The British General Election Continues....ever more boringly!

The British general election continues in its own dreary way, with Gordon Brown given the accolade of being 'Mr Nasty' because he made a private comment about a pensioner being bigoted.  Yes, this is the level of excitement that has captivated the British media all day, and is tedious beyond belief.  But then what would you expect from a British general election that is suffering a complete lack of charisma and driven by a vox pop mentality and a political party machinery that's modelled its shenanigans on the campaign trail to a level Josef Goebbels would be proud of.

The British media is full of indignation about this or that, most of which are side issues and not really tackling the central issues in any real depth.  If they are then the reports are so swayed towards a political bias that it's hard to now what is fact, in the real sense, or journalist fact which is tantamount to being the same as the putting someone in the village ducking stool, and concluding that the truth was only obvious when someone had died. 

I've lost count of how many words have been used about Gordon Brown being the worst prime minister ever, or how David Cameron is so full of nothing, or how Nick Clegg is Mr 'Nice Guy'; all of which is totally irrelevant in an election that is so important to the future direction of the UK.  I've written comments in the Guardian newspaper supporting Nick Clegg because he is the one opportunity for the country to rid itself of its political corruptness, to rid itself of a voting system that's so outdated and undemocratic it beggars belief it's still there in the 21st century.

In terms of policy, there's virtually no change to either NuLab or NuCon political ideology, both are fascistic, both are way to the right, and both have done their level best over the last 30 years to turn Britain into a police state, and succeeded.  Neither of these two parties is going to do anything to rein in the excesses of the banking and financial sectors.  Neither of them are going to reform the House of Lords.  Neither of them want to stand on a platform and change democratic accountability for the better.  Neither of them is interested in the people of Britain, only interested in retaining power.  Neither of them is willing to say how many people are going to be made jobless because of cuts to public service institutions, and at the same time neither are saying that any of the banking and financial sector will be held criminally accountable for their lack of due diligence and corrupt financial practices.

This general election represents a golden opportunity to be rid of a two party system that has been corrupt for the past three decades, and it's about time the British people showed some real British bulldog balls and got rid of both NuLab and NuCon.  They are two political experiments that have gone so Frankensteinly wrong.

A mixture of a week

Monday is such a boring day, not really helped by a mind that's gone on strike and is now being stubborn, won't negotiate and is heading for another 'winter of discontent'.

Yesterday was a sad day, one of the greatest literary influences of my younger days, Alan Sillitoe, passed away.  It seems that most of the people that I grew up admiring in one way or another, are disappearing and moving on to the after life.  Such events, perfectly natural ones in the great scheme of things, simply bring home the nature of human mortality and time to do all the things you want, growing evermore limited as the days pass by.  It makes you think.

Of course life wouldn't be life without its little episodes, such as my bed collapsing at 2.30am last Thursday.  Needless to say I awoke with a brutal start, on top of the mattress which had imploded into the centre of the bed frame.  Such times are very trying, particularly when you're full of cold and the last thing you need is to be strangled by the continental quilt.  Being English, and having recovered my composure, along with making a very drowsy note never to buy another bed from MOMA, you should never trust MOMA, the best solution to a sudden crisis is go and make a cup of tea.  An hour later I'm back in the land of nod, comfortably lay on the IKEA sofa, happily dreaming of making....the bed.

I've no real desire to keep moaning on about my dose of the flu, but having started repairing the bed on Friday, and managing to finish yesterday, Sunday, progress was drearily slow and tedious due to copious amounts of perspiration cascading from the body beautiful.  I have to begrudgingly agree that causing the bod to sweat was no bad thing at the end of the day.  This morning I awoke feeling much better, at least the coughing has stopped for the moment, which is always preferable in the cold light of day.  Despite this the sleep was a bit haphazard last night, mostly waking every hour to check that the bed hadn't collapsed again, and I hadn't disappeared up my own bottom.  I'm happy to report that my repair job was magnificently done and eventually I had a better night's sleep than I first anticipated.  It was somehow pleasurable to get up at 6am, listening to the birds outside chirping away; I'm pretty sure that they were complaining at the falling rain, which was preventing them from making love to their partners in crime.  It was surprising how much noise male German birds make at 6am, and even more surprising how masculine their chirps sounded.

As you're all well aware by now, unless you're a first time visitor to this blog and then you won't know but welcome anyway, it's always to good to have new fans, my novel 'Nick & Jenny' has been published and even though I say it myself, a damn fine read.  Ok, I know that might sound a tad on the biased side, but what do you expect when I'm head of marketing and publicity, and also the author to boot.  Anyway, the point is that it's come to my attention that people are waiting for the paperback version, before buying.  Now I know that's a nice thought, and I thank those in question for thinking in such a wonderful way, but the news is that there are no immediate plans to publish in paperback form.  Yes, it will happen in the future, but for now it will only remain on sale in e-book form.  I know to some of you this is a bit annoying, and it's not my intention to annoy my small but growing readership, but there's not enough time in the day to do everything I want to. 

At the moment my time is taken up with trying to publicise the e-book, trying to put together an audiobook, setting up a small company and numerous other things; so I simply don't have time to search for a publisher to print the paperback and offer it at a reasonable price.  In addition to this, I'm also aiming to publish my second novel, 'Danny's navel adventure', in June or July time, again in e-book form.  One of the reasons for concentrating on the e-book form is because it's a growing market and growing much faster than the paperbook market, which according to reports is beginning to decline.  As a first time novelist, who's responsible for their own publicity and marketing I need to concentrate on one particular segment of the market.  I will admit that I'm on a very steep learning curve, and I feel like a whale out of water, thrashing around trying to get back on course, but one of the things I can do is ask you to let people know the book is out there.  I'm not asking people to buy the book immediately, although thanks if you do, but download the free sample so you can get a 'taste' of the book.


I know that I've gone on a bit, but sadly that's part of being a salesman, something which is utterly foreign to me; how I suffer for my art!  Having got that out of the way there's more good news.  I've been asked to be a guest blogger and write about a subject close to my heart, you'll find out more by visiting http://completelymentalblog.blogspot
and I would ask you to take a little time out to read it and even subscribe to it.  As blogs go you can also visit my new occasional blog  http://tonibryan.wordpress.com which is going to become more focused on my creative side.  As with both of my blogs please subscribe to them if you're a regular reader, or even a new one!

Finally, congratulations go out to that dear, lovable rogue of an Austrian, sorry German, friend of mine and others, dearly missed but who remains nameless, I didn't want to name you Stefan just in case you became embarrassed but that's between us, don't worry only you and I read my blog so it's not an issue, he's become a permanent US resident and got his 'Green card', brilliant news it has to be said, whichever way you want to view it....just joking matey!

Mr P's Birthday

Nick & Jenny 1

I'm being a man...whilst enduring a bout of the flu!

I'm being such a man at the moment, full of self pity and feeling very sorry for myself due to a bad dose of flu.  Why I should be afflicted with the flu is anyone's guess, not that I'm in any way wishing to have any kind of philosophical or medical discussion about it.

That aside, although any sympathetic female who wishes to be Florence Nightingale for an hour or so is more than welcome to mop my brow, providing she doesn't mind there's a distinct possibility she might get the dreaded lurgy as a reward.  As for entering into any sort of meaningful conversation is nigh on impossible due to the repetitious monotone of my voice declaring to the world 'O woe is me, woe is me!  Forsooth I not be far from kicking the bucket!'

Of course, in that time honoured fashion that the male species finds incredibly amusing, yes Tony jr and Dino I'm publicly naming you, they both think it's highly hilarious to make me laugh and then listen to me collapse into a coughing fit, which registers 6.5 on the Richter scale.  With friends and sons like this, who needs enemies.  Yes, I know that I'm moaning but I'm allowed, after all you're not suffering as I am, not that I'd want you to....unless you're Tony and Dino and then I can ignore my more gentler side for a while.

The only good thing to come out of this, is that I can lie on the sofa and watch endless old movies, blasts from the past, ones that moulded the young idiot into an even older one.  If nothing else, whilst I'm dying from flu, anything that placates the mind and causes me to ignore the snuffles can only be a good thing.  Besides the good thing for you is that I'm not prattling on about the British general election, which this time round has stirred my long lost interest in British politics, apart from always having an interest in Scotland finally becoming free of those south of the border.

There I'll leave it until next time, when hopefully I'll be feeling much better and I can carry on drivelling on endlessly about nothing in particular.  Oh my poor nose, does a river really run as fast as you do?

Welcome to the new look!

I'm sure that the changes to the blog will come as a bit of a shock, not least the colour scheme and the new layout.  Be that as it may, and by now I hope the surprise has lessened a little, in line with my more cheery outlook I've decided to brighten things up a bit.

I've been mulling over the changes for a while and at 1:30am on a Sunday morning I finally got on with it, resulting in a colour scheme that resembles the sun on a drug induced high.  My reasons for the change are simple, I wanted some colour, so that all of the text and images stood out and you could see things more clearly.  The one thing that did concern me about the previous layout was that it appeared washed out and looked confusing, to my eyes at least.  I think that everything is much better defined and easier on the eye.  Let me know if you agree or disagree with the new changes and layout.

As for my recently published book, 'Nick & Jenny', I'd be grateful if you could mention it to your families, friends, people at work and so on.  I might also add that I hope to publish my next book, 'Danny's Navel Adventure' in June/July time.  Danny's Navel Adventure is a comedy about a man who goes off into the world to find answers to the one question that bothered him, whether or not he'd ever been in love.  The final draft has now been done, and apart from designing a front cover and a few cosmetic changes it is finished.

Ok, just a quickie for this posting and I'll catch up with you soon.  Take care, and remember to keep smiling!

General election & a dream coming true!

The past week has seen me not getting to bed much before 2am everyday, waking up 5 hours later, completely dishevelled and looking like a zombie, which isn't all that newsworthy in the great scheme of things.  Of course the news from Britain is that Gordon Brown, a dour Scot who wanted to climb Arthur's seat in Edinburgh, got lost on the way there and somehow ended up becoming the British prime minister.  So the moral of the tale is, if you want to avoid becoming prime minister, don't lose your way when going to Arthur's seat.

Yes, another general election, when all the senior politicians will pose in front of cameras, trying their hardest to appear as matronly as possible whilst at the same time falling over themselves to become the butt of many fashion jokes.  Men get off easily, wearing as they do those boring dark suits by Armani, Boss etc, and so remain as bland and banal as ever.  The politician is no different to the banker, in for what they can get, whilst refusing to give anything out.  The thing is though we know that we can't trust bankers, but we should be able to trust politicians.  Alas poor politician, I never knew him that well, so it's hardly surprising that politicians, on the hustings, standing proudly on soap boxes, mingling with real folk, want to get away to play a bit of a blinder and get elected to 'serve' the needs of the electorate; which is nonsense in the vast majority of cases.

There are some very good politicians, but these are generally too busy doing the work they were elected to do and so don't get much of a mention.  The problem with political life is that to get known you have to enter the dog fighting arena, or should that be the 'cock pit', where an uncanny ability to blow your own trumpet helps enormously.  Sadly, the most successful politicians seem to be those not doing the things they were elected for.  But anyway, the next few weeks will see the media feeding frenzy, which will be stuffing itself on a vast amount of inconsequential rubbish, no doubt helped along by an amount of hot air dangerously close to melting more of the arctic ice cap, which in turn will threaten the good people of Greenland as it becomes ever more liable to disappear due to rising sea levels.

On a more personal note, having finally got my book published, click here for a copy, I've sold a few and whilst I'm as much in the dark about what people like to read as the next man, I've already received some wonderful feedback about it.  Clearly I'm under no illusions that this book is likely to make my fortune, but it somehow makes you feel that you're contributing to someone's life in a positive way.  As my son, Tony, pointed out last night good reviews are one thing but also bad reviews are a possibility too; yes, my son likes to keep his dad's size nines firmly planted, and rightly so.  So bad reviews will come and I don't really mind that providing it's constructive because that always helps, no matter how negative it might appear.  Besides my ego's not that big and I'm unlikely to use the self destruct button at worse, or for that matter run naked around the city shouting 'Woe is me, woe is me' or some other fanciful quote from 17th century England.

However, as a final note, and now I'm having to market the book which for me is an oxymoron, no idea what it means but I've always liked the word, I would ask all of you to spread the word and ask friends etc to download the free sample of the book, it only takes a couple of minutes.  Or if you're feeling generous and want to see this old miserable git move ever closer to his ultimate dream of following the one love he can aspire to and achieve, then please buy it.  I've left the price of the book low, so that I don't have to compete against the price of a starbucks coffee.

Many thanks everyone who has supported me, and helped make a lifelong dream happen.  From little acorns do mighty oak trees grow, or in my case 'From wriggling tadpoles to who ate all the pies' hell, he needs to do something to help him smile! :-)