Homage To Catatonia*

The Song Remains the Same: I’m afraid I’ve been otherwise detained by a combination of bare arsed laziness and a bad case of procrastination which has meant that it has been seven weeks since I last updated this blog. Other than checking up on the blog of the archetypal eternal optimist, The Scottish Patient, who likes to detail the latest score draw for the Hibees, and winding up PB Deb, my favourite (self-described) centrist in his comments box, the truth is I have been giving Blogsphere a bit of wide berth in recent weeks. That means that I have been missing out on all the homilies from Benjamin at Harry’s Place; the latest in Lenny’s recycling of his college essays and Chubby Brown’s old jokes; and it has even been the case that I haven’t been getting under the feet of Will, the self-hating Mackem, at General Theory of Rubbish. New Year’s Resolution or no New Year’s Resolution, it is the usual drill for when I’m kidding myself on that I will be updating the blog more regularly: a supposed wee gentle post that turns into a long winded rant to ease me back into posting, with the obligatory bad jokes, obscure pop culture references and a few meaningless pictures and links thrown in for good measure. Why now discard a tried and tested formula? I’ve finally got round to putting back the links on the sidebar, and even surprised even myself in updating it with new links. All the new links in their own way are recommended reads, but before I do the drumroll bit for them**, I thought I would take the opportunity to wish a belated happy birthday to the Reasons to be Impossible blog. One year on, and it still has that unique mixture of typos, literary allusion and tendency to boot stomp on an opponent - real or otherwise – when a gentle tap would be sufficient. He seems to blog most often on a Monday or Friday mornings, which suggests that UCL students are either too hungover at the start of the week or starting early on the buckfast at the end of the week to concern themselves with hassling the UCL staff.*** Back to the matter at hand of talking up the added blogs . . . . . Taking them in the order that they are listed, the first blog up is Socialism in an Age of Waiting. One of the best known and most regularly read of the blogs out there, it invariably polarises its readers; either you froth at the mouth when reading it or cut and paste large swathes of it with the byline of: ‘I wish I wrote this . . . ’.**** Their blog is always readable and I’m always impressed with the breadth of their reading and their ability to easily turn their hand to literature, politics or art when blogging. Quoting Rosa Luxemburg in their byline: “It is not true that Marx no longer suffices for our needs. On the contrary, our needs are not yet adequate for the utilisation of Marx's ideas . . .”, it perhaps explains why they seem to have a soft spot for Socialist Party impossiblism and our majoritarian view of Socialist Revolution. As a triumverate of writers located somewhere down on the south coast, it always interesting to try and figure out the dynamic of the working relationship of Socialism in an Age of Waiting and wondering who writes what and in which tone. It is definitely the case of good cop, bad cop and sarcastic cop. The question is which of the three is it that likes to wind up Backward Dave so much? Next up is Hak Mao. I owe Hak Mao an apology big time. I’m not suggesting that it was a while back that I promised that I would reciprocate the kind gesture of her blog rolling me but I seem to remember that it was around about the same time that Celtic still had a decent team and, if someone mentioned the words ‘Hot Topic’ to me, I would think of Prime Minister’s Question Time before I thought of a brilliant pop song. Hak, like Normski, shares a love for cricket that I will do a body swerve around to save my kneecaps, and is always interesting to read for her postings on such forgotten figures such as Victor Serge, for her ability to wind up the po-faced left and she also deserves a special mention for giving Will’s blog a well needed makeover. (Now, if she could only do something about his jokes as well.) It’s an old cliche but the further and longer you have been away from Scotland makes you pine for it all the more. Some of the biggest Scottish Nationalists going have the sunburnt faces from where the pale ancestral colouring meeting the hot Australian sun and, for some, a haggis followed by the dessert of the deep fried mars bar (and washed down with Irn Bru) takes on a cultural significance where normally it should induce angina but in my case my past OTT ‘Scottishness’ came in two forms: firstly, a contributory factor to me being politicised when I first read about James Maxton, John McLean, John Wheatley and Red Clydeside, and, secondly, when I dived, head first, into modern Scottish literature. Which brings me to Kevin Williamson’s blog, the Scottish Patient. Of course I went the usual haphazard route of a crash course in modern Scottish literature: stumbling through James Kelman, discovering the sly wit and subversiveness of Alasdair Gray and Agnes Owens in the process when I picked up a cheap copy of Lean Tales; putting on my waders before tackling the purple prose and humanism of William McIllvanney; and even reaching back to read such excellent and neglected writers such as George Friel, Carl MacDougall, Brian McCabe and Alan Spence; through to the fruitless search for a secondhand copy of Alan Sharp’s novel, A Green Tree in Gedde. All great writers and well recommended but rather than wallow in some sort of Scotia nostalgia - from the Kailyard to Cumbernauld New Town? – it was through Kevin’s good efforts (not forgetting Polygon Press and Duncan McLean’s Clockwatcher Press) that I was able to discover such great writers as Gordon Legge, Laura Hird, Michael Cannon and Duncan McLean himself. With Rebel Inc Press, Kevin Williamson also had the good grace to republish writers such as John Fante, Richard Brautigan and Nelson Algren (I’ll bite my tongue on the republishing of Jack London’s overrated ‘Iron Heel’ with its introduction by Leon Trotsky.) Kevin’s blog is, in the main, given over to clips round the ear for the Albion; taking the rise out of the great and the good; reports of how the Hibs are faring with accompanying pictures of supporter friends at the games (he’s no daft our Kev: the pictures he puts up all seem to be taken at half time for some reason. Either he has a strange predilection for taking photos of grown men drinking bovril or capturing the footie moment at half time, he still holds out that Hibs may get that score draw); and giving away freebie CDs,***** whilst doing a public service of bringing to people’s attention the musical thread that leads the Fire Engines and Josef K all the way through to Franz Ferdinand today. Being a man who likes to wear many hats, he also the Rebel Ink Columns blog, where he reprints his articles previously published in the Scottish Socialist Voice, the paper of the Scottish Socialist Party. As he says himself, the mission statement for the articles that appear on the blog is that: “Unlike almost every newspaper columnist in either Scotland or England the author gets carte blanche to write 666 uncensored words on whatever he so chooses. They often upset people. Especially fellow socialists.” I’m not sure if he first mentioned it in one of his columns but one of the passages of his that always stick in my mind is when - as an ex-Millie - he gave the definitive opinion on the hot topic of Stalin versus Trotsky: “They are the right and left cheek on the same scabby arse and that arse needs a boot pronto.” I’m paraphrasing of course but it made me laugh and fingers crossed it hacked off some of the ‘Generals Without Armies’ in the process. Reidski at The Big Blowdown is one of my favourite reads. Think about it, he is an exiled Celtic fan living in London with excellent taste in music, and has that ability in blog writing that I don’t have - mixing the personal with the public - which to my mind makes always the most readable of blogs. Now that I think about it, the bastard may have stole my life and my writing style. He can make reparations by writing more often. He makes me seem like George Simenon in the writing frequency stakes sometimes. Backward Dave has the most ingenius idea when blogging. His disclaimer reads: “This is a blog. Where it says “hurriedly scribbled,” it means just that. These views are not necessarily my considered opinions. Think of them as velleities and lemmas.” As I don’t have the big dictionary next to me I’ve got no idea what “velleities and lemmas” means - though I am still quietly impressed by his use of obscure words – but I think he has got the right idea when blogging: just do the stream of consciousness schtick. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Delete it if need be and move onto the next post. There will sure to be a John Prescott gaffe or another Michael Howard political suicide speech around the corner to comment on sooner rather than later. (Backward Dave and the SIAW have been known to tear lumps out of each other in various commnets box around blog land. I don’t know if it was a beautiful friendship gone bad or mutual loathing from the off, but they do seem bump into each other quite often.) Dead Men Left is the blog of SWP member James M. It’s a fair cop, I wouldn’t normally give the steam off my tea to a member of the vanguard, but James seems a decent bloke and his blog always have interesting posts. Fully paid up to supporting the Respect electoral turn of the SWP, and politically active in the area where it has had the greatest impact – Tower Hamlets – Dead Men Left is informative to read for his take on where Respect is going. I see Respect as little more than an increasingly desperate late throw of the dice of an aging and politically jaded SWP leadership, and that it is confirmation of the largest of the vanguardist groups is increasingly running out of ideas and losing direction. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I? And SPGBers in glass houses shouldn’t really throw the political brickbats about, as they have a tendency to be thrown back with twice the ferocity and we’ve yet to get the windows replaced with flexiglass. For me, 2005 is paved with well meaning resolutions, and one is the commitment to reading more fiction - well to read more books full stop. The end of 2004 has set me in good stead with me finally getting around to reading the excellent ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. A brilliant book and I’m only hacked off that my eyes passed over it on the bookshelf all these years. I missed out. A good blog to help me with that promise to myself is Ready Steady Blog. As well as giving me pointers on what to read, it will also assist me in bluffing my way through all those books that I haven’t read but which I think I should give the impression that I have. You can never bluff too much in this world. Mischievous Constructions is the blog of Michael Brooke. At the moment he seems most concerned in his blog with writing about his New Year’s Resolution of grappling with learning to speak Greek but I especially check out this blog for his writings on film and television history. I get the impression that he is something professional in that field. I’ll try not to hold that against him. Erm - that’s me done, and I’ve just realised why I don’t update my blog more often. I thought I had put this long-winded waffling to one side when I missed that last deadline for writing a college essay all those years ago. I really must memorise Backward Dave’s disclaimer - he has got the right idea on these matters.

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* It's my bad pun and I am sticking to it.

** Save yourself some time and just click on the sidebar. The rest is just padding and waffle, but if you have got this bit then you have waded through it already. ;-)

*** Best place to get a kip in the UCL Library is undoubtedly the Jewish History and Hebrew Library. There is usually nobody about and its always nice and warm. Don't make the mistake that I made a few years back of falling asleep in the History Section of UCL Library, only to wake up in a pile of your own drool to see your personal tutor staring back at you like you are an out patient from UCH. I did the only honorable thing I could do in the circumstances - I promptly went back to sleep and pretended that it didn't happen the next time I saw him.

**** I will be doing this myself at a later stage.

***** The good man bunged me a freebie CD of 'Scotch Rock'. It may be the subject of a post at a later date. I trust that the Lena Martell track will be on Volume Two?