Richard Hawley

I don't mind the English and the Maths and the science. At least that's functional. It's the fucking thoughts and feelings bits that I can't stand! What's a fucking mood board anyway? And trying to talk to teenage or pre-teen boys about their feelings is fucking painful. The big one just looks at me blankly, what do you mean, how do I feel, what are feelings? And the little one just has a tantrum and says it's too hard! So it's my feelings that they want, because otherwise we'd still be doing it a week later, only they don't want to know what I feel, really, really, they don't! I forgot you get to do this all the time Nick and it's not the teachers, who are very good at my sons' school. It's just a nightly pain that the whole family endures and, speaking personally, I'd rather go through childbirth. xxx

So, hair-shirt fucker that I am, I've not switched the heating on in our house yet. London has been positively balmy so I've held out, much to the kids' disgust. But last night was a tad parky so I switched it on, only to discover that it doesn't work. The house is now freezing, 1972-stylee, and my central heating blokey can't come for at least a week. We did have a wood fire last night but I'm thinking of getting the hairy blankets my mother gave me out of the loft... that's how bad things have got. Sometimes I am a proper prick but don't tell anyone else. x

Hairy blankets from the loft? Isn't that the loft insulation

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The heartbeat doesn't change, only the faces surrounding it.

I need to learn how to be superficial. I need to discover how to have meaningless conversations without finding reason or a way to disagree. I need to talk about Downton Abbey, Bake-Off and, most topically and in this instance, Back to the Future Day without saying: "What's futuristic about foodbanks, lack of permanent job contracts, rising child poverty and no trade union rights? It's positively fucking Victorian." Because it makes me sound like a hairshirt, child of the Amish c**t. x

I disagree it's worse than Victorian it's positively Elizabethan - now about Lady Edith's new magazine for women...can I pencil you in for the cookery column?

Only if I can sign it child of the Amish c**t. xxxxx

Halloween is my jam. Always has been, I love me some Halloween! And I married a guy who gets just as geeked out as I do, in fact he was the Halloween buyer for a chain of party stores here for a really long time. So every year we've known each other we've done either a couple's costume or a group costume, because fortunately our friends are just as nerdy about Halloween as we are. And we don't fuck around. One of the couples we know has a block party with trick-or-treating and bonfires and spiked cider for the parents, so we go to that and then drive around looking at these beautifully decorated houses of some really dedicated folks. Then bigger block parties downtown with a pub crawl and costume contests, sometimes to private parties other friends are having, and then to our favorite old-skool legit early-60s cocktail lounge to cap it all off. I was supposed to go out with everybody last night and tonight and I'm too sick to do so. I am super mad. Staying in and watching cheesy old thriller-chiller movies and pouting instead. Blargh. But I hope everybody else is having a spooky time! Happy Halloween!

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Trying not to fuck shit up, since 1969

On the other hand, this has been cracking me up for a few days. There are two types of girls on Halloween: I'll give you three guesses as to which I am, and the first two don't count.

https://vine.co/v/e0vlV5wlzax

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Trying not to fuck shit up, since 1969

All the fucking bullshit about Corbyn not bowing far enough at the remembrance day parade. Honestly, its fucking purile.

This is the story the Sun won't print:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/11/08/jeremy-corbyn-stayed-behi_n_8506416.html?1447025946

My son and I spent Saturday and Sunday morning at Remembrance Day events because he is a trombonist in a band that played at both. If it were up to me, I'd wear a white poppy and fuck the lot of the militaristic bullshit that goes with it. But you don't, you keep you head down, keep your mouth shut and behave, even when Ian Duncan Smith is sitting in front of you and you could very easily do him over and no-one would notice. You try to respect others feelings, even if you don't agree with them.

I'm with Harry on this one...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/08/poppy-last-time-remembrance-harry-leslie-smith?CMP=share_btn_fb

Rant over...

Interesting article. Thanks for posting.

My dad, who was born at the end of the First World War and fought in the Second, hated the 'Help for Heroes' charity. He used to mutter how could you be a hero when you chose to be in the forces and therefore chose to go into war zones. This is not to cast aspertions on anyone in the army or who have lost their lives in recent conflicts but I thought it was an interesting point from someone who who really understood the realities of war.

I give to the British Legion because they helped my mum and dad. When my mum could no longer get into a bath and the council said there was a year's wait before they could help, the British legion paid half and I paid half to turn the bathroom into a wet room. Since my dad died my mum regularly has the 'poppy calls' man who does odd jobs around the house, paid for by the British Legion, so it doesn't cost her anything. But it is also sad that we need charities to help the elderly and frail.

My mum's dad would not talk about his time in the First World War and cried when they announced the Second saying 'they have no idea'. We used to joke with my dad that he spent the war hiding and wasn't strong enough to lift his gun, but after he died and I was sorting through his stuff I found a letter I had forgotten about from the wife of someone my dad served with. She was thanking my dad for the help he gave to her husband when he was wounded and how he always talked about my dad saving his life. She sent the letter decades later, just after her husband had died. It brings home the realities of conflict. As my grandad said, we really have no idea.

I am rambling on here and don't really know what I am trying to say. I think what I am saying is I agree with you Helen. We need to respect, but it is about remembering those who have died and trying to find a away to stop the death toll growing every year.

Musings and ramblings over......

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up the Owls

Oh, Lou, that's lovely. Think many of those who fought in war know the horror and would move heaven and earth for there not to be another. My nanna and grandad both lost their fathers in the First World War and, whilst I won't go in to the tale, the misery, poverty, prejudice and hardship of that rumbled on through the decades sort of defined them. And you are right, I give to the Legion precisely because of what you said. But what government leaves its heroes asking for charity at their time of need?

Corbyn posted a poem by Wilfred Owen yesterday, which sums it up for me:

"Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."

No wonder your granddad cried. And there is no glory in that, just heartbreak.

Take care Lou Lou and my best to your mum. xxx

What a powerful, beautiful, horrific poem. It says it all.
Thanks for your good wishes Helen. x

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up the Owls

I remember learning that at school & how it silenced us stroppy teenagers. Stuck with me to this day.

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The heartbeat doesn't change, only the faces surrounding it.

Remember learning that at school too, lofty - such vivid imagery, almost savagely beautiful. "It's a sweet and noble thing to die for your country". So many didn't have a choice and went along full of naive, youthful optimism.

Still have photos of my grandad in his uniform, his medals and his bible. Such a gentle giant of a man, I can only imagine the private horrors he kept locked away at the back of his mind.

This is my favorite poem.

It's long been such, I will never forget reading it as a high school freshman and how disturbed it made me feel. When you read something like that as a young person, you don't get the full impact, but you sense the scope and importance of it. As years and wars go by, the weight and dismay of the poem becomes heavier and heavier, until it becomes the singular poem on the topic. In my mind, it remains unsurpassed, not even by Eliot.

Owen is also just one of my favorite poets, as well, and his life story only makes me appreciate him even more.

So I especially respect the namecheck on Heart of Oak.

We should have paid attention to his warning.

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Trying not to fuck shit up, since 1969