Is yours, but let’s just recap where we are.

The State has dropped the pretence that this country is a democracy.

A new, fucking awful, Prime Minister has replaced the old, fucking awful, duly elected Prime Minister.

A soulless robot has been replaced by a soulless seaside amusement machine, fake engagement and deep fake belly laughs.

We get no say in this, just as we get no say in where this sit-com character spends our money.

£30,000 on a flight to Manchester for him alone, plus the costs of Met Security and the rail and hotel fares for the fucking imbeciles that he’s appointed to Cabinet.

We’re so fucked that our gaping orifice is visible from space.

Taxes will rise to pay for the daily invasion of criminals and rapists that our government could stop in a heartbeat- if they wanted to.

Crime is exponential, especially rape and sexual assault and all the while, if you dare to say a word, you’re a bigot, a racist, a right wing thug.

An old lady is brutally murdered in her own home and guess what ? There’s a political / terrorist angle.

Probably not the usual suspects this time, more likely the alphabet mafia of perverts and degenerates who feel that their fucking fetishes give them permission to invade women’s spaces whilst waving their girl-cocks.

And more about them later.

What does our wonderful government do?

They fabricate a mass-murder plot against Muslims and splash the news of it all over social media.

Except it wasn’t.

But that won’t get reported in the same way.

Our media is now so compromised and complicit that it’d make the Soviets envious, whatever the state wants reported will be the truth.

Taxes will go up again.

It’s a given.

We have huge amounts of our own, home grown wastrels and money sponges, let alone the thousands upon thousands of gimmigrants who have zero interest in working or paying taxes.

We’re so fucked that they can see the aftermath from Pluto.

Staffordshire fucking Police are defying the actual law and allowing men who identify as rapist women into female cells.

A Muslim woman who dresses so that only her fucking eyes are visible through a slit has won an award where she’s empowered women – how? Fuck knows.

We’re so fucked that we look like Bonnie Blue from Saturn. That’s not a coastline and sea, it’s a bukkake tsunami.

So, what do we do?

And that’s the question.

I was in Bath on Thursday evening, I had a couple* of drinks with an old friend and we had dinner in a very nice bar.

*I only know how many from the bill, it was a lot of martinis.

We chatted all evening about times past, friends and lovers lost and the sort of conversation that bounces from point to point but somehow stays on track.

Our waitress was just the right side of friendly and probably thought that she was subtly encouraging us to drink more, she did get a good cash tip from both of us for being fun and good company without trying to game us too much.

So we may have been a tiny bit pissed.

Can’t have been too bad though as I took that on the way back to the hotel .

While we were sat at the bar, a strange thing happened.

Two very obvious, older men in dresses came in, ordered a drink and went to table.

They weren’t ‘trans’ they were men. At least fifty years old but their clothes were sort of appropriate for their age.

Still.

A bit weird.

So when it turned out that somewhere between eight and ten of them were more or less opposite us a bit further down the restaurant, it seemed natural to discuss them.

We agreed that they were:

All blokes.

Not one could pass for a female, not even the 30ish youngest of them.

Not actually doing any harm and given that they were using the disabled toilet, being reasonable and respectful.

And we agreed that despite the fact that we thought that they were all deviants, they weren’t doing any harm.

And we didn’t care.

They looked as if they belonged in Royston Vasey – all of them.

But it wasn’t hurting us.

So we didn’t care.

This country is fucked.

Beyond all recognition.

Beyond saving.

So there’s the choice.

But before that.

Here’s a word from our sponsor.

Written in 1948.

‘The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.’

We can join in with this, or we can turn it upon itself.

Give yourself a moment or so a day to hate.

Not any specific group, but THEM.

The people trying to shape your life, your opinions and even the government.

Spend the rest of the day looking for the positives wherever they may be.

Family, friends, lovers, work colleagues, random strangers, cab drivers, supermarket staff, books, TV and music.

Make the choice to be your own person.

To choose who or what to hate.

And to love.

Enjoying the Summer?

Despite the heat, I actually am.

I’m writing this before lunch on a Sunday because it’s just too hot to do anything that’s even like work.

Work in this case means cutting branches down and dragging them 200 metres for a fire – or jobs like that.

The work that’s paying for some home improvements like a new boiler that’s being installed on Tuesday is now split between my office and here.

In the shade of a pair of silver birch trees some distance from the office.

I’ve installed a mesh WiFi network and it’s lovely to do video calls with the leaves whispering in the breeze.

I was thirteen for the heatwave of 1976 and it was a time that I didn’t want to end.

My parents rented a maisonette from the council and we had a small, square back garden.

That my fucking dad concreted over.

Still.

That was a minor issue, the younger sister of the next door neighbour stayed for the summer holidays, she was the same age as me and we spent every night talking until late as the skies turned gold, purple and then black.

She was immensely smart, pretty in a way that I couldn’t describe at that time and was the first love of my life.

We wrote to each other for months when she returned home, but the inevitable happened as it will at that age.

She grew up faster than me and moved on.

I thought of her for the first time in fifty years or so yesterday and wherever she is, I hope that she’s had a wonderful life so far.

My parents moved us to a house a mile or so away when was fifteen and life changed again.

And so it went.

A life that picked up speed and somehow got faster, a blur of images from a high speed toboggan run.

All those people.

All those places.

So many that I can’t remember which Caribbean island holiday was which, what happened on a particular work trip to India or Australia or..

You get the idea.

I think that it’s only the weather that’s made me think of 1976 and those moments that felt as if we were frozen in warm amber as we talked until late every night, a little transistor radio providing the soundtrack.

My mum bringing drinks and biscuits out as it got cold, a blanket draped over her arm for us to share, then smiling and going back inside the house.

And now, I lie beneath a tree, typing about a boy whose emotions I can just about remember, his view of the world so different from mine that he could be somebody else entirely.

But a bit of him is still there, his romanticism has been readjusted, his optimism is still with me most of the time and his curiosity has never gone away.

Have I acquired layers of personality and experience over him or is it more complicated than that?

Am I / are we / one personality or a core that is mostly unchanging with a set of other personalities that can be swapped and changed?

This week I’m going to be a number of different people.

Today, I’m almost in neutral gear, listening to music while the dogs wander around – Milo has disappeared but Cairo is asleep under an apple tree next to me

I’m dipping in and out of reading a book while playing with my cameras and gradually getting an understanding of ‘oh. THAT’S how you do that.’

Tomorrow, I’ll be back in work mode along with being almost a passenger when I see a private consultant at 430 to look at my right knee.

Wednesday, I’ll be in full on bastard mode when I meet a 3rd party company to tell them exactly how they’re going to be delivering work for us until December, then I’ll join a senior management call before checking into a hotel.

Then I’ll be meeting a friend for drinks somewhere as it’s her birthday the next day.

It’s Cairo’s birthday the same day.

Remember the date.

After a few drinks, I’ll put my grown up face on and we’ll go for dinner at Simpsons in the Strand.

Maybe Soho after that -who knows? If so, I’ll put on a harder edge and become more or less unapproachable to the outside world.

I’ve blagged a free day off on Thursday, I’ll make a massive fuss of Cairo and probably do a pub lunch.

And I’ll be whatever the dogs want me to be.

But that’s mostly chilled, soft spoken and affectionate.

I’ll still be ‘me’ at the core of all this though.

The idealistic, romantic thirteen year old is somewhere in the mix along with the versions of him that learned a lifetime of lessons, some tough, some wonderful beyond belief.

I wonder what he’d think? Would this life be what he could have imagined? Would he have thought that when he was learning French or German that he’d have dinner with a Paris St Germain footballer or that he’d have some fantastic adventures while working in Berlin, that he’d live in India, meet a god, fly out to Thailand on a whim for a weekend and dare the gods to strike him down during a lightning storm and a monsoon, that he’d trawl the bars of London and Sydney, with dozens of cities in between, that he’d retire with two dogs that he adores, that he’d go back to work, do more travel, host a dinner in Edinburgh Castle for high ranking military officers from around the world, that the few friends that he’s developed over the years are amongst the best people in the world, that fifty years after he first fell in love, he still looks at life with wonder and gratitude.

That the various bits of his personality flow around each other like a kaleidoscope view.

Click.

Click.

View.