Monthly Archives: March 2019

Sunshine Over Dalkeith, Dark Clouds Over Jamie

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If, like me, you’ve got young kids, and little money for exotic travel and indoor pursuits, the winter weather can act as your jailer. Although we’ve ventured out as a family to local parks and lochs over the last few months, it’s been a long time since we’ve been on any of our customary mid-to-long-range adventures.

In the fairer months we try to visit a brand new place at least once every couple of weeks. It doesn’t have to be hours away. Scotland is a small country, but you could still comfortably spend a lifetime exploring its nooks and crannies (although if you want to free up a little of your precious time, you won’t be missing much if you skip Airdrie. Spoiler alert: everybody dies).

I’ve been feeling stir crazy. Yearning for the wide skies and the open road. Recently, each drop of the seemingly never-ending rain has fallen from the sky like a punch; each and every dicky tummy or runny nose that’s kept us housebound has felt like a personal affront. It’s a conspiracy, that’s what I came to believe, a conspiracy to keep me away from the wider world. What’s out there, hmmmm?? What are THEY hiding, hmmmm? Why don’t THEY want me to go out there?? I’ll show them… I’ll show ALL of them. Fetch me my tin-foil!

Last weekend, my weather forecast app showed me a jackpot of yellow suns. It almost rained from my eyes. I was so happy. Finally. We were free. Free to explore new and exotic places like… em, er… Dalkeith.

I’d been having a wee Google to myself. Dalkeith had a big country park, on the grounds of which was an old estate house, miles of forests, trails and tracks, beaten and otherwise, and a giant adventure playground styled after a fort that looked like it was absolutely terrific fun to run around in, and climb, and explore… for …the kids, of course.

The mid-range adventure was locked in. On the morning of the trip I could feel the stress lifting from my body like mist rising over the mountains. I knew the faster and farther we traveled along the motorway, the more the winds of change would blow that mist away, scattering it to the vast, swallowing jaw of the heavens. I was looking forward to testing out my new beatific smile in a car full of shiny, happy people.

We first had to make a stop at Asda, though, so I knew my new monk-like demeanour was going to be put to the test. Supermarkets are places where stress goes to shop and peace comes to die. I kept telling myself it was going to be OK, though. For starters, my partner, Chelsea, would be running the grocery gauntlet, venturing in for a low-carb, pre-pack salad while I stayed in the car with the kids.

But a car makes for a fragile cocoon, and the clenched fist of irritation soon smashed its way inside, hell-bent on pummeling my heart into action. My blood started dancing the moment we pulled into the car-park.

I surveyed the scene, and it was war-like in its horror and intensity: cars scuttled across the tarmac like giant dung-beetles; pedestrians infested the walk-ways like hordes of angry zombies, sniffing for the warm blood of their next kill. My fingers clenched the wheel. Reality had elbowed optimism out of its way and straight into the path of an oncoming shop-mobility vehicle.

I rolled the car to a stop at the front of the building to let Chelsea leap out. It was a swift, slick operation, necessitating the car being stationary for less than three seconds. Even still, just as I was driving off, PARP PARRRRRRPPPP! The mist of stress, which had been drifting cloudward, turned into a mountaineer, and slammed a pick-axe into the base of my amygdala.

I looked in my rear-view mirror. A fat, middle-aged woman in the rickety-old car behind me stared ahead with a look of wide-mouthed ferocity. Three seconds was an unacceptable amount of time for me to have made her wait. I summoned all of my powers of diplomacy and restraint. The kids were in the car with me, after all.

‘COW!’ I shouted, balling my hand into a fist and extending my middle-finger into the mirror. ‘FAT COW!’

I drove off as slowly as possible, relishing her continued anger. If only mine had abated, I could’ve claimed the moral high-ground, but I was just as angry as she was, with an added rainbow of righteousness rushing through my snarls.

I was still fuming about it long after she’d gone, even once Chelsea was back in the car cradling her low-fat salad. ‘Well, we know she’s impatient. She clearly can’t wait to shovel the next cake into her fucking mouth.’

‘Jamie, the kids!’

‘Well,’ I said, in a tone of voice that suggested I’d just crafted a profound and eloquent justification for my ongoing rage.

Soon enough we were on the motorway, and my stress was hovering somewhere above the car, never able to lift entirely on account of the tail-gaters haunting my back-bumper like towed ghosts. A few hundred near-miss heart-attacks fluttered by. After an ice-age of irritation, the SatNav announced that our destination was a little ahead of us, just off the main road.

I drove through a stone archway, and down a long, single-track road fringed by tall grass and trees on either side. Far down the track the road bent out of sight, so far down, and under a wide expanse of blue sky to boot, that we might as well have been in some remote segment of the highlands, instead of a mere minute from a busy dual carriage-way. There were no other cars or people in-front or behind. Bliss. Sheer bliss. About half-way up the track, I trundled the car to a stop. There, at the side of the road, was a young buck, nibbling leaves from a tree, its big antlers perched incongruously atop its little head, like he’d just picked them up from a joke-shop.

‘Look, kids,’ I whispered, even though the windows were all up.

We gazed in wonder at the innocent and obliviouslittle creature for a few seconds. Well, I gazed in wonder, anyway. Chelsea’s eyes were centred on her phone, and the kids didn’t really seem to give a monkey’s. It’s not like it was a monkey, after all.

‘It’s a wee stag, and it’s eating some leaves,’ I said with a smile, very much stating the obvious.

‘Let’s get a picture,’ I decided, because of course get a picture. This is 2019.

The stress was gone, whirling high above us on an unstoppable trajectory to Mars. And all it took was the simple sight of a tiny animal, nonchalantly munching some greenery.
I edged the electric window down an inch or so. The nyee-whir-thud made the buck flinch, but after a few seconds of consideration it went back to munching the leaves. I edged it down some more, figuring that the buck was inured to the noise. I was right. Nyee-whir-thud. Munch, munch, munch.

‘Use your phone,’ I said to Chelsea through gritted teeth, careful to trap as much sound as possible inside my mouth. I wanted to capture this beautiful, peaceful moment. To preserve it for all eternity.

PARRRPPPP! Went the car behind us. WHOOOOSH! Went the buck, disappearing into the trees. PARRRPPPPPPPPP! Went the car behind us again. I looked in the rear-view mirror to see a fat, middle-aged woman glaring angrily ahead, her vast white monster of a car trundling and revving beneath the impress of her impatient fat foot.

I instinctively, and rather bizarrely, made the wanker gesture in my rear-view mirror, as I ranted like a maniac. ‘ANOTHER IMPATIENT FAT COW! WHAT, ARE YOU IN A RUSH TO GET TO THE COUNTRY PARK? IS THERE AN EMERGENCY WITH A FUCKING SPARROW OR SOMETHING, YOU FAT COW? WE. WERE. TRYING. TO. TAKE. SOME. TIME. OUT. TO. SMELL. THE. ROSES.’

Chelsea shook her head, and glanced back at the kids. ‘We do NOT say that someone IS fat. We say that someone HAS fat. We don’t teach our children to judge people like that.’
I nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Chelsea. ‘I’m sorry, kids,’ I said to them. ‘Daddy gets angry sometimes, and he says things he shouldn’t.’ I let that percolate before adding. ‘She shouldn’t have peeped though.’

I rolled on, as slowly as possible, so slow I was almost going in reverse. This time, my anger had turned to wicked delight. I could see the woman behind’s anger mounting and mounting the more slowly we trundled up the long, long single-track.

‘Boy,’ I said, grinning at myself in the rear-view mirror. ‘That cow sure has a lot of fat.’
‘JAMIE!’

I laughed.

Maybe it isn’t the great outdoors and the wide open skies that bring me peace. Maybe it’s something more primal than that.

Maybe I just like being a dick.

I’m pretty good at it.

And that makes me happy.

A Rave for Kids?

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© Photography by Khristopher Morgan for Here & Now (fb.com/weareherenandow)

Falkirk nightclub ‘Temple’ recently applied for a variation to its license to allow it to operate as a venue for children’s ‘rave’ events during the day. Councillor Robert Bisset, sitting on the Licensing Board, said he wanted to delay a ruling until more and better lighting had been installed in the club.

I understand the health-and-safety implications of a horde of hyperactive kids jumping around in a dark room, but it’s obvious that not one single member of that board has ever been to a rave, else they would have known that darkness is something of a prerequisite, not to mention a necessity.

If adults were to have a rave in a brightly-lit room, the cumulative effect of all those illuminous togs, jutting limbs and sweating, gurning faces bouncing up and down to a thumping, whizz-bang beat would be too disgusting and absurd for its participants to bear, and they’d all have to go home and sit in a corner for three days, rocking back and forth while trying to peel the skin from their faces.

Light burns; darkness salves.

Do we really need to inculcate our kids into raves, anyway? I understand that the ravers of yesterday want their kids to follow in their footsteps, but so soon? I did a lot of things in the late 1990s, most of them entirely unsavoury. I wasn’t once inspired to think, ‘You know what, I hope my kids get the chance to go hunting for drugs one day, too. But, you know: when they’re six!’

Surely the adult world can wait. What are we going to do to them next? Put them in little suits and see if they can blag mortgages for their Wendy houses? Make them sit through an awkward-as-fuck dinner party? Send them to the vet and force them to witness a series of increasingly harrowing hamster euthanasias?

What would a rave for the under 6’s look like anyway?

Let’s just imagine that for a moment or two…

Come regress with me.

At the kids’ rave

The beat drops for Baby Shark. There’s a scream and everyone starts juddering like crazy across the dance-floor, except for one boy sitting cross-legged at the side of the hall, who rolls his eyes and mutters something about Baby Shark being ‘soooo 2018’ and a ‘passing fad’.

‘It’s too commercialised now,’ says Felicia, a little girl wearing an ‘In the Night Garden’ T-shirt. She squats down next to him in solidarity.

He rips open his buttoned cardigan to show her his ‘Teletubbies’ T-shirt, and then gives her a disgusted look.

‘Don’t try to rave with me, newbie. I’m old school. I busted moves to Pingu, shufflin’ it penguin-style, when you were still swimming in your dad’s nut-sack. I watched Postman Pat before the pube-headed, speccy twat went airborne. OLD school. You feel it?’

‘I’ve seen Rugrats,’ she says haughtily.

‘Bitch, I’m wearing Rugrats mother***ing Y-fronts.’

He gets up and starts strutting away, shouting back over his shoulder:

‘I can’t be seen with you. You’re a fraud. I’m going home to listen to DJ Peppa Pig’s Sick Licks. ON FUCKING VINYL!’

He struts away, his finger held aloft behind him. ‘BYE Felicia.’

It’s the wrong finger, but she gets the idea.

A new tune bangs out across the room. The crowd are going wild, joining hands and jumping up and down, side to side, like one massive conjoined entity: a ska-beast, its veins pulsing pink-and-green on the dimly-lit dance-floor. “PAW PATROL, PAW PATROL, BE THERE ON THE DOUBLE! PAW PATROL, PAW PATROL…YEAH, LEMME HEAR Y’ALL MOTHERFUCKERS SING IT! YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT, SAVE THAT MOTHERFUCKING CHICKEN, Y’ALL, DOGGY-STYLE!”

Wayne, a stocky five-year-old, is out on the dance-floor in the middle of the throng, dancing like a boy possessed. Mainly because he’s absolutely off his tits on E-numbers. He’s had a line of Sherbet, a pure rock of Twix, and a half-bar of Milky Way that’s been cut with Smarties. Not to mention shit-loads of Coke. He’s throwing some shapes. Literally. He’s throwing squares, triangles, circles, rectangles, right at the other kids’ heads. Big thick Fisher Price plastic shapes.

A few feet away from him is Kade, a nursery kid with rhythm in his bones. The crowd’s created some distance between itself and Kade, not because Kade’s such a good dancer that he deserves space to ply his art, but because Kade’s shat himself. Violently. He’s flicking grotty smears of butt-gravy each time he shakes his hips. It’s splatting out of the sides of his nappy like Beethoven’s drool. A little girl a few feet away from him gets a splat of it on her dress, but because her parents are hippies, it goes with the pattern and she doesn’t notice. And still Kade dances, his arms thundering like pistons, his head bobbing like a Churchill dog in the back windscreen of a race-car.

‘CROWD SURF!’ he shouts, and everyone edges further away from him.

Back over at the side of the hall is Isaac, who’s been trying to blend into the wall. He’s wearing designer sandals, khaki cut-offs and a long face. He sees Felicia looking sad, and shuffles over to her. He’s no gentleboy, though; no knight in shining armour. He just knows a captive audience when he sees one.

Isaac sits down next to Felicia and tries to introduce himself over the din. ‘I’m Isaac, yeah? I’m 4 and a quarter. I love these things. You can’t just feel the music, sometimes it feels like you ARE the music, yeah?’

Felicia picks at one of her nostrils and stares at him through one heavy-lidded eye, sighing audibly. Undeterred, Isaac continues: ‘Yeah, you probably haven’t seen me around. I’m actually taking a gap year from nursery this year. It was sapping my shakra, man, I needed some room to grow, you know?’

She jams her finger up the other nostril, and plucks out a runny dollop of squidgy bogey. She grinds it into Iggle Piggle’s eye, all the while staring dead ahead at Isaac, who hasn’t noticed a thing. In fact, he isn’t even looking at her anymore.

‘Yeah, I’m working on a novel, actually, it’s a conceptual piece, my Dad says it’s the best thing he’s ever read, it’s all about how school doesn’t actually exist, yeah, and there’s this dog, but it can talk, yeah, and you find out it represents the main character’s grief at his gran dying, man, but really it’s a love story for our age, yeah?’

‘PSSSSSSST,’ hisses a boy standing over them. He opens his jacket to reveal a row of lollies above a row of packets of sherbet.

‘How much for the jacket?’ asks Felicia.

In a perfect turn of events, the 2017 club remix of ‘Johnny Johnny Yes Papa’ thumps into life around them.

The dealer looks down at Isaac’s shorts and sandals with a sneer. ‘Who buys your clothes? Your mum?’

‘Em, yeah,’ he says. ‘I’m four. Our mums… all our mums buy our clothes. Who… who buys your clothes?’

The dealer smiles. ‘Good point, son. Want to get fucked up before our mums come to pick us up?’

Isaac shoots to his feet. ‘Let’s party like it’s … well, right now.’

Click here for the news story

Entering ‘Leaving Neverland’ with an Open Mind

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Depending upon the preconceptions about Michael Jackson’s guilt or innocence you bring with you to HBO’s Leaving Neverland, you’ll find it either a harrowing how-to guide on the grooming of children, or a show-case of the acting skills of two very cynical and greedy con-men.

Wade Robson and James Safechuck claim to have suffered years of abuse at the hands – and various other body parts – of Michael Jackson, a campaign that went hand-in-glove with a relentless charm blitzkrieg that saw the boys and their families showered with gifts, money, love and attention.

Because the documentary offers no physical evidence or conclusive ‘proof’ of Jackson’s alleged crimes, it was natural for viewers to slip into the roles of arm-chair detectives and amateur psychologists: scrutinising Robson and Safechuck’s every motivation, facial twitch, hand gesture and intonation, hoping to discover the truth somewhere in that web of cues.

Do Safechuck and Robson seem upset enough? Do they seem too upset? Is their tone too lively? Too flat? What are they doing with their eyes? Are they being too emotional, or too clinical?

It’s a very human impulse: to seek; to search; to pull apart; to judge. We like nothing better than to impose and transpose our ideas and ideals about the world and human interactions on friends and strangers alike. We know people, right? We’re great judges of character. Aren’t we?

Most of the time, though, our moment-to-moment ‘instincts’ or knee-jerk reactions are wrong, or only ‘right’ within the narrow parameters we set for ourselves based upon the limited information to which we have access; all filtered, of course, through our biases. It’s too easy to imagine certainty in the shadows when you’re busy being blinded by the light of your own self-righteousness.

Wade Robson

Cautionary examples of micro-scrutiny and projection abound, in fiction as in real life, the most striking example of which can be found in Albert Camus’ exemplary work ‘The Stranger’. The story’s narrator is condemned to death for a crime of self-defence; judged guilty almost entirely on the basis of his muted reaction to his mother’s unrelated death a few weeks previously. He didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral. This perceived lack of feeling was witnessed by the townsfolk, twelve of whom went on to serve on his jury. A man who doesn’t weep for his dear, departed mother, they reasoned, must be a man capable of limitless evil. He’s guilty, they proclaimed. He’s a liar.

Case in point: I found myself occasionally sceptical of Robson’s testimony, particularly the uncomfortable level of detail he delivered unflinchingly to the camera, but then found myself softening towards him when a) I discovered he was married and, b) he cried in the second part of the documentary. That’s when it hit me. I don’t know what a typical abuse victim sounds like, or how they typically feel or behave. Who am I to pick apart every micro-gesture, or judge this man based upon his tears or lack thereof?

[And so fucking what if any of them are after ‘Jackson’s’ money? If I’d been offered fame and fortune, and found out too late that the price for achieving this was serial sexual abuse and the disintegration of my self-esteem and trust, damn right I’d try to take every single fucking penny of that bastard’s money. And don’t forget this – it’s all about money for those feeding from the Jackson estate, too. It’s not only the victims who have a ‘vested interested’ in safeguarding that ‘fortune’]

In the end I found it best simply to listen to the two men and their families; let their stories wash over me in their entirety, and then try to place them in their proper context: that context being Jackson’s supreme power and status; and the myriad public allegations that have been made against him since the early 1990s.

Looking back at Whacko Jacko

It seems as though the wider public’s greatest sympathies have always lain with Michael Jackson. His fans and supporters have always held him up as the proto-typical abuse victim, an almost Christ-like figure. Having been brutalised and beaten by his mean drunk of a Dad, and forced to perform in the public spotlight like a cross between a circus monkey and a cash cow, Jackson then arose – free from bondage, free from suffering – to usher the world into a new era of love and peace. Jackson was meek and mild. He’d known pain, he’d known terror, he’d known subjugation, he’d known powerlessness, and he was here to tell the world, ‘From now on, I will demonstrate my ethos of kindness and happiness, and I will do it by surrounding myself with hordes of pre-pubescent children, and sleeping with them in my bed.’

Erm… sorry, what? This has always been the snagging point, and the point around which Jackson’s legal and PR teams have spun the hardest. There can be few parents whose alarm bells fail to ring upon learning of this aspect of Jackson’s behaviour, and the fact that many of the parents of the boys who went on to claim abuse at Jackson’s hands found themselves fooled or dismissed around this point is a testament to the toxic power of money, success, and worship. Jackson seems to be above and beyond the scope of the #metoo movement. He’s like a pope; a prophet; a holy man. Jackson isn’t a mere Kevin Spacey: he’s the Catholic Church itself.

The abused often become abusers. Often, but not always, those who have been hit, hit; those who have been subjected to anger and intolerance go on to subject their nearest and dearest to anger and intolerance; those who have been touched, touch; those who have been brutalised, sexually or otherwise, go on to brutalise others in turn, or else allow themselves to be brutalised again and again and again, in a horrible escalation of the original pattern. Or both.

There’s a reason Dexter’s titular serial-killer-in-disguise brings in a tray of donuts for his cop-station co-workers every morning; there’s a reason real-life monster Jimmy Savile ran so many marathons and donated so much money to charity. It’s over-compensation, misdirection. Smoke, mirrors. Schmoozing.

Grooming.

We Brits tend to be a bit more cynical about these things given our recent experiences not just with Jimmy Savile, but with seemingly every male celebrity who ever graced a stage or set between the 1960s and the 1990s. We know that abusers can hide in plain sight, skipping over fields of whispers to shake hands with pop stars and princes alike.

I know men and women are capable of lying about rape; I know kids can lie about abuse, for all sorts of reasons. But more and more these days (excluding the TV and film industry) it seems as though our sympathies lie more with the abusers – the rich, the powerful, the savage – than they do with the victims. The poor and disenfranchised of America cheer for Donald Trump – ‘He’s just like us!’ – as all the while his unfeeling foot moves to crush them. The working-classes of the UK pour platitudes upon the Queen, a woman who likely wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.

And when a weak and spindly Michael Jackson celebrates a Not Guilty verdict by clambering on top of a parked car like a vampiric Willy Wonka, or a mutated Mister Burns, his fans erupt in a chorus of cheers, whistles and applause. That VT footage is in the documentary. It’s sickening. Jackson raises his arms aloft and makes himself into a lightning rod with which to absorb the explosive adulation of the crowd, a happy smile plastered across his plastic face.

You were accused of child molestation, Michael. And it’s not the first time. You’re not on stage. It reminded me of when Rolf Harris started singing excerpts from his greatest hits while testifying in court. Not just wildly inappropriate, but callously inconsiderate and narcissistic.

Won’t somebody please think of the children…

I’ve heard a lot of people ask, in response to this documentary, ‘Why didn’t the accusers say something sooner? Why did one of them actively lie in support of Jackson and then change his story? Kids blabber and talk, about everything and anything – why didn’t they?

This ignores the role that shame and fear play in our lives. It ignores the work that an abuser does to normalise abuse and/or to isolate their victim from their friends, family, and even reality itself. It ignores the conflicting feelings of love and loyalty a child may have towards their abuser. It ignores the fear a child may have of not being believed, or of hurting their family, even of hurting their abuser. It ignores the fear a child may have of losing that connection to their abuser that on some level they’ve been conditioned to need – a feeling of being loved, of being special – not to mention the material gains it affords them: the bribes, the promises, the luxuries. It’s a horrible, sickening process that makes children feel complicit in their own debasement.

The answer to those three questions posed at the turn of this sub-section lie in our own lives and relationships. We all come through power structures when we’re children: family, foster homes, care institutions. Even without the spectre of abuse, it can be hard to assert yourself within those dynamics. Maybe there’s an old uncle whose views you find repellent, whom you nevertheless tolerate as an adult because those hierarchical cues keep working to constrain your responses.

Maybe a single look or stray tone from either or both of your parents can seal your lips in silence or get your heart pumping like a drug-addled disco-dancer. I know grown adults in their forties and fifties who still won’t spark up a cigarette in front of their elderly parents for fear of reproach.

Look at Tony Soprano, pop fiction’s most iconic and well-rounded mob boss, a man of ferocious and absolute power who still nevertheless finds himself at the mercy of his mother’s narcissistic machinations and infanticidal fury.

Wade Robson, James Safechuck and director Dan Reed

Think about the working world. School and higher education, despite their lofty claims to unlock the unique power of the individual, serve largely as tools to mould kids into the workforce of tomorrow. What little vestiges of non-conformity still exist in a person by the time they join the job market are usually chipped away quickly by the iron hand of the corporatocracy (the only place where creativity is encouraged is in the banking system, and even then its greatest artists usually end up either in jail or in the government). We have no loyalty to our workplaces beyond our wallets. There are no childhood entanglements to complicate our relationship. But, still, most of us toe the line, and work hard not to rock the boat.

In our workplaces we’re forced to accept things and people that under different circumstances we wouldn’t have the inner-reserves of self-control to bear. Workers imagine that Human resources departments function like unions, looking out for the little guy, helping to keep bosses in check, but in reality they exist to preserve the status quo and minimise a company’s risk of haemorrhaging money to lawyers. Ditto appraisals, which are promoted as a boon for the worker, the equivalent of a wish-list to Santa sent up the chimney-spout. To your employer, though, your appraisal is simply a stored record of either your compliance or your mistakes, ultimately a form of insurance against any future legal action. ‘But what grounds do you have for this tribunal? We have three years’ worth of testimony here as to your happiness? You never spoke up before.’

Now imagine that instead of being at home or at work you’re in the orbit of one of the most iconic, powerful and adored human beings who ever lived.

Systems trap us. Our homes and possessions and families make us slaves. Most of the time, most of us take the path of least resistance. Battles are draining, and the reality is: most of them we won’t win. Even if we’re right. Even if we’ve been wronged.

That’s why we admire rebels: James Dean, John Wayne, Larry David. They blaze the trails we can’t. We’re weak. Abusers and psychopaths know this. Especially the rich and influential ones.

That’s why they invariably win, time after time. And will doubtless continue to do so. In a sense, we’re all victims; and few of us even realise we’re being abused.

We’ve now left Neverland

By the end of those four harrowing hours of interviews, interspersed with archival news and home footage, it becomes finally, painfully clear that Neverland wasn’t a waking dream for these kids, but a living nightmare; a factory disguised as a gang hut; where hungry serfs found themselves ferried along rainbow-coloured conveyor belts, on which their childhoods were plucked from them like rhino horns.

Michael Jackson’s power, fortune and legacy are all waning now, which is another reason why the bubble he tried to seal himself inside is ready to be popped once and for all.

He’s still the King of Pop with a capital P. But the ‘aedophillia’ isn’t silent anymore.

Remembrance of Brexit Days Past

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I think Brexit Day always seems a lot more magical when you’re a child. You know, it’s a real family occasion: the celebrations, the procession, the executions, all of that.

I remember one of the early ones, I must have been seven, eight. Can’t remember precisely, but it was the first Brexit Day my parents thought I was old enough to take part in the ‘After Dinner Death Match’. The prize that year was the last chocolate in the box, well, the only chocolate in the box. And it wasn’t a box, it was a piece of toilet paper. And it wasn’t a chocolate, it was some rat shit. But anyway, it was my turn to fight that year, and I drew my gran’s name out of the hat. Sounds like an easy win, but it wasn’t. She was tough as old boots, my gran. As a fighter and as a meal. Food was scarce, you see, so whoever lost got eaten.

Mum made gran into a curry, or maybe it was a Balti – it was definitely something hot and spicy – to mask the taste of that leathery old skin of hers. Dad wasn’t happy. ‘A curry?’ he said. ‘A bloody curry? What’s wrong with good old British faggots, or a fry up? You’ll get us marched off by the Lizzie Lynch Mob yet, Cynthia!’

Even with all the spices, gran tasted worse than my cousin Bill, and that’s saying something, because Bill was a big old fat guy with hundreds of moles and welts and psoriasis and smegma and everything. Still, waste not, want not, and each to their own. I think smegma is vile, but my mum always said it was an acquired taste, like blue cheese – whatever that is.

My gran on the campaign trail for UKIP, in happier times

Gran’s last words to me as she bled out under the dining room table were, ‘I hope you choke on my tough old tits, you weak little shit-bag.’ For some reason those words have always stuck with me… There was a funny little moment too, just as she slipped away, when my Dad shouted back at her, ‘Brexit MEANS Brexit, Brenda,’ and we all laughed. Even gran cracked a smile. Gran was like that, though, always up for the banter.

I remember being very sad that day. Very, very sad. Not because of gran, you see. My dad was right, Brexit DOES mean Brexit, that’s just the way it is. No, because my pet – and best pal – Russell, had died the day before. Oh, I was devastated. Absolutely devastated. You look at any picture from my childhood, and it’s me and Russell. I’d take him walks, we’d sleep in the same bed, we’d stay up late and watch movies together. Mum tried to console me as best she could on Brexit Day morning, because she could see how upset I was. She said: ‘We’ll get you another carrier bag, son, maybe a John Lewis one this time,’ and I just lost it, because Russell wasn’t just any old carrier bag. He was an M&S carrier bag.

Mum and dad told me about the times just before I was born, before Brexit, when people kept cats and dogs and things like that as pets; my parents had a pet, too. A little Bichon Frize called Steven. But when the economy crashed that first time, and money didn’t exist anymore, nobody could buy food, so they rounded up everybody’s pets and ate them. It went into law, actually. There were big barbecues and cook-outs in the street. Dad said it really brought communities together and it was like the Royal Jubilee, only with more of an emphasis on dog eating. My parents said it was hard to eat Steven, but only because he was so dry. ‘A little bowl of smegma,’ mum said, ‘That’s the secret.’

Dad loved flame-grilled spaniels best, but mum always had dangerously exotic tastes, so she preferred things like spicy cat-arse kebabs. One time a next-door neighbour of theirs brought some garden snails to a cook-out, and they shot him, because snails were too French, you see. He should’ve known better. The rules were clear. You weren’t even allowed to call small things ‘wee’ anymore, just in case anyone thought you were  a French agent.

A few Brexit Days after that – I can’t remember the year exactly, but it was around about the time they moved the capital city to Bolton, and dissolved Wales… not the assembly or anything, they just dissolved the whole country – I lost an uncle. What was his name? Ah, Uncle Simon, that’s right. It was good riddance anyway.  He’d had a bit too much to drink, and I remember him sitting there, wearing his Union Jack paper-hat , and he just shook his head with a little smile and said, ‘Ah, Brexit. What was that all about, eh?’ My mum snuck off to the kitchen to use the phone. I could see my Dad was trying hard not to lose his temper.  Ten minutes later these six big guys, all dressed like the Queen – with matching handbags and everything – marched in and carted him off. Uncle Simon was terrified, you know, he was screaming and everything. ‘I’m a loyal subject! I’m a loyal subject! No! No!!! Listen to me, just listen: send ‘em back; too bloody cold for ‘em; they tried to straighten our bananas. See??? I’m one of you!! I’M ONE OF YOU! I’M A BREXITEEEEEERRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrr!’

I don’t think I can do justice to the amazing atmosphere at the Brexit Day processions. You know, there would be the big bus with the ‘£350 million’ sticker on it, and it would go past and peep and everyone would wave; there would be people dressed in top-hats and monocles carrying gilded canes around, just like King Rees-Mogg (peace-be-upon-him). There would be a guy dressed as Churchill kicking blacked-up homeless people up and down the street as someone played God Save the Queen on a lute. Sometimes Nigel Farage would drop in and stoat about with a pint of piss, grinning at everyone. Oh, it was wonderful.

One Brexit Day, though – I think it was around about the year that King Rees-Mogg first announced the building of the sea-wall in the ocean between Dover and Calais – they had to evacuate our street because one of the kids in the neighbourhood found an old time capsule someone had buried in 2006, and there were apparently pictures of people smiling and eating food and going to hospital and stuff like that, so they did a controlled explosion of the time capsule. And of the little kid who found it, just to be safe.

The procession always ended with a big bonfire in the village green, where they’d do the ‘Burning of the Obama’ –  he was a French muslim, you know – and they’d round up anyone who looked a bit like Jeremy Corbyn and hurl them in, too. That was how they got my other gran. We warned her to use the Remington.

I really liked the arena combat, where people fought against horses, but my favourite was always the ‘Annual Execution of a Remainer’. There was always so much excitement around it. They’d choose the executioner from one of the local primary schools. They picked Graham McPhail from my class one year, I was so bloody jealous. I think that was the year they finally abolished Scotland and renamed it ‘England the Second.’ Anyway, for weeks afterwards people would run up to Graham in the playground, and ask to touch his strong and stable trigger-finger.

Graham went on to become a member of the Lizzy Lynch Squad, you know, those guys that dress up as the Queen and take people away to be shot for treason. Years later, he was the one who killed my mum. Someone had overheard her saying that she liked ‘smegma pasta’, and of course Italian food is unpatriotic, so off she went. That was that. I didn’t hold a grudge against Graham, I really didn’t. He was just doing his job. Brexit means Brexit, after all.

Anyway. What did you say the half-life of nuclear radiation was? It’s a bit stuffy in this bunker. I’d like to get out for some fresh air, maybe wave a few flags around for old time’s sake. Actually, there’s a thought. I could use my Union Jack to waft away the radiation… What a great idea. That’ll definitely work. It is the most powerful flag in the world, after all. BRITAIN SAVES THE DAY AGAIN! GOD SAVE THE QUEEN! GOD SAVE THE UNITED KINGDOM!

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 3, Eps 11 – 13

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Part 14: Return of the Aye-eeee

Wherein some people are nuts, and some people talk to nuts, and they’re the less nutty ones

These days, it seems there aren’t any American actors in lead roles on US TV. Even the characters that are supposed to be American are played by British or Australian actors.

Before Idris Elba hit stratospheric levels of fame, he teamed up with Dominic West to fool The Wire-watching world into believing both were natives of the Baltimorean landscapes over which they battled and hustled; Hugh Laurie expertly masked his middle-Englishness to play the embittered, brilliant, ebullient and quintessentially American Gregory House MD; and two Australians, Aden Young and Adelaide Clemens, convinced absolutely as a pair of tragic, star-crossed souls from the deep-south in Showtime’s exquisite crime-and-redemption series Rectify. These actors and actresses are all exemplars of the craft of transatlantic (or transpacific) tongue twisting.

There is, however, an ever-growing roster of Brits and Antipodeans who’ve less than impressed the great American public with their efforts: Rick in The Walking Dead (especially in the first season, where he sounded like Forrest Gump’s even dippier cousin); Ewan McGregor in the third season of Fargo; Charlie Hunnam in Sons of Anarchy; and Gerard Butler in… well, in just about anything in which he isn’t supposed to be Scottish.

Except in the most heinous of cases, my untrained ears can’t seem to discriminate between good and bad attempts at the various dialects of the US. It got me wondering if people outside of the UK accept on the same unconditional terms the attempts of non-British actors to mimic our native accents. Did people in Rhode Island detect anything amiss in Dick van Dyke’s famously shite attempt at Cockney? Did the people of Florida notice that the Northern Irish accents in season 3 of Sons of Anarchy were so bad they almost constituted a war crime? And what do the people of New York, Nevada and Hawaii think of the Scottish accent issuing from the mouth of Outlander’s resident death-defying witch, Geillis Duncan?

I’ve no way of knowing. I can, however, tell you what the people of Thisguy, Scotland think of it. How can I put this? Hmmmm. Well, em… Lotte Verbeek has a good stab at the Scottish accent. The trouble is that she doesn’t stop stabbing. She stabs it again and again and again and again. Until it’s dead.

That may sound uncharitable of me, and that’s because it is, but in my defence it’s impossible not to feel a little combative considering that the character of Geillis contributes to how my kin and culture are conveyed to the world. Outlander is, after all, one of the most widely popular Celto-centric TV series of all time.

Don’t get me wrong, Verbek is a good actress, and she makes a commendable attempt at a Scottish accent considering that she hails from mainland Europe, but Geillis’s dulcet tones are so off-centre that, as a Scot, it takes me out of the performance entirely. It’s like listening to a symphony being played off-key on un-tuned instruments by a drunk orchestra.

Of dogs.

There’s one way you can judge the quality of a Scottish accent, and it’s this: the more syllables an actor adds to the one-syllable word ‘Aye’, and the longer those syllables are drawn out, the worse the attempt. Case in point: if Geillis’ ‘ayes’ were elongated any further they’d basically be the death throes of a Japanese Anime character.

Anyway, we’ll return to Geillis later in the run-down. For now, let’s kick things off with a ship-wrecked Claire, who wakes up shaken and stirred on a strange island; singular in her purpose, alone in her terror. The island Claire finds herself on is a mish-mash of Biblical tropes: it’s Eden after the fall; it’s the wilderness through which Jesus wandered for forty days and forty nights, warding off the temptations of the Devil himself. There are indeed snakes here with Claire, but they aren’t much interested in tempting or talking: just in throttling and biting.

For the first 16 minutes of Uncharted, Claire is on her own. There are no people in this strange environment, only hunger, and a landscape littered with prickly plants and biting ants. Basically, she’s Mowgli, but without the singing animals.

I’m a sucker for the Robin Crusoe narrative, especially when it’s riven with religious symbolism. I love to see snapshots of our primal past and renderings of our post-apocalyptic future: the isolation; the struggle. HBO’s The Leftovers delivered this brilliantly, twice: once, when it showed the plight of an early human female navigating a deadly, antediluvian landscape with her newborn child, all the while surrounded by threats and augurs, and again when it showed us Kevin Garvey Snr wandering the Australian outback in the third season episode Crazy Whitefella Thinking. Even the Discovery Channel’s Game-of-Thrones-But-A-Wee-Bit-True series Vikings got in on the game when Floki first discovered the empty, roaring majesty of pre-colonisation Iceland, a rugged landscape he first mistook for Valhalla.

Scott Glenn as Kevin Garvey Snr in season 3 of The Leftovers

Silence, and paucity of speech, if used sparingly, can lift and liberate a piece of television. Silence has a great transformative power; it can sharpen our senses; open our minds; direct our focus to all that’s profound and terrible at the heart of the human condition.

Outlander couldn’t get Claire to stop talking long enough to give that a try.

I know Claire’s narration is a device that creates a bridge between the book and the TV series, but in this case… to whom is she narrating? And what does her narration add in way of shade or nuance to what we can already see and intuit with our own brains and senses? Surely one of the main benefits of Claire having no-one to talk to is that we don’t have to hear her moan or state the obvious for a while. But no. We’re shoved inside her head, like it or not.

“I was hungry. That means I needed food. I needed to find some food. So what else could I do? I decided to find some food. I had to try. But it wasn’t easy. The longer I went without food, the hungrier I got, and the harder it was to find the food. And the more I missed Jamie. Ow, an ant just bit me. That was sore. Still, at least it took my mind off how hungry I was for a moment there. I really need a shit now. I wonder if I can risk wiping my arse with any of these strange leaves? Goodness, I’m hungry. Did I mention that?”

Next we meet Father Fogden, the foppish Englishman of aristocratic stock who has a close, personal relationship with a coconut we pray isn’t sexual. He’s eccentric, he’s adorable, he’s sinister (the man, that is, not the coconut): he’s a Richard Curtis character who’s been inexplicably written into The Shining; he’s the newest owner of the Caribbean Bates Motel, but instead of his mother being dead, she’s an angry fat Cuban lady, who isn’t really his mother, but his almost-mother-in-law. Imagine losing your wife and being trapped forever with your mother-in-law. No wonder he’s on the yupa.

Mamacita – the mother of Father Fogden’s lost love Ermenegilda – wastes no time in cursing Claire to Hell and back, switching it up between English and Spanish so as to inject a bit of variety into her scorn. It becomes clear why Father Fodgen is so fond of fraternising with coconuts (although the hallucinogens might have something to do with that as well). As Claire heals, Mamacita cooks for her, serving up stank with a side-plate of sass for every meal.

Thankfully, Mr Willoughby’s goat-killing proficiency alerts Claire to the presence of Jamie’s ship. Claire’s dash through the jungle to catch Jamie’s ship before it ups anchor and sails away is commendably tense. Thanks to Outlander’s historic cruelty towards its central lovers I really wasn’t expecting a happy re-union. As the action cut between Claire’s panic and Jamie’s preparations, I prepared myself for the old time-delay trick (making it look like Claire was about to catch the boat with seconds to spare, when in reality she’s missed it by a whole day) or the different-place trick (they’re in the same time-frame, but on completely different islands).

Claire is a lot of things – stubborn, haughty, sometimes dangerously myopic – but she’s no damsel in distress. She’s brave, cunning and, above all, resourceful, the latter quality proving the difference between Claire being marooned with Lord Coconut and Mama Sass for all eternity, or sailing off into the sunset with Jamie once more. All it took was a wee waggle of a mirror through a sunbeam, and Jamie was rousing the troops to rescue her.

‘MacDuhb’s wife turns up in the most unlikely of places, does she no?’ says this season’s Angus to this season’s Rupert. Outlander knows fine well that we know that they know that we know how delightfully preposterous the show can be sometimes.

Father Fogden – my very favourite Caribbean-crack-smoking, coconut-nattering nincompoop – again gets to a shine when he presides over the union of Fergus and Marsali. I love Fogden, and I sincerely hope two things: a) that he returns next season, and b) that he’s free to officiate my real-life wedding later on this year. What a unique occasion it would be. I don’t know many people who have been joined in holy matrimony by a man who’s off his tits on gin and yupa.

I laughed heartily when Father Fogden tried to marry Marsali to a different guy on account of Fergus’s missing hand, and then laughed again when, his mistake having been corrected, he shrugged and said, ‘Not as though he’s lost his cock… you haven’t, have you?’

While I saw it coming – and it was a long time coming – it was still hellishly sweet when Jamie asserted kinship over Fergus by handing him the Fraser name.

Uncharted, then, was like the Fall of Eden in reverse: beginning with a silent, lonely journey through deadly and inhospitable terrain, haunted by the specter of a serpent, and ending with two characters joined together in hope, innocence and love, but also – you know, haunted by the specter of a serpent… if you know what I mean (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

The state of Eden is a distant memory for the poor Africans caged and enslaved in the sweltering heat of the Jamaican sun. The very best life they can hope for, at least for the next few centuries, is one serving drinks to snooty, cruel or indifferent aristocrats. It goes without saying that slavery is a repulsive practice. That human beings treated other human beings like that is disgusting, that it happened not so long ago in human history is chilling. For once, Claire’s inability to tolerate any act of injustice irrespective of the times and irregardless of the consequences is worth championing – even if it will almost certainly draw unwelcome attention to Jamie’s visibility and presence on the island.

Deliciously, though, history might think differently. In order to free a slave called Temeraire, Claire had to buy him, which means there’s a physical record of the vehemently anti-slavery, time-travelling firebrand buying a slave and therefore, on the surface of it, actually contributing to slavery.

So, Geillis then. She was never a particularly nuanced character to begin with – Lady Macbeth with a touch of murderous New Age Earth Mother – but in her latest (and last) incarnation as a blood-bathing black widow and purveyor of black magic, she’s positively ridiculous. When she isn’t chasing after the shiny MacGuffin fastened to John Grey’s coat, she’s waving her hand in the air in a dismissive manner and storming through a crowd of party-goers in her big flouncy dress to a chorus of giggles and gasps, like some cartoonishly wicked pantomime dame.

Let’s talk John Grey here. Until now we’ve seen him as a noble but dopey, love-sick little puppy, holding a candle (or indeed a sapphire) for Jamie across time and across continents. The moment where Claire works this out is incredibly sweet.

But the man also has a steely side, shown here when he delivers a rousing, stinging, brutal dressing down to the status-hungry Captain Leonard, saving Jamie’s skin into the bargain. I was almost out of my seat cheering.

Once Geillis’s three-stage-plan to immolate Ian, infiltrate the future and bump off Brianna was foiled, I half-expected her to turn to the Frasers and snarl, ‘And I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for you pesky kids!’ But she was far too busy being decapitated for any of that malarkey.

Well, almost decapitated. In the books I gather Claire sees the job through with the business-end of a blunted axe, but in the TV show she only manages a partial chop. That’s not a criticism. I know how hard it is to cut a cantaloupe under ideal conditions, so kudos to TV Claire for trying. There are thin religious parallels here that are probably more explicit in the book on account of Claire’s more successful stab at decapitation.

In the Bible, John the Baptist – who as his name suggested loved a good baptism – prophesies the coming of the Messiah; a great ruler of legend for whom he is the fore-runner. A little later, he’s beheaded. In Outlander, Geillis – who performs baptisms of sorts upon herself, and always in goat’s blood – prophesies the coming of a great ruler. A little later, she’s beheaded. Did I mention the parallels were thin?

I guess it’s easy to see God-shaped shadows everywhere in a season that’s been so awash with Biblical imagery, from Jamie’s hellish print-shop fire to goats to prophecy.

Outlander is usually pretty good at making its sex scenes tell a story, but here – in their last bout of bump n’ grind before their boat is engulfed by waves; the ‘clam before the storm’, if you like – it felt gratuitous. Yes, I know I can’t grudge them some tenderness after all the many hardships they’ve just endured, but it didn’t feel like their passion was informed or fuelled by the cocktail of emotions that undoubtedly would have been swirling around in their hearts and bellies, particularly since Claire had just killed a woman. Oh, and FYI, the use of the word ‘breeks’ is never sexy. Never. In Scotland you’ll most often hear it in this sentence: ‘Whit’s wrang, have ye shat yer breeks?’

That storm was breath-takingly realised, though. It looked and felt dangerous, deadly and horrifying. I got a real sense of the dizzying, frenetic, claustrophobic terror the crew must have felt. Really made me feel on edge: the raging power of the waves, the hopelessness and helplessness, the shrill whistling of the wind, a deadly world drained of colour, and alive with life-smothering danger. Bravo. Spectacularly well done.

Oh, hi, cliched-kiss-of-life-under-the-water, we’ve been expecting you!  And then, later, on the shore, Jamie manages to bring Claire back from the brink again with his very own patented brand of CPR – a very gentle kiss on the cheek.

At least Outlander has kept its two lovers together this time, first at the eye of the storm, and then in bewildered exile, where they always seem to find themselves. Where are Fergus and Ian? What are they going to do? Is Jamie safe from the King’s men?

God Bless America.

See you soon for season four.

A few final, disjointed thoughts

  • I mentioned the TV show Rectify way back at the start of this article. Please, please watch it, I beg you. It’s haunting, raw, poetic, visceral, and agonisingly beautiful; in this scribe’s humble opinion one of the best TV series of all time (if that isn’t too blasphemous a thing to say out here in Outlander-land).
  • I could tell pretty early on that Mark Hadfield wasn’t Scottish (the actor who played Mr Campbell, Margaret the seer’s brother) but never-the-less Mark does a very good job, never letting the accent drift into the realms of parody or exaggerated stereotype. English fans: is Claire’s accent good? It sounds pretty spot on to this set of Scottish lugs, but let me know in the comments below or on Facebook.
  • The bit where Jamie has to deliver penicillin to a poisoned Claire is nicely done. His reluctance to pierce Claire’s skin with the needle coupled with his baffled astonishment at the whole realm of modern medicine I’m sure made the Outlander-watching world erupt in a sonic-boom of ‘Awwwwws’.
  • On the subject of Geillis: if I can just let my carnality shine through for a moment, I found it particularly pleasant when she rose naked from her pool dripping with blood like some sexy mash-up of Hellraiser 2 and Cleopatra. I wasn’t a big fan of her feet, though. Not a foot man in general, I’m afraid. The moment Geillis started stretching and rubbing those veiny numbers in Ian’s face, allegedly in a bid to seduce him, I began hurling pairs of socks at the TV screen.
  • “Your nipples staring me in the eye, the size of cherries…” Em, smooth line there, Jamie. You should somehow try to work the word ‘breeks’ into there. It’s a good job you’re handsome, son, because your patter is awful.
  • I keep forgetting about Jamie’s disfigurement at the hands of the horrible Black Jack. Every time Jamie and Claire bonk it must cost the make-up department a small fortune. “Hey, we’ve got a big sea-battle coming up… maybe Jamie could keep his dressing gown on for this fuck?”
  • “Where did you find him? I must know, is he genuine?” – the look on Mr Willoughby’s face here was charming and funny.
  • I liked the closed circle of discovering that Claire had already investigated the murder she’d just committed.
  • Margaret tells Mr Willoughby: ‘You’re a rare soul’, which makes him smile. Be careful though, Wlloughby. You’re still not adept at decoding the Scottish accent. She might have just called you ‘an airsehole’.I hope Willoughby and Margaret are very happy together. In years to come I’m sure they’ll delight in telling their kids all about that time Daddy murdered their uncle.
  • I’m not sure about WIlloughby’s or Margaret’s arcs. Seems like it was all a bit too convenient. Ultimately, I don’t think either of them, separately or together, were handled particularly well.
  • When Margaret goes into full prophecy mode, I always burst out laughing.

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READ THE REST – Click below

Why I want to binge-watch Outlander

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 1 – 4

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 5 – 8

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 9 – 12

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 13 – 16

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Eps 1 – 4

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Eps 5 – 7

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Eps 8 – 10

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Eps 11 – 12

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Ep 13

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 3, Eps 1 – 3

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 3, Eps 4 – 5

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 3, Eps 6 – 7

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 3, Eps 8 – 10

30 Things You Didn’t Know About Scotland

Humanity: Instagramming Ourselves to Death

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This week I learned that there are people out there in the world – actual real people, mind, not robots, not actors, not reptilian imposters from hidden realms hell-bent on our destruction, but people…actual, confirmed people – who use ‘Instagrammable’ in everyday conversation. Not satirically, not in sentences such as this one: ‘When I find out who it was that said it was okay to start using the word “Instagrammable” I’m going to wrestle their head off their shoulders like a bottle-top,’ but in sickening, humanity-damning sentences like this one: ‘Look at these new £500 trainers of mine. They’re so Instagrammable.’

I’ve only recently learned what Instagram is – fire-worshipping troglodyte that I am – and now I’m being forced to accept Instagrammable as a verb. It hardly seems sporting.

We’ve been taking photographs of ourselves for a long-time, even before photography existed. Hundreds of years ago, only the very richest or most alluring could hope to have their portrait hemmed within a gilded frame and hung on the wall of some castle or stately home. In my day, you had to wait a couple of weeks between taking a photo and seeing the results, so instant gratification was never a motivation. Even with the advent of Polaroids, there was still no easy way to weaponise and disseminate your photos to a wider audience for the purposes of stock-piling serotonin.

Next, we started taking selfies – with our phones, no less. I remember how long it took for me to teach my 1920s-born grandparents how to use their VHS player. Thank Christ they died before phones became cameras, computers and shopping lists all rolled into one. It would have killed them.

With the dawn of selfies we became both trophy and target; big game hunters hunting ourselves. We snapped ourselves next to famous landmarks, influential people, gaudy palaces, plane-hijackers wearing bomb belts, and the edges of cliffs, sometimes literally dying in the pursuit of the perfect photo.

Now it seems we’re living in an age where an object’s only worth is in how it buoys our image, builds our brand, raises our social stock or makes other people feel unworthy of the gift of existence.

What cunts we are.

First there was MySpace, and Bebo, and Facebook, and Twitter, where at least some semblance of meaningful dialogue was, and is, possible among the preening and screaming, but now there’s Instagram: where pictures reign and words die. Instagram is a corporate hell-scape over which celebrities flog designer hand-bags and douche-bags, and little people wave filtered snapshots of their little lives in a desperate bid to convince themselves and others that they actually matter. Spoiler alert: they do matter, but not because of a fucking dress or a designer milkshake.

It was milkshakes that brought this nightmarish new lexicon to my attention. I heard a segment on Radio 4 about ‘activated charcoal’, the practice of adding intensely-heated (or, to put it more wankily, ‘activated’) charcoal to foods because there’s some evidence that it aids nutrient absorption, and thus improves general health. They’ve been adding activated charcoal to milkshakes, and if you’re wondering who they are, the answer is = cunts.

My apologises for having dropped two c-bombs on you thus far, but believe me I’m exercising admirable restraint. This entire article could’ve been a Jack Torrance-esque flood of that same awful word over and over, forever and ever. ALL INSTAGRAM AND NO PLAY MAKES JAMIE AN ANGRY C***T.

During the segment they interviewed a chap who was marketing active-charcoal-enhanced milkshakes – as black as tar – on account of how ‘Instagrammable’ they were. Not only were they ‘Instagrammable’, but ‘Instagrammability’ is, apparently, ‘WHAT EVERYONE WANTS.’ A part of my brain died when he said that; the part that contains the concept of hope. If that’s really what everyone wants, I thought to myself, then allow me to plough my car into the nearest petrol station. Please feel free to upload my smouldering remains to Instagram. You can even crumble my ashes into your drink first.

Where does all of this end? Are we about to enter the era of ‘Instagrammable’ funerals? Posing for selfies next to the Gucci-branded coffins of our dearly beloveds? Or worse, next to their waxy corpses, their cold skin daubed with activated-charcoal?

“Oh. My. God. Kymbyrly, you’ve got to tell me the name of your mother’s Funeral Planner.”

“Delgado de Laga. He’s terrific. Costa Rican, gay, vegan, almost prohibitively expensive. He’s the whole package.”

“I absolutely MUST have him for my mother’s funeral.”

“Oh, did your mother die, sweetie?”

“She’s absolutely fine, but I hope she goes soon.”

“Oh, me too, I do so love an occasion!”

(both clap hands together and squeal)

The most depressing thing about the whole look-at-me ethos behind Instagram is that it works. We’re big fans of the veneer, the slick surface. We love a bit of flashy, flashy, shiny, shiny. If we weren’t so superficial as a species, so susceptible to flim-flam and illusion, then psychopaths would never be able to ply their trade, and Donald Trump would still be a virgin.

It works – it shouldn’t, but it does – as much as oldies like me who are teetering on the brink of total irrelevance hate to admit it. We’re peacocks, that’s what we are: preeners, strutters, rutters and nutters. Our big, beautiful brains are in thrall to the whip-hands of our bodies, and the broth of chemicals surging through our blood-stream. We’re horny skin-bags full of hot, angry soup. Everything we do these days seems to spring from a misfiring of the perfectly reasonable impulses to love, couple, copulate and procreate. We’re corrupted and corrupting.

The problem is that our technological innovations are taking us places that our Amstrad-ian bodies and brains aren’t ready to go; our inventions are evolving faster than we are, and it’s making us take pictures of cars and clothes and milk-shakes in a misguided attempt to fuck – and fuck with – each other. No species in the galaxy can beat us when it comes to taking something simple, and making it hideously over-complicated and painful.

We’re Vulcans trapped inside the bodies of Klingons at the mercy of evil supercomputers. Things are probably only going to get worse.

One day we’ll either be dead, or better.

Get the picture?

Read my scathing piece on greed and capitalism here: ‘To the Emperor, all but the Emperor belong in the gutter.’