The Coppers Revenge

Outline in chalk,
senescence overtaken;
white noise,
shallow breath.

Probing eyes peer
into the blood curdling scene.
Peaceful;
sacrosanct you.

Mimicking rest,
static eyes open and late.
Annulled;
forever gone.

Body bag set,
residue hidden within.
Tonight
you wont go cold;

but you’ll probably
go unsolved.

First published in the Mudhutter Football Express Issue 22, March 2009

Beatles Day - A Celebration

Article by special guest writer Roy "Carpenter" Smythe

Well it had to happen didn’t it? A day dedicated to the four young lads who shook the world. So on the morning of the inaugural day to celebrate the genius of The Beatles I awoke determined to embrace the concept of Scouseness and Beatleness in it’s entirety.

To start with I imagined how I would feel if I was suffering intolerable heroin withdrawal symptoms. What better way to understand a Scouser? I reasoned that I would be tremulous, experiencing terrible gastro intestinal disturbances, my nose would be running like a bastard tap, my levels of irritability would be intense and that my pupils would be pinned to fuck. Scouse as you like eh?

This didn’t really feel authentic enough though, so I got dressed and left the house and headed into Liverpool on the train. Fortunately I had forward planned the attire part of the day to perfection. So it was on with the Lacoste shell suit and sovereign rings and away I went. All was going well as I hid in the train bogs drinking my white lightening cider from a polystyrene cup and avoiding paying my fare. That was until I got to Lime Street that is, and then the stewards got me. Luckily I said that “I ownleee gorron a Edgggge Hkkkkill whaccckkkk” and so only had to pay a single. As I swaggered off the station pleased as punch with myself I headed to the Liverpool Echo head office in Old Hall Street to buy my “mop top wig” which was retailing for just £5. How could anyone doubt my belonging to the town now the mop top wig was in tow?

It was at this point that I realised that I needed to up the stakes if I was really going to get down with the Scousers and the Beatle fans, to celebrate. So I took the last swig of cider from my cup and then placed it on the ground. Within 30 minutes I’d collected over £6 and I’d made contact with a local unemployed smack head who assured me that he could cut me in on a £10 bag. So, full of smack I wandered the Liverpool streets looking for Beatles devotees whilst feeling like a proper Scouser.

So much so that I initiated the next ingredient of my assimilation plan, I mugged an old lady. That’s right, I slapped the old duffer across the face and snatched her purse, well when in Rome eh? Would you believe it, another £10 bag in the old dears purse and the works to complete the mission. No fucking money in it though, just a bus pass and a love letter from 1945 that I used to dab the blood up after I’d dug for a vein. I never knew being a Scouser could be such fun.

As I staggered further into the city, onto Williamson Square, I came across a mass of people. Surely these are the devotees that I travelled so far to be with. Alas no, and I ended up spending the rest of the afternoon sat with the members of the Williamson Square Jobcentre Plus crew in the Beluga Bar. Not exactly Beatles, but very Scouse, and seeing Ricky Tomlinson on the telly with the same wig at least validated my decision. There was no need for the tribute band on the ferry though, fucking gash.

Shortly after I blacked out and sometime later I woke up being dragged into the back of a Police van naked and with come running down the back of my legs. Internally I didn’t feel too uncomfortable and the flashbacks since would suggest I was complicit.

So there you go, being a Scouser and a Beatles fan is indeed “boss” and I look forward to celebrating the day again next year.

Words hand crafted by adopted Scouser,

Roy “Carpenter” Smythe

Damascus

This road to Damascus
paved with ambivalence and doubt.
Left me staring at the ceiling
and the walls that moves in time.

Throw a shekel in your dead sea,
do I float or I do I drown?
Sirens calling me to prayer,
but I'm waiting to be found.

The Wailing Wall heaved and sagged and groaned,
leaving me unmoved, moving on alone

and Damascus is a long way from home.

Friends (not so) Reunited

Yes. . . I know.

I’m aware I said in the first MFE of the 2008/09 season that I would be much more serene since my summer wedding. However, something happened the other week that ended all that. The wife has lost her wedding ring! Since the big day she’s been leaving it lying at her arse and I’ve been picking it up at the back of her and scolding her. “You’ll fucking lose this”, I kept telling her, and alas she did. Worst of all is that she hasn’t got a fucking clue how.

Of course I’ve had the piss ripped out of me, with friends and colleagues telling me she must have left it on someone’s bedside table. Or that it must have slipped off her finger and slid between the grills, as Bobby from Vision World scuttled her over the bonnet of his Cortina. By and large I’ve laughed these suggestions off. To be honest if you had seen the wife you’d laugh it off too. People that have witnessed her say she’s got a lovely personality, you know, proper bubbly.

Anyway, seeing as the fat jolly bastard had stuck a wedge the size of China between our new-found happy marriage I found myself spending an inordinate amount of time on-line. There’s a few things on the wonderful world of the web I’ve always wondered about, mainly because I can’t get my head around them. They’re the Friends Reunited, Facebook, etc shite. The whole idea behind them flummoxes me.

If these so called friends that you profess to want to be reunited with meant so much then why did you lose contact in the first place? I’ve never lost contact with anyone I didn’t want to, friend or no friend. Anyway, for the purpose of research I centred my efforts on Facebook and what an inspired choice that was.

What a set of fucking prize whoppers who post on this old pile of bollocks. First of all you get an “invite” to be a friend of whoever has wasted precious seconds of their life looking for you. This is in the form of a little message when you log on to Facebook or via your e-mail. Now there’s two ways they could have found you. Number 1 - Type the name of the person you’re looking for and plough through the hundreds of wankers who share the same name as you. Fine if your name is Cecil Pillsbury, but you’re up shit creak if it’s John Smith. Or, Number 2 - Tap in the name of your friend complete with e-mail address of said friend and invite them to join you.

What the fuck are you doing inviting someone to be your friend online if you have their e-mail address? Surely if you have this amount of information you could e-mail them and ask for their mobile number to invite them to meet you in the real world for a pint? Come to think about it, if you have their e-mail address you probably got it off them when you spoke to them on the phone or in person. In fact you’re probably already their friend. It makes no sense at all??

The fun doesn’t stop there though readers. There’s so much fun that can be had as a Facebooker! You can join loads of exciting groups like “Boycott X Factor until the judges get a grip” or “Viva Ash Vegas”, oh the fucking mirth. These groups don’t actually do anything other than give a platform for shit houses everywhere to say how great it is to get absolutely hammered in their local town. That leads me onto the photo section were our eccentric Kings and Queens of comedy post picture upon picture of themselves in various states of pose with hilarious captions like “u go girl” or “I didn’t realise I was so small”.

Invariably most of the photos are in the pub and are dreadfully unflattering. Even worse though are the photos that people put up of their holidays or their kids birthdays. If you’re reading this and have been guilty of the aforementioned crime then let me spell it out for you. NO-ONE GIVES A SHIT and because you’re not forcing it into their faces, like you would if you actually sat in the same room as them, then no-one is looking at them. Be honest, how fucking dull and inconvenient is it having to feign interest in some other bastards snaps? It’s beyond tedious and the thrill factor doesn’t increase because it’s on-line.

Then there’s the friends suggestion facility. I’m thirty bastard one, why the fuck would I need someone to suggest who I could be friends with? My personal favourite is the “Status Update” were our quirky cyber heroes can share spleen rupturing moments like “I’m growing a beard and thinking of God”. PLEASE FUCKING DIE or at least get disconnected.

A final mention to the Facebooker über alles. The sad wanker who you never liked, you were never friends with because they were in the lunchtime chess club and you wouldn’t even piss on if they were on fire. The ones whom only reason for being on Facebook, Friends Reunited etc is to tell you how well they are doing for themselves. The type of sad bastard who writes comments in their “Status Update” like “Mike is thinking 2 long haul trips in a week may be a bit excessive after all.”

Oh do fuck off , if life was so great you would have no need to post a message to Facebook via your mobile telling all of your 792 friends who don’t fucking care that you’ve been on a aeroplane.

Facebook and it‘s inhabitants. . . . . . . I’ve shit ‘em.


Dirrrrty “I’m just off to post pictures of myself and my family via my blackberry in a bar on Bondi beach whilst getting horribly pissed” Oldman

First published in the Mudhutter Football Express Issue 21. February 2009

High life.

Living the high life,
self-appointed King in a vertical concrete ghetto.
It’s there that all the decisions are made
undisturbed by the street level drifters.
Entry; strictly verboten to the outside world.

Peering through cigarette stained fingers
at the inhabitants below. Insignificant;
neither subjects nor enemies.
Creations of a repugnant existence,
urchins of the lowland terrain.

But you forget old friend,
I know you far too well, having stood
on the 22nd floor of your inner sanctum.
Paranoia breeds amongst the empty beer cans,
discarded spoons and magazine cuttings.

Leaving your shopping at the door
I catch a glimpse of you through the letterbox.
How did it come to this?
A shell of a man I once loved and knew,
sweet brother John, are you ever coming back?

Skinny girl

Ginger spice hair,
tight fitting Rupert pants .
Mesmerising hips,
held me lusting in a trance.

Trance laid asunder,
wait to make my move.
Saunter to your dance floor,
hit you with my groove.

Groove young skinny girl,
le début, la fin.
Everybody’s story
written on their skin.

Skin is beauty deep,
six feet down and terse.
Dance with me a rumba
before I book my hearse

Hello I love you wont you tell me your name (again)

I say again, but I never really forgot it in the first place, it’s just we lost each other along life’s busy highway. So it’s with great pleasure I have been able to announce to anyone bored enough to listen “this month (well since the 30th May) I have been mostly listening to The Doors.”

Our re-acquaintance has come at a particularly happy time in my life as I, Mr Dirrrrtyoldman have recently taken our lass the bird now known as Mrs Dirrrrtyoldwoman to be my lawful wedded wife. It was during the wedding night haze of an evening fueled by merriment and alcohol that I found my former musical love, The Doors.

The wife’s sister and husband, now my sister and brother in law had brought their iPod to the party to liven up an otherwise dull selection of my CD’s. Now our family do’s invariably wind up with the lot of us taking turns on the microphone and amplifier. These are always generously brought along by the wife’s aunty and uncle, now my aunt and uncle in law. Anyway I’m pestering the sister-in-law to find me something on the iPod that I can get up and give plenty, when low and behold a selection of The Doors tracks come up.

It was like getting married all over again only without me tripping over my words and getting something in my eye. So I gave it what for and belted out Light My Fire and Hello I Love You. This was all too quickly followed, in everyone else’s opinion, by L.A Woman and Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar). Well, fuck ’em, it’s my, sorry, our wedding.

An hour or so later, and with the bravery of far too many glasses of cheap Champagne I launched into Roadhouse Blues and Riders On The Storm. By the time I woefully belted out the oral sex metaphor, Love Me Times the gig had gone on far far too long. I didn’t even get the first bar out for Back Door Man before a bemused Mrs Dirrrrtyoldwoman reminded me there were children present and that singing “the men don’t know but the little girls understand” wasn’t exactly the behaviour of a newly married man.

In the aftermath of a disastrous night it was with a chuckle to myself that I remembered a couple of other Doors related stories. The first being at my mates, Dad’s funeral when I was about 19. The Church was a Catholic one in Burtonwood and the place was packed to the rafters. Now apart from serving on the alter as an alter boy, I’d never been to the funeral of anyone I knew. So all of us mates are sat at the back as nervous as could be when the organist starts up, Ray Manzarek style. Quick as a flash one of the lads whispers, “Jim Morrison’s gonna jump out that coffin and Eddies Dad’s going to walk in the back any minute now laughing his fucking nuts off.” Well we just creased up laughing, but thankfully no-one really noticed as they were all to consumed by their own personal grief. I’ve laughed at every funeral since.

Another one involved a mate of mine insisting he was the reincarnation of Jim Morrison as he was born on the day he died, 7/3/71. It transpired that Morrison died on 3/7/71 and the poor bastard got it ripped out of him for years.

So I’m sat here typing this and listening to The Doors in the background. A quick glance at the sleeve notes reminds me that this is a band that recorded six albums in just four years. It takes most bands that amount of time to record one album nowadays, and that’s with all the technology that is meant to make it easier and sound better.

As the final few bars of When The Music Is Over fade out I can’t help but think what a waste it was that Jim Morrison checked out at just 27yrs old. It’s a true tragedy that Morrison, a man who had the looks, charisma, voice and writing skills left this mortal coil so soon into his young life. Who knows what else this wordsmith could have produced?

My guess is that he would adhere to the old cliché about burning out, not fading away.

If you’re up their Jim it’s a pleasure to have made you acquaintance again. Now make sure you keep a Whiskey Bar open for my arrival.

First Published in The Mudhutter 16, June 2008

Lamp post tribute

Floral words at the foot
of a lamp-post memorial.
Paltry monument ruse
to the unknown drifter.

Disparaging all success,
amnesic convenience.
Rejoice the passing
with out-of-date flowers.

Celebrating death,
scorn anonymous life.
Presumptuous petals fall
from fickle fingers of fate.

The Death of Christmas

You just can’t keep the man down eh? In this latest feeble offering of “The Death of. . . . . . . . . ” Dirrrrtyoldman whinges and moans like a prisoner on death row protests his innocence. This time it’s about how things aren’t quite how they used to be when he was a lad. Let’s hope that one day he has a premonition and writes his own name in the title.

Well it’s nearly here isn’t it? Not quite, at the point of writing this it’s a full week before Halloween let alone Christmas. Thankfully though at least the supermarkets have plenty of those scary masks and costumes left to dress up and celebrate our traditional 31st October revelry. I was expecting that they would have sold out already, having already been in the shops since the end of September.

Another self inflicted bastardisation from the good ol’ U.S. of A that denigrates our once proud nation. At least we’ve got Bonfire night. Although no-one has officially unveiled it as a month long celebration I’m sure it must be. Otherwise why would the fireworks be flying past my window every night from early October?

Anyway I digress. If you’re reading this before, or on the big day, may I wish you a merry Christmas. If it’s between Christmas and New Year I hope you had a lovely time. And if it’s already the New Year then don’t worry as you can make a head start on planning for Christmas, as it’s nearly here isn’t it? And that my dear friends is what gets right on my tits. For all intents and purposes Christmas might as well be all year round. The elongated build up and the never-ending guilt and pressure heaped onto Mums and Dads everywhere to buy their young Master Park-Bench Beckham the exact gifts he wants. Well it’s fucking intolerable!! What happened to an apple and an orange, a pack of playing cards, a pea-shooter and some marbles in a stocking?

Now I’m not saying I didn’t get anything for Christmas, but at least my Mum and Dad made me sweat a bit wondering if I would get what I wanted. Not only that, but up until the age of 11yrs old I thought it was Father Christmas who was judge and jury when it came to dishing out the presents. When my Mum told me, “Only good girls and boys get Santa’s toys” I fucking well believed her. I was even more afraid of making an arse of things when she told me, “he’s watching you, so behave”. It was bad enough having Catholic guilt about having the odd (well once a day) crafty wank. But to think that there was God and now Santa watching my every move and seeing me making my bald man cry (sometimes twice a day) was far too much to deal with.

Where was child-line when I needed it? In fact where was buck toothed child saver Esther Rantzen? Probably getting roasted by two elderly white bearded gentlemen knowing my luck. Another bonus about being a Catholic at Christmas was trying to remember and then repent for the sins of the last year. It’s funny how the confessionals were always packed in the weeks leading up to Christmas and every eye was reverently bone dry. I know all three of mine were.


Whilst on the subject of sweating (see paragraph 4, line 2, 3rd word in) at Christmas, my Dad sweated much more than me. He sweated like a pig at the best of times, but a lifetime on the booze does that to a man. I can always remember him nervously eyeing up the Christmas shop. Sat there, calculating if there was going to be enough change from the silverskin pickles and quality street to see him right for a few jars down the Earlestown Labour Club. It was no mean feat for a man whose eyes were like permanent piss holes in the snow and whose numerical skills ended at 3. Well he’d never had more than 3 pints when my Mum asked him how much he had drank, although I’ve never before or since seen a man in such a state off so little booze. The panic visibly drained from his face, and his demeanour dramatically improved, when he realised there was enough of his hard earned dole cheque left to see Christmas in, in style.

All of this reminiscing got me wondering though. What happened to Christmas? What happened to wide eyed innocence and excitement? What happened to the two bearded gentlemen and which one was the biological Father to Rantzen’s child? Oh for Jeremy Kyle back in 1981.

No-one believes anything anymore or is it that there is nothing left to believe in? God, the tooth fairy, the easter bunny and even Father Christmas himself. We don’t even believe in each other.

Last Christmas, as I do every Christmas, I helped my lad write a letter to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas. With the letter tightly clutched in his tiny hand we skipped off down to the postbox and posted it, jobs a good un! Later as I picked him up from school I got talking to some of the other parents and asked them had their little Johnnies and Jane’s wrote to Santa. You’d have thought I had been speaking a foreign language the way some of them reacted. Whilst some gazed in amazement as If I’d discovered the world was round.

I bet these are the same set of miserable bastards who don’t even bother to take the time on Christmas Eve to chew the carrot up, drink the milk and Whiskey, and leave just the right amount of mess and crumbs to make the big mans arrival look complete. They just don’t bother at all. Too much like hard work and definitely too much effort in the imagination department. Even too much effort to be bothered to see their own offspring with that look on their face when they see the tell tale signs that “he’s been”. No matter what class you are or whether you’ve got two pennies to rub together, that look on a kids face can’t be bought at any price. And it costs fuck all to do.

This year my lad is holding on to the last remnants of his belief in the myth. To be honest I didn’t think we would get this far, he’s 9 next February. No doubt in the near future he’ll be telling me that I have lied to him and that he is filing for divorce from me and his Mum. He’ll cite a breach of his Human Rights and irreconcilable differences for the split. The lawyer that represents him will accuse me of causing mass feelings of indignity within the minorities, before holding me directly responsible for Lambeth Councils 2005 decision not to rename their Christmas lights, “winter lights”.

Well you know what? Fuck ‘em, because I’m sure there’s still enough of us about to enjoy it, no matter what the merchants of doom and gloom are prophesising.

Merry Christmas everyone.


Dedicated to me Mam who bought me a BSA Javelin bike for Christmas in 1981 and spent the next 24 months paying for it.


First Published in The Mudhutter No5, Christmas 2005

THIS is Wigan

Oh soulless town, oh dreary place,
bequeathed its charm and sold its face,
a chain-store culture with no grace,
enveloped you at such a pace.

Arcade so new, but not so grand,
you stole my home and raped the land,
snatching childhood from my hand,
replaced by all I cannot stand.

Blue fronts, green fronts, fronts the same,
same old culprits, same old names,
comfort lies to heal the lame,
conform their lives to fit the game.

A sinking place, ’neath waters drown,
a subjugated King, no crown,
it‘s with regret that this old town,
is void of culture, going down.

THIS is Wigan.

First published in The Mudhutter Christmas e-zine, December 2008

Fences

Horses run free across the open field,
galloping between the railings.
Jumping the fences that dictate the route
and distance of the afforded freedom.

Those that unseat the riders care not
for which way they turn.
Uninterested in the rules of the race
and the expectations of the crowd.

Some even go in the opposite direction,
because they can, because they want to.
Fun and games until the stable lad
reigns them in and ushers them back to the paddock.

P

Fragile body broke and bruised,
born to love but died abused.
Upon deaf ears fell silent screams,
you never had a chance to dream.

How ever could they treat you so,
raining in their violent blows?
The ones your were supposed to trust,
condemning your young life to dust.

Rest now sweet child dry those tears,
sleep in safety free from fears.
An end to suffering and pain,
rise once more to love again.

First published in the Mudhutter Football Express Fanzine 20, November 2008