Red Leader: Enemy activity has been slight

My home seems to have turned into an irresistible magnet for malevolent technology gremlins.

Anything that depends on electricity to function appears to be doomed.

Their evil spell is all over everything, from the toaster to the lappy, the PS3 to the microwave. Nothing works properly anymore.

Which reminds me, about one hundred years ago, I went on tour in the support band to the utterly excellent punk-poet John Cooper-Clark.

I know.

I am OLD.

Anyway.

I don't recall much about the gigs, except for two poems he did (and how much heroin he did, but that's for another story, maybe sometime never).

One was "Chicken Town", which was frighteningly brilliant, the other was a mock-lament to George Best and it was called "The Day My Pad Went Mad."

It was about how Besty was crazy for all-mod-cons and everything in his 1970s' penthouse playboy pad was run by electricity and remote control, from his curtains to his bath taps, his "stereo" to his telly, his entrance gates to his burglar alarm, and what happened when, one day, the technology went haywire.

Well. I know how Besty must have felt now.

I might not have eleccy gates or even a burglar alarm, but EVERYTHING else refuses to work.

*joins the Amish*

I wake with a start

like a vampire at sunset

remembering I'm dead

and this stake

in my heart

may yet turn me to dust

but you never heard a single

word

i said

It always astonishes me how many forelock-tugging "squire knows best" Daily Mail-reading morons there are out there.

You should see them exploding on the Mail website in over-excited fury at the Lib/Dem idea of taxing properties worth over a million quid.

It's very funny. And very scary at the same time.

Personally, I could not care less about the Lib/Dems or any of their "policies."

But my point is this - as if anyone who lives in a million quid gaff would even bother to piss on those legions of knobbers writing in feverish support of them.

Not even if they were on fire.

Which they are.

With fury.

Haha.

This is a randomly-selected reader comment about the story published today: "If a person has a million pound house, he has worked hard for the money to buy it or inherited it of (sic) his hard working parents. Both Labour and the Liberals seem to want to punnish (sic) him for doing so by taxing him more. Totally unfair."

Yes guv'nor. If you have a million-pound house you must be a very hard working gentleman, a proper toff and no mistake.

Shine your shoes, guv'nor? And Gawd Bless you, sir.

Bloody peasants.

I hate them - thick as pig shit and maniacally determined to protect their right to be downtrodden and kept in their place by their "lords and masters."

Their "betters."

The "higher-ups."

This is an unfair generalisation, but in 1914, it was THAT attitude which persuaded millions to walk slowly into a hellstorm of German machine gun fire on the orders of some cretinous toffee-nosed upper-class red-tag General git from Eton.

Don't run, chaps. Don't show the Hun you're a-feared of them. Let us fix-bayonets and off we go. Erm. Unfortunately, I just have to get back to my commandeered chateau ten miles away.

Tally-ho!

PS: I KNOW a "million-pound house" isn't necessarily a Palladian mansion set in 5,000 acres of rolling grouse moors, but it doesn't matter.

All I can say is, I'm glad to see the back of it.

No, really.

That IS ALL I can say.

All I can manage to come up with is a tired cliche that is so familiar it's almost invisible.

For I've forgotten how to write; the working week has turned my brain into soup and the bit that used to help me string one word after the other has gone missing.

This should worry me, but it doesn't.

I welcome it, embrace it, snog it and stick my hand up its skirt.

Well. That's me done.

I've used up nearly all my words and the remaining few I have left in reserve I might need in a minute to attract the attention of the barman.

Oh dear. I see the dog has my best guitar in his mouth so, must fly.

Have a fab weekend.

I know I will.

*sobs*

Overlooked. Not in the sense of being left out or ignored.

Just - overlooked - as in, there's nowhere on this planet I can go for a single second without someone LOOKING at me, seeing me, watching me, hassling me, asking me stupid questions, or just plain being RIGHT NEXT TO ME.

Nowhere.

At work I am at the centre, for good or ill. Probably ill.

At home - HA! No chance. It's a warzone anyway so what hope of a solitary second to be, well, solitary?

In the street - Pfftright - some git in half-mast kecks always comes up and says something like: "You haven't responded, YOUNG MAN, to my amazingly excellent and incredibly BRILLIANT email highlighting the problem of this strange race of men in the trees that I alone have spotted. What do you have to say to THAT?"

Online: Oh Dear God. Let's not even go there.

I need a hideaway. Somewhere.

Yeah.

It seems so obvious now.

The only way out of this is MONEY.

I've never been a big fan of the pursuit of it before.

Which probably explains perfectly why I NEED IT NOW!

Any suggestions?