Glove #5

Issue #5 of glove is complete. It contains 40 pages of outsider literature by 26 writers from beyond the mainstream. I would love to publish it as a physical magazine, but there is a slight problem; I’m on Universal Credit & can’t afford to pay for the printing up front. What I could do is sell it for £1 for a PDF, which I will do if that is the only option. However, having had 10 people already stump up cash as subscribers, not to mention the contributors, I don’t want to let them down. What I would love is if people could use PayPal to send me the cash in advance. It’s £3 UK, £4 EU & £5 Rest of the World, including P&P, to iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk – if I could sell 100 copies, the magazine will be a reality.  So far, I've had 65 people pay up front. If I can get a few more, the magazine could be at the printers by the weekend & available the week after. What do you say? Can you help out a struggling small magazine that’s trying to give new & undiscovered writers a platform for their work?

Detoxing Masculinity

Remember how, only a few short weeks ago, it was the seemingly unending, punishing heatwave that was keeping us awake at night? Now that the weather's turned and the darkness is more temperate, it's the terror occasioned by the intrusive, persistent fear of an inevitable, impending nuclear Armageddon that's preventing us from sleeping the 8 hours through. In those long, quiet moments of black darkness and even blacker despair beneath the duvet, the question that loops around my head is; when did the world turn to shit?

I posed that very question on social media and received responses suggesting differing milestones in human history, from Gordon Brown’s election as leader of the Labour Party to Oliver Cromwell’s pogrom against the Diggers. Sadly, the argument that seemed most compelling was Dave Walkden’s assertion that the journey to hell in a hand cart commenced when homo habilis learned how to throw rocks at each other. I must confess I wasn’t in Tanzania or the Mashavera region of Georgia around 2 million years ago, so I don’t have irrefutable proof of this, but I reckon it’s a knocking bet that the first homo habilis to act the hard cunt was a bloke.

Now I’m not saying it’s fundamentally wrong to be male or a man, but it is undeniably wrong to be masculine and downright evil to venerate, fetishise or celebrate any manifestation of the poisonous creed of masculinity that infects our society. You see, my contention is that all the world’s woes and subsequent problems stem from untrammelled toxic masculinity, combining to produce the historical narrative whereby the debased and demotic phallocentric patriarchy have wreaked havoc and destruction on many worthwhile aspects of human civilisation. The sad state of affairs where SI is associated more with Massimo Osti than Guy Debord has its roots in the testosterone-fuelled obsession with acceptable varieties of masculine workerism, under the doctrine of operaismo, specifically the unquestioning adoration of the military practised by authoritarian populists of all political hues, from Blairite Labour to Jaya Frandsen and every intervening point, that has become an epidemic during the 21^st century Global Nuance Famine, first endured by Newcastle United followers in 1997.

Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t commodity fetishism writ large, as the products of our labour still alienate us, regardless of their nature. It’s the worship of work itself that so appals me; a sexualised, subservient veneration of the act of hard, physical labour, whereby the shining torsos of violent, heterosexual men, culturally reduced in the minds of worshippers to synaptic and muscular dominance and aggression, act as the defining iconography of the workerist mindset that glorifies both brutality and power, at micro and macro levels. Toxic masculinity has been there, undermining and destroying human civilisation and harmony, since the dawn of time. It predates Capitalism by a couple of million years, suggesting that many on the left have been focussing their ire on the wrong target for much too long.

Not me of course; I’ve always opposed the grotesque posturing of the Vanguardistas in their eroticised praise for pooled sweat, dripping from the oxters and crotches of strong men, engaged in manual labours. The apologists for capitalism, from Blarites to the lumpen Brexit Falange solemnly declare their faith in the armed forces, that external manifestation of state repression and imperialist excess, while simultaneously denouncing the domestic state apparatus of the police and judiciary as fundamentally corrupt, not to mention the iniquities of the benefits system, and rightly so, but in an undialectical fashion bereft of ideological rigour, for the supposed ills of oppressing only the white underclass and not those from outwith that estranged sector of society.

I wonder whether it is toxic masculinity by proxy that has led to the growth in rampant transphobia by the TERF tendency. I attempted to discuss this phenomenon earlier in the year, with http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.com/2018/03/terf-wars.html but wasn’t entirely happy with the results of my ruminations. You, it seems to me that TERFS, in seeking to maintain their hard-won gains, are so implacably opposed to male power that they have unwittingly adopted the tactics and approach of patriarchal alpha males in their denigration of trans females. Instead of supporting trans comrades, who gain the respect and admiration of almost all others on the left, Militant apart, the TERF faction seems to adopt the quasi homophobic, intimidatory tactics of the extreme right, and not just Gail Speight or Ann Marie Waters either; I really see no difference in tone between EDL members talking about burkas to the way TERFS talk about trans women. For reference, see the terrible, hateful transphobic sticker campaign TERFS are now waging against trans rights.

Meanwhile, the Taaffist Tendency are equally incorrect and mendacious in their alleged analysis of social mores. The despicable Democratic Centralist idealisation of their warped understanding and deliberately reductive and inaccurate representation of working class culture and use of soi disant socialist realist versions of the same, function as cultural pornography for CWI inadequates, like a synthesis of Leni Riefenstahl, Morrissey and Akinwale Arobieke, showing the proximity of Leninists to Fascism, especially the art of Franco's followers, because of their queasy glorification of heterosexual alpha male manual workers and implied rejection of white-collar workers, regardless of sex or gender, as being inferior specimens of the proletariat. Remember, Militant are the ones who claimed sexuality was a class issue, whereby gays were de facto middle-class supporters of capitalism. Currently, their website contains no reference whatsoever to oppression faced by LBGTQ+ workers in contemporary society, presumably to ease the grooming of apprentice bricklayer contacts from Pontefract, images of whose defined torsos being dried and powdered in gymnasia satisfy the base urges of these timid Trots. I’m not making this up you know.

 The world today is floundering, not because of the death agonies of late-era Capitalism, but because of the relentless emotional and intellectual destruction wrought by phallocentrism. In 1981, Heaven 17 told us on (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang that Reagan was a “Fascist god in motion.” They were right then and in recent years, the wheel has completed a full 360-degree revolution, with another unhinged fool in the Great Satan’s dugout. Meanwhile Britain, under the yoke of the Grantham Bathory during Reagan’s administration, is now helplessly drifting in a stagnant pool of Etonian ordure, while the ruling elite shift their largesse abroad. These are tough and unpleasant times to live in England; hate crime, hate speech and hateful attitudes infest and infect every aspect of the country. It isn’t a place of safety.

On the right, the buffoonish bullshitter Farage, whichever temporary Fascist bolthole is giving him succour this week, is finished. He has been since 2016; no amount of posturing, repositioning or publicity stunts will have him taken seriously. Someone should give him a knighthood; let him drink himself to death in the capacious bars of the Palace of Westminster. The serially incompetent Johnson continues a staccato march through every uninhabited nook of libertarian hokum; if he’s the nearest the extreme right have to a theoretician, they are in even greater ideological jeopardy than we all anticipated. Don’t be fooled though; he is not ready for pasture just yet. The purpose to his repeated idiotic public pronouncements is clear; he’s arrogant, deluded and ambitious enough to want to be Prime Minister still. In fact, he probably covets the job more than Theresa May does these days. Johnson’s populist drivel about women in burkas and letterboxes was a crude shot across Rees Mogg’s bows; while Walter Prince of the Plutocrats looked a shoo-in for the next First Lord of the Treasury a while back, there will hopefully be blood on the floor at Smith Square soon. No wonder Ken Clarke is always on the piss eh?

However, there is also the ominous figure of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, fresh from a 4-month stretch in solitary to avoid the sugar and boiling water treatment. His wings may have been clipped by these experiences, but I find that unlikely. The stunted, wife-beating, fraudulent, convicted football hooligan is too much of a megalomaniac to ever learn from experience. I think his relative media silence is on account of some pretty good legal advice telling him to shut his cakehole. If he does return to public strife, and I’m sure he will, he’ll need a new campaign to front. UKIP are finished, the EDL are finished, the FLA are finished, partly on account of Meighan’s sticky-fingered accountancy practises, and Britain First, partly because of the risible tactics and appalling stupidity of those retarded amoebae Frandsen and Goulding, are completely finished. The stop gap Fascist holding pen, the Democratic FLA are supposedly marching in sunderland on September 15^th. As the Mackems are away to their old pals Burton Albion, who relegated them to Division 3 at the end of last season, I’m not sure who they are expecting to attend, especially as Newcastle host Arsenal and you couldn’t imagine two English clubs less likely to support fascism than the Magpies and the Gunners. Because of his imminent retrial for Contempt of Court, I would imagine Yaxley-Lennon will give this fiasco a wide berth and return, in a blaze of social media chicanery, at a later date. We need to remain vigilant; they haven’t gone away you know.

And, with a heavy heart, I turn to the Left in England, asking what is to be done? The news that the 2018 Labour Party Conference is to be held in Liverpool has made my blood run cold. Aside from Maomentum’s insane pronouncements and tactics, presumably including a three-minute hate dedicated to Tom Watson, oleaginous piece of shit that he is, and a centrepiece Petrol Bomb a Synagogue for Jezza night, this gathering has the chance to replicate and then redouble the chaos of the 1968 Democratic Congress in Chicago.

As I always maintain, while I am ideologically, intellectually and emotionally drawn to the Socialist Party of Great Britain and other companion parties in the World Socialist Movement, pragmatism and age have brought me back into the Labour Party. There really isn’t a choice. In a nostalgic way, Labour Party life is remarkably similar to how it was during Michael Foot’s tenure, whereby a weak yet kindly man of impeccable Socialist morals is used as a crash test dummy by cynical forces from both left and right. The devious and deceitful tactics of right-wing members of the PLP and their acolytes in the MSM have somehow brought about the situation where Jeremy Corbyn has been painted as a racist and an anti-Semite, which begs the question as to whether Edward Leer and Alfred Jarry are writing the script for today’s world.

Jeremy Corbyn is not perfect; his latent support for Brexit shows his dated, Bennite roots, which has allowed him to be ideologically kidnapped by the brazen oafs who peddle the dangerous lie of the Workers’ Brexit. His dignified disinclination to get involved in a mud slinging contest with traitors within the Party has resulted in mud sticking. However, and let’s be 100% clear about this, Jeremy Corbyn is a lifelong fighter against racism, intolerance, injustice and prejudice; denouncing the conduct of Israel towards Palestine does not make anyone, least of all him, an anti-Semite. What it does, is make him a compassionate humanitarian which, I’m sure you’ll agree is a pretty good thing to be. I don’t know how much I rate him as a tactician, but as an ideas man, JC is up there with the best.

If we want this world to be worth inhabiting, then those of us on the Left need to unite behind the Labour Party’s leader PDQ. He isn’t perfect, but he’s a good man. It would help if he realised we need a second referendum before the Brexit Dark Age becomes a reality of course. It would also help if all those violent, angry, intimidating, inadequate men stopped using their masculinity and just thought about the need for love and compassion once in a while. Lay down your guns and testosterone and let’s make the world a better place, before it’s too late.

Peevishness

The first beer I ever bought was a pint of McEwan’s Best Scotch in The Beeswing at the bottom of Felling High Street, at some point in the late autumn or early winter of 1979 going towards 1980. I was 15. It cost 30p and was horrible. Ostensibly a dark mild, Scotch, as it was universally known, was freezing, fizzy dishwater. From that point onwards, I developed a taste for our local bitter; the garish, orange tinged, chemical soup that was Newcastle Exhibition, or Ex for short, meaning that I generally opted to drink in S&N pubs out of brand loyalty, though I did enjoy the, on reflection, far superior Stones whenever it was available.

My final visit to The Beeswing was probably in the late 80s, during my final period of residence in Felling, when on Sunday nights we’d do a 14-bar pub crawl, with a half in every establishment until we got to The Wheatsheaf for the compulsory lock-in.  Of those 14 pubs (The Bay Horse, The Greyhound, The Portland, The Victoria Jubilee, The Blue Bell, The Halfway House, The Royal Turf, The Mallard, The Mulberry, The British Queen, The Malting house, The Fox and The Wheatsheaf), only half a dozen survive. The Beeswing is the British HQ of a sinister Christian cult which makes the Sea Organisation seem like Songs of Praise.

Times change. The last beer I bought was a pint of Bass in the Tynemouth Lodge on Tuesday 14^th August. I am now 54. It cost £3.40 and was worth every penny; a dark, complex amalgam of floral notes and fragrant hints of the hydrogen sulphide Burton snatch. Delicious; undoubtedly it’s my favourite pint in my favourite bar. One social aspect of my drinking habits has remained constant; the need to have a local where I feel at home.

Undoubtedly, I have drunk far too much beer during the past 40 years. I have risked my physical and mental health, spent money I couldn’t really afford and got myself into situations that I ought to have avoided, not to mention suffering from innumerable debilitating hangovers and inflicting tornadoes of rancorous flatulence on my loved ones. However, I don’t really regret my hophead hedonism all that much, as the positive aspects of beer, pubs and general gregarious affability seem to have counterbalanced that. Despite hangovers, when they strike, ruining the next day to the extent I unable to function as a sentient human being, I still enjoy getting half cut, though no more than twice a week and never on consecutive evenings.  One of the reasons for my continuing enjoyment of beer is that I can’t recall a time when the variety of brews, standard of breweries and choice of pubs has been anywhere near as good as it is now, with the gaping chasm between great bars and crap ones growing by the week. To avoid wasting money, I simply don’t do chain pubs, other than a very occasional trip to my old local The Newton, where I drink San Miquel, as the wretched ale they suffer is invariably the kind of sweet, lifeless, malty slop that for too long has masqueraded as hand-pulled “Real Ale” in estate bars across the country. Times change, but times also stay the same.

Just after my 19^th birthday, I left Tyneside and moved to County Derry for university. Fairly predictably, Guinness became my tipple of choice. Most of the time it was of a uniform standard; balanced, creamy and satisfying, it knocked spots off the competing brews, though it was helped by being the only porter available until Murphy’s began selling in the north in my final year. Obviously this being the height of The Troubles, alcohol was segregated on sectarian lines like everything else in the Six Counties; Catholics drank fizzy Harp and the unspeakable Smithwicks, while Protestants had Bass, though a much different brew to the one I now partake of in The Lodge, or deeply unpalatable Tennents. Without doubt, the formative years of toilet training on Ex had prepared me for the catastrophic digestive side-effects of Guinness, though not for the change to my palette.  Three years in a BT postcode meant I lost much of my appetite for bitter beers, especially the burnt coffee maltiness of English Guinness. Moving to London after graduation, I found myself investigating the range of strong, continental lagers available on draft; Lowenbrau became a particular favourite.  When I began my post graduate studies in Leeds in 1987, I was happily able to change between Tetley Bitter, ubiquitous and on hand pull, and its stablemate Lowenbrau in The Fenton, Hyde Park, Original Oak or Sky Rack. It was a happy year.

Returning to Newcastle in 1988, the complexity of a pub-based social life in an evolving city would have been best mapped by a Venn diagram. Effectively there were 4 distinct types of pub; in the demotic corner, dull, functional S&N locals and brash, deafening, quasi-hysterical Bigg Market style disco bars, while in the aesthetic corner there were the more alternative establishments that tended to sell Real Ale and imported strong lagers to a soundtrack more akin to John Peel than MTV. The interesting curve ball in the Newcastle pub scene, then as now, were the range of Sir John Fitzgerald houses (Bridge Hotel, Crown Posada, Café Royal, Fitzgerald’s itself and my favourite city centre bar, The Bodega) that served outstanding pints in comfortable surroundings in the centre of town. Safe havens in a jungle of excess.

Basically, I sought to disentangle myself from the noisier, crappier bars, on account that the only safe things to drink were the various kinds of painfully unhelpful cooking lager, because there was so little taste and body associated with them, it was remarkably difficult to serve stuff that fizzed like Andrew’s Liver Salts badly. However, being a fanatical Newcastle United fan at the time, I was still forced to drink dross in Haymarket area pubs pre match on occasion, though I preferred the decent brews in The Hotspur or the safe cans of Red Stripe in The Trent House. My weekend habits became a routine; one night in The Old Fox and The Wheatsheaf, Big Lamp’s flagship south side bar, in Felling and the other in The Egypt Cottage and The Barley Mow at the top of the Quayside. Occasionally, we’d wander elsewhere in town; The Hotspur, The Trent or The Strawberry at the top end of town, or the Bridge and the Crown Posada at the bottom. There really weren’t many other good pubs to choose from, and so rather than the CAMRA guide, an awareness of ambience or proximity to gig venues became important. I always hated The Broken Doll mind you; every time I went in, I thought the place was about to fall down. And Slalom D was unspeakable.

When we moved to Spital Tongues, I said farewell to The Fox and The Wheatsheaf, embracing the gloriously down at heel Spital House, where Ex and Scotch retained a hold over the constituency and The Belle Grove, which was more of a student pub and concentrated on the dreary, generic Youngers hand-pulled stuff and Becks on draft . I had no real affection for either pub or these beers and, finding myself in Slovakia a few years later, I was able to embrace the full range of glorious Czech and underrated Slovak beers on offer. Rather surprisingly, exposure to such beer for 2 years did not finally force a breach between me and darker beers; instead I began to appreciate the importance of the Rheinheitsgebot laws. Now I’m not saying everything I drink these days is brewed in the prescribed purity style, but you’d not find me willingly guzzling Diageo or Anhauser Busch’s basic 4% liquor syrup, adorned with whatever malty and sulphite flavourings are required to show the difference between Hop House 13 and Guinness.

Despite a few years of unadventurous, local boozing on Stella or San Miguel in The Newton, I have found over the past decade and a half that I prefer my gigs to be intimate, my sporting events to be local and my pubs to be quiet, orderly, able to dispense high quality beers and full of middle class smartarses like me. I am a Real Ale but not so much a Craft Ale person. I don’t necessarily mind keg rather than cask beer, but I do draw the line at third rate Brown Ale style syrup served with lashings of fruit peel, like a gelatinous, melting Christmas cake. Give me a hoppy, floral bitter, in the old Kentish rather than Yorkshire style, where you’re drinking for taste and refreshment rather than simply to get battered. That said, I do admire those breweries, such as Loka Polly or Cloudwater, who can produce 8.5% DIPA’s that taste no stronger than a 3.8% session bitter, but still make your legs collapse and brain cave in after half a gallon.

One of the things I truly do love about beers and breweries these days are the sheer numbers of them you can come across. Of course economic Darwinism comes into play and many microbreweries fall by the wayside or get subsumed by other companies, but that’s part of the fun and the learning curve I guess. I am incredibly proud of my 23 year old son Ben for many different reasons, but his love, knowledge and support of the local beer scene in Newcastle and Leeds is truly captivating. He knows what, where, when and why to drink. At his age, I was more interested in collecting pubs rather than quality testing them.

Having just moved back to Newcastle after his MA, he is able to enjoy bars like The Bodega, Tilleys, Forth, Head of Steam, Split Chimp, Box Social, Bridge Hotel, Bridge Tavern and Crown Posada in the centre of town, then the Cluny, Ship, Cumberland, Tyne and Free Trade in the Ouseburn and the rapidly expanding brewery tap premises such as those for Brinkburn Brewery and Tyne Bank in Byker, Flash House in North Shields and soon-come Anarchy Brew in Walkergate, not to mention a disparate array of brilliant pubs such as: The Tynemouth Lodge, Left Luggage Room, Low Lights Tavern, Northumberland Hussar, Brandling Villa and many more. Here’s to all the local microbreweries producing magnificent beers: Almasty, Two By Two and Northern Alchemy to name but 3. If you don’t know any of these bars or brews, and this is by no means an extensive list, do some research and we’ll raise a glass at the Tynemouth Cricket Club Beer Festival between September 6^th and 8^th.

Cheers!

Give it a Rest Lads....

Saturday 11^th August is my 54^th birthday; I intend to celebrate it by watching my beloved Benfield at home to FA Vase finalists Stockton Town in the FA Cup extra preliminary round. This is a 3pm kick off, so I’ll bookend the football by seeing my beloved Tynemouth at South Northumberland in the NEPL. Despite receiving riches beyond dreams from the Nash, in the shape of a £120.39 Universal Credit payment for this month, I have absolutely no intention of ruining my big day by spending this money on a ticket for Newcastle United v Spurs. Instead I’ll put the cash to good use and keep myself in champagne, oysters and foie gras for the next 4 weeks.

If you think I’m talking rubbish, you ought to have a listen to the noise surrounding Newcastle United since the end of the last campaign. Just to remind you, against all expectations, the Mags managed to finish in the top half of the table and thumped Chelsea 3-0 in the final game of the season. Fair play to them for that; literally nobody had predicted such a positive outcome to the first season back up. Of course, normal football clubs would use this surprisingly positive outcome as a springboard to move forward, spending either cautiously or recklessly on a raft of new players, but we all know Newcastle are not a normal football club. Ashley and his toadying minions in the distant chain of command between the owner and the manager, have succeeded in their annual quest of upsetting everyone with any interest in or affection for Newcastle United by showing a blatant disinclination to put hands in pockets for anyone but the most obscure and underwhelming signings imaginable.

Anyone who knows the game a fraction can concede that NUFC did the right thing at the end of 2017/2018 by getting rid of the useless Gamez, Good and Haidara on frees, while the fiscal acumen that saw the club actually getting cash money for Sels and Shitrovic made me laugh out loud. The sale of Mbemba, because he never learned English, and disposal of Colback, whose days were numbered after he pinched El Gaffa’s parking space at Little Benton last year, were less of a matter for celebration, showing the inflexible and unforgiving side of Benitez’s personality extends beyond a stubborn refusal to play expansive football and into his iron-fisted approach to man management, even if neither player would have been anything other than a bit part squad member. For the avoidance of doubt, it needs pointing out that Sels, Gamez and Lazaar, were Benitez signings who were plainly below the required standard; one wonders what the manager saw in them, or why he was prepared to accept them in his squad if they were foisted on him. After all Keegan, to whom Benitez is so often risibly compared, walked when presented with the legendary Francisco Jimenez Tejada and the invisible Nacho Gonzalez as a fait accompli. Then again, it appears Benitez was fully behind Charnley’s attempt to whore him out to Spain for the World Cup; an offer that was rejected unsurprisingly.

While Adam Armstrong’s departure to Blackburn is sad as another local lad has failed to make the grade, it isn’t something to lose any sleep over, though the strange case of Mikel Merino’s departure to Real Sociedad does again bring into question the manager’s ability to get the best out of the talent at his disposal. Merino came with a reputation of great promise but seemed to lose his way and drift out of the first team picture. As a result, the young Basque escaped the clutches of the ageing Castilian, returning to Donostie.

However you tot it up, Newcastle have managed to accrue £50m in player sales which, in concert with the approximate £120m of Premier League and Sky payments, should be enough even for an outfit as parsimonious as Ashley’s lackeys to get some quality into the squad. Instead, they’ve comprehensively pissed on Rafa’s patatas bravas by spending an utterly underwhelming £17m, with £4m completing the essential purchase of Dubravka (who, of course, came in for a vicious social media slagging after the Braga fiasco). The Slovak keeper and the return of the excellent Kenedy on loan are highly encouraging pieces of business but, and let’s be honest about this, there isn’t the same feelgood factor about the latest skip load of landfill scuffers. Ki hasn’t pulled up any trees in the Premier League before, while Schar and Muto are unknown quantities, seemingly signed because they are the sort of cut price cast offs no-one else wanted. At least we’ve heard of Rondon; he might not be the most mobile, but he’s got the sort of physical presence we’ve not had since Andy Carroll was sold, though he looks more like Shefki Kuqi than the one-time contender from Dunston.

Perhaps the most sobering bit of news is that the season ending injury sustained by Lejeune in training and Hayden’s transfer request that put the block on Sean Longstaff’s proposed loan spell at Pompey, shows just how thin the squad is. We still need a left back, a centre half, another ball-playing option in midfield and a quality striker. Who do we have lurking in the shadow squad? Well Saivet may well be back in the area, but he’s hardly likely to be on the pitch any time soon. This means, with the transfer window closing on August 9^th this year, there is absolutely no chance of Newcastle United matching previous summer investment, far less attempting to kick on. Ashley will be delighted at a £35m trading surplus. As far as he’s concerned, providing there are still 50,000 useful idiots in their replica shirts filling the ground and buying replica shirts, the world will be ok. Lower mid table mundanity with anxious periods spent in or around the drop zone is ever the order of the day, as the club have a squad that is marginally worse than last season, which is unforgivable but further evidence the owner doesn’t care what happens as long as he gets the Sky cash each year. Witness his latest idiotic decision; the bonus players will get for keeping the club up has been slashed by 75%, without any notice, on the eve of the season. Brilliant decision that one; it’ll have done loads for the team ethos, no doubt.

Of course, if Benitez signed the contract extension he’s been offered instead of playing the victim every time a microphone is waved under his sneck, the purse strings may open, but it isn’t guaranteed. Instead it seems 2018/2019 will be a 38-game farewell tour before el Mister que lloró lobo moves on to his next project. This is a shame as he’s been a steady hand on the tiller, bar the blip of relegation in 2016, even if the football has been on the dull side of prosaic. Of course, he has introduced a work ethic that has surely satisfied fan demands for a team that tries. Or so that’s what I’d assumed. Sadly, far worse than the bleating of the manager is the incessant howling of the fans. You know the ones I mean? With flags, season tickets and Twitter accounts.

On Saturday 28^th July, a few youthful hotheads waved cliched, angry flags directed at Mike Ashley at various locations in the town and took pictures of it on their phone. It wasn’t the storming of the Winter Palace, but it was a gesture of defiance. On top of this, savvy young lads have been creating all manner of problems for Sports Direct and Ashley’s Albert Speer, Keith Bishop, by clogging up their on-line portals. Even better, though seemingly banned by Twitter, Sports Redirect is a service suggesting alternative places to spend cash on leisurewear This is the sort of contemporary economic terrorism, redolent of the Situationist International’s tactics, that capitalists hate; well done kids. Apparently, there will be another flag protest outside Sports Direct on Northumberland Street before the Spurs game Saturday; wonderful news, but completely futile if anyone who attends this demo then proceeds to set foot inside the ground. The one and only way to get underneath Ashley’s gossamer skin is to hit him, not just in the pocket, but in the publicity stakes and an empty ground would do precisely that, as he’d take each and every UNSOLD empty seat as a personal insult. Sadly, I’m fairly certain there’ll be north of 50k watching Harry Kane notch a pair of unanswered goals.

Interestingly, there were 21K at SJP for the meaningless friendly loss to Augsburg, while in League One, sunderland kicked off their second campaign in the third tier of English football with 10,000 more in the place and roared their plucky collection of obscure non-entities to a 2-1 win. Does this mean sunderland have better fans or more fans than Newcastle? Of course not; while castigating NUFC supporters for continuing to prop up Ashley’s regime, the absent hordes from Wearside admitted their non-attendance was merely a result of apathy not anger. You see, protesting against the owner was frowned upon as standing up for your club, however limply, is the sort of thing Mags do. While that preposterous stance is the equivalent of sporting Stockholm Syndrome, the Mackems have at least been freed from the despotic incompetence of Ellis Short. I’ve absolutely no idea just what Donald Stewart brings to them, other than a visible social media profile and a fucking big mouth, but his populist grandstanding has struck a chord with their desperate and disenfranchised support; hence, 5k extra bodies in the ground for the opening day of the season and 3 valuable points.

Personally, I cringe whenever Donald Stewart starts running off at the mouth, as he’s clearly getting in above himself, but at least he’s pleasing his devotees, regardless whether he achieves anything or not. Contrast this with the shameful populist grandstanding by Chi Onwurah in the Houses of Parliament. Alright, so SJP is in her constituency, but attempting to have a pop at Ashley when the country is on the brink of a Brexit inspired Civil War is an outrageous dereliction of duty. If an MP was to have a go at Ashley, I’d have paid far more attention if lifelong fans like Ian Mearns or Mary Glindon had taken up the baton. However, they realise the importance of creating a visible, viable united opposition to the evil actions of the Tories. It is perhaps something Chi could bear in mind, considering her willingness to undermine Corbyn in the last two leadership elections.

Meanwhile on Tyneside, we’ve had another tectonic shift in the spinning plates of supporter engagement. As ever, in the deepest red from the blood of the martyrs’ corner, the original absolutists from the marginalised, miniscule and moribund Mike Ashley Out Campaign (MAOC) continue to trumpet their long-held Travis Bickle versus the Quislings stance of boycotting the club while Ashley remains in situ, denouncing those who spend a penny piece on Newcastle United as perfidious collaborators. MAOC are, as I see it, correct in their denouncing of the organic cult of the personality If Rafa Goes We Go; unlike a defined member-led group, this is more of a loose association of like minds that began as a Twitter hash tag and has grown into something less credible. To draw a comparison, #IfRafaGoesWeGo is Red Labour and the Ashley Out mob (nothing to do with MAOC and once known as Pardew Out) are Maomentum. Frankly quite why the departure of Benitez, as opposed to the removals of Keegan, Robson or even Hughton, should be seen as the point of no return is beyond me. Those lifelong Mags who have seen it all before and have no intention of sacking it off, regardless of ownership or who manages the team, may be diametrically opposed to me ideologically, but I respect their honesty and I share their contempt for such stroppy narcissism.

The opportunistic Leninists at True Faith have been all over #IfRafaGoesWeGo from the very outset, to the extent of waking up their somnolent pals in NUST to add their insignificant weight to the campaign. Meanwhile NUFC Fans Utd, who have been doing such wonderful work with the West End Foodbank, which is in a crisis of its own, have joined with just about all the various supporter factions as part of The Magpie Group (https://themagpiegroup.co.uk/) to write a letter to Mike Ashley. Of course he hasn’t responded. At the last count, this umbrella organisation, with a name previously used by Malcolm Dix, John Hall and Bobby Pattinson’s crusade against the McKeague dynasty back in 1988, is being supported by (deep breath): Ashley Out, NUFC Fans United, NUST, The Shite Seats, The Toon Network (who?), True Faith, Wor Flags and Wor Hyem 1892. In other words, just about every fan grouping you could think of, bar the inflexible MAOC and timorous NUFC.com.

As ever, cracks are already evident in the edifice of the supposed united front. In a quite astonishing editorial, True Faith took umbrage with Ashley Out for the crime of being anonymous. Indeed, the tenor of the whole piece was dedicated to rubbishing the need for The Magpie Group, presumably as that hadn’t been a True Faith idea. Instead, the reader was subjected to endless paragraphs of support for their favourite hashtag #IfRafaGoesWeGo. While this was strange, it was nowhere near as disgraceful as the distressingly misogynistic abuse dished out to Donald Stewart’s partner, who was repulsively derided as a “stripper;” this is neither true, nor relevant and I sincerely hope someone has words of advice for the person responsible.

You know, I'm frankly bored of the whole protest culture circus surrounding Newcastle United. As far as I’m concerned, the 57 varieties of whingers, and this includes Benitez who is well paid for what he does and has an even more lucrative contract in front of his nose, should either put up or shut up. Either carry on going to the games and accept they are lining Ashley's pockets, or walk away and find something else to do with their time. Last season the mantra was; "all we want is a team that tries." Now they've got one it's suddenly not enough, so the internet superfans are demanding 50 million quid players like toddlers at the shops and threatening to flounce off if the manager does one. Can you imagine Benitez's press conference after The Magpie Group’s recent trip to the barricades; “It’s clear to see the fans are worried. Thankfully a few supporters have written a letter and I can confirm Ashley has now sold the club, having bought Mbappe and Willian as farewell presents. Keep on keeping on.”

Frankly, only MAOC and their absolute refusal to countenance any individual expenditure that would benefit Ashley and NUFC.com for their uncomplaining willingness to suck up every outrage performed in the name of Newcastle United because of their diehard support and refusal to stop going, have my respect. The foot-stamping tantrums of those who want their protest cake on Northumberland Street and to eat it, without side helpings of irony or humble pie, in the Gallowgate, lack all credibility. All I can say to the professional mischief makes is; give it a rest lads, eh?

I, Gig Economist

Today my bank sent me a text to say I was in excess of any arranged borrowing & that I needed to send them £74 by 3pm. I don't have that money. I don't actually have any money. I'm not quite destitute as yet, but I'm in the position of having to apply (again) for Universal Credit. This blog explains why....

As yet another of those endless, baking Saturday afternoons that characterized this summer, slipped effortlessly towards early evening, several of us were sat outside the pavilion, watching Tynemouth coast to victory against Sacriston. The obligatory cool cans of Red Stripe, bought for the purpose of nostalgic rehydration became the basis for our toasts of celebration as the Croons clinched an emphatic 70-run win. Without doubt, the combination of the very best of weather, company and cricket elevated the mood to something approaching euphoria. Who needs foreign holidays when this is on your doorstep for free? My summer home beyond the boundary on Preston Avenue was the only spot in the world I wanted to be after tea in late July, as a distant Angelus bell tolled with somnolent solemnity through the shimmering, pollinated haze.

Make no mistake; the mood I’ve just described is not uncommon. As I approach my 54^th birthday, I am the happiest I have been in years. I am surrounded by the most wonderful crowd of family and friends, who I love dearly and who love me in return. My beloved pair of Tynemouth Cricket Club and Benfield Football Club attends to my emotional need for belonging and support, while Monday six-a-side, recreational cricket with the Bad Boys and trips to Elite in Hoults Yard, not to mention my trusty bike, nourish my yearning for participatory sport and something approaching exercise. Of course, the explosion of microbreweries and the prevalence of quality real and craft ales at every corner fulfills a more fundamental urge and there is always music, ancient and modern, to help salve the aesthetic itch. Frankly, it’s a bloody good job I don’t work for a living as I don’t know how I’d find the time for it.

Listen, I must say this at the outset, I have not regretted my decision to take redundancy from Tyne Coast College just before Christmas 2017 for one single second. If I hadn’t walked out that main entrance for the last time on December 15^th past, I wouldn’t be alive now. That’s not being over dramatic either, because I would either have dropped dead with the stress of the place or done myself in, unable to cope with the Kafkaesque nightmare my role had become. Ultimately and unquestionably, taking my bit was the right thing to do, as I’d hit what marathon runners call the wall; I couldn’t go on, even one more step. If I’d continued in employment, the only way was down.

The sad thing is that my departure was out of key with the overwhelming majority of my time as a teacher and lecturer. Indeed, for most of my 30 years in education, it was an honour and a privilege to be part of the profession and I’ve never regretted the decision to train as a teacher after my degree. Not once. Sure, there’s always been the constant writing urge gnawing away, but there was never any money in it, even less than teaching. Consequently, my extra-curricular scribblings at odd times of the day and during those extensive, though absolutely necessary holidays have kept the muse alive and satiated throughout 3 decades and more of employment. To be honest, it was changing circumstances of what I was required to do for 37 hours a week that spurred my desire to escape, for if things had remained the way they were before 2015, I’d have happily stayed in post until I turned 60.

You see, in all honesty, I could never have imagined leaving teaching during the decade and a half I was blessed with the good fortune to teach in adult education. Initially this specialized vocation involved running GCSE English courses for adults at a community centre in South Tyneside, then 2 idyllic years working in Bratislava for Akademia Vzdelavania, imparting my particular take on British Culture and Society to timid, incredulous Felvidéks, before returning to the Cinderella sector of the domestic education market, by means of time spent as a hired hand in private language schools and summer study tours in Oxford, Bournemouth and York. Those were the hard schoolyards; lousy pay, short term contracts, ropey halls of residence digs, but I came through these privations with flying colours and my mettle intact.

The varied, extensive experience I gained in dealing exclusively with adults for those itinerant years made me almost marketable, as I was offered a job at Sunderland College. In truth it was a timetable no-one other than me would have wanted; split three ways between EFL to Asylum Seekers, Access to HE with adult returners and Foundation Year University students on an intensive language course. In retrospect the new vision and actual reality of the way learning was being marketed in the 21^st century was encapsulated by the competing elements of my role. The glorious, blessed widening participation agenda was trumpeted endlessly by Blair’s cronies; as such, Access to HE became a massive growth area for a dozen or so years. The responsibility of giving a second chance to those culturally and economically marginalized victims of the Thatcher years who’d never had a first one, was the greatest reward of all my years in teaching. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, my work helped possibly adult 2,000 learners raise their expectations and change their lives. Additionally, the exponential growth in Asylum Seekers and Refugees in the early years of the century, not to mention learners from the 2004 accession states entitled to free English tuition as part of the Maastricht Agreement, gave FE Colleges a socially responsible role in helping to integrate marginalized, disaffected and vulnerable people, thousands of miles from home, into their new surroundings. Again, I think back to literally hundreds of learners who worked with admirable dedication to improve their language skills, just so they could get a job, or talk to their child’s teacher.

Of course, it wasn’t all glittering prizes and unqualified success; Sunderland College, like every other FE provider, had learned the terrible beauty of avarice post 1994 incorporation. As businesses, FE colleges existed purely to turn a dollar and charging Chinese students the thick end of £5K a year cash money to learn irregular verbs by rote was a lucrative market. The students didn’t want to attend these classes; they wanted to sleep through the day and get on MSN Messenger to their pals at night. However, they’d paid up front, or their parents had, and the worthless diploma at the end of the year was the necessary evil required for entry into a full degree programme they assumed was the next step for them. Regardless of educational merit, the college obliged; they all passed and undoubtedly their degree would have followed a similar, lax pattern. It was the kind of educational fraud I felt glad to leave behind, for a brief while at least, when I got my next job, back this side of the river.

I was appointed by Tynemouth College in 2003, which became Tyne Met in 2005, which became Tyne Coast in 2017; each institution was progressively worse in terms of management, working conditions and staff morale. The old Tynemouth College was primarily a cheerfully eccentric combination of the world of Goodbye Mr Chips and the attitudes of Paris 1968; the oddball coastal Goths and gays who didn’t fit in at Tommy More or Whitley High came there to be taught by a wonderful collection of ageing, boozy, unconforming academic high flyers. I’d never seen so many lip piercings and Nirvana hoodies in my life. Despite having one of the 3 most evil people I’ve known in my entire life as my boss, I adored my job, teaching Access to HE, EFL and A Level Literature. Certainly, the first two parts of my job were the parts of the syllabus none of my dear old colleagues wanted anything to do with. Of course, despite succeeding superbly in its founding mission to send the cossetted and clever children of petit bourgeois coastal parents to Russell Group universities, Tynemouth College was deemed too small to be viable, and once the North Tyneside behemoth came calling, it was inevitable that Tyne Met would be established.

Frankly an account of what went on in the higher echelons of the successor institution between 2005 and 2009, which combined the economic acuity of the Weimar Republic with the moral code of an Elizabethan revenge tragedy, really ought to have been made into a Panorama special, if not the subject of a full scale investigation by Northumbria Police, but we’ll leave it there. Suffice to say, unlike just about every other ordinary member of the teaching staff, everything came up roses for me, as restructuring and repositioning meant my job from 2006 until 2015 was entirely dedicated to leading the Access to HE programme. Numbers were through the roof. Twice our learners won national awards. Twice I won teaching awards. Twice the department was honoured by Northumbria University and the college itself. Without a shadow of a doubt, this was the best decade of my working life, but the dread hand of the Tory cuts post 2010 started to chip away at the foundations of my socially inclusive Soviet.

First of all, fees became payable for all those over 23, regardless of their educational history or prior qualifications; even if you had barely a handful of GCSEs, age made you liable. The nostrum if you think education is expensive, try ignorance is undeniably true, but economically unhelpful in those circumstances. This debt was managed in the shape of a loan for £3k that the learners never even saw but would be liable for if they didn’t graduate 5 years after finishing their course, never mind ditching the Access course as many did when life’s impecunious pageant intervened. Those regulations put a lot of obstacles in the way of even the keenest learner. Next up, some bright spark decided Universities were no longer allowed to design Access courses; at a stroke destroying valuable partnerships and networks that had been built up over decades. Previously Universities had structured Access modules to ensure adult learners were briefed in what they actually needed for degree level study. In English this meant: academic writing, referencing, personal reflection and analyzing contrasting opinions; a skills-based course tailored to equipping undergraduates with the raw materials they needed to produce degree level work. It was ideal, which is probably why it was abolished. In its place, faceless regional exam boards designed generic, off the peg rather than bespoke courses, taught on strict, inflexible “pathways.” Then, the coup de grace; those bloody Tories did away with the nursing bursary, so instead of getting £8k a year to train, wannabe nurses had to fork out £9k fees instead.  This is just another of the catastrophic wounds our beloved NHS has had to endure in recent times. Consequently, applications to Access plummeted, the bottom dropped out of my professional world and, unable to play the career politics game like a couple of so-called colleagues who accepted the King’s shilling by moving into management like the Vichy academics they were, I was cast adrift. I could have taken VR then, but I chose not to.

As regular readers know, I was poorly in 2015, but I was determined to display my recovery by returning to work, in whatever capacity. There was an economic necessity for this as well; Ben was only in his second year at Uni and I couldn’t let him down. Therefore, I accepted the rancid hand I was dealt and played it with as much finesse as I could muster; a redeployment “opportunity,” attempting to instill a desire to pass re-sit GCSE English to swathes of bored, shiftless, lazy teenage sports duffers, dull, quasi-automated Uniformed Services squaddies in waiting and the diabolical daughters of Beverley Allitt and Myra Hindley in the shape of the terrifying Health and Social Care harridans.  Not only that, several times a week I descended like Orpheus in a nuclear powered bathoscope to plummet to the depths of academic Styx to teach Functional Skills Level 1 to those poor wretches who oscillated between barely sentient vacuity and profanity-spewing hyperactivity. It was education, but not as I knew it.

Actually, I’m gilding the lily here; most of the kids tried their best and were in those classes because they had generally been either poorly taught, were suffering with undiagnosed special needs or were victims of horrendous social deprivation. I tried my best and so did they in the most part; me for 2 academic years and so, sadly, did many of them as well. However, you simply can’t pretend to love what you do when you don’t, or I can’t and almost all of the time I felt I’d been comprehensively deskilled as a functioning human being. Drowning in a sea of branded polo shirts and leisure wear. Suffocating in an ionosphere of Lynx Africa. My mother’s death the weekend before classes started in September 2017 gave me a sense of perspective. I took bereavement leave and thought about handing my notice in, though reasoned this would have been financially idiotic. Instead, I resolved to return and see the academic year through.

What stopped me from completing this plan was my final and complete realization that Further Education is now completely unfit for purpose; it is so badly underfunded that the only way Colleges keep going is by widespread fraud, by waving through students who’ve either handed in inadequate work or left the place completely. The reasons for this are simple; money. Every pair of legs that remains on the books produces funding, which increases if these vile bodies pass and this is what keeps the place open. The dirigistic power imbalance, akin to the feudal pyramid structure of society or the Leninist model of Democratic Centralism means all policy decisions handed down by the elite corps of power-dressed preening narcissists on six figure salaries must be obeyed and carried out unquestioningly; if you are told no-one fails and no-one drops out, you make that happen. Otherwise, there is trouble. This means staff who have been physically attacked by students are forced to keep brooding thugs in their classes as the scrutiny afforded to retention figures if the yobbo in question is thrown out is almost intolerable. I’ve known of cases when a student quits at Christmas to take a job, but is kept on the register and somehow, miraculously, achieves the qualification on which they were enrolled, even without being near the place for more than 6 months.

What sort of culture allows this to happen? Dictatorial incompetence from the top down, basically. In my experience, senior managers are, without exception, psychopathic bullies who prey on the weak, inadequate and willingly dominated middle managers they have appointed as their patsies and errand boys. These simpering camp guards, who are only obeying orders, take their professional angst out on the already undervalued, underpaid, overworked and disaffected teaching staff, setting them more impossible tasks that either Alice or the Mad Hatter could manage before breakfast. Occasionally one of the shop floor cannon fodder goes feral; develops Stockholm Syndrome and becomes a management grass, while the rest become ever more disenchanted. As someone who had been the union rep for more than a decade, I had seen an endless litany of ordinary staff bullied, cajoled and intimidated into resigning or signing risible compromise agreements by evil managers, hell-bent on self-preservation, motivated as much by power as money. Almost without exception, trumped up, non-existent crimes and fabricated statements acted as the building blocks for another courtroom show trial, with the top brass acting as judge, jury and executioner. Faced with such impossible odds, even the strongest, most resilient and dedicated teacher would tell them to go fuck themselves. Who could blame them? Consequently, when the college sent round a general email asking for volunteers for redundancy that early December morning, I applied without hesitation.  I’d like to think they accepted with the same sense of alacrity and glee.

The terms of my departure remain confidential; suffice to say that when Easter arrived, the Beast from the East and other inclement weather fronts in the first part of 2018 had prevented me from getting the back garden in proper shape. However, I’d not been idle otherwise. You know about my healthy living kick; work would have prevented that. Deciding it was time to move on, I provisionally registered with 3 supply teaching agencies and set the wheels in motion to claim Universal Credit. Yes, it is hard to do so, as the complexity and length of the application form is clearly intended to put all but the most determined of potential claimants off. However, I stuck to my guns.

Bearing in mind I was required to sign on at Byker Job Centre, I was delighted to discover the building and ambience were agreeable. It wasn’t the whitewashed walls and bare stone flagging of Felling dole office where I’d graced with my signature once a fortnight at various times in early to mid-80s, both pre and post University. In fact, I’d signed on in July 1986 as Ian Cusack BA (Hons), much to the fury of the bloke behind the counter.  At Byker, the staff were remarkably kind, optimistic and helpful, even when I tried telling them I fancied being a poet; I William Blake. It didn’t get a laugh, but I did have a promise of being paid after 6 weeks if I hadn’t got a job.

Remarkably, or so I thought, they made absolutely no effort in trying to steer me towards any appropriate vacancies, relying on my knowledge of local teaching agencies to get some work. This I found depressing, as I wanted to work as soon as possible, doing whatever was possible, until I could get back into the education game. Obviously, the indeterminate waiting time for my Police Check to come back was the deciding factor before I could hope to do that, as without it I was uninsured. Despite attending 3 different meetings at Byker Job Centre, where I explained my situation in painstaking detail, nobody sought to help me find work. I’ll say again, and the fact I’m serving behind a bar for the first time since 1986 shows this, I’ll do anything within reason to earn a few quid. I am open to suggestions or offers.

In the midst of this, I was delighted to receive an interim bequest from my mother’s estate, to replace with the redundancy pay off I’d dispensed with by settling my mortgage. The money from my mam, Laura and I agreed, would buy her flat, under the new legislation enabling long term tenants to purchase Housing Association property; unethical I know, but what the hell? The fact is that Laura and I have been together for 12 and a half years, but because of a complex set of reasons, we’ve never lived together. Primarily, the fact she was in receipt of DLA because of her degenerative spinal condition until the Tories wrecked the benefit system and determined she was not eligible for PIP. We have been fighting this, at a funereal, bureaucratic pace for over a year now. During this time, Laura has not been given any money, so the outright purchase of her flat was actually the only way to guard against her being made homeless, appallingly enough.

Unlike my mortgage, this purchase required legal to-ing and fro-ing, so it took a while to sort out. The end result was that with the funds resting in my account, my savings meant I was no longer eligible for UC, even though they would disappear as soon as the purchase documentation was in place. As I’m an honest sort, I made this entire situation clear to them via the on-line portal which is the only acceptable form of communication with the UC regional centre in Middlesbrough. Within hours, my claim was rejected, and my account closed. The promised payment was also withdrawn. So much for Giro Johnny Cusack eh? Even more inconvenient was the fact I no longer had a work coach, for whatever good he did me, to advise me on the best way to find paid employment. All I could do was wait for my Police Clearance to come back, which it finally did in mid-May. Now, at last, I could leave the ranks of the idle poor. Well, that’s sort of what happened. We hear much talk in the media about the cashless society; I’d like to think I’m a living, breathing example of it. You see, I simply haven’t got any money, meaning I’ve slipped easily into the role of non-paying Metro passenger for economic reasons. I’ve been forced to curtail my expenditure on gig tickets; to the extent I was only able to see Michael Head because of the generous provision of a guest list place.

Once I’d settled the purchase of Laura’s place, my ISA contained the grand total of 1p. Each month I need to find approximately £500 to pay for my outgoings: Council Tax, utilities, home insurance, contact lenses, gym membership, mobile phone, TV and Broadband. It is a battle and it’s one I’m losing pretty comprehensively. Since the start of this financial year, or June 1 to be precise as that’s when I got my first pay packets from my two casual jobs, I have earned precisely £677.98. This comprises £443.98 from stints behind the bar at Tynemouth Cricket Club, which is a job that I got for myself and has given me far more satisfaction than teaching did in my last role and £234 for GCSE invigilation at Walker Technology College and Whitley Bay High School.

I get £25 per session generally but made the princely sum of £34 for one paper in which I acted as a scribe for a lad who’d broken his arm the week before his exams started. I had hoped, nay expected, to get more work than this, but for whatever reason, the phone doesn’t ring, and my inbox doesn’t ping. The other 2 agencies have not provided me with any work; one of them actually required me to provide a signed letter from my GP to say I was fit for work, after learning about the time I had off for bereavement leave. As well as being incredibly insulting, it was also financially beyond my reach because of the price doctors charge for producing such a document.

The situation is this; as I have no savings and have been denied benefits, all I can do is dip into the large overdraft facility my bank provided, when such easy credit seemed proportionate to my £32k salary when I still worked. Each month I get more overdrawn. Each month I get hammered with yet more bank charges; £40 for this month alone. The only possible savings I could make from the monthly total expenditure, would involve cancelling my TV and Broadband package. This would save me £70 a month; a drop in the ocean. Yes, I am lucky; I have an uncomplicated lifestyle devoted to cricket, football and writing. Yes, I have a roof over my head; in fact, I have two, which is why I’ve put my house up for sale, but that might take another 6 months at least to come to fruition. Yes, I have my occupational pension that I can access at 55, losing a quarter of its value, or at 60, even though finishing teaching early means it won’t be as comforting as it could have been. Most of all, I need a job soon.

Being a casually employed bar man is not lucrative and I’d love the chance of a proper job, but I’ve not filled out an application form since 2003. I really don’t know where to look or what to look for. I’d be happy to do anything, within reason. I’d work nights, weekends, whenever. All I need to do is take home about £600 a month and I’d be in the pink, as well as in the black. Giz a job eh? Of course, things could be worse; I could still be the dead hamster, broken on the wheel of misfortune at Tyne Met. Every day when I wake up and remember I don’t have to spend any time in that place, I feel rich as Croesus.