Cymru/Wales: Bipolar Nation

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Saturday 28 November 2015

Bullied into Bombing



We are being bullied into bombing Syria, not by America but by the Conservative Party. The Tories are bullies. That's why the electorate voted them in. There's a touch of the masochist about the British Public. How else can you explain their return to power after 11years of Thatcher. Blair softened us up and he was bullied into bombing Iraq by Bush "Yo Blair"! Now Cameron is getting his collar felt by Francois Hollande "Maintenant David" and who will be the fall guy? The only man of integrity in this sorry mess, Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour Party, his Labour Party are still full of Conservatives/Blairites who cannot get their head around the fact that he is the leader of their party and for them to use this, this matter of life and death to destabilise him is unforgiveable. Despite my impressive credentials of insanity, I am not able to call on the Intelligence of the Security Services. I can't look at the maps of Northern Iraq and nod my head sagely and say 
" Mmm, yes, bombing seems to be the only option ". Now is the time for mystic intuition. You will not be able to defeat ISIL with the 'sledgehammer to crack a nut' strategy'. Western Democracy is on the precipice. America is imploding from within if we are to believe 24 hour news. The Twin Towers go down, lets attack the invisible enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia has taken a couple of body blows recently and they must be remembering back to their occupation of Afghanistan. This is essentially an invisible enemy, the erstwhile 'enemy within'. Although it might not appear that way now, they might be doing us a favour, a horrific and bloody favour, by making us take a long hard look at our holy Roman Empire before it crumbles.  However painful it may be for the relatives of the Paris dead and yet another scar on the tissue of the collective unconscious, now is the time to 'Suck it up Buttercup'



Tuesday 24 November 2015

BRITISH VALUES BLUES



I got me!
I can't get enough of 
MY BRITISH VALUES BLUES
We'll be taught about traffic jams and stiff upper lips
we'll learn about queuing and upper class twits
chavs and the mis-named working class
sing to me of Britain and its 'rude poor'
Austerity makes you mean and nasty
when you've finished...
can I have your pasty?
Being British has sucked since we learned about our history
and how we caused a lot of global misery.
Sing to me of Royalty and the Queen's Christmas Message
and explain to me how there is homelessness
You want me to learn the Lord's Prayer as well?
Is your God not a British Value? or is that more the Middle East?
Are you and yours getting ready for the Festive Feast?
Teach me about how being British is different to being French
We haven't had as much carnage on the old school bench.




cwtches piws






When you see the hearse driving passed your gate
You know then, that it is too late. 
You can no longer ask why,
stop banging on the glass,
why bother try?
You had your chance and f****d it up with excuse after excuse
that's just the ego talking.
Waiting for you to make contact,
the paramedic said she'd gone piws.
Your life was a gift from those who deemed you worthy
then you became a selfish tw*t
this world is topsy turvy.
what I'm trying to say is
pick up that phone
don't be alone.
If they are still there
don't stand and stare
the world needs your cwtches now
more than ever 

piws=purple
cwtch=hug

Saturday 21 November 2015

Comedy Club









Last night I attended a Comedy Club. I won't name the venue but it was advertised as starting at 8.30pm but didn't get underway until 9.15pm and for a middle aged non drinker like me that was a long time to be fiddling with your phone. I had gone undercover to do some research. To see how the pros or semi-pros do it because three years on from attending a BBC Radio 2 Stand Up Comedy Workshop at the Glee Club Cardiff I still harbour ruthless ambitions of having a go as a Stand Up Comic as opposed to the sit down variety which in my more grandiose moments, I think I am. One thing I learnt was how to deal with a heckler or rather somebody under the influence who was blurting out random words and phrases as she saw fit. She was not middle aged and not a non drinker. So there I was, the moral majority sitting at the back, squirming at what the aspiring comedians had to deal with. Hats off to them.  The compere was a thorough professional and did well with what I thought was a difficult audience. I thought they were difficult because of the amount of alcohol they had consumed in that three quarters of an hour before the gig had started but what do I know. So I am working on my 5 minutes of material and keeping my eyes peeled for a gig at a Temperance meeting. If you hear of anywhere, please let me know. 


https://uk.pinterest.com/RedTheatre/comedicomedy/


Below are links to previous posts about my as yet un-launched stand up comedy career


http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/stand-up-comedy-routine.html




http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/working-on-my-new-routine.html




http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/vichy-france.html




http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/comedi-cymraeg-after-fashion.html


Thursday 19 November 2015

Father & Son



On Monday at the top of town (Aberystwyth) right beside Siop y Castell I saw a man place a plastic gun around a child's head. I presumed that it was his father and the child was about five. It looked like a Kalashnikov rifle. I was stunned. A woman came out of the shop with a bag of sweets and the child mumbled something and the woman laughed and said 'Bullets'. They woz your 'white working class'.  Like Tintin I walked swiftly passed. 
This was three days after Paris. So three days after the atrocities in France, this is what is happening in a sleepy Mid Wales town. It didn't occur to me that he might have won or bought it at the fair which has brought its own sense of sinister to the ghost town. Empty dodgems and wurlitzers, donut stands and enough opposition to Poundland from the covered markets. It was like something from a David Lynch film. Children learn what they live so give it twenty years and we'll have a 'Bataclan' at the Academy Night Club where a man had his earlobe bitten off two weeks ago by another man in an Orange wig! As you can imagine, the Cambrian Snooze had a field day! The front page stories of this rag had up until last week been 'Human waste dumped on road at Bow Street' ' Man trapped under Grass cutter in Cemetery'. Now there are stories of global importance that are having repercussions in Birmingham by Sea. We played with toy guns as kids but seeing and hearing this was perhaps more shocking than the 24 hour rolling news which after 24 hours actually loses its shock value. Well one kid in Aber has already had his gun and bullets for Christmas, Dear Santa, please don't forget the grenades and rocket launcher next time.



Tuesday 17 November 2015

The Foreman went to France 'Part Deux'








The old Clifford Evans and Tommy Trinder film but this time with Arnold Shwarzenegger all 'roided up' to take on Islamic State. George Formby holding his ukelele aloft and enouncing in broad Wigan 'they'll have to prize it from me cold dead hand' and 'turned out nice again mother fucker'. The mad mullahs will be shaking in their sandals. "We thought we were fucking insane but this innocuous little Northerner might just bring down the Nation of Islam."
So dear decadent West, what are we going to do about Islamic State cos we know that Bombing for Peace is about as effective as Fucking for Virginity. 'C'est La Guerre Mes Amies.' What about getting an International Brigade together 'Boots on the Ground' made up of the homeless, the prison population, drug addicts, alcoholics and the unemployed. You see by joining this army and fighting Islamic State on your behalf we might redeem ourselves in your eyes 'the comfortable and complacent'. We might go from zero to hero faster than an AK47 bullet. It must be made clear at the outset that we are not fighting for Western values. If it wasn't for the decadent West we wouldn't be unemployed, doing drugs, homeless or in prison. Like big fat flies in the desert we cannot deny that these 'Daesh' are a nuisance. They are stopping us from drawing disrespectful cartoons, having over priced food and alcohol out with friends and enjoying American Death Metal in overcrowded night clubs. If that is not worth bombing for, I don't know what is. Unless you are a Muslim and have been inside a Mosque and have been trampled underfoot at the Hajj, you, like me, will have no idea of the power of the word of Allah, that has his followers donning suicide vests like we don Marks & Spencers thermal vests. We, who live in the material world with Madonna can have no idea of the spirit world, the world of the ascetic hermit who has turned his back on the world aka Western Democracy. We have been sleep-walking into this since 9/11. We in the West carry on with these values as if they are something to flaunt but if people are willing to kill us and themselves to overturn those values, isn't it at least in your children's children's interests to hold those values up to intense scrutiny and get the Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri to tinker with them a little bit. Rather than declare war on ghosts and guerillas who can melt back into the general populace perhaps 'Taw pia hi' or 'Silence is Golden'  This is a war that 'we' cannot possibly win because we cannot be 100% sure that they are the bad guys. You might be sure but then you are still inhabiting the polarised world of good and bad. I am Bipolar, I've been there thank you very much and now in the interests of my own mental health, I have to see both sides of any argument, even if the other side's argument hides behind murder, suicide and carnage.   

    

Penblwydd Hapus/Happy Birthday

My old man is a lifelong Arsenal fan and I took the opportunity to visit the new Emirates Stadium on his behalf and take a few snaps of the stadium and the players he would have remembered.

Penblwydd Hapus Iawn Mr Williams 




































Friday 13 November 2015

I want to become a Columnist



Ok, you've 'outed me'. I want to become a Columnist. When I started this Blog in January 2012, it was with the sole intention of writing a book, I've done that! I've written 3 volumes of humorous verse on top of that. Now looking back over my recent work and being entertained by it myself, I realise that I want to become a columnist. I've got an opinion and sheesh, don't you know it. This is where I need your help. You've been getting freebies up until now. I need paying gigs to keep me in the writing game. I should be writing a weekly column for a 'snoozepaper' somewhere. A plastic typewriter with outside fireplace, I don't care, I'll write anywhere. I'll write in English and in Welsh with a spellchecker. I'll write for the Barnstaple Bugle or the Glastonbury Gazette. I'm not proud. As long as I can sprinkle the column with rude words, innuendo and good humour we are all winners but I'm not competitive as you know. I won't get on the blower to Charles Foster Kane to ask for a gig so this is where I need YOU to put the Shark Fishing in Wales word out there to the 'glitterati of the literati' world.

"I am the Shark Fisherman of Wales. The rest of you will be spared. Go back to England, and tell them there, that Wales' daughters and her sons are yours no more! Tell them Wales is free"!

So whaddayasay? whaddyasay? Can you and will you put the word around Chicago and Illinois? Will you bring this blog to the attention of your people and say that this geezer, this half man, half fish, is looking to write a weekly column? Thank you! Danke! Diolch!
I can be contacted on davidredbutton@googlemail.com
Let the Paying Gigs Commence. 

Wednesday 11 November 2015

Shark el-Sheikh




I have been out of the news spin for a while but I pick up little snippets on my wireless set as I post GIFs on Facebook and I cannot help but shudder as I hear the voices of fellow Brits speaking from places like Sharm el-Sheikh. What the F are these working class heroes doing dodging bullets on Mediterranean shores? Have they learnt nothing from Tunisia? "Ah but we had all this with the IRA" said my neighbour and I replied "The IRA didn't behead people and post on YouTube". The British Working Class have got to have their two weeks of sun or they feel deprived of their constitutional bill of rights. It's as if Thomson Holidays wrote the Magna Carta. The Russian Bear has stirred up the Hornet's Nest now and innocent Russian Civilians have been blown out of the air. Weren't innocent Dutch civilians blown out of the air last year by a stray surface to air missile in the Ukraine. Is this Aviation Karma?  And it wasn't the voices of the Home Counties being interviewed by the BBC, it was the accents of the South Wales Valleys and Lancashire. The Surrey set don't tend to head to  
Sharm el-Sheikh renamed Shark el-Sheikh because they can afford to go somewhere safer. It's when ISIL decide to hit the skiing resorts will we see Brits finally winning something in the downhill slalom. The idea is to keep us all penned in on our creaking island, looking at each other distrustingly over our Lattes. So where is now safe? Skegness, Cleethorpes, Pwllheli? Come on Brits, lets show some of that stay at home spirit. A week in the Holy land over Christmas beckons. It'll be cheaper. 




Sunday 1 November 2015

Coward of the County



Yn y Tafarn uchod tua 1984/85 mi wnes i roi'r gan 'Coward of the County' ymlaen tua chwech i saith gwaith un ar ôl y llall ar y Juke Box ar y wal wrth chwarae gem o ddarts gyda fy hen ffrind Seimon. Mi roeddwn wedi teithio o Ruthun i weld ffilm yn yr Astra ac wedyn yn teimlo ein bod yn dynion yn 18 oed aethon mewn i'r 'Load of Mischief'. Tafarn Beicwyr oedd o yn ymyl y bont rheilffordd a dwi ddim yn gwybod beth ddaeth drostoi ond dwi'n meddwl fy mod eisiau herio'r Beicwyr. Roedd Seimon a fi yn hogiau digon swil a Seimon dal fel yna fel oedolyn ond erbyn hyn dwi'n ceisio cuddio'r swildod yma gydag ymatebion cegog a heriol. Dwi ddim yn siŵr beth oedd gennai yn erbyn y Beicwyr, gweld nhw efallai fel pobol galed a fi'n canu gan 'Kenny Rogers' fel rhyw fath o anthem i'r 'underdog' ond na fe. Meddwl o ni heddiw am y teimlad o gael dy fygwth. Mae 'na fygythiadau mawr yn ein cymdeithas. Bygythiad Cyfalafiaeth a bygythiad Nadolig yn nesáu. Rhywbeth anifeilaidd ydy'r teimlad o israddoldeb, teimlad sydd yn perthyn yn hanesyddol i ddiffyg hyder a hunan casineb. Pam ddylwn ni teimlo fel yna a pam roeddwn yn teimlo nôl yn yr wythdegau na herio'r sefydliad oedd yr unig ffordd ymlaen. Os dwi'n cofio'n iawn yr unig ateb gaethon ni gan y Beicwyr oedd 'ochenaid fawr' o rwystredigaeth pan ddaeth y gan ymlaen am y seithfed tro. Dwi'n meddwl y noson honno mi wnes i fy mhwynt ond ers hynny dwi dal wedi bod yn ceisio profi fo yn erbyn y sefydliad 'concretaidd' sydd yn cyhwfan trostan ni byth a beunydd.   


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David's books

How To Be Idle
Second Sight
Freud: The Key Ideas
The Yellow World
Intimacy: Trusting Oneself and the Other
Going Mad?: Understanding Mental Illness
Back To Sanity: Healing the Madness of Our Minds
Ham on Rye
Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania
Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Mavericks
Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
I Bought a Mountain
Hovel in the Hills: An Account of the Simple Life
Ring of Bright Water
The Thirty-Nine Steps
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
The Seat of the Soul


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