Only in America!

But a friend of mine, and a female one at that, pointed out something that was obvious to her, a fully fledged and boldly stated football hater, but not to any of my other so called professional footballing mates.

‘This is the start, mark my words’ she began. ‘Can you imagine what it would be like if the USA won the bloody thing?’ She went on to state that she gave the USA, eight more years to be fully fledged World contenders; for the game of football to take on an entirely different face; and for wages akin to Pro football stars and NBA megastars becoming commonplace. She foresaw a time in the not too distant future where top European players would fight to play on American soil and she foresaw an even scarier vision of what the new Wag would be like. (She also spoke about them living in houses as large as the borough of Hackney but by then it may have just been the drink talking!).

But after all of the celebrations, and the super speech given by Mr Donovan, it suddenly dawned on me that a bigger statement had been made. You see, football’s home is England. It is our national sport, the one thing we have which we know we created. Now we may not be the best at it but our Premiership is arguably the toughest division throughout all of the World’s leagues and we have always garnered a bit of respect for this fact, and for winning the world cup in 1966, (yes I mentioned it…sorry!), but now with the USA beating us at our own game, I am sure the victory is all the sweeter.

Now we can no longer claim to be better than the USA. They can beat us at football whereas we would always struggle to beat them at Basketball, American Football, Hockey or Baseball. A big thing happened on Wed 23rd June 2010, and the secret meaning behind all of the celebrations was not lost on me. America can lose their next game and not lose any of the respect that they have rightly earned. If England loses, we lose a whole lot more.

Now there is a valid and understandable reason why the USA should be better than poor old blighty and the reason is purely a question of size. The USA is a continent, cunningly classed as a country. America’s pool of sportsmen is the equivalent of a British team consisting of players from the whole of Europe (and probably parts of the Far East too.) An England team is possibly the equivalent of an American team consisting of players picked only from Kansas. How good a team could you really create with that genetic bundle to choose from?

So the scales of justice unfairly favour the bigger man. By continually getting better and better, the American public will begin to get behind this fledgling sport. Once this happens, the money men will move in and then anything becomes possible. Before long the beautiful game will be officially known as Soccer and the ‘real’ footie fans will be relegated to the minor leagues and pub teams of Great Britain. Bleak!

But why does America want a piece of the pie anyway? Is it for anything other than money? Does pride come into play at all? Money is the motivating factor that makes any greased wheel turn around quicker creating spoils greater than anything we can possibly imagine. We may think the Russians have money, wait til Nike and the like get a bite of this cookie!

If I sound bitter it is only because I know the end is inevitable. David Beckhams’ ‘relocation’ to sunnier, shinier and smilier climes was only the beginning, there will be others.

‘If you build it they will come’

Never a truer word has been said for never a truer moment

Right now though, the World Cup is still on, there are many more games to play and anything can truly happen. And when the winner is announced and the celebrations begin just take a moment to see who finishes where. Those teams we tend to forget about who may come out in the knockout stages having far surpassed how far they expected to go.

These are the teams to be watching out for and one of them will be the USA.

Being from Manchester it is not easy for me to stand behind those words, but alas they are true. You see for me, the World Cup is more than just a football competition; it is the chance to get to know and learn about other countries, other cultures, and other ways to celebrate a goal! And in London we have the biggest multicultural mix in the world. Guaranteed that no matter what match you are watching, there will be a bar somewhere in this city filled to the brim of Slovenians or Paraguayans or whoever is playing, cheering their little pants off. That is what makes this city so wonderful to be in at this time, the chance of meeting people form entirely different cultures is so high that any trip into the West end alone becomes like a trek across the whole of Europe and the Middle East.

And they get behind their teams, women included. I remember once a few years back whilst I was working for a large International company. The bosses decided to put a large screen, in the dining room and to play all the games. Every game their was a representative form that country in the company and it made the whole experience that much better than watching it by yourself or with your mates! And seeing Irena, the Brazillian from Accounts almost lose her top when Adriano scored was well worth the £1 donation,  I can tell you!

Wait until you see the rest of the kit!

So surely, with all of this available to us, on our own doorsteps, we should take advantage of what is on offer. The other week whilst on the market I bought a ring form a coupe of Albanian gentlemen (no jokes please). Rather than just pay for my goods and walk away I decided to open the lines of communication and talk to these gentlemen. Now my take on Albanians is from what I learnt in school and what I read in the papers, and let’s just say, they have received more than their fair share of bad press over the years. At one point they were, according to my economics teacher, the most communist country on the planet. So I took a few moments and asked them what it was like in their country, and was everything I heard true. We spoke for about half an hour and as I had questions for them, they had questions for me. They were forthcoming with their comments and very interesting to talk to. Now I know that half of what I had read was wrong, and they talked about what it was like to grow up under such a system. ‘Everybody had the same’ is what one of them said to me and the significance of this didn’t hit me until later that day.

I grew up in a country where the rich were much richer than the poor, where poverty existed on the same streets that millionaires drove Masseratis’ to their mansions! To compare this with a system where no one had anything? Where everyone was ‘equal’?  To be honest, I don’t know who had it wrong but I certainly saw that perhaps what my economics teacher was spouting all those years ago was a little bit biased.
To understand someone you must walk a mile in their shoes and this was no different. I walked away from that stall understanding more about another country than any text book had ever told me and I had received this information first hand.

There was a time when I was able to know exactly where someone was from just by looking at them. Growing up in this country, if I saw another black person they were either from the West Indies, Nigeria or Ghana; Asian, India or Pakistan; White England, ireland, Scotland or Wales, it seemed no other countries were travelling into Britain. Nowadays I couldn’t even throw out a guess, Congolese, Ivorians, Tibetans, Slovenians, Brazillians, you name it they are here and they offer the perfect chance to learn more about other countries in the world. But not everybody feels like this I caught the tale end of a radio interview with a guy who believes that the World Cup is used to distract the public and is only there to take advantage of the people so wrongdoing can commence behind their backs. He believes that like religion, World football is part of a bigger controversy to control the public and turn them into automated capitalists, vying or the latest football shirts, paying obscene amounts for tickets and willing to get involved in some cases with violence to get their ‘footballing political point across!

Maybe so, and I will leave you to decide on that one but in the meantime, the next time you are in town, and the football is on, why not stumble into that bar fall of Slovakians, or the one next to it full of Chileans, or indeed the one down the road full of Denmarkians?? Grab a beer, and learn a bit about a culture that is probably not to different from your own.

So why not take a sip from this world cup and savour the whole experience.

Men In Love by Nancy Friday, purports to be about Men who love women, but on deeper investigation it goes beyond any Disney type clichés of love and gets to the root of the link between a mans love and a mans rage, which are seemingly inseparable and misunderstood emotions. The secrets come out in male fantasies, whether it is fuckin’ your female boss at work over her oak panelled desk or performing cunnilingus on a life sized Barbie doll in the middle of a snow covered cornfield! It seems that there is a reason behind all those fantasies and what they tell about us men, is remarkable.

By page two I was hooked and by the end of the first chapter very enlightened indeed, things just got curiouser and curiouser. What struck me as strange was the experience I got whilst reading it. This is a book of no holds barred male sexual fantasy and it felt weird reading it because it dawned on me just how physical and violent we men can get in our imaginary worlds. It was also nice to know that I am not the only one who has extreme thoughts. The author herself confessed that what she heard shocked and scared her, in most part because it was coming from a member of the opposite sex. Women talking in the same way somehow seemed okay for her to listen to. If men and women are similar in other ways but totally different with matters of the heart, what kind of co dependent world do we really live in? It is said that whilst men need women, women don’t need men. If so, isn’t it possible that this is the fear lurking behind every man in a relationship and something that because it can never be satisfied, manifest itself in a variety of ways. I can then easily see why that one motivating factor, for men to be loved and not to be left behind, could easily explain violence towards women, cheating and sordid sexual fantasy acts.

A female friend of mine believes that in part, men are jealous of women because we can never have children, and therefore never know what it is like to produce life, the most important thing in this world. At first I disagreed vehemently, more with the arrogant way in which these words were spoken than anything else, because it dawned on me that she was probably right. No we will never know what it feels like, but surely feeling sorry for ourselves in this psychological way makes no logical sense. Women will never know what it feels like to have a dick swinging between their legs, not a real one anyway! So ho hum!

We are not surprised to hear about a male sex offender, or a male pornographer, but when it is a woman, it is usually taken as being the exception to the rule. Could it be that more women are in ‘subordinate’ roles in the sex industries because they have a totally different view on sex itself. Can they detach easier than men can because their aim isn’t always control and domination. In fact, do women love easier for the exact same reasons?

The roles of men and women in society have always been separated, and the last few thousand years have seen more and more inventive ways for men to control women, only for women to come up with far more superior ways to win it back. Men can never win because in a way we are playing a totally different game, or at least the same game with different rules. Its like a tug of war, with the men are trying to pull the women into the ditch, the women are happy to go in the ditch, and know, before their male equivalents realise, that the same men will have to pull them out afterwards! Job done! It is both fair and unfair at the same time, uneven yet balanced because it can be argued that if men stopped trying so hard, there would be no need for the swift feminine counter attack. There would be no need for the woman’s role as has been moulded by society and therefore more crucially, no need for the mans dominant role. And where would we be without it?

So how does this need to dominate, that men have over women, manifest itself, and more importantly what happens when it cannot be satisfied? Men go crazy! We love women and yet hate them at the same time because of what they stand for. We don’t want to need you but we do and it drives us mental trying to control something that we know we will never be able to control, try as we might. It is in our nature to want the upper hand even if sexual fantasy almost always reverses this position, especially whilst wearing a gimp mask, but we still try.

But given all of this I am glad to be a man. Silly words maybe but honest to God, if I could go back and choose this time, I would pick male every time. I am clear that I am seeing through fog most of the time, but it is a look I have become accustomed to. I may get into the odd argument with an ex girlfriend, or woman in authority, but then that’s what makes life colourful and interesting. I like peeing standing up and carrying the heavy shopping bags and give respect where respect is due. So I am calling for a truce. Ladies, if you can hear me, go easy on the men in your life. Recognise that you have the advantage, all the knowledge and all the best seats so be happy with that.
Leave us to watch football, drink beer and wank over porn.

We know what its like to be you, (thanks to all the nagging we get), but do you know what its like to be us?

But why not?

I look at the General Election voting fiasco the other week, which had people in their thousands unable to vote all over the country, and I also look at what happened to place the Conservatives in charge of the country through a trick of the mind. I also look at how the media make it seem as if one person and one person only runs the country and then witness as that unfortunate Prime Ministers personal life is then left open to ridicule and contempt whenever anything bad happens in the economy.
I listened to my friends tell me I had to vote for someone or else it was a waste of a vote, but my common sense told me that a wasted vote would be voting for somebody you did not want.

I also watched as the policies eagerly promised by the Conservatives and the Liberal democrats before they got into power were thrown away as soon as they got the hands on the door knob of number 10 – and nothing could be done about this? Why are you allowed to blatantly lie just to get votes? Why is this acceptable? Why isn’t this challenged?

I look at the whole political system in this country made up of public schoolboys who act as if the different political parties are merely ‘houses’ they were in at jolly hockey sticks boarding school. There always appears to be an in joke between them. And when I look at them I ask myself, who put you there? How do you represent me?
And the short answer is…they don’t.

Politics is a dirty word, which clearly has a social understanding of subterfuge, lies…and more lies. But that is my take on it, what does the dictionary say?

1520s, “science of government,” from politic (adj.), modeled on Aristotle’s ta politika “affairs of state,” the name of his book on governing and governments, which was in English mid-15c. as “Polettiques.” Also see -ics
.
Politicks is the science of good sense, applied to public affairs, and, as those are forever changing, what is wisdom to-day would be folly and perhaps, ruin to-morrow. Politicks is not a science so properly as a business. It cannot have fixed principles, from which a wise man would never swerve, unless the inconstancy of men’s view of interest and the capriciousness of the tempers could be fixed. [Fisher Ames (1758–1808)]

The second part interests me and probably explains why Politicians never have to be fixed on one issue, and they never are. They dodge, swerve, duck, bob and weave through interview question after interview question, debate after debate, policy after policy, exhausting the questioners and pissing off the public. Politics, as a real life phenomenon, needs only an unsuspecting public and the promise of riches, to work. It is a business that relies on having friends in high places.

So back to the election, the public spoke and what they asked for was a Govt that was run by all 3 parties. What we got was a Govt run by two who look like a modern day Bill and Ben, or Ant and Dec, exciting the crowds with their mischievous comedic political antics and their uncanny resemblance to each other. (Let me see the birth certificates!). Politics in this country have always been the playing field of the rich and in bred, their opportunity to treat the rest of the island like a social experiment just to see just how much everyday man can be squeezed, tossed and taxed, (it is a business after all!).

Do I sound negative? Probably. But it’s not all doom and gloom. I mean, looking from the outside in, the politics game is a funny old game. It has its heroes and villains, its plots and sub plots and its reversal of fortunes. The political world is a world of intrigue, of lies deceit, illicit affairs and scandal. It is still steeped in institutional racism and pre 1960’s sexism and combined with the twisted politicians of other nations, it is truly a spectacle to behold. Who needs Holly-, Bolly- or Nolly- wood when everyday on the news real life political sagas play themselves out, all you need to bring is popcorn! Politics is fine from a distance, especially if you can find any of the characters likeable enough to watch.

If you can’t, don’t despair, there are always the other 500 plus channels on your television set and the safe knowledge that this country could NEVER be as corrupt when it comes to voting as Sierra Leone or any other African country.

Yeah right!

‘I fuckin hate gossip!’.

And who could blame him. When I got my A levels results, by the time I had gotten home an hour later the news had already spread all over Manchester…and Nigeria! I never actually got to tell anyone in my family personally, not even my Dad. A guy in my class had overheard my A in Economics and just…spread the word. I didn’t even know him that well. The Nigeria grapevine was alive that day and yeah, my dad was proud of me but it would have been nice for me to tell him myself.

‘I really fuckin hate gossip!’

Gossip has a negative connotation. It is always assumed that it leads to something bad or undesirable and that the people who gossip are basically evil fuckers who have nothing else to do. Mrs Brown at Number 33, that girl in class who just loves to chat, The National Enquirer! you people know who you are. But at the same time we all love to hear gossip. We want to know about the affair that the guy from number 35 is having with his secretary, or about the latest blonde who bedded Tiger Woods. So as much as we don’t want it done to us, we welcome reading about someone else. Are we all such obvious hypocrites?

You also have to look at the function of gossip. To hurt and ridicule perhaps at face value, but if you look deeper it is just PR isn’t it?, something that keeps the subject of the gossip in the headlines. So in this way gossip must be both good and bad, a real Aristotelian concept, something being both one thing and its exact opposite. This probably means something very deep and cosmic but I can’t remember what exactly so for now, I will steer away from theology and veer towards the dictionary.

The dictionary defines gossip as; 1. casual and idle chat to have a gossip with a friend 2. a conversation involving malicious chatter or rumours about other people a gossip about the neighbours 3. Also called gossipmonger a person who habitually talks about others, esp. maliciously

Not surprisingly all quite negative. But if we go further back in time we have a definition thus follows,

O.E. godsibb “godparent,” from God + sibb “relative” (see sibling). Extended in M.E. to “any familiar acquaintance” (mid-14c.), especially to woman friends invited to attend a birth, later to “anyone engaging in familiar or idle talk” (1560s). Sense extended 1811 to “trifling talk, groundless rumor.” The verb meaning “to talk idly about the affairs of others” is from 1620s. Related: Gossiped; gossiping.

So it would seem that in the beginning, gossip wasn’t altogether a negative thing. Especially when you remember that back then people relied on word of mouth to know what was going on. Now with advances in communication, gossip appears to hold a different position. If people didn’t gossip we wouldn’t know anything. At the end of the day, in their own political way daily newspapers are the most professional of muck spreaders!

But then what about those people that just love to chat your business. They get facts wrong and exaggerate everything leading to people talking behind your back and casting aspersions. In truth nothing can much be done about this, haters will be haters after all but that doesn’t mean that the results must always be bad. When I was in Uni, a girl who I had obviously done wrong decided to warn three of her friends who were due to attend the following year, to stay far away from me. The result was that two of these girls sought me out; I didn’t have to try or anything. There really is no such thing as bad publicity!

But what about when this gossip is coming from inside the family? Can we take it in the same way and not be affected by it? Is that realistic? I mean you tell your sister you may be pregnant and five minutes later your mum is phoning up to congratulate you and your dad to kill somebody! Maybe it is done from a good place but it is still gossip isn’t it? In my family I am the one who spills everyone’s business (my siblings who are reading this I do apologise!). But the reason I do this is two fold. Firstly I truly believe that if they didn’t want the whole family to know their shit, they wouldn’t tell me in the first place. Secondly I think there is something good about there being no secrets, especially in kinship ties. Good relationships rely on a perfect balance of energies between all involved and so anything can push that balance off kilter. A pleasant chat between mum and son will be the opposite if one of them is holding onto something.

Additionally, family gossip is sometimes the only way that family know what is going on, especially where everyone is spread all over the country. Secret successes are made ‘public’ and allows the family to share. Interestingly it is the problems that we refuse to share that end up being chatted about.

Perhaps that’s why I find it difficult to believe that gossip is all bad, even when said maliciously. There is something calming and endorphic about the release of the truth that makes you feel much better inside and good conversation usually follows a bout of good gossip. Now you can choose to focus on the negative side of idle chatter because people can get hurt, but just to be different, why not focus on the positive side for a change and adopt the new mantra that gossip…is good!

Conjuring up images of a drunken pirates illicit booty, (that’s ‘swag’ by the way),  it would appear that its origins are not too far away.
swag•ger (sw g r) v. swag•gered, swag•ger•ing, swag•gers v.intr.
1. To walk or conduct oneself with an insolent or arrogant air; strut.2. To brag; boast.
v.tr.To browbeat or bully (someone).n 1. A swaggering movement or gait. 2. Boastful or conceited expression; braggadocio.
All the ways that you would describe a pirate, meaning both Capt Jack Sparrow and Johnny Depp have swagger.

But these definitions are a little dated even if they are basically correct because ‘Swagger’ in today’s language has turned into something good, something to aspire to having, something that all the heads on the street think they have though many come up short and it is more than being arrogant and boastful. The Urban dictionary, which allows people to illicit there own definitions and opinions had over 50 definitions for the term had the following to say

‘How one presents him or herself to the world. Swagger is shown from how the person handles a situation. It can also be shown in the person’s walk’.

‘A person’s style- they way they walk, talk, dress’.

‘Poised, sassiness that can’t be touched. It may be in the walk or it may be in the talk, but there is no doubt it means you own the room and you have that natural charisma. Basically, one with swagger dominates at life’

‘A way of walking, normally showing authority. To swagger is to walk with presence. There are several different kinds of swagger…
The Tesco Bag Swagger – to walk with clenched fists at waist height while swaying as though carrying heavy grocery bags in each hand.

The Terminator – To walk as though rigid, with no swaying whatsoever and as though an android on a mission.

DnGaf – ¨Do not give a fuck¨ swagger – To walk without a care in the world, people get in your way… not a problem!’

And the list goes on and on and on, perhaps because this is a relatively new take on an old expression. With the many different definitions that exist, there appears to be certain things that hold true throughout all of them. so we could say that a combination of things need to be present to have swagger?

Attitude – And not just any attitude. Its a ‘I don’t give a fuck’ kind of thing. It’s not attached, it’s not concerned but it is passionate and it is unforgiving. Its the kind of attitude that makes you succeed in any scenario but best of all, it doesn’t even matter if you fail.

Style – more than just the clothes you wear, it is more about how you wear, the clothes you wear. When i was younger my older bro always use to tell me to ‘wear the clothes – don’t let them wear you’. This problem explains why 2 people can rock teh same outfit and have totally different results

Presence – Being able to walk in the room and be noticed by everyone before you say a word. Gives the suggestion that you exude some kind of magnetism, some energy or force that people react positively to.

Confidence – With confidence, the very essence of your being becomes someone who is cocksure, cool, calm and collected. But more importantly, in control even when they appear not to be

So who do we see as having swagger? Can women have it? And can anyone get it?
Well in the celebrity realm the list is endless, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Brad Pitt, Jamie Foxx, Tom Cruise, Tyrese, Harry Connick Jr, and even Johnny Vaughan the radio presenter, Women like Angelina Jolie, Thandie Newton, J-Lo, Madonna and that girl from 90210, (although feminine swagger may present with a mix of diva-ness).

You see the more I looked into it, the more I realised that swagger isn’t just one thing, and because it is a combination and what works for one guy may not work for another. So in addition tot he 3 elements above, there are two more things that should be included,

Self Belief and Ownership
The person with swagger appears to have a huge amount of self belief that is the backbone to the above qualities and more importantly perhaps the indidual takes ownership of this and all of the other qualities.

So can anyone get it?

I would love to say yes but then that wouldn’t make me one of the special few and in truth I don’t know if it is that simple

So what do i think?
I think swagger is something else entirely. I think it is an unseen energy, a electromagnetic field that surrounds the individual and from which great things can happen. And this energy field protects the occupant giving him the feeling of invincibility, perhaps. Or maybe that is the stuff of dreams and science fiction. It works for me though and would explain why it is so hard to pinpoint but so easy to recognise.

And when all of these qualities are put together it gives us the ‘special’ walk, the unmissable smile and the likeability factor that makes us recognise this quality even in people we may dislike. The fact that now it is seen as a good thing whereas in the past it originally wasn’t does make me think though. Then again swagger conjures up this image of being your own boss and not taking orders from anyone. Something that a pirate definitely as and something that, in today’s world of Govt control and powerless populations, is an attractive and extremely desirable quality.

So, after watching Steve Martin in Cheaper by the Dozen Two, yes they did make another one! I cooked and ate some dinner and then sat down to watch Eastenders, a guilty pleasure of mine. (For you guys overseas think of it like any regular American soap opera minus the model like men, uber beautiful women and fantastical storylines!). .But it was the programme that came on afterwards that really caught my attention. ‘Joanna Lumley tracing the Nile’, was exactly what it said on the tin, Joanna Lumley, that amazing sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties and noughties TV actress, famous for her roles in the Avengers, (tight catsuit), and Absolutely Fabulous (boozy floozy!), travelling the length of the Nile, and giving her opinions, thoughts and observations along the way. It was beautifully filmed, wonderful to watch and a real learning experience for many out there who have never travelled to the ‘Dark Continent’, and I use that term, as full of as much sarcasm as I can muster on this one dimensional computer generated page. You see there was no difference between this show and the historical accounts of the rich, ignorant white male explorers of the 18th century.

As I watched I heard of places named after the white people who had found them. Lake Victoria, Lake Albert, lots of other European names in a place that, last time I looked, was still in Africa! I often wondered what the local people of these regions thought about that. Should I not be offended that my family’s continent of origin is ridiculed in such a way? Whatever happened to respect? At one point, the lovely and oh so very British Ms Lumley, was in Uganda and blamed the mass poaching of the wild animals on Idi Amin, who apparently made it hunting season all the time when he was in power, (no question though of the thousands of white poachers who capitalised at the same time).

Highly Dubious or Heavily Distorted?

Look, I am not saying that there is a racial bias here, I am SHOUTING IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS! Fair enough, I understand where I am located, but is it too much to ask for just a little bit of balance. Yes Africa is the land of wild animals, exotic rivers and people dress like something out of a Tarzan film, but there are also thousands of cities and towns that are as modern as any place in the UK or the US. I get angry because children like my son, will see this kind of programme, and automatically will form an opinion in his malleable mind, as will his schoolfriends. Children can be heartless little fuckas at the best of times and many of them in this country are given the ammunition to be just that froma  bvery young age. Kids believe what they see on the television as do most Sun, Daily Star and Daily Mail reading adults! Do we really think that portraying certain countries in specific lights has no effect ar all on anybody? Yes I am bitching right about now, but this is serious!

Another programme I saw last week was about Nigeria, the country where my father is from. What we got, again from the BBC I guess still doing its bit for ‘Britannia’, was an image of a country full of thieves, poverty and slums. Now I am not saying that these people did not have a valid reason to be in front of the camera, I just think, in fact, I know that there is a hell of a lot more to that country than was depicted on my 32 inch high definition screen. Lagos is a city; people live in houses and apartments, go to night clubs, museums and even take afternoon tea! I am all for an image of any country as long as it is balanced, and when it comes to places in Africa especially, I am calling for fairness across all media. Tell it like it really is and balance the fuckin picture for once because I am sick and tired of seeing and paying for this shit, and then having to explain to my son that things are not really like that.

Phew! Okay rant over for now. I think maybe it was due to a combination of seeing Avatar…again, Pocahontas 2 and Atlantis The Lost City in quick succession. Three Disney films that, I might add, had exactly the same plot and premise. Finally I know Disney’s secret, tell the same old story again and again by simply changing the main characters. Hmmm! now that sounds like a familiar tactic, I wonder where I have come across it before…

This got me to thinking about how the perception of ourselves, and thus our own importance, is reinforced, good or bad by what happens in the wider world around us. History is a case in point as when I was at school we learned all about Roman, Egyptian and Greek history. We also learned about British history and briefly, very briefly, touched upon slavery, and that was a mere paragraph in my text book, (thank you William Wilberforce!).  So in five years of studying history at the most important time of my life, in a Grammar school, the only thing I learned about black people was that we were slaves. The fact that I knew there must have been more to it was largely irrelevant, as was the fact that my dad was a constant source of knowledge about my own family’s long history. The simple fact was it didn’t get much respect in my wider world of the school classroom and so that feeling of being marginalised and unimportant was readily accepted from a very young age, and worst of all was done unwittingly.

But it is not only in history class where a young black boy can feel unimportant, Geography is perhaps a much clearer one. The map that most of us know and recognise from school is called the Mercator map, famous for its blatant inconsistencies that somehow managed to be overlooked by the ruling powers for almost 400 years. The map, first produced in 1569 was racially and geographically biased, most notably in its reduced sizing of continents like Africa and South America against Europe and Britain in particular. Obviously in those days information was scarce and knowledge of the wider world was limited in fact, most ‘learned’ English scholars believed in their being mythical beasts and monsters in these far off lands populated by a darker race of people. Zounds! No problem with any of that, but when the same map is still being used when I was at school over 400 years later…something is fucked up!
How important do you think black kids would feel if they realised just how big the continent of Africa was?, and if this truth was backed up everywhere, in school atlases, on news reports in McDonalds happy meals promotions! After all, in this day and age nothing is real until it is plastered over everything.

Interestingly, in 1974, a German historian and cartographer by the name of Dr Arno Peters produced a map that was not racially biased and was area accurate, that is, it showed the continents to be of a truer and  more proportional size. But this map was condemned from the start and was not widely published, why, because over educated scholars of the time decided against it. Just what were they afraid of?

Conspiracy theories abound and to be honest, the actual reasons I am not interested in. It is the effect of these illegal acts of knowledge falsification that I have a major issue with because the end result may just be a disassociated youth who has no interest in the world that he is in. To deny people the correct information must surely be wrong as it allows for the continued racial biases that we find in most areas of modern society today and allows for the continuation of such a system that is at its heart racially unfair. It is then, way too easy for terms like ‘ethnic minority’ to be banded about acquiring more meaning and relevance than they should have in the first place.

Looking at the Peters map, just who is the ethnic minority anyway?

A group of youths were the cause of the uproar and in the centre two teenage lads were trading blows like they were on Saturday Fight Night!, at least, I thought it was 2 boys. Upon closer inspection I realised that one of the ‘boys’ was in fact a girl, but she was giving it all she got. The fight was split up by one of her friends and she took the opportunity to spit in the face of her male aggressor, before being urged to go in the other direction. The excitement over, everybody got back to what they were doing and pretty soon all was forgotten.

Had I just witnessed the new face of feminity?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not the kind of person that believes that women belong in the kitchen, or indeed that there is a particular way in which men and women should act, but what I have noticed lately is a shift in the way that some females behave. Girls now are following in the footsteps of their male classroom counterparts when it comes to violence and straightforwardness. The rise of the ‘pornification’ of women in the media, has been matched by the rise of the laddette. The beer swilling, foul mouthed females who lurk until closing time in bars and clubs around the City, always ready to down a pint or two as quickly as possible and too eager to lay you out flat on your back if you say the wrong thing or stare for too long in their direction.

Just what is going on?

But maybe I am being unfair. Am I basing my opinion on what a woman should act like on an age old stereotype put in place by men way before my time? Am I indeed sexist in my approach and beliefs that it is normal for a woman to act demure and ‘princessly’, not being expected to paint a fence or change the wheel of a car, but will always look better in an apron or dressed to the nines in clothes created more for the male gaze than for any type of physical practicality? I admit that I came up in this male dominated world therefore hold some male dominated views and yet there still seemed something wrong with seeing a girl trade blows against a boy. In my opinion the boy should have known better, if that had been my son hitting a girl, I would have been more than disappointed. (But then again, if a girl was acting like a boy and started a fight against my son, I can’t say wholeheartedly that I would be angry with him if he gave her a bitch-slap!) .

You see to me if you act in a certain way, then you can’t really blame anyone for treating you in a certain way. It may just be that this rise in more masculine femininity has come on the back of a more feminine masculinity. Men are spending more and more on cosmetics and stuff to make you look and smell pretty than anytime before in history. Now, its certainly not the first time that men have dared to care for their appearance but the last time it wasn’t met by an equal shift by women in the opposite direction. In the past, when women were held further down than they are today, men were allowed to play whatever roles they wanted to, often donning ridiculous wigs, and horrific makeup, and looking like 17th century pimps! Today things seem to be changing but unfortunately the good is mixed with the not so good, encompassing behaviour like I witnessed in the park.

Logically thinking I suppose what we should see is a middle line where men and women act more or less the same, where women can stand on equal terms with a man, receiving an equal amount of acknowledgement. Maybe that is the effect of a changing world, maybe this is what this world needs to redress the huge imbalance that has occurred since time immemorial and so perhaps, maybe we are just going to have to get used to it. Now, I don’t think that we will see a blanket transformation of harder female types appearing on the horizon like zombies out of a Dario Argento film, it will be more a gradual thing taken up only by those who are eager to do so.

And so, as long as there are women out there happy to play the ‘stereotype’ that I have come to know and love, everything, in my world at least, will be copasetic!

You don’t sleep with your friend’s sister

You don’t sleep with your friends ex

You don’t sleep with your friend’s mother, (Aunties were okay though!)

I never asked why these taboos existed in the first place. I just took it on board that my family were just giving me the benefit of their vast experience.

The Sister
So for years you been hanging out with your best mate, going round his house, sharing his food and generally becoming that half brother hybrid he never had, you were always welcome through the door no matter what time of day or night. You even had his mom doing your ironing and fixing you sandwiches, and all of this would stay the same, as long as you didn’t take a second glance at his little sister.

Things used to be okay, back when she was still in primary school and then again when she was going through that awkward geeky stage trying to fit into her new body. But since her 16th birthday you couldn’t help but notice her. She sees you as the brother she can have sex with, you see her…, and that’s the problem, you see her, and all you do now is want her. At meal times she practices her flirting skills on you, the older man who should know better, but really and truly doesn’t at only 18. Next thing you know you’ve visited her secret place and are now secretly seeing each other. Now you have to tell your mate!

Just don’t do it was the advice I got and whether or not it is like the scenario described above, or just a drunken fumble behind the pub with your mates not so pretty twin…I was told to just stay away and I always adhered to this, well, almost always.

But what was the big deal. On one level isn’t your mate showing you no respect by basically saying that you are not good enough for her, a bit of a piss take. Or else he could be saying ‘I know what you are like with women, and you not very nice’, or he could be saying ‘I will get jealous if your time spent over at mine is not about me anymore’. Then again maybe he has it in his head that you have been watching his sister since she was thirteen! And to be honest, there is probably an element of truth in each of these statements, scary I know

The Ex
You’re best friend broke up with his woman and you were nominated to talk to her, and get him back in there. Or else your mate split up and you stayed friends with her because you were always friends. Whatever the reason you suddenly find yourself hanging out more and more with this person, at first talking about the one thing you had in common, your mate, and then deciding to stay as far away from this topic as possible and talk about everything else, instead. Problem because now you can really get into each others heads. On top of that because there is no sex, you spend all your quality time talking and doing other things together. Your mate doesn’t say anything, not because he isn’t bothered, but because he doesn’t know just how much time you have been spending at his old address. And lets face it, you’re not in a rush to tell him and she isn’t either…not yet anyway. So eventually the inevitable happens and that innocent hug goodbye at her door, ends in the two of you in the sack declaring undying love for each other in between thrusts! Sexual frustration has won the day and now you have to tell your mate that you might need a best man!

Just don’t do it. That was the advice I got from my friends and my older brothers. You see there is a secret code here and this is the ultimate no no. From a legal stand there is obviously nothing really wrong about it, but this falls more under the realm of a moral issue, and morally it is wrong. From your boys point of view, you must have been sweating on his missus the whole time they were together! From your point of view I think you were too, kinda, or is jealousy the motivator behind this one. Then again it could just be true love, and if it it is then anything you go through will all be worth it.

The Mother
Your mates mum is one of those darlings that just seems to get better with age. When you were thirteen it was obvious she had to remain the things that wet dreams are made of, and fourteen and fifteen weren’t much different either. But when you got to 16 you noticed that she noticed you. Her comments always related to your new size and bigger frame and she made constant references to you growing and maturing. Yes, my friend, she had seen you but you were still at that age where nothing could really happen. You didn’t know what to do anyway with a woman her age and everything she said could have just been innocent. So, you forget about her and she just becomes the topic of schoolboy memories when you chat with your other old school mates, the milf that got away!

So you are out drinking in a bar one night, years later, when a woman approaches you. It takes you a minute to realise that the woman standing in front of you is ‘Stifflers mom!’ One drink leads to another and before you know it, you’re bumping uglies wherever and whenever you can! Then you’ve got to tell your mate, or at least dodge him for the next few weeks. He won’t understand, may get angry, and will want to punch your lights out!

Just don’t do it. Yes, it is the ultimate schoolboy fantasy but people will get hurt in the fallout. As a teenager, if you are lucky enough, you can always claim ignorance and innocence of what was occurring (works in a court of law!), leaving you with amazing memories and a story to tell around the campfire! In reality, there is the age gap to contend with and the probable difference in tastes, but you know what? If you happy and you know it…fuck it! Your mate will understand and as long as you get him a Christmas present and tell him he doesn’t have to call you ‘dad’ after you’ve moved in, he should be cool…eventually.

I guess the point I am making is if something feels right, you should just go for it. There will always be those out there that disagree with what you want to do or thnk they should advise you on your life, and more often than not they have other issues going on that they are not dealing with. I never thought to ask my brothers what their advice was based on and it came to me, eventually, that the advice they saw fit to give me, just wasn’t worth the toilet paper it was written on!