Good End Be Swift

According to some Mayan forecast, 2012 will see the world ending. Planet earth will be no more. It will blow up, disappear into a worm hole, clash with a meteor or whatever happens to doomed planets at their endex. Perhaps God will pop us like a giant bubble wrap? Who knows but would you care? If we knew for certain that we would exist no more in 2012 how would you feel? Would you be afraid, running around in a blind panic or would you be relieved? Hell, everything ends sooner or later.
If it were not for the fact I have just become a father, I would be in the relieved camp. Now don't go presuming im depressed or anything because I can assure you I am not, but I do think the world has evolved about as far as it can go and it is time to give another species a try.


The future looks....peachy?

The funny thing about humans is we like to think we are all important, above everything and that we deserve to go on forever but the truth is we don't. No, we really don't. mother nature doesn't care about us, she was here way before we dragged our sorry asses from the primordial soup and will be around doing her thang well after we have killed ourselves off. And you know what? She won't even care, not in the slightest, she'll simply carry on, happy being mother nature.
So if 2012 really is then bring it on in all of its apocalyptic glory! Blwyddyn Newydd Da i chi gyd xxXxx

When Cinema Was Ghost and Man Silenced

I don't go to the cinema often (mainly because I regard movies these days as dull as dishwater) but I did go to see United 93 in 2006. Its a film by director Paul Greengrass about the events on board United Airlines Flight 93 when terrorists hijacked it on that horrific day of september 11th, 2001. And im very glad I did watch it in the cinema because it gave me an experience I never had before (or since).
Usually cinema crowds are rowdy with folk rustling crisp packets and taking too many trips to the bathroom (go before the cinema!) but with United 93 it was oh so different. No talking during the film, it was like a library and when it finished the audience was as quiet as the grave. As the movie ended with Flight 93 crashing into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, it knocked the stuffing out of people. It was like the snap of the gallows when the trapdoor is sprung and everyones spines were jerked into the reality of what happened on 9/11.
People got out of their seats with minimal fuss, stunned into complete silence, and headed for the exits to try and leave death behind on the silver screen where it ought remain. Eventhough humans are essentially made for death, we like to regard ourselves as immortal and want horror to only exist via the clapperboard but United 93 challenged this, telling us like it is; unimaginable tragedy can happen and frequently does.
We walked the cinema aisle quite sobered by the film, immortal no longer but there was something else which felt better than immortality. We felt as one, bonded by the same frailty of life that we fear. The courageous acts depicted in United 93 of citizens fighting back against acts of terrorism had put us in our place. And I have rarely had such an awesome feeling from a film. The feeling that good will always win in the end, just like the hero riding into the sunset.

Victorian Postage (Christmas Black)

I have had a very old fashioned Christmas, almost Victorian by some standards. Indeed were it not for spinning around the globe via the teh interwebz and tapping out pretty words on my new laptop, it could have been 1850 in my household. Christmas television? I didn't watch it (even missed my usual Corrie). Films? I watched the original King Kong on Christmas day and that was it as far as movies went. I didn't pull a cracker, or stuff my face with mince pies and neither was I eating turkey sandwiches for four days straight after the event. (We have goose as I cannot abide turkey, a dreadfully bland meat if ever there was one).
To be honest I have not felt festive at all, and were it not for family the decorations would have remained in the boxes. I realise I sound like a terrible damp feather but this is how its been this year. Its not been totally 'oubliette fever' of course but the magic spark that used to set me off and get my enthusiasm going has dimmed a wee bit. Might be that I could attribute some of that to losing the person who put me on this earth and who always made Christmas so special, and there is that but I also feel like I have outgrown it too.

Merry Christmas

Why am I blogging on Christmas day?


Goose giblets

A Sig To Me from Phil

from a rugby legend

I have met many famous faces on my often boozy travels from rock stars to movie actors but never once have felt inclined to ask for an autograph. I don't do that (mainly because I feel they should be wanting my signature) and neither do I stand with my mouth wide open like a star struck prune. People are people regardless, it matters not to me if you happen to be in the public eye. Basically I couldn't care f**king less. But I do happen to have a signature that I cherish.
It was back in 1999 when I was at death's door (literally) after a drop too much booze and I found myself in Prince Phillip hospital in Llanelli. One day rugby legend Phil Bennett was visiting a member of his family, and seeing as he also knows my family he kindly came over to my bed and wrote those nice words on my poetry notebook in an attempt to cheer me up. (My poetry notepad goes everywhere, even to my deathbed).
Phil played in the great Wales rugby team of the 1970s, and is a genuinely lovely guy, and if you ever read this Phil then yes you did indeed cheer me up at what was a very grim time for me. Diolch yn fawr!

Porthcawl Mexicans

The bandits still standing (just)

Porthcawl fair (or Coney Beach Pleasure Park to give it its proper name as it was named after the New York fair on Coney Island) has been around since 1920, offering thrills and cherished memories to countless thousands who would visit the fair every year. Sadly nowadays numbers are in the decline but during the summers of the 1980s Porthcawl was THE place to be.
Schoolchildren and grandmothers alike would look forward to the trip and the delights it held, from donkey rides on the beach to the famous Water Chute ride which was situated at front of the funfair and greeted visitors with the shuddering noise of carts on its wooden frame and great sprays of water that would spill over the plastic glass shelter.
I, and many many others, loved the place. For a child you couldn't not love Porthcawl because it was the place that could make your childish fantasies come alive before your eyes. Wooden roller coasters, ghost trains, the Devil's Dipper (a mix of coaster and ghost train), the Enterprise (think giant bicycle wheel with you on the spokes in a metal seat), amusement arcades, waltzers, dodgems, it never ended. And then there was the food! Like all funfairs, it had a bit of everything from candy hearts to hot dogs but it was the fresh doughnuts and faggots and peas that the fair was famous for.
So many memories nestle in the good parts of my mind; like wanting to be the first to see the Water Chute as the car got closer, and creeping slowly through the Chamber of Horrors where scenes of medieval torture would be lit up in the dark complete with blood curdling noises. Then there was the Funhouse which had an assortment of cool things from crazy mirrors to the steepest and highest slide I have ever seen. There was lots of grazed and bruised flesh after a visit in there.
One of the rides which stands out in my recollections is the 'cowboy ride' which is situated (its still there all these decades on) almost at the back of the fair. Its a childrens ride where a steam train goes around a Wild West themed track complete with saloon bars, cactus and the Mexican bandits you can see in the above photo. (A picture I took on a 2008 visit).
As you can imagine, being a childrens ride its not very exciting and the highlight was going over and under the small bridge in the middle of the track (I had a strange fascination with staring at the ferns which grew under this bridge) but whenever I think of Porthcawl my mind invaiable gets drawn back to this charming little attraction. And there I am once again, 7 years old, holding a quivering candyfloss in one hand and ringing the rusty bell on the trains bare carriage with the other.
And whenever we chugged past those Mexican bandits, my brother and I would try to reach out to try and touch one of them, believing if we did that some sort of magical dust would rub off on us. (Or at least I believed this).
Today if I tried touching those fading bandits, I might expect to be instantly sent back to my childhood, my beard gone along with my tattoos, and the sands golden again with the worlds weight lifted from my heavy shoulders. Those wooden cut outs are a link to my youth, long before the modern engines arrived and burned away the ghosts.

Bans Will Never Deter

New figures have shown that more than 58,000 motorists with multiple drink-driving convictions are still repeatedly driving while intoxicated. The bans are not working, and in my humble opinion they never will. You see, it takes a 'special' type of person to drink and drive; a special kind of halfwit with not an ounce of consideration for his fellow man and who will carry on being a menace on the roads no matter what the courts throw at them.
If someone is so wreckless that they would be prepared to risk their own lives and the lives of others by driving after a drinking session, they will be well equipped to ignore any driving bans that come their way. These people are devoid of conscience and posses very little morals. Indeed drunk drivers are selfish and dangerous and they need to be punished properly.
My solution is simple: anyone found guilty of killing somebody after getting behind the steering wheel while drunk would be jailed for life. In fact I would probably go a step further and agree with sending them to the gallows. Murder is murder is murder and if I support executing murderers (which I do) then drink~drivers would obviously be candidates for the scaffold.
Just go along with my idea for a minute. Imagine if Britain did hang drink~drivers. Im willing to bet those 58,000 who stick two fingers up at driving bans would soon see the error of their criminal ways. Some readers will think im being too harsh and maybe they are right but you get my meaning. We need stiff sentences to those who drink~drive, not feeble bans. Bans wwill not deter anyone, least not these cretins.