like when you do your Christmas shop. The shops are only shut for a day or two so why can’t I get a fucking loaf? Do they know something I don’t?

We leave with our usual purchase, two packs of tea lights.