Karen Carpenter 2nd March 1950 - 4th February 1983

Well, here we are 27 years on to the day and while I'm sure that what some of us may feel is little compared to what Karen Carpenter’s brother and the rest of her family and friends still feel, I know that what many of Karen's fans experience on days like today is real.

Although Karen packed into her short life more than most of us would do if we lived to be a hundred, it's still heartbreaking that she's not teaching her young grandkids the drums somewhere and maybe looking back at February 4th 1983 as just another day during the period when she beat her anorexia and silenced her demons forever.

If Karen were alive today I like to think that she would be living in a home full of happy laughter and looking up at a wall full of awards for her platinum selling albums (both solo and as part of The Carpenters) as well as an array of photos of children and grandchildren. I'd also like to think that there would be photos of Karen and a man that was the love of her life and who had been a rock-like presence and source of support throughout her life.

It’s tragic that she never had anything like that to look back on as well as all the things she would still have to look forward too, but the fact that so many of us take time to think about Karen Carpenter and enjoy her music, whether it be on the 4th February or any other day, is proof of how much her memory lives on.

The girl done good !

RIP Karen Anne Carpenter 2nd March 1950 - 4th February 1983

So that’s the "noughties" over and done with......

So that’s the "noughties" over and done with, which is all fine and large accept for the fact that for the last ten years I thought that the decade we were living in was called the "naughties". It never did make sense to me and the penny only dropped about a month ago that they were in fact referring to the number zero! True story!

I don’t know what I was expecting from the "naughties" anyway, but maybe I had a modern day 1960s in mind for those hippies at heart not alive to experience such hedonism the first time around. We’d all be driving V W Campervans with "free love" and "ban the bomb" stickers in the back window, however, we’d only go to music festivals if they had enough wi-fi hotspots to go around and there was good mobile phone reception. The "naughties" would have been the 1960s for the Big Brother / Facebook generation. Sounds pretty dull when you think about it doesn’t it ? Perhaps it’s just as well it never happened !

So what can we expect from 2010? Well, keep Wednesday 20th October free as the world is due to end that night. I don’t have that on any actual authority other than the feeling that somebody somewhere is bound to be seeing portents of us all up the creek (and no-one was allowed a paddle on health and safety grounds) at the time ten past eight, on the 20th day of the 10th month, in the year 2010 - that’s 20:10 20/10 2010 in case you’re wondering what I’m on about. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! No need to panic, you’ve still got a good nine months or so to dig a hole in the garden and hide yourself away. Either that or you’ve enough time to have a baby. It’s your call ! Women and children first ! Go on, make the most of the remaining Winter evenings!

Before all that, I’m sure you have plenty of New Year’s resolutions to be breaking as well as wondering if your first pay-day of 2010 will EVER arrive! What is it about January that is so depressing and miserable? Ok, so being broke and stuck in the same dead-end job you had in January 2009 is enough to be going on with.

Happy New Year !

As published in the January 2010 edition of The Kemptown Rag

What kind of Christmas do you want ?

Do you think you will get the Christmas you want this year? I don’t mean in terms of presents as that is something that can often be a bit hit and miss if you ask me, but do YOU get to spend Christmas the way that YOU want too?

For some people, Christmas is all about fitting in around everyone else and constantly having to give way for the sake peace and I could be wrong but I don’t think that the origin of the phrase "peace and goodwill to all men" has anything to do with TV remote-controls. However I’ve lost count of the numbers of times I’ve had to sit through "Christmas Day at The Vic" and other garbage masquerading as "Christmas Specials" simply because requesting a change of channel (or even better turning the darn thing off) would cause an atmosphere thicker than the brandy sauce.

Before you get to the day itself of course, you have to go through the great Christmas run-up which seems to last a good two and a half months. As well as planning your own festive shenanigans, there is the business of avoiding any Cliff Richard music you may inadvertently hear while out shopping, as well as working out what you can and cannot afford before dealing with whether or not you really want to be bothered with the work’s Christmas party. Having once had to spend a rather tedious December evening in what was nothing more than the attic room of a Brighton eatery, with some drunk work colleagues and a plateful of burnt offerings, I think that the ‘office do’ can often be too big a disappointment to be worth bothering with.

It isn’t that I don’t like Christmas, there are bits of it I really quite enjoy. I think that Christmas Eve is one of the most special nights of the year. I love all the anticipation that goes with Christmas Eve: the present wrapping, the Carols on the radio and if you hunt hard enough there might be the Three Wise Men doing their thing on television somewhere.

It’s the fact the Christmas Day itself often isn’t always easy to spend the way that you want, which makes me feel that Christmas is something that should be left to those with a faith and everyone else should consider giving the whole thing a miss.

Merry Christmas anyway !

As published in the December 2009 edition of The Kemptown Rag.

If you were planning to go to a Boyzone concert.....

If you were planning to go to a Boyzone concert, great news ! You should get a 20% discount ! Ba-dum tish ! Thank you, I’ll be here all week ! It’s a cheap gag I know but what never ceases to amaze me is how quickly ‘jokes’ seem to be in circulation so soon after the death of someone well known. Is there a special department in a bunker somewhere, where it’s someone’s job to come up with such material? Do they get half a dozen or so jokes per famous person ready to release the moment the news of their demise is broken?

Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, who died suddenly last month, probably wasn’t even cold before the internet started buzzing with chatter about his death, some from shocked and sympathetic fans, but a lot of it from people whose senses of humour seemed a little perverse to say the least: "What did Stephen Gately’s mother say as his coffin was lowered into the ground? ‘I bet that’s the cleanest hole he’s been in for a while!’" Seriously, who comes up with this stuff in the first place and what kind of person finds it so utterly hilarious that they have to share it with others?

Celebrities have always been (and will continue to be I’m sure) fair game and I’m normally the first to enjoy a good laugh at their expense. When famous people complain that they have no privacy and all the rest of it, I find myself very much lacking in any sympathy. Had Stephen Gately been in the red-tops recently, saying he just needed to be left alone to concentrate on doing whatever he was doing (I have to confess I hadn’t heard anything of him for years, so have no idea what that would be, but would probably be along the lines of a biography and/or an album hardly anybody would buy), then I wouldn’t have had much sympathy for him. Any celebrity that has had enough of the limelight can retire quietly to one of their many houses, count their money, sure in the knowledge that the majority of us won’t miss them.

In the main, I have very little time for celebrity culture and find most of it pretty vacuous and temporary, but some of the things that I see written about famous people after they pass away is just beyond belief.

As published in the November 2009 edition of the Kemptown Rag.
　

Ever been glad someone's dead ?

Ever been glad someone’s dead ? I don’t mean in a punching the air and shouting “YES!” before literally dancing on the grave of the recently departed and hoping there is a fat inheritance due kind of way, more a feeling of being relieved that someone isn’t around to witness society as it can be today.

When I think of my grandparents, who were born around the same time as the Titanic was launched, I think of people that personified hard work, had strong family values, were thoroughly decent and honest and didn’t owe a single penny piece of debt or have so much as an unpaid bill when they died. Had they still been alive today, as well as being medical marvels for having survived so long, I think that they would be a constant source of worry due to the way things seem to be heading these days. If they were violently attacked in the street, would the perpetrators be caught and receive what most would consider a decent punishment? Or would the criminal just reduce a social worker to tears with their heartrending tales of broken homes, temporary relationships, alcoholic mothers, absent fathers, chaotic living arrangements and their generally aimless, debt ridden existences.

My view of the justice system these days is that if some drugged up teenager caved in the face of an innocent Grandmother, wrenched the wedding ring from her finger, swiped the silver photo-frames of her grandchildren, all to pay for his/her next fix, then he/she would get almost nothing in terms of punishment. The victim would be sent a letter with a crime reference number and an offer of some group hug type therapy, but nothing resembling actual justice. It would be seen as a good result if anyone was caught and questioned in the first place and the criminal would be back to terrorising the vulnerable and making the lives of decent people a misery before you could say “ASBO”.

During a recent discussion about crime and punishment on the BBC’s ‘Question Time’, Harriet Harman said: “we don’t believe in being harsh for the sake of it”. I found myself wishing I could have slapped her round the face with a wet haddock to try and knock some commonsense into her. Pointless vindictiveness is one thing, but letting someone off the hook and disguising it as something else is quite another.

As published in the October 2009 edition of The Kemptown Rag.

Safely into September.....

So we’re safely into September and if you’re anything like me, you’ll be thinking “Stop The World I Want To Get Off!”, which is apparently a 1960s musical starring Millicent Martin (thanks Wikipedia!), as well as the phrase I often use when I feel that time is running away with itself. Although autumn is here, it just doesn’t seem possible that we’ll soon, once again, be using the remaining few months of the year making plans to spend the last few weeks of 2009 totally out of our collective trees.

Is it really nine months since we last did that? It can't be!

Anyway, how has 2009 been treating you so far ? We're still under the leaden skies of the recession (even though the politicians want us to believe that everything is on the up and that they‘re totally in control and know what they‘re doing). We’ve also had swine flu (apparently the doling out of Tamiflu has been so successful that it can now be picked up at carboot sales for £20 a pop. Great job Gordon!) and who could forget our daily dose of Telegraphed scandal that told us what we pretty much already knew; which is of course that most MPs are just a bunch of thieving, nest feathering, self-obsessed lying bar-stewards!

I certainly remember listening with growing incredulity to Nadine Dorries, the honourable useless Tory cow for Mid-Bedfordshire, saying, while being interviewed on Radio 4, how she was afraid that there would be a suicide in the Houses of Commons as a result of the Telegraph’s revelations. Apparently the poor darlings were feeling a little bit picked on. Ah bless! The dozy Ms Dorries had obviously missed the point, which is of course that most of us wanted to see our MP swinging from the nearest lamp-post considering the utter mugs that they had taken us for.

We’d have even let them claim for the rope on expenses.

It was only recently that Alan Duncan MP was whineging how life as an Member of Parliament is now like living “on rations” and that they, the poor hard done by, funded by the taxpayer MPs are treated like something that has dropped out of a dog’s bottom. Seems pretty justified to me. It also shows that, even after all this time, politicians like Alan Duncan are woefully out of touch with normal people.

As published in the September 2009 edition of The Kemptown Rag.