Joe Saunders

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May 24, 08:34 AM
May 22, 03:56 PM
Your last post about Herb's anniversary was beautiful. So, you say ask you anything? Do you you need an internetterly remote but heartfelt man-hug?

Always :)

May 22, 12:19 AM

lazenby:

LBJ kissing his father goodbye. 

This makes me think of…

We all kiss on the mouth in my family. We’re stupid and common and we don’t got no class whatsoever. Somewhere in the history of everyone else came a time when men stopped kissing men because of fuck knows. And then from somewhere else came kissing on the cheeks. Sophisticated. European. Modern. In France they got two kisses because of the unions. In the UK we only got one because of rationing. 

Meanwhile, stuck out away from civilisation on the Wirral, no one thought to tell my family who still to this day grab each other and kiss on the mouth.

I don’t tell people anymore. To warn them, I mean. I just take them out there and let them come to Jesus on their own. My wife, first time she met them, was bombarded; hardly knew what the fuck was going on.

They’re a strange bunch anyway - particularly for a girl from the South. We spent two or three days over there with them. She got kissed on the mouth a lot by a lot of strange people.  Drunk, mostly. She makes it worse by being the kind of person you want to just grab and kiss anyway.

When we were driving home she suddenly turned to me and said “They kiss, your family, you know? They kiss you on the mouth.” as though she’d only just realised it herself. 

“You’re goddamned fucking right they do, baby.” I didn’t say because, Christ. But I thought it.

And this picture of LBJ saying goodbye makes me think of that, and Uncle Ian and a family of thousands all saying hello and kissing you because that’s how we do it.

May 03, 11:03 AM

This - Richard Burton reading Churchill’s ‘Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat’ speech - was tacked onto the end of a Parkinson best-of - almost as an afterthought. I searched for a copy of it online, couldn’t find one, so here we jolly well are.

This was Burton’s party trick. If anyone has ever said WAR with more power and conviction then I shall go to the foot of our stairs. 

A full transcription of the actual speech (with bonus MP3) is here: http://www.fiftiesweb.com/usa/winston-churchill-blood-toil.htm

March 27, 11:46 PM
Anniversary, Scars, Grand Canyons

On March 17th last year, at the age of 1 year and a couple of weeks, my son Herbert had a stroke for no good reason on God’s green earth.

I was at work in York when it happened. Gem tells me he was shovelling beans into his face like he does almost every day when he went all floppy on the right side of his body. Gem screamed him to hospital in Wythenshawe and the attending doctor that night put him on an emergency course of worst-case-scenario antibiotics. She figured it couldn’t be a stoke because babies don’t have strokes. 

A few hours later when I arrived back in Manchester he was cuddled up in her arms with a huge bag of Some Drugs dripping slowly through a canula into his good arm. He still had a hugely high temperature.

While we were changing him in the little bathroom there, his eyeballs rolled back in his head and he went away. That experience tends to stick with you.

We were in the hospital for 2 weeks and we have to go back a fair bit with checkups and physio and whatnot. I’ve struggled with sadness a fair bit since then. I became aware that I was filled with it and I couldn’t get away from it. I began to feel like a cave full of cold, dark seawater. 

I got help from lots of awesome people. I briefly took drugs for it - they were excellent really. I tell people that my heart broke. Those are pretty much the only words I have for how I feel. Still, actually. My heart broke and that’s where the seawater leaked in and I think it’s irreparable - though I hasten to add that I’m fine and I’m happy and I have an awful lot of closure on the whole business so, please, don’t call in.  

Anyway, I was talking about grief the other day with my Mum. My younger cousin lost a baby at the age of 6 months - Poppy her name was. She died because sometimes babies have strokes and sometimes they die. I was talking about that with my Mum. We were talking about how my cousin hasn’t had another baby since Poppy died and how that probably wasn’t surprising.

I love my cousin. He’s like 6 years younger than me and we grew up pretty close. When I think about his losing Poppy it makes me think of my son in the hospital, rolling his eyes and going away and it makes me wish I could help my cousin more. Or that I had helped him more.

Poppy died years before my son was even invented and I couldn’t even begin to imagine at that age how much it must have hurt my cousin. I was appalled, of course. I was sad and I cried. But it’s like the Grand Canyon; it’s one thing to hear about how big and impressive it is and quite another to stand on the edge and stare down into it. 

I said exactly that to my Mum and realised I’d accidentally been profound. My choice of words took me right back to hospital and I was staring at Herb and he was going away and I could feel the ragged edges of the wound on my heart, still tender, filled with cold, black seawater and now somehow vertigo-inducing and terrifying in its enormity. 

(A horrible collision of metaphor. Not unusual, if you know me. I pretty much just tend to toss my words together like a salad and chuck them out there. You’re lucky, frankly, if you can understand one word in ten.)

But that wasn’t my sadness - it wasn’t even my cousin’s. Just something I’d projected on to him that he may or may not feel and, either way, wouldn’t be pleased to hear that I was feeling on his behalf. Depression is like a dropped lolly-ice in that respect; it’s sticky and picks up other things all too easily and pretty soon you can’t tell cause from effect. It’s all just a big ball of woe. (I am a student at the Katamari Damacy School of Amateur Psychiatry.)

So: scar tissue is what I guess this is about. The Bad Thing that happened is going to stay happened - and every day that goes by (365 and counting!) puts another few layers of skin between me and the wound. 

And, to add yet another layer of ridiculousness to this already fucked-up metaphor, the wound is clean, cauterised and doused, for good measure, in Scotch. 

Related story: the above all happened a week or so after the anniversary of Herb’s stroke. The actual anniversary was spent with my sister and her kids at the beach in East Kent. It was lovely. In actual fact though, I had no idea that it was the anniversary. Somehow I’d got the wrong date in my head. When I finally realised my error, I had a little cry and lost my temper a little bit, chiding myself that I’m a bad father, until it occurred to me that what we’d done was exactly what I would have chosen to do to mark the anniversary - with the added bonus of not having to dwell on painful memories.

So anyway. I just wanted to write these things down to mark the occasion, and to note that it is an occasion, however painful and inconvenient that might be, and to bring people up to date. Which I have now done. Please return to your gyrations. 

March 20, 06:00 PM

Hello Tumblr. You are broken. 

March 04, 09:47 PM

darlingohara:

Frank Sinatra

February 08, 03:37 PM

Current Status

doyourwardance:

Haters gonna hate.

February 05, 08:39 PM
February 01, 10:34 PM
Tell us a story, Joe.

My Dad likes to decry the current state of teaching in this country. Actually my Dad likes to decry lots of things. Decrying things is what gentlemen do when they’ve wrestled all the bears and slayed all the dragons. Ou sont les bears and dragons d’antan, innit?

Anyway. Amongst the things my Dad decries is the current state of teaching in this country. I rarely listen too much. (I agree, as it happens, but I am busy planning my upcoming bear-wrestling bouts.) This Christmas he told me a story about the man who taught him poetry when he was a kid. I pass it on to you, anonymous asker.

The majority of teachers at my Dad’s school in the fifties were (he tells me), ex-servicemen. Some had limps, some had scars. I’ve assumed that most of them saw service in the second world war. I could be wrong, but it seems likely. Dad’s headmaster certainly did. He had a limp to boot. His name was KFW Walker.

One day Mr Walker is teaching my Dad’s class about poetry. He reads Keats’ Sonnet To A Cat to them. It is, he tells them, one of his minor works.

Cat! who hast pass’d thy grand cliacteric, 
How many mice and rats hast in thy days 
Destroy’d? - How many tit bits stolen? Gaze 
With those bright languid segments green, and prick 
Those velvet ears - but pr’ythee do not stick 
Thy latent talons in me - and upraise 
Thy gentle mew - and tell me all thy frays 
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick. 
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists - 
For all the wheezy asthma, - and for all 
Thy tail’s tip is nick’d off - and though the fists 
Of many a maid have given thee many a mail, 
Still is that fur as soft as when the lists 
In youth thou enter’dst on glass bottled wall. 

And after he reads out the poem he tells the kids a story. And the story he tells is set in a forest in Belgium some time in late 1944. Captain Walker and his company are caught unawares in an artillery attack; they have no time to dig in and have to scramble for cover where they can. The bombardment is extremely heavy and the shells are bursting in the air.

Walker tells the kids that all he had time to do was throw himself down onto the forest floor and try to make himself as tiny and thin as he possibly could while the trees literally exploded around him. He tells them that it is the single most terrifying sound that he’s ever heard. And he tells them that the only other thing that he can hear as the trees crack and fall and the shrapnel rips through everything is a line from Sonnet To A Cat repeating in his head over and over and over:

…pr’ythee do not stick / Thy latent talons in me
…pr’ythee do not stick / Thy latent talons in me
…pr’ythee do not stick / Thy latent talons in me


And that, Walker tells my Dad, who tells me, is why I can never forget that poem. And that, my Dad tells me, is why I decry the current state of teaching in this country.

(I’ll write this properly at some point. Or at least I’ll try to write it *less*. I will also tell the other story involving my Dad, KFW Walker and a ping-pong ball which will make you all cry. In the meantime, please all feel free to use the Ask Me Anything button. Press Button. Get Story is my new rule)

January 24, 12:22 AM

etrangere:

January 23, 10:11 PM
The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter

By Tina Fey

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.

May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty.

When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer.

Guide her, protect her

When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels.

What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit.

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.

Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen.

Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait.

O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back.

“My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget.

But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Amen.

December 07, 03:24 PM
what did you have for lunch?

You’re wearing it. 

December 06, 03:53 PM

I’m trying to count the ways this will never happen again. 

November 22, 10:33 AM
Pike poetry

I think that the Lt. Pike meme should be extended from the amazing photo memes that have been circulating, into the world of poetry; the artistic form of preference for the jackbooted thug. Below is a humble example.

The Road Not Taken - by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY

PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY

PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY

PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY

PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY

PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY

PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY PEPPER SPRAY
And that has made all the difference.

November 21, 04:32 PM

Some days you are the dog.

Some days you are the deer.

Some days you are the guy in the chinos.

Some days you are the guy saying ‘heh’ at the end. 

November 14, 12:25 PM
The Fairy of the Phone (1936)

The next time you’re involved in a conversation about the degeneracy and moral turpitude of this generation, point your fellow debater at this video which shows that people in the 1930’s managed to overcome the threatening shadow of worldwide fascism and still be super gay. (Video via @severalbees)

November 11, 12:22 PM
November 11, 12:21 PM

chrismear:

(via Gunshow - Two Friends)

October 28, 08:49 AM
Do you reply to these questions? Where do the answers appear? But more importantly, what are you wearing?

1) I do. I just rarely notice I have them. How exciting!

2) I don’t actually know

3) T-shirt; jeans; hang-dog expression.

Audio

  • Current Status
    11 plays
  • You should dig out Paul Simon’s first solo album. And if you can’t dig it out because you’re one of these post-album wankers or, inexplicably, you’ve failed to buy it - though why that would be the case I couldn’t even begin to speculate on as it would probably end with me coming round to your house and explaining to you at length, with slides and much salty language why you SUCK SO HARD at everything - then you should go download it or whatever it is you punks do these days. You should dig it out because it is a Truly Great Lost Album. Point being that we live in a world where acoustic guitar toting toolbags are as ubiquitous as carbon molecules. This upsets me for a number of reasons, not least of which is they’re horning in on my action. That whole sensitive artist, rumpled shirt, oh-thanks-I-wrote-that-years-ago-it-means-a-lot-to-me-that-you-liked it schtick is MY SCHTICK and it’s the birthright of my children. I have nothing to teach them about life except how to pick up a guitar and get good enough at arpeggio that maybe, one day, you will receive the oral sex from someone at a party because of it. That worked at like one of the parties I went to in my life. One of them. Out of at least 20. That’s a 1:20 chance of the oral sex. Vanishingly small. And this was in the nineties when the oral sex was common. By the time my kids are old enough to go out and get the oral sex, well, there’ll probably be an age or height restriction on it which will only make it more critical that the parties they go to are not saturated with scruffy-haired ballsacks singing about their problems. Paul Simon is an interesting place to start learning about this kind of shit. For one, he’s about the only guitar-toting hipster I can think of who wore a toupee. For another he could actually play the guitar and, for thirdly (?) his lyrics - on this album anyway, are incredibly spiky and mean-spirited. He’s like a jewish Elvis Costello. A bald, jewish Elvis Costello. And short with it. This is my favourite song from that album. It’s short, nasty and almost impossibly hard to play. Its like, not content with insulting Garfunkel on the Bridge Over Troubled Water album, he’s found that he wants to continue hurling insults at him from his solo career too. I swear to god, if we could get access to the studio masters of this album we’d find tracks called ‘Why Can’t You Just Sing It In Your Normal Voice” and “Shove Your Bright Eyes Up Your Arse, Twat.’ Also, this song contains the word ‘Paraphernalia’. Beat that with a stick, Sufjan.
    36 plays
  • Your friday earworm.
    7 plays
  • In honour of the Manchester International Festival 2009, at which my wife is Very Important, I’m posting this song - and the following anecdote. We were queuing to get into a De La Soul gig last year, when Mark E Smith rolls out of a taxi looking, you know, grumpy and inscrutable. Gem jabbed me in the ribs and, in a voice just loud enough to be heard by everyone, said, “Look! Look! It’s Mark E Fall from The Smiths!” That is all.
    14 plays
  • In an effort to further baffle and alienate my readership, I present “The Larks” as performed by Coope, Boyes and Simpson. Sadly, I am not being ironic. I have loved this song since I was 12, and this recording of it since I was 22. As I am now officially 33, I can afford to be a jumper wearing, bitter drinking, folk twat. Suck it, haterz.
    7 plays
  • 41 plays
  • Keep meaning to upload this recording I made on 14th February 2000, a few days after my 22nd birthday. We’d all gone out the Steeles on Haverstock Hill for a few drinks. Around about Midnight we headed home and, somehow, lost Piker. So he jumped in a taxi to catch up with us, got to Whitechapel, realised he didn’t have any money, got the driver to take him to the bank, couldn’t get any cash out. Then, in a fit of cruellty that makes London taxi drivers famous the world over, the guy drove him back to Haverstock Hill and abandonded him. Piker, being Piker, put up with this and, with his last pound coin, made this desperate phone call to me. Completists might want to note that he did end up finding the girl’s house he mentions and didn’t end up sleeping in the ditch. (low quality recording, one speaker only, very tinny indeed)
    23 plays
  • RIP, Jimmy Carl Black - the Indian of the group. (Lonesome Cowboy Burt by FZ and MOI)
    31 plays
  • I don’t want to be all “OMFG, you have to hear this song!” but OMFG, you have to hear this song. I was already in love with Dan Reeder after I heard I Drink Beer (Myspace link), and further investigation revealed that there is simply nothing not to like about his careworn voice, tendency to cuss and simply-layered guitar. This track though, just knocks him out of the park. Dan Reeder is my new God. Buy his albums or I’ll come round and put your windows through.
    5 plays
  • Uploading the Eagles for rhetorical purposes.
    11 plays
  • Awesomeness personified in a movie soundtrack
    4 plays
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Joe Saunders
Internet | Manchester, United Kingdom, GB

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