The Importance of Being Idle

Wrecks'n'Effect

Well first thing I did this morning was head straight down the council housing office and get that form handed it, along with all my 'supporting evidence'. Why they needed to see the past three months of bank statements I can't imagine, in fact at teh time I was sorting them out I was actually feeling pretty pissed off about the whole thing, but then I need their help, so I guess I have to jump through whatever hoops are deemed necessary. Plus the girl behind the counter was cute, so I wasn't mad or anything.
Then I came home to discover that two application forms I'd asked for last week had finally arrived, on the deadline for applications. So I filled them in as quickly as I could (which wasn't all that quickly really, don't want to make a mess of them, and I had a cup of tea, and wandered about a bit in the creative writing parts, and listened to the Foo Fighters, and ate half of this really nasty raspberry flapjack - yes this very one here that is still sitting on my desk taunting me), added explanatory notes as to why it was late (if it was, might've got there by this evening if I'm REALLY lucky) and then headed out for a postbox. Now normally I'd have either gone to the one just over the playing fields, or the one just by the main road. However in a somewhat controversial decision I went to Daventry, mainly as an excuse to drive my car (hehe) and also because I have exactly two friends in the entire of the UK and Erin is the other one, and I thought I'd go and visit her, cos I haven't seen her in a long while. She was working, naturally, although not terribly hard (so little changes), but she was super pleased to see me and very huggy, which was nice. So I hung out with her for a couple of hours, then I went and did a little grocery shopping, came home and I don't really know what I've done since I've been home. I know I've done some laundry and skimmed through this months issue of Q for interesting gigs (of which there are a few - Athlete are even touring AGAIN in October, that'll make three times this year, although sadly not close enough to me to go, which is a pity. Maybe they'll add extra dates), and read their overly gushing review of the new Coldplay and overly harsh review of the new Foo Figthers.
Speaking of Athlete as I was (parenthetically, a moment ago) I was listening to Vehicles & Animals on the way home and I was singing along (badly) as usual, but when I got to the track Vehicles & Animals I was suddenly in tears! Which is weird, cos that one has never done it to me before. I mean, I suppose if any of them is likely to reduce me to a quivering wreck it would be that one, with its lament for lost childhood and desire to cling to innocence, but it had never had that effect on me before. Weird. At least I was nearly home. Oh man though, I don't know what it is about that last bit of road to Daventry though, the section after Flore, but dammit I have NEVER seen so many cars that have clearly been drunkenly driven into trees or ditches in my life! I know one day when I was coming back from Daventry I was a couple of cars back from a head on collision which was pretty scary, although the thing I remember most about it was that I REALLY needed a pee, and had to wait while the Police took statements, the firebrigade came and cut people out of wrecks, and ambulances took shattered bodies to hospitals. Seemed to take forever at the time.
Remember what I said a couple weeks ago about this country going to hell in a hand basket? Well this one takes the fucking cake. A group of kids (like 8 to 10 year olds) are being held on suspicion of attempted murder after they attempted to hang a five year old. Its got so many echos of the Bulger case that I just... I despair. I mean I really honestly don't understand what goes through the minds of these kids, I really don't. There must be something going horribly wrong in their upbringing if they are so dissociated from the people around them that hanging another child seems like a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon. I realise that there is also an element of hysteria in that too, but much like Thompson and Venables, how do you deal with children like that? Do you just give up, throw away the key and keep them inside forever, assuming them to be irredeemable? Or do you try and take that tragedy and make something worthwhile out of it? I don't know, I honestly don't. I do know what those two (Thompson and Venables) did to Jamie (Bulger), and it was premeditated and deliberate, hell they even arranged the body so that his death would appear accidental. They understood what they were doing, and they wanted to do it anyway. Maybe this new thing isn't gonna be anything like that, I hope it'll turn out to be something else entirely, but I just don't know what it could be that is any better...
Of course it's not like these sorts of occurences are anything new or modern, things like this have always happened, its just that these days they're widely reported and talked about, whereas forty, fifty, a hundred whatever years ago, they were hidden, and villages and towns had things that no-one talked about. So I don't suppose things are really any worse, it just feels that way sometimes.
This is what you get when I type an entry while I'm watching the news. I'd say I'm not gonna do this in future, but we all know that'd be a lie, I'm gonna do this as much as I bloody well like!
Just remember the early part of the post, where things were happy and good stuff was happening. Then go listen to some happy music!

posted by BadMonkey @ 5:36 PM