This blog comes to you courtesy of Aspirin.

Hello and greetings to my coterie of confidantes, may I whisper in your ear?

I went to my bed feeling quite happy after seeing the dreams and plans of Simon Cowell swallowed up by the great British public and spat out all over the shiny suits and designer dresses that surrounded him on the BGT judges panel. They got it wrong and then in the height of ungraciousness they basically told the world we got it wrong! Amanda Holden couldn't wait to say out loud, Ronan should have won...even Ant and Dec had a little dig at poor old Jai.

I have said it before and I will say it again, if you want to make cash from punters voting don't be surprised if they sometimes remind you whose money it is.

I'm sure Ronan will find himself well looked after and poor Jai will have his day in the sun before joining Joe McElderry, Leon Jackson, Shayne Ward, Michelle McManus and countless others who the fickle British public loved for a little while before something shiny in the corner of the room took our attention and we forgot they ever existed.

Just as an aside, I'm probably the only one who remembers Ron Ely as Tarzan on the telly, but wasn't the little boy he worked with called Jai? I wonder if it is the same boy?

So, that was a nice end to a bad day, bad because I had one of my bouts of heart burn which really knocks the stuffing out of you.

Not being dead after my heart attack left me with a handful of medication that I have to take each day - I'm not alone in this I know, with pills for blood pressure and cholesterol and other things - six tablets a day including the dreaded aspirin.

I have a very delicate tummy and the aspirin irritates it quite badly and causes severe heart burn which is treated by one of the other six tablets I take, but occasionally the tablet seems to give up and the acid wins - the result is not good.

I'm sure that Simon Cowell has a similar feeling this morning....

You really have to be careful what you eat during such a bout but you know you have to eat so that the acid has something to work on other than your gullet. Dry bread with some wafer thin chicken - I really could have murdered a Rich Tea cream finger.

Anyway, feeling much better today, no butter on my crumpets and an extra cup of tea to help dilute the aspirin and let's keep our fingers crossed that it was a one day excursion into the ocean of pain, not the full cruise.

It is on days like today that I reflect how not being dead is quite good, but not as good as being alive - there is a difference.

In recent days some of my associates have been writing about milestone birthdays and how they want to set themselves goals and aim for new targets in their life - I used to think like that but now I think life is to short and unpredictable to be planned in that way - I just want to enjoy each day as best I can. I don't want to set myself up to fail and I don't want to put extra pressure on myself - we are like little fluffy ducklings on the tide of fate - we control so little of our lives that we should embrace where we are and who we are and then the next day do the same. You can maybe swim a little against the tide but be ready to say, OK - I'm here am I - what can I do here?

I still think we should have dreams and we should aspire to those dreams, like Jai, but most of us will be like Ronan, we will fall short and we should take the medicine, accept the occasional bout of pain and move on.


Now, go and have a nice day and remember this:


Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself. If all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.

- Simone de Beauvoir

525600 Minutes...

...give or take a few. That's how long it has been since Jake left us.

He is missed everyday, like his brother, and although it saddens the heart to realise just how long he's been gone, the memories Mrs B and I have of him bring a smile.

How can we ever forget that day we walked into the kitchen to find him standing in the middle of the kitchen table, gently picking grapes out of the fruit bowl and devouring the lot!

He was a special part of our lives and we are so grateful for both him and Danny deciding to let us share their house!

Mrs B and I are heading off for a few days, to recall the brightness of the past.

Thanks Jake.

The Old Man

Young and Daft

We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle; easily and often breached.

Unable to accept its awful gaps, we would still live no other way.

We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan.


Irving Townsend

Respect for the Law

Here we are again my little flockers, it's Sunday afternoon and it is very blustery here on top of the hill, I fully expected to see a piglet tied to a balloon go flying past.

I just wanted to intrude into your sad lives for a moment to deliver a shaft of pure insight from the beautifully calibrated machine that is the Guru's brain; super-injunctions don't work very well!

There is a huge amount of digital chatter about the not so secret identity of a certain footballer who can't keep his knob in his shorts, I'm not going to name him here because there is no need, the gigs up on that. One Scottish newspaper has even put his face on the front page of their paper.

Many normal everyday citizens have taken the time to find out who he is by accessing Facebook or Twitter or by just typing 'Imogen' into Google and seeing the list of possible suggestions.

 The simple fact is that now the cat is out of the bag it really does undermine the law being used to try and gig...sorry gag freedom of speech.

Any decent law only works because it is accepted by the majority and it is open to all but of course this sort of law is not open to all, just those with deep pockets. This law, as Charles Dickens put it so succinctly, is a ass!

This is a law that is being used by rich and powerful men to cover up shameful acts, which they claim are private and that the exposure of said acts would cause harm to their families...the same families they disrespected and harmed by committing the act in the first place!

This is a law that is supposed to stop the exchange of information about celebrities who court the media and sell stories and allow access to photograph the wedding but then they want to pull up the drawbridge if it might seem a story will show they are not as perfect as they try and make out.

I can see the purpose in having a law that protects privacy when it comes to medical conditions for example or for matters where national security is an issue and even to protect people who through no fault of their own are thrust into the media spotlight, but basically the general populace share so much of their lives on social networks sites these days that the idea of a privacy law seems totally ludicrous and unnecessary for the majority of us non celeb types - and a law for the minority who can afford it is a law I have little, if any respect for.

So, my little gang of giggling googlers - when the summons arrives on your doorstep because you might have tweeted the name of a knob, let me know and I'll arrange the protest march.

Now back to your Sunday afternoon - Songs of Praise, a glass of sherry and then Bafta.

PS...

The press should really play their part by acting responsibly - but of course they only publish garbage because you like to read it. Hence, your presence here.

When is a book not a book?

Answer - when it's the Bible.

It's been a strange week my children, strange and quiet. Mrs B was in Spain for a few days, tracking down Nazi war criminals which is a hobby she picked up when she got fed up of knitting.

Now to more serious matters, the week started with a discussion on the telly about the value of the Bible, and it still makes me laugh and cry in equal measures that some people take the words written in that book as an absolute truth.

For me the Bible is a collection of stories, all written by different hands, which makes it an ideal source for quoting odd lines that seem to back up how we feel about different things. Does that make sense?

Let me expand - Mansfield is a place full of tension at the moment as a young local man was murdered last week and the alleged offenders are Eastern European immigrants. The outpouring of hatred towards them on a Facebook site was quite sickening. Ignorance, anger and threats of revenge and at one point we had the usual Biblical quote used to excuse this attitude - 'an eye for an eye'.

My guess would be that if you asked the contributor of those five words which book of the Bible they were taken from, or even to expand the quote, they would not have been able to answer.

They also forget that elsewhere in the Bible the main man, Mr Jesus, rejects this quote and offers instead this advice 'If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also'.

There are also many who have offered their own take on 'an eye for an eye', Gandhi and Martin Luther King both suggesting all these eyes being destroyed only makes the world blind.

The angry, and perhaps rightly very angry contributors of this hate talk also quoted the old Mafia phrase, 'revenge is a dish best served cold', - so I would offer to them Romans 12:19

'Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord'.

They don't want to hear this message of course because it does not fit in with their state of mind nor their perceptions of what is wrong with our country and our town.

The truth is a very complicated thing, and part of the truth of this situation is that many do feel dispossessed of their own future and perhaps some feel a little angry with themselves because the young immigrants that have moved to the area are in employment.

Another of the vitriolic comments was ' they come over here and take our jobs' - I leave you to ponder these words and the implications for those who are born in Mansfield, fail to get the best from their education and then fail to find a job either through a lack of qualifications, willingness to work or lack of opportunity.

I think anger is a proper response to the loss of life in these circumstances, I fully understand how a family will be consumed with all of the emotions that come with grief - but some of the people who have written on the Facebook site did not even know the victim, yet they felt compelled to express their own hostility towards others, ignoring the request made by the family for calm and reflection.

The family have shown considerable dignity in their loss and it is a shame that angry and racist comments were attached to their tribute to a lost loved one.

My feeling is that the people who wrote the words were angry and racist before this awful murder and that they will never change their opinion, but they feel justified in their actions because the Bible says
'an eye for an eye'.

Finally let me offer these words, they are not from the Bible but they are from a book and by my token should be as equally valued as any words from any book:

'Do not hurt where holding is enough, do not wound where hurting is enough, do not maim where wounding is enough, do not kill where maiming is enough'

Stephen Donaldson - Lord Fouls Bane

Sleep Tight

...and mind the bedbugs don't bite. This was one of the ways we were despatched to our beds as children, not that we had bedbugs, we were too poor for bedbugs. Instead of bedbugs our parents used to fetch a baby rat in from the coal shed and let it nibble our toes. We would fall asleep immediately, fearful of the rat making progress up the bed if we didn't close our eyes.

Going to bed was known as 'climbing the wooden hill to Bedfordshire' and in those far off days of my childhood, we would take care that our candles did not set fire to the counterpane. Continental quilts indeed! Mr Edward Heath has a lot to answer for with his Common Market and his fancy bed coverings.

Now, I can hear you all gasping with amazement that The Guru has enough energy at this time of night to set finger to keyboard, well I can tell you my fingers are full of energy and could easily have been put to another use but I am alone in the house and I needed the company - and it was either communicate with my little horde of slightly deluded followers or talk to the spider in the bathroom, whose name is Ethan.

I call him Ethan in honour of the Tom Cruise character in the film Mission Impossible - do you recall the scene when he descend from the roof into the vault, well that's how Ethan the spider arrived in front of me in the bathroom. I'm afraid he gave me quite a shock and I nearly messed myself - luckily I was in the right place and it all turned out for the best.

Yes, alone in the Guru Presidential palace whilst Mrs B is in Spain, drinking cheap gin and talking to bull fighters I'm sure.

The house feels very empty, there is nothing on the telly as I refuse to watch Alan Sugar so here we are, getting on for half past ten and I have taken my tablets and now I sit alone and ponder.

I don't want you to feel sorry for me, my dear kind friends, I am quite OK really - but it does remind me of how lucky I am to have someone to share my life with. My heart goes out to all of you who have to live alone for whatever reason.

Now this is getting a little maudlin and I don't want sad little faces as you all tuck yourselves in for the night - so go, be happy and remember as Harry Connick said - it's better to be happy in a cardboard box than live alone in a castle...