There’s a true menace at work; something that is bringing our once proud nation to its knees. Planes grounded, cars left stranded strewn across motorways, people staggering across roads shouting deliriously ‘BUS, BUS.’
Before you leave your home after reading this, best sneak a look out of the curtains. Don’t linger too long. It could blind you. Just one look and you’ll know. Know if you're safe from the dreaded ... SNOW.
If you dare step outside, beware. There beasties lie. Cars skid down ungritted roads, crashing into everything they come even remotely close to; other cars, garden walls, pensioners. Buildings explode in the distance and wolves appear and start to howl.
Despite all the snow teenagers can only find ice and rubble to make ball shapes from. Icy brick balls that break teeth, windows, skulls.
When snow scatters over the UK it’s like a haze of LSD over the country. Mania ensues. People talk about the weather as if Armageddon is on the way. “Have you heard? Snow is coming tonight?” “SNOW, SNOW? We’d best get to Tesco, fill up with petrol, get food in.”
Radio broadcasts are interrupted every half an hour, special snow TV shows are made and websites are plastered with flash banners warning us of the impending danger of the slightly frozen water falling from the sky.
Yet we’re hardly a snowy nation. We only have 9 natural ski fields. France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, South Korea, Canada and New Zealand are just some of the nations that have far more annual snowfall than we do. All of them have snowfall every year, just like we do. Yet we seem to be the only nation that have trouble predicting that after over 200 years of records and snow in near enough every year, that it might happen again next year.
In 200 years time global warming will shift the Gulf Stream and mean Britain will have similar weather to other countries on the same latitude; Canada, Denmark and Russia. That means 4 month winters that start cold, get colder, drop lots of snow, freeze the snow, drop more on top of it and then snow just a little more.
Schools will have winters off, people will start to hibernate and cars will have to be fitted with padded bumpers.
Snow hung around on roads for days last year because we, an island nation surrounded by salty sea water, ran out of salt. Next year we there’ll be a mass culling of sheep because we run out of grass. Plans for solar power will be scrapped because we run out of sunlight.
Having said all that. I get to go home early from work, so can't complain.
Next week’s blog may be cancelled due to the weather.
Building the Great Wall of China, Putting Man on the Moon, Eating 59 Hot Dogs in 12 minutes; all incredible achievements, but all outshone by my efforts this week to close my bank account.
Banks are phenomenally efficient when it comes to taking money from customers. I missed a payment on my credit card once. Within a week I’d been emailed, called, received a letter, a carrier pigeon, a visit from a knife wielding ninja who threatened that my ‘time would come’ if I didn’t clear my monthly minimum repayment of £2.41; anything to get the cash.
It seems strange then that when I tried to contact my bank because I was owed cash and wished to dispense with their services, they were nowhere to be found. Every link on the website just lead to ways to pay them cash. The FAQs were listed like so:
How do I pay you cash?
Where do I click to pay you money?
I owe you a fortune due to your ludicrous and unethical interest rates, where do I go to pay an amount that will be dwarfed by the monthly fee you'll put on top?
And so on. I scrolled down but with no luck. There were no answers relating to anything other than paying in money, borrowing more money or setting up new accounts. At the end it read:
“If your question has not been answered please ring this number:” All in big font, all easy enough to follow. What I didn’t see was the font that read “your calls will be charged at our premium rate, unless you call from a mobile, in which case we’ll just roll a handful of dice and that’s how many pounds you’ll owe us.” I’ve been kind enough to enlarge it for you: “your calls will be charged at our premium rate, unless you call from a mobile, in which case we’ll just roll a handful of dice and that’s how many pounds you’ll owe us.”
Had I known that it would cost more than the funds in my account to withdraw, then perhaps I wouldn’t have bothered, but I picked up my mobile, dialled the numbers and entered a numerical labyrinth of Minotaurian proportions. The phone rang twice before switching to an automated response. I’m not entirely sure why they leave in the two rings. Are we supposed to believe the responder is a real person?
The toneless robot on the other end barked orders at me far too quickly for me to remember what I should do. FOR ISSUES WITH CARDS PRESS ONE NOW BUT FOR BALANCE INQUIRIES IT’S TWO AND NUMBER INFORMATION PRESS FOUR BUT NOT IF YOU WANT TO SPEAK TO ANOTHER MACHINE THEN PRESS FIFTY THREE GO GO GO.
I panicked and just pressed numbers at random. It must have done something because there was a long beeeeeeep and then it rang twice before being answered by another robot. “You’re in a queue, but your custom and money is very important to us, so please do stay on the line.” Greensleeves played. “You’re in a queue, but your custom and money is very important to us, so please do stay on the line.” Greensleeves played some more. This ordeal was repeated for 10 minutes before I was finally put through to Jim.
“Hi, I’m Jim, you’re through to accounts.” “I’d like to close my account please.” “Ah, you’re in the wrong department, you need payments. I’ll put you through.”
I went through greensleeves again, but this time Miriam greeted me.
“Hi, I’m Miriam, you’re through to payments.” “I’d like to close my account please.” “Ah, you’re in the wrong department, you need ‘give us cash’. I’ll put you through.”
This went on for hours, weeks even, until my phone switched off because there wouldn’t be enough money in the world to pay my bill.
I’m thinking of opening a restaurant in the same manner. You pay on arrival. You’re seated and told your food will be with you shortly. You wait an hour to the sound of greensleeves before going to complain. There you have pay £5 to join a queue to tell a staff member called Mick you’re unhappy. He’ll charge you another fiver to tell you you’re in the wrong queue and you need to speak to Alice in accounts. All the while I’ll sit in my office and eat all the food myself before deciding at the end of business hours I’ve not had quite enough food so I’ll award myself a food ‘bonus.’
Sounds unrealistic yes, but if all the restaurants in England did it, then we might be onto something.
A poppy can lay dormant for years in soil, only for it to flourish when the earth is churned over. That’s why fields upon fields of poppies could be seen in France and Belgium after the World Wars. That’s why it stands for the memories of those who laid down their lives for us; those who churned the soil of fascism so freedom could bloom.
Jon Snow, the channel 4 newsreader has once again refused to wear one on air this year, saying he refuses to bow to ‘poppy fascism.’ A tragicomic image comes to mind of poppies marching on gardens, refusing to allow other flowers to bloom and shooting on sight all bees that work for any other plants.
He says that he doesn’t wear any symbol on air, pointing out that he doesn’t wear charity bands or black ties to mourn even those related to him. He is only interested in his journalistic impartiality. It’s a brave stance. However, it’s a stance he’s only able to take because of those who laid down their lives in such numbers so many years ago.
I wear pink on pink days, black for funerals and I wore a yellow band when my father was fighting cancer. There are more causes to support than colours. Wristbands have gone from plain, to multicoloured to pin badges. There’s even a Livestrong clothing range. Soon you’ll able to drive an animal rights car and live in an apartment that supports the fight against MS.
They’re all valuable causes, and Jon Snow is right when he says supporting one opens the floodgates to all. It conjures up the image of the news being presented by a giant slinky of multi coloured bands with a voice emerging from the top; ‘and the NASDAQ came down 3 points today.’
But a poppy means more. It means that we have the right to support any cause we choose to without reproach. It means I can write this blog, you can read this blog and people can write comments underneath; all without fear of being dragged away in the night.
In fairness to Snow, he has a job that does require impartiality, and he wears a poppy off air. For Abercrombie and Fitch and Bodycare UK there’s no excuse. Both companies banned their employees from wearing poppies simply because it isn’t part of their uniform. Do employees have to wear company approved underpants, socks, hair?
Why is it that some people seem so averse to celebrate their ancestors? Maybe it’s because we don’t make a big deal of it. Korea, USA, Australia and New Zealand all have national holidays to celebrate those who have died defending their nation. We just have bank holidays, and banks steal all our money.
A national holiday would give people the proper time to reflect on the bravery of those who have walked the extra mile for the most constructive or destructive of things, of that which is the hardest to sell; an ideal.
Over the next two days, if you walk past a poppy stall and debate whether to buy one, do you have time? Just remember 70 years ago, people just like you had no debate. 1,700,000 Brits laid down their lives over 9 brutal years. That number is too big to comprehend. Put simply, somebody British died every 3 minutes over both wars. That’s about the time it’ll take for you to buy and put on your poppy.
It’s November today, unless you’re reading this in the published form Lewis’ greatest blogs in the middle of July. Then it’s not November, but chances are the issue will be the same whatever the time: Christmas.
I should love Christmas. What’s not to like? People buy you stuff, you buy them things you’d like in return, maybe in the hope they won’t like it and just leave it hanging around for you to take home. There’s good TV. You can eat too much, drink too much and any inappropriate comments towards family will blamed on the rum content in the Christmas pudding and forgotten by the time the New Year comes in.
I get carried away by the excitement of it all and end up splurging vast quantities of cash on incredibly wasteful pre Christmas presents for myself. ‘Tis the season; I deserve an ivory carved back stretcher to go with my gold plated truffle chocolates.’ That’s fine when there’s 3 weeks of build up. My bank account can just about survive the onslaught.
When I walked through the local shopping centre last Monday (25th October) my heart sank. Christmas lights already. I couldn’t help it. A manic smile slowly started to form. Jingle bells began to be whistled. My hand reached for my wallet. Only 60 shopping days until Christmas, must ... buy ... crap.
Now I’m open and exposed. Everywhere is decorated; there’s no escape. Even the websites have festive trims. I’m like a heroin addict walking a world full of giant smack filled needles that I can just drop onto any time I like. I kid myself, that by using a card and not money it doesn’t count. But of course it does and I always end up spending the first week after New Year’s sobbing at my overdraft and eating Tesco value baked beans for every meal.
The Americans have thought this through. They have thanksgiving at the end of November.A nationwide family gathering where presents aren’t exchanged and cards aren’t bought. Everybody wins but the turkey. A staggering 46 millions turkeys get eaten in the USA each year at Thanksgiving. It’s a feathered genocide; 2 words I can’t imagine putting next to each other in many other contexts. It’s also the biggest evidence so far against evolution. Surely if the birds could evolve they’d have started migrating in October by now?
This mass consumption of gobblers means that people only start to think of Christmas when December arrives, and so none of the joy is lost.
By the time Christmas arrives here I’m all Christmassed out. Cracking and eating nuts has lost its novelty value, can’t stand the sight of tinsel, I’ll punch you in the face if you offer me another mince pie.
Each year Christmas seems to creep further and further back. Soon I’ll be eating Stollen in June, next year putting the tree up in March, to the point where I’ll be out buying things in December for the Christmas the year after.
Anyway, I must dash, there’s only 75,318 minutes left until the big day.
If I offered to pay a young member of your family all their tuition fees, but only if I could drown their cat, would you take it? It’s only a moggie. Got him from a rescue centre didn’t you? He’d have been put down if you hadn’t stepped in. He owes you; time for him to pay back his dues –help little Sarah through her BA at Lancaster. And he’s 4 years old – that’s 193 in cat years. He’s had a good life.
There’s a chance you’d take it. Especially now Universities are allowed to charge what they want for admission. Next open day you attend there’ll be a price list handed out at the start:
1 year before quitting£4,500 2:2 £22,000 2:1 £35,000 First class £1,000,000 or suck off the Dean
It might seem a strange offer, but the world is full of people hiding bad things in good offers. Take Operation Christmas Child. On the surface they look great. They send presents out to poor children. Like modern day Robin Hoods, but the rich are consenting because they feel terribly guilty.
What’s not to love? Well the service is provided by Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical Christian group, whose leader, Franklin Graham has said that Islam is an evil and wicked religion. They’re also rather homophobic with their ex leader, and current leader’s father Billy Graham saying that all homosexuals should be castrated. Not sure what happens to lesbians. Maybe he doesn’t mind them as long as they film it.
The shoe boxes are targeted at Muslim countries, and are asked to not be sealed as they are checked before sending out. There have been a number of reports of evangelical literature being put in the boxes, and children being made to hold prayer groups before being given their gifts.
The majority of receiving children don’t celebrate Christmas. I wonder if the poverty stricken children of Aboriginal Australians will be receiving toy trucks and a card saying ‘Happy Hanukkah’ any time soon.
Does it even matter? When I was a child if somebody told me I could have a box of toys, but I had to renounce Satan first I’d be up dancing his evil spirit out of my soul. I’d say anything you like. ‘Monkeys and carrots are evil and must be stoned to death with marmite pebbles. Now give me the Xbox.’ Doesn’t mean I’ll be picketing abortion centres any time soon.
I can’t help thinking they’re targeting the wrong audience. Going to the furthest flung parts of the world to tell impoverished children who don’t speak English and don’t celebrate Christmas that homosexuality is a sin seems a lot of effort for little reward. It’s hardly as if they can donate back to Samaritan’s Purse.
People across Europe despise Franklin Graham and reject his views. That’s the target audience. European students. You can convince a student of anything, and they’re suckers for free gifts. Go to a University, start offering free toasters and novelty underpants and within minutes you’ll have an army marching round chanting ISLAM SUCKS, DOWN WITH GAYS.
Now if you'll excuse me. I'm volunteering for a charity that puts hand grenades in Easter Eggs.
If you would like to make a donation to Lewis’ angry students campaign, just leave a comment at the end of your article with your bank details.
On the occasional sunny days that Oldham offers me I like to wander into town to take my lunch. Despite walking through Oldham, it’s generally a pleasurable experience. I get to poke about in the market stall, ask the people in the pound stores how much everything is and if all that gets too much, I can sit on the one bench not covered in gum and bird shit just outside the court house and watch the comers and goers; this helps me feel smug and self satisfied about my middle class place in the world.
The main reason I cherish these days of splendour so much is that they’re so few and far between, so it was with joy in my heart when I trotted out of the office yesterday to spend 60 minutes of avoiding vomit, drunken maniacs and potty mouthed youths.
I walked up the high street not caring about the man with the lopsided beard asking me if I’d like to see his smelly bishop.
Then it happened. It loomed into view like a teacher coming into the class room as you’re mid white board graffiti. I froze. Mistake. They pounced on my weakness. It was a chugger. A charity mugger. They show no mercy.
For my American readers a chugger is one of those folks with a clip board full of pictures of puppies looking sad or children quietly sobbing. They wear a t-shirt for the charity they work for and generally some kooky accessories that make them look cool and worth talking to. They’re not, so don’t.
The conversation with a chugger usually goes like this.
“Hello Sir. You look like a generous kind of guy. My kind of guy. Your shoes are cooooool. Mind if I stop you for a minute to have a quick chat about my charity that helps middle aged women in Nantwich that have limited access to good Rioja?” “Yes I do mind. Fuck off!”
Or rather I want to say that, but instead I just crumble like Cheshire cheese into a serving of meekness; ready for them to take advantage of. I mutter something along the lines of ‘no thank you, I don’t have time, please, I want to buy my lunch.’ But then they show me a picture of dying baby seals.
“See what happens when this 50 year old accountant’s assistant doesn’t have a nice glass of Bordeaux to help her through her meaningless existence? SEE WHAT HAPPENS?” “YES, yes, I see. Please sobbing, please no more, take my money.”
And so I sign up and promptly cancel the direct debit. Promptly in this case meaning 4 months later, just in case they notice and send somebody round to my house with pictures of a shop selling kittens for drowning.
They’re masters at making you feel horribly guilty and that your life won’t be worth living unless you sign up to give £2 a month. Yet that feeling should be the other way round. Chuggers make £7 an hour for their part in this spreading of depression. That means that if you donate for a full year you’ll pay for a chugger to be on the streets for a full 3 ½ hours until a penny of your money goes to the charity.
This scam is just a transfer of money from your account to the account of another so they can stand about persuading people to keep the cycle going.
At this rate more people will be chuggers than aren’t and they’ll start fighting each other for your cash. Chuggers will climb down your chimney, claw at your windows. All the while saying could I just show you this?
So next time a chugger shows you their guilt book tell them you’ll consider their offer, and if, after consideration, you still want to donate, then you’ll access their website and donate there.
With enough of us doing it, maybe they’ll get the picture and chugg off.
In China 4 in 5 people have written a blog. That’s 7 trillion blogs. Is there really that much to write about? Is life in the People’s Republic so eventful that even when the blog count reached 10 figures a marketing assistant in Xi-an still thought I love Chairman Mao very much, the world must know of this?
As more and more blogs get put out, fewer and fewer people ever actually get read. It’s like trying to tell a great anecdote at a party. The more people turn up, the more people chip in with their own stories, trying to steal the limelight away from you. As you reach the danger point of the story; the part where it’s horribly boring, but essential to the crafting of the tale, people start to lose focus. There are so many other people to listen to. People with short stories; stories told using just 3 words; stories that are just a look. But you can’t do that. You need to take your listeners on a journey of facts, context and characterisation. It all needs to be just right, but nobody listens, so you take a gun and point it at the ceiling.
BANG. I have a story, it’s really funny and you’re all going to listen.
Soon blogs will attack other blogs. You’ll be reading that piece about conceptual art involving cheese and armpit hair, when another blog throws a grenade in and kills it. You’re left with an article from Marc, from Ebbsfleet, telling you how he just like, so doesn’t get why parents drive estate cars. When I’m older I’m going to be a cool dad, drive a 2 seater and strap my kid to the roof. You don’t want to read on, but you know he’s still armed. Who knows what kind of viruses he could send your way. I heard about a computer that can bite your fingers if you type things it doesn’t like.
What’s the solution? How can a good blog find an audience? A friend of mine has experimented with his blogging. He’s blogging about blogging. Now I’ve mentioned him, I’m blogging about somebody blogging about blogging. Technically this blog is about blogging too. Blogging about blogging about blogging about blogging. I’ll have to stop; my computer has started to grow teeth.
Everybody tries to outdo each other with their topics. Blogs about travel, but travel with a fish strapped to their face. Food, but only food that can be snorted. Political inside information written by the Downing Street rat.
Maybe the way forward is boring blogging. Bogging. I have a chair. It’s wooden and made from pine. My USB is blue and I’ve lost the lid. I went to Spain on holiday. It was hot.
Bored? Write about a blog about it. This one is finished; blog done.
I’m thinking of refusing to pay part of my National Insurance. Before you judge me, it’s not in the same way that old people occasionally refuse to pay their council tax because they’ve not come to terms with the fact rationing has ended and bread costs more than a handful of cocoa beans. My reason is true and just, ironically, quite the opposite of the target of my ire: dentists.
If dentists take on NHS patients, then they get paid by the NHS, which is funded by National Insurance. An easy enough system; you might even go so far as to call it fair. Doctors, kind, caring, ever patient Doctors are paid by National Insurance donations, so we can live safe in the knowledge that next time we suffer from tennis elbow, jogger’s knee or footballer’s penis, we will be treated without judgement and for free. Not a penny. The Doctor will already have been paid. That’s the case if the Doctor treats your leg, arm, or wherever you injured in that tragic fishing incident. They don’t discriminate.
Dentists, however, are a different breed. Despite only ever studying teeth, they manage to wrangle 7 years of study out of university. There are only 32 teeth, yet dentists study for the same amount of time as a Doctor who has to know every vein, muscle, bone and hair in the whole human body.
My last dentist appointment consisted of an angry looking man wielding a rather sharp object in the vague direction of the chair I was to sit in. He shone what seemed to a football stadium floodlight in my eye before beginning wrenching my jaw open, poking inside my mouth with a small sickle and muttering random letters and number.
“A 3, 47 K, QZ 8,962 and p -0.314.” His assistant wrote all this down, and then he poked a couple of my teeth with his finger, whilst sounding as if my mouth was some sort of construction site. “Hmmmmm, yes, mmmm. Interesting. I’ll just do a little scrape here, and lay some tarmac there.” The scrape involved pricking my gums with the sickle until they started to bleed profusely. He barked at me, “your teeth are fine get out!” and I was sent on my way with nothing to stop the flood of blood, but a gargling of florescent green fluid that looked suspiciously like engine coolant.
For this quarter of an hour I was charged £15; a pound a minute. All of this despite the fact I was an ‘NHS patient.’ I protested that I’d already paid through national insurance, but then the dentist walked into the office wielding some sort of drill asking ‘is there a problem?’ It was like some sort of Russian nightclub charging me to leave.
All that’s ignoring dental hygienists. Regular cleaners break their back to make sure entire hospitals are germ free and make £5 an hour. A dental hygienist has their subject sat in a chair at a comfortable height and takes 20 minutes to make £60.
Now if you’ll excuse me I have a class. When they leave I’m going to charge £20 each and tell them if they want a grade A they’ll have to go private.
Supermarkets are shit. Travel to anyplace, at any time, speaking in any language and you’ll come to the same conclusion.
Ask an assistant in your local Asda what in season vegetables they have that will complement your black bream fillets, and they’ll most likely just point in the way of the fruit and veg section, whilst muttering to themselves ‘complement a bream? Vegetables can’t talk ... idiot.’
Ask the butcher in Tesco the best way to cook a brisket joint and watch them follow your lips moving, whilst starting vacantly, before moving onto the next customer and starting the whole procedure again. Rejoin the queue, ask them again and repeat the process continuously. After an hour or so you’ll be witness to a full mental breakdown.
On a side note. A butcher butchers. A market trader trades. Following this train of thought, a fishmonger mongs. What is monging? And why are the only two things you can mong, for a living at least, fish and iron?
Supermarkets specialise in food, and yet their entire staffs seem to consist of people who know absolutely nothing about food. Having worked in a supermarket myself, I’m aware that the requirements for the job are rather low. Surely asking a little knowledge about the store’s specialisation wouldn’t hurt?
Imagine going to a car showroom to ask an assistant how many miles to the gallon a Fiesta does, only for them to respond, ‘don’t know mate, I don’t like driving myself.’
Where possible I buy from markets. The food is cheaper, better quality and sold by people who actually know what they’re talking about, mainly because they care. If they don’t please then they don’t make money.
The other day I drove to Oldham market on my lunch break. Once a thriving community hub, now it resembles the scene of a local environmental disaster with everybody relocated. There were 4 stalls open, a stray dog and a hoard of giant mutant ants.
Even with such a sparse environment there was a charge to park. 80p for up to half an hour! I wanted to walk 20 yards to buy some fruit before walking back, and for the pleasure I had to pay 80p. The reason for Tesco’s domination of the grocery market revealed: free parking.
I was tempted to not pay, but an officer patrolled round patting a bat into his open palm. I was going to wonder how many people have to park before his wage is paid, but he didn’t look happy that I would even dare to think on his territory, so I just put the sticker in my window and hurried to the stalls.
I avoided the ants and a few stray tumbleweeds, but the dodging was worth it. Standing alone in the centre of the now deserted, once proud, country famous Tommyfield market was an oasis of edible delights.
The market stall was everything a food stall should be; rammed full of seasonal, locally grown produce, mixed with a selection of imports to choose from. The stall holder was a friendly bearded man, who took great pleasure in recommending various herbs that would go well with my vegetables. The food was well labelled and was a representation of the man selling it; a British Asian with a clear love for hot food, judging by the 7 varieties of chillies on offer in a multitude of difference shapes and sizes.
Proof that you shouldn't play with your food.
I was in my element, surrounded by great foods and somebody who could help me utilise them. It was a place that would be one of many in days gone by, and yet this champion of quality produce is facing a real struggle. His customer base was low before, but now the council, in their infinite wisdom, have charged people to park next to the market, reducing his income still further. People are expected to pay 80p just for the right to give him trade.
As so often in these cases the answers are infuriatingly simple. Scrap car park charges for people parking for under half an hour, and reduce rental rates on the market for food stall holders. The market is dead. It makes no money anyway, probably loses it considering they pay for somebody to ensure that nobody shops at their stalls. Slashing rental rates and removing parking fees will get people into the market, attracting shoppers and traders.
I can’t see it happening though. I reckon most of the councillors were trained by Tesco.
My dad, much like most dads, can do anything. A call often comes from my mum along the lines of:
“Nick, the car won’t start.” “Don’t worry love I’ll have a look.” Twenty minutes later it’s running like new.
“Nick, the fridge is leaking a green fluid.” “OK my dear, I’ll see what I can do.” A day later the fluid will be gone.
“Nick, there’s a massive international diplomatic crisis in Somalia.” “Give me 5 minutes and I’ll be right with you.” A week later, the eastern African state will be conducting democratic elections that see a victory for a progressive liberal party that oversee the transformation to a major world economic power with low crime.
Sadly I’m lagging behind in that department. I recently went to buy a car, and was shown up terribly for my lack of knowledge:
“This car has only done 54,000 miles. Just has a broken stereo.” “Only 54,000 miles? That’s the same as going round the world. Twice! You say the stereo is broken?” “It’s easy to fix, just take this Allen key and ...” “Who’s Alan?” “Just take it and turn it in your gersabulator.” “I’m sorry I don’t speak Spanish.”
He charged me £200 extra, added a few long words and I walked out feeling rather flummoxed. I rang my Dad to ask his opinion about matters, but he was busy rewiring the whole house so he could control each appliance with his mind.
“They quoted me £3,000,000 and I’d have to wait 1000 years for the research to be done, but I got this book from the library and thought I’d give it a go. I’ll be able to have a couple of pints with the money I save.”
Needing music for my drive to and from work, I decided to have a go at replacing the broken stereo in my car. Shouldn’t be too hard I thought. The back of my shiny, new CD player looked friendly enough for an electrical appliance. Big plug holes for wires to connect to. No tricky instructions and it even had pictures. Perhaps I’d been giving my father too much credit.
I pulled out the old stereo, expecting to see easy to replace wires, no tricky instructions and even pictures, but all I saw were my shattered dreams. It looked like a Jackson Pollack painting; all colours visible to man, all seemingly merging into the same tiny hole in the back of the unit. To make sure I couldn’t check where they were going, the ends of the wires were bound together with black tape.
The back of my car stereo
With this came the realisation that I’m part of a generation that relies far too heavily on others. So many of us have just one skill, usually the one we have to learn for work, but don’t have a clue when it comes to something that requires knowledge outside of our forced studies.
Having said that, to cheer myself up I logged on to my laptop, checked my email, ordered a new book and bought some gig tickets. By the time my old man manages to figure out how to do that, they will have invented a car stereo that replaces itself.
Music these days is a constant source of frustration to me. It just seems to me as if no effort goes into the production of songs anymore. Take this lyrical creation by the once omnipresent Busted.
“I’ve been to the year 3000, not much has changed, but they lived underwater. And your great, great, great granddaughter is pretty fine.”
Ignoring the grammatical horrorshow that is the writer’s inability to decide if the whole thing has happened in the past, future, or present tense, and looking at the factual data makes for puzzling reading.
Apparently not much has changed in the future. Not beyond the realms of possibility. Has life really changed so much between 1000 and 2000? We all live in houses and work, the rest are just improvements. In the future however, they live underwater. Stop and think about for a second. They exist in a whole new environment, a realm where up to now, humans can’t breathe in. A world, in which it took millions of years of evolution to create fishes that could breathe out of water. Yet now the singer from Busted would have us believe that humans will be able to make the evolutionary switch to living underwater, in a period of just 1,000 years. On top of that, he states that’s not a big deal, nothing special, "not much has changed." I would suggest that’s a pretty enormous change, something that really won’t happen. It might be pretty fun to think about, but it simply won’t take place; like the banning of all boy bands like Busted.
He also saw, presumably underwater, the audience’s great, great, great, granddaughter. That’s 5 generations on from now, over 1,000 years. That means each baby is born when the parent is 200 years old. 200. Years. Old. That’s Des O’Conner territory. Imagine being a teenager with a 200 year old parent. You score your first ever goal at football and look to the side, swollen with pride, desperate for your father’s adulation, only to see a rotting corpse. Busted and their contemporaries McNuggets, just aren't thinking these things through.
In their defence, crap whilst their songs may be, at least, they’re their crap. The second day of the Bingley music festival introduced me to Professor Green, although he prefers to be called Pro Green. It struck me as a little strange that somebody would go to all the effort of changing their name, only to then have to tell people to change it still further. A bit like changing from John to Arthur, only to tell people ‘actually, it’s Reginald.’
Either way I spent an hour on a sunny Sunday listening to the Pr G, as I think he’s going to be next week. The first two songs that were played I thought I recognised. I held Shazam up on my iPod, and it came up with I Need You Tonight by INXS. No mention of Doctor Blue. The next song was somebody else’s and so was the next after that. Through his entire 40 minute set Colonel Mustard played 9 songs, of those, 5 came up on Shazam as being songs by other artists. He was basically playing a song carefully written by somebody else, and talking over it. I can do that, in fact I do sometimes and my Girlfriend shouts at me.
The set was just other people’s hard work being exploited, and all this by a man referred to as The British Eminem by the NME.
That’s part of the problem; he’s British. He didn’t grow up in America, or indeed live there at any stage, yet he introduced a song by saying I’m gonna tell you about my streets, the bad streets of Clapton. They might not be the best place to grow up, but Clapton is hardly Compton. In 2005 Compton suffered 75 murders in a population of 90,000, more than one a week in an area the size of Huddersfield.
In contrast, this year there has been 90 murders in the whole of London. London that is home to 8,000,000 people.
Is it so surprising that young people continue to look towards to America to provide their hip-hop needs when British rappers like Professor Green aren’t original, just poor versions of people like Eminem.
Maybe it’ll all be different in the year 3,000, after all it’s hard to rap underwater.
There’s something wonderfully British about festivals. Whether it’s a simple village fete, a cider pressing party, a scarecrow festival, a bonfire parade, or even something grand like Notting Hill or Glastonbury; the variety of gatherings is only matched by the range of nutters, crazy folk and general wierdos that you can find at them.
Plenty of other countries have festivals, but I doubt many countries can manage the range of oddities prevalent in the UK. There’s always somebody dancing to no music, wearing clothes that look like they’re still growing or possessing a collection of badges that has taken decades to amass.
How these people afford it is a mystery. Take Glastonbury for example. Tickets are now £180 for the weekend, that’s before you take in costs for food, drink and most of all, transport. I’ve been to the village of Glastonbury and I remember distinctly trains that only ran when the driver woke up, and the nearest highway of any sort being 311 miles away. Yet it has hundreds of nutters, all of them seemingly working away in various offices, schools, fields, zoos near you.
I went to a couple of festivals in Korea. They were fun, and they even had people in costumes, but those people were laughing and joking with friends. There were no true mentalists. The costume was exactly that. A real crazy man wears a suit made from dandelions not for a laugh, but because that’s just the clothes he wears. That home done piercing filled with a bent fork is that way because that’s what he had handy at the time. Nutters don’t try, they just are.
So when a friend of mine asked me to a music festival over the weekend just gone, my ears pricked. When he said it was in Bingley and only cost £30 I bought a ticket straight away. Cheap and in Bingley, a more fertile breeding ground for nutters there surely never has been.
The festival started on the Friday night and passed mainly without incident. The beers were of festival standard, overpriced and underflavoured, but there was an added bonus. One could earn 10p for every cup given back. In theory this was an excellent idea; it promoted recycling and reducing litter. In practise it led to hoards of children scurrying around feet collecting dropped cups. They swarmed like rats throughout the crowd; some were even urinating to mark their cup collecting territories. I escaped the crowds to order a pint, only to see it swiped from my grasp by a chalice hungry minion.
The Saturday was basked in sun, weather which added to the middle class feel of the whole festival. Most people were sat down with picnics they’d brought. It made crowd surfing tough, and a few people weren’t happy to have me jump on them as they tucked into their kettle chips. However it all kicked into gear with the last two bands. The penultimate act was John Lydon’s band Public Image Limited to be followed by James. On the face of it they were similar, two bands coming back after breaks and both promoting new material. Sadly that’s where the comparisons end.
PIL walked out, and after putting on their instruments they set up their music books to read from as they played. That didn’t bode well. They used them constantly during the performance, meaning no connection with the audience. John Lydon, in his true punk ways, spent the money he earned for doing a country life butter commercial, reforming PIL. He obviously overlooked time learning songs when planning his budget.
A member of the crowd, obviously angered by such an appalling lack of effort, threw his plastic pint at John. It hit him on the shoulder and spilled beer over him. His response was ‘wankers, beers is for drinking, not throwing.’ And so it began.
John was pelted throughout his reading of lyrics, and each time he responded by abusing the audience. According to one NME review, his famous on stage tirades are straight off the cuff and come from within. When John started with ‘We don’t want your government Blair,’ I began to have my doubts. Towards the end he lent his face to the crowd and asked repeatedly ‘can you smell the onions? Can you smell them fucking onions?’ He stopped when a burger was thrown at him. It just added to an image of an old desperate man looking to be part of a world where he is longer relevant. I felt sorry for him.
James, on the other hand, needed no sympathy. I can’t claim to be a loyal fan. I’ve never seen them live and my listening to them is limited to the radio and bars, but from the first bar of their first song Sit Down the whole audience, including me, were hooked. Tim Booth sang and danced with the passion of a man who has been playing gigs for a year and still in love with his music, not a music veteran who’s been touring for 18 years. For recognising how lucky they are and how important the connection with your audience is, I’ll raise my glass to James. At least I would if some kid hadn’t stolen it to sell.
Tony Blair’s memoirs are well on their way to becoming the fastest selling in British history. On pre sales alone it shares the top 3 current bestsellers with the autobiographies of Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson; we do love a good monster story in Britain.
Usually when somebody provokes such ill feeling as Blair, there are a number of reasons for it. Being hated to the point where a million march against you takes some doing. Thatcher stole industries, jobs, communities before she finally rose to full on hatred with the theft of milk.
With Blair, however, there was just Iraq. His smug smile was irritating. Hobnobbing with celebrities and pretending to be a football man both showed a man desperate to be liked, but nobody died. He was just a bit of a loser. That was OK though, people can deal with a loser when unemployment is falling, hospital queues are being slashed and the minimum wage is increased yearly.
Seeing 179 British soldiers dying to stop weapons that never existed managed to take Blair from OK loserish guy, to hated war criminal pretty much overnight.
On Parkinson Blair said he prayed to god for answers about the invasion of Iraq. He then went on to say “You realise that judgement is made by other people... and if you believe in god, it's made by god as well."
When I was at University there was a man who used to walk around the local town centre. He would collect cans, put them into a black bin bag liner and carry them to the same spot at the same time every night. There he would proceed to stamp on the bag and shout “BAD CANS, BAD CANS – THE DEVIL IS IN YOU AND HE MUST COME OUT, BAD BAD CANS!” That man was unsurprisingly taken in for medical care after a few weeks. He was guided by the voice of god, and yet all that was damaged were a few cans.
There was also a Muslim student who used to tell people outside the student’s union bar that they were being judged by god; that bad things would happen to them in the after life if they continued down their path of sin. He was warned by the University not to go near the union unless he could keep quiet, and yet all he did was talk to us.
Strange then that when, guided by god, and passing judgement on his / her behalf, Tony order the invasion of Iraq and with it the death of 700,000 civilians, he was worried that people in Britain would think of him as a ‘nutter,’ because he was Catholic not Church of England.
Strange also that Blair would describe Gordon Brown as a man with ‘zero emotional intelligence.’ That from a man who patronised the British people so severely by stating they couldn’t accept a leader of another religion.
Today’s difference isn’t strictly between Korea and England, rather America and England, although a night out in parts of Seoul often merges USA and Korea into one. Show an American a room full of flowers and they’ll tell you how wonderful they look. They’ll tell you how much they love flowers, even if they don’t. You’ll end the meeting feeling good. Show somebody English the same room and they’ll ask where the coffin is.
One night in a bar in Chuncheon I had a conversation with two American guys on the topic ‘top five people you’d like to meet.’ It was full of positivity as we discussed our heroes and how they’ve shaped our lives.
On my first day back in my Oldham office a colleague asked me: “If you could punch 5 celebrities flush in the face, who would they be?”
In the spirit of national pride here is my punch list. The rules are that the punches are to the face, will not kill or leave permanent marks and they are also without repercussions, so if there’s a famous woman you dislike, fret not, punch away; it’s only a blog.
Shane Ritchie
My first answer and it was made immediately. I’m not entirely sure why I’ve always despised him. Maybe it was his smug smile as he replaced people’s stained shirts with new ones and claimed Daz did it(it takes a special kind of desperation to pick up Danny Baker’s rejected jobs). Perhaps it was the needless abuse he dished out to Peter Simon during his time as presenter of Run the Risk. More than likely though it’s because one of his boys is called Shane jnr, and another is called McKenzie Blue. Anybody who puts a colour in their child’s name is practically asking to be punched.
(Punch me, punch me right in the face)
Garth Crooks
Football is a world that’s easy to hate, and there’s plenty of punchable people. It could be Ashley Cole: “55k a week is taking the piss.” Sepp Blatter: “Women should wear tighter shorts.” John Terry: “I just had sex with your wife.” (lawyer’s note, this is not a genuine quote)
But all of these will feature on so many punch lists. I like to spread the wealth and so my football man is that ditherer of questions, that confuser of events that have just happened. A man whose fourth most searched for term on google involving his name is 'Garth Crooks Idiot.'
Garth Crooks (shouting): “That should never have been a red card, only ever a yellow card.” Steve Claridge: “It was his second yellow card Garth.” GC: “But still.”
His job started at the BBC as a post match interviewer, and it’s not hard to see why when he excels in that art with hard hitters like this:
“That was clearly the result you wanted wasn’t it?” (To a Dutch player after they’d won 3-0) or even this question made to Arsene Wenger: “David Seaman made a phenomenal save today. Is he capable of saves like that?”
Such a poor performance in such an easy task as asking coherent questions would have most people fired, but sadly Garth has just moved further up the pecking order at the BBC and into that realm of football pundits that really shouldn’t be eating unassisted, never mind offering their insight into the game.
Imagine if a journalist was to interview a celebrity and just asked ‘You’re good, aren’t you?’ Or a doctor that asked ‘It hurts when you move your knee. Are you capable of moving your knee?’ A world full of Garth Crooks is a frightening prospect and for that reason he deserves a punch.
Chris Moyles
Chris Moyles is the peak of the Radio One Iceberg. That’s not to say I don’t want to punch him on his own merits, but in this case he’d be taking the punch for the whole of Radio One, especially the news desk.
I love the BBC. It makes me proud to be British. The website is magnificent, the shows are generally of high quality, and it shows why privatisation isn’t always the best way. Programmes get made by the BBC that don’t make money, but are quite clearly high points of our culture. Think of Blue Planet, The Thick Of It and Have I Got News For You. These are programmes that don’t insult the intelligence, that promote knowledge and are made by people at the top of their professions.
Sadly Chris Moyles and Radio One are the antitheses of these qualities. The breakfast show seems to consist entirely of Moyles talking about ‘funny things I said in the pub’ all of which have been written by producers. If there’s one thing worse than bombing, it’s bombing other people’s material. Such funny things include shouting down the microphone, referring to a ringtone as ‘gay’, introducing himself to Halle Berry as a ‘big black man,’ saying Polish people make great ‘prostitutes and ironers’, and having footballers on his show who say the word ‘faggot’ without reprimand.
Radio One news is no better. BBC news should be a bastion of impartiality and informed comment, and yet it allows Radio One to constantly follow up its new reports with opinions of the public disguised as intelligent statements, such as “James from Luton says ‘I think the floods in Pakistan are terrible.’” Really James? How informative; I may have struggled to have come to such a conclusion had I only been presented with the raw figures of 3,000 dead.
“Chelsea from Salford thinks ‘Them MPs aren’t right, they need to be sorted out.’” Fantastic Chelsea; would you like that to be implemented as a policy to tackle Government corruption? Just as simple as sort them out. If only such laws had passed but 5 years ago, think of the waste that could have been avoided.
For this and for only ever being Northern when it suits you, Chris Moyles, given the chance I would punch you full in the face.
(How has this man made money?)
Paris Hilton
To keep this blog from being accused of sexism I have decided to include a woman. Namely Paris Hilton. As a child I was well taught in the ways of the world by my father, and so I know never to trust anybody with a monobrow, anybody who wears a hat with no practical purpose and women who carry dogs in bags.
Through no fault of her own Paris sums up the worst in rich children who really don’t have a clue, and don’t really need to, because even if they flunk everything, they’ll always have money.
“All British people have plain names, and that works pretty well over there.”
No Paris they don’t, just ask Shane Ritchie.
Number 5
I do my best to make the blogging experience as interactive as possible, and because of this, and in no way due to my laziness I have left the 5th option open to public discussion. Who would you punch in the face? You get to leave a comment at the bottom and I get more dwell time on my website; it's a win win situation.
Scroat - [scrote] -noun Difficult to define, but people who aren’t scroats can generally tell if somebody else is. A scroat often be seen stealing from old people, shouting at their partner when pissed or generally just doing scroaty things. Scroats often congregate into groups with other scroats. They can be indentified by a constant need to massage their testicles. They’re often seen being walked by dogs that seem intent on killing anything that crosses their paths.
My neighbour is a scroat. I know he is because when he’s drunk at weekend he calls his girlfriend a slag. I can tell she’s a scroat too because she stays with him. For all their faults scroats tend to be fairly loyal, perhaps because nobody else will hang out with them.
On my return to England I was amazed by the sheer quantity of scroats, I counted 42 outside one shop alone. Korea is mercifully free of them. There’s no sense of cool if you’re stupid in school or any sense of ‘well done’ if you’re somebody who cheats or steals.
Much like honesty and decency spreads through all walks of life in Korea, so Scroats infest English culture like rats. Footballers dive and go on strike to top up their millions, led by big time Scroat Ashley Cole. Celebrity TV shows are made to cater for them, and even political parties like the BNP exist, should they ever become inspired to vote.
One day soon they’ll be a Scroat religion with a leader who wears all white and ridiculous quantities of gold. He’ll lie, cover up crimes and blame everybody else when he’s caught.
Apartment living has its benefits: Heating bills are kept lower, there’s no garden up keep and you don’t have to negotiate any tricky steps when you’re drunk. However, it does mean your access to neighbours is limited to looking into their living rooms across the carpark.
During my time away in Korea our house was rented out. For the most part the tenant left it in one piece, however, a gardener he was not, and so my first job on returning was to tidy the garden as best I could. The first two priorities were cutting the grass and removing a vine plant that had gotten out of control. To do both jobs I borrowed a pair of blunt shears.
After hacking at the grass for some minutes I finally removed two blades. Exasperated I moved onto the vine plant. When I left England it was growing, but was a manageable size. Now it was a beast of epic proportions. As I removed leaves I saw the remnants of eaten plants, scores of crushed snails and the bones of next door’s cat that went missing. It seemed impenetrable, especially so since my tools had developed a layer of rust that chipped off only to reveal older rust. A Russian doll of rust lay beneath.
After an hour of squeezing leaves between the ‘blades’ my neighbour, whom I have never spoken to, offered to lend me her secateurs. The offending plant was massacred in minutes. My gloveless hands bled as it went down fighting, but I kept on. It went deeper than I thought possible. The inside was a graveyard of bugs, plants, snails, Russian spies. As I went under the leaves to cut the plant at its main stem I felt the branches closing in on me, but despite its best efforts I cut it down to the roots. All thanks to the kindness of neighbours, neighbours I never would have spoken to had I lived in an apartment.
Having said all that my other neighbour is a twat.
Korea was an easy place to live. 27 hours make a full time week, a meal out costs a fiver, beer is plentiful and work starts late. However, because of this, it isn’t the healthiest place. Like a tree’s age can be counted by its rings, generally you can tell how long a teacher has been in Korea by how many extra inches they have around their waist since they arrived.
Despite having an incredible year full of new experiences and new friends, leaving Korea, for my health’s sake at least, wasn’t all sorrow. Nobody wants to be the last to leave a party, but it’s hard to be the first.
(Perhaps the best ever song about going home, apart from Driving Home for Christmas by Chris Rea obviously)
Different people have different responses when it comes to the time to go. Some count down the days on their facebook walls as if the whole thing was a prison sentence. Some people cry, some people just stay. For the most part people are mixed like I was. Heading home my first feeling was joy at seeing my family. Actually my first reaction going home was ‘Finn Air – £500 for excess baggage – robbing bastards!!!,’ but after stealing a cushion and headphones from the flight, my sense of justice was restored and I went back to being happy at seeing my family. That was followed by sadness. Not at the end of the highlife, Korea is as close as one can be to being back at university, but without the need to eat baked beans for 42 days straight. I was sad at the fact that due to their homes being in USA, Ireland, Australia and Canada, I probably wouldn’t see my new found friends again.
With regular travelling people come and people go, and that’s part of the deal. You know you’re probably not going to see them again, so moving on isn’t hard. However to live in another country for a year means to put down roots. Friends are made and plans are made with them. Your life is a normal life, but in another country. When the time comes to leave that means not just leaving a country, but your friends, groups, plans, local bars, favourite restaurants, colleagues and hardest of all in my case, students.
The culture shock I experienced going to Korea was only eclipsed by the culture shock going back to England. In the spirit of easy reading, starting tomorrow, each day I’ll be posting the main differences between the two countries.
Tune in tomorrow for the first difference: neighbours.
It’s said the Inuit have over 100 words for snow. Likewise we English have a whole collection of words for small body of running water with no obvious danger: stream, brook, spring, creek, course, rivulet, spate, pissflow. A river is something big, something to be feared and crossed on a bridge; to be looked at from a distance and admired.
A stream is where I got my running water kicks as a kid. I used to journey down brooks in my wellington boots. There was no need for waders; the water never rose above my toes, but still it felt like an epic journey each time I traversed the watery mile to the local tennis club.
(The "river" Chew in Greenfield. My home village.)
I poked things with sticks, imagined huge waterfalls ahead, pushed my action man in his raft, generally anything but come to terms with the fact that I needed a friend.
I had to do the work in my head; we simply don’t have that many big rivers in England to stimulate the imagination. I put it down to generosity of spirit; with our 200 days of rain each year, we make sure that every village has a trickle running through it. Anything else would just be greedy.
That’s probably why I’ve never white water rafted before. The only white water I’ve encountered has been from industrial waste in the Thames.
When I heard it was done in Korea I had to try it. Before we travelled East to Inje, friends insisted the water would be calm; an easy introduction to the sport. Sadly it wasn’t to be. The day before, it rained as if an ark was needed. The whole sky was like an endless bucket being poured on all below it. The river raged up 2metres in a week, up a grade in a day.
It wasn’t a case of spotting the white water as we drove alongside the course, rather spotting the water that wasn’t. I could see all manner of rafting paraphernalia in the swollen water: paddles, helmets, arms.
I asked the instructor if it would be dangerous. He nodded. “It’s safe ...... verrrrry dangerous.” “So, it’s dangerous then?” “No, not dangerous, just a little not safe.”
This carried on back and forth. The instructor looked at another instructor and they told me various contradictory statements about the safety, or lack of it, of the rafting. The safety class was similar. We were told what to do if we plunged into a rapid. “Turn around, head up river, feet down river. Be verrrrry calm.”I looked at the waves rising up then crashing down into holes 3 metres deep. It didn’t seem conducive to calmness.
We got in the boat and practiced in the one calm spot for 10 minutes. This involved the guide shouting various instructions in Korean, the rafters shouting them back, and the boat spinning 360 degrees. He seemed pleased with this and so we set off into the first rapids.
Lindsay and I shared a boat with a group of high school exchange students from Singapore. They were confident, articulate and spoke in 2 languages, flicking back and forth between English and Malay, often mid sentence. The country has 4 official languages. Maybe their fluency can be put down to education; maybe that 42% of the country is of foreign heritage. Whatever it is if Korea really wants to be serious in its efforts to become a bilingual country then it need look no further than Singapore as a working model.
As we waited for the boat to drift to the first rapids and its doom I took time to look around. Cities in Korea are cramped, built upwards and generally devoid of any aesthetic pleasures. However, this does have a benefit. Much of the country is undeveloped, and in cities like Inje you can travel 10 minutes in a car and feel, as I did that day, like you are in true wilderness. Mountains rising up from rivers, entirely forested and seemingly full of adventures to be had.
(10 minutes from drive from the city of Inje brings you to this)
Then the rapids hit. We trashed our paddles around furiously, swayed from side to side, got soaking wet, but from the first swell I was hooked. There’s something extraordinary about being thrown about in a boat that is only comparable to when I’ve been mountain biking or fell running. You may not know entirely what you’re doing all the time, but that’s the draw card. You really don’t know what the result will be, because you don’t control every possibility. Nobody but nature does.
I started to get the hang of it, or at least I thought I did. We hit more rapids and guided through with no more damage than wet bodies. With 3 more rapids left we hit a big swell that rose the boat up and then dropped it mercilessly at what felt like a 90 degree angle. We all fell about, desperately clinging on. A girl was thrown overboard into the swirling abyss and the guide began to scream. Until that moment he’d be the epitome of calm. Perched precariously on the back of the boat and joking about. At one point I’m sure I saw him doing a handstand. Now though he seemed frantic. We were in the middle of a big rapid with a large slab of granite approaching. The problem with rocks is that they’re not in the habit of moving out of your way. Everybody grabbed what they could of the girl, whilst trying not to be thrown to the greedy river themselves. We finally hauled her on board and left her to lie at our feet.
She looked terrified. We managed to traverse the rest of the white water with no further incident, and it was then that I could consider the facts that make rafting so exciting. It really can hurt you. The water doesn’t help you out. It’s unrelenting, and so needs unrelenting respect and attention. That just deepened my addiction.
One of the best parts of outdoor sports compared to competitive sports is the removal of the competition. With that gone, your success doesn’t correlate to somebody else’s failure. It creates an atmosphere where people help each other out, and do their best to make sure you enjoy the experience. I looked up the river from our end point and the smiles were just the same as mine from boat to boat. If there’s ever a sport that sums up the spirit of Korean people, then it’s rafting.
The average person in the UK will spend 42 days in hospital over a lifetime. I’ve spent 12 in just the last 4 years before coming to Korea, so it wasn’t entirely surprising that I would receive some treatment during my time here.
It’s not that I’m especially sickly; most of my problems have been injuries. Damaging nerves in my hand after spearing myself with an electric toothbrush is a particular highlight.
My first trip to the hospital here was to deal with the dreaded swine flu, or piggus sickus to give it its Latin name. I arrived at the treatmentroom 5km away from the main building, on an island, over a moat reinforced with barbed wire, just in time to see the sign being changed from ‘keep out, leper colony.’
My next trip was to have an x-ray on my foot following a collision with a seemingly suicidal goalkeeper at football. This time I went to a different, smaller hospital; the choice is endless here in Chuncheon. I entered the building and was immediately given an appointment for an hour’s time. Coming from England I was expecting to be told to come a month next Tuesday, but only if it isn’t sunny, otherwise the old women will fancy a day trip.
From the time of appointment I was seen to, given an x-ray, assessment of the x-ray and prescription, all within 25 minutes. I’m still not sure what was wrong with my foot. He just kept pointing at my toes saying “abnormality, abnormality, abnormality,” whilst dancing about with some sort of staff, before sending me on my way to physical therapy. This involved a walk of 100m and no waiting.
They must have known I was English, because physical therapy involved the kind of treatment James Bond could expect to receive should he ever fail to escape the clutches of the enemy.
First a red hot bandage was wrapped around my foot. It was left on for 10 minutes, plenty of time to leave my foot medium to well done. I was told to lie down whilst they cooked my body parts, something the old woman in the cubicle next to me was evidently doing, as my bed shook violently with her snores. After the time was finished a nurse removed the pad and took it back to its rightful place removing wallpaper.
The middle part wasn’t as bad as a nurse rubbed gel onto my foot and moved a lump of metal over it. I had no time to ask what it did as straight away it was removed and replaced by two electropads. These proceeded to send electric currents through my foot. I did ask what these were. Her English was sketchy, but she managed to mention something about ‘stunning cows.’
As it turned on she pointed at a button and said ‘pain, press here.’ I nodded, lay back and relaxed knowing there was nothing a couple of pads could do to hurt me. Then it started. Waves of currents were sent through my bones. The first set forced my body upright, the second, gave me a twitch I’m still trying to get rid of. The next few went entirely through my foot, and gave it a similar to sensation to being crushed in a vice. After two of these I pressed the buzzer frantically. The nurse walked over, nodded and turned the power up. I screamed in agony and pressed the buzzer again, only to see her manically grinning as she turned it up still further. We played this game for 5 minutes before the power shorted out, the hospital lights started to dim and my foot began to smoke. Then I was allowed on my way.
Ignoring the devastating pain, and thinking of the time taken, for me the whole experience was fantastic. But therein lies the catch: for me. I can afford it. Millions can’t.
Certainly the old man I see near my apartment, bent double with arthritis, using a plank of wood as a crutch because he can’t afford treatment or crutches, can’t afford it. It’s an $8,000 a year minimum to be insured here, and that covers roughly 55% of your bills, only if you have work.
Nor can the woman who uses a pram filled with bricks to act as a makeshift walking frame. If you have no work, then you’re liable for 100% of your bills. Insurance just buys you the right to be treated.
In the other major country with no free healthcare, the land of the free, the USA, it’s a similarly shitty deal. 47 million people have no medical insurance. That’s more people than live in the states of Connecticut, Oregon, Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, New York, Virginia and Utah combined. 2 million people a year file for medical bankruptcy in the USA, meaning every 30 seconds somebody has their life ruined because they’re unlucky enough to be sick, and couldn’t afford to be treated; all this in the richest nation on Earth. Of those people, more than half will have medical insurance.
University education is simply not an option for those at the lower end of the economic ladder. They have to spend their money on not dying. To be treated for leukaemia costs $500,000 and most insurance packages don’t cover that. 1 in 3 of us will get cancer at some stage in our lives. It’s a frightening enough prospect even without knowing you and your family will have to spend the rest of your days paying back debt, just to have a chance of survival.
There are hundreds of examples of insurance companies ruining lives with a loophole, just for a drop in their ocean of profit, but the argument doesn’t need strengthening. To make profit from people’s ill health is wrong. That simple.
An argument given by middle class people is ‘I have to wait too long for treatment.’ What a fantastically selfish, arrogant and small minded view. ‘Yes there may well be people being turned away bleeding from the hospital door because they don’t have the right forms, but there’s just no way I’m going to wait 3 hours for this x-ray.’
At least they’re waiting for something. Those 15 million in the USA with no healthcare could be hit by a drunk driver today and they won’t receive medical attention unless they have insurance. Even then they could well be liable for costs as their insurance company look for any way possible to not pay. In an age when $3 trillion dollars has been spent on the Iraq war alone, that is, in all senses of the word, criminal.
The second group of people perceived to benefit from a private system, in terms of reduced queues, is those with enough money to go private in any country. If you can afford the $8,000 a year to be treated in South Korea, then you can afford a full BUPA package in the UK, or to go private in France, Spain, Germany ...
Using queues as an argument is redundant.
Whilst my two hours of waiting and full treatment was a novelty here, I could easily have such an experience back home in England. I’m just not forced to pay if I don’t want to.
Still not convinced? Tell the amputee using a stick he’s carved himself to aid his walking because he can’t walk, due to not having treatment on his legs, as he can’t work to be able to afford the fees. Tell him no public healthcare is acceptable. And then try telling him with a clear conscience.
Can you do that? Then it’s time you signed up for private healthcare; you really can’t afford to wait.
The 1999 Bronze Medal winner from the annual blog awards, in the catagory 'Ok blogs about people called Lewis who move from the North of England to South Korea and back again.'
Other stuff to read when you've read all my blogs twice over
Scroll down far enough and you can read about my time living in South Korea.
If you like your blogs cooler and more relevant then read the new stuff about an angry Northerner's journey through life.
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