Andrew Reid: Curb Your Enthusiasm

A falcon soars above the low hanging clouds, and then it swoops down into the drizzle, persistent fucking rain pelting it’s wings, and then it settles on top of a building, once known as the Hilton hotel, but now just like most of the rest, a rusting old building hollowed out to keep the constant rain off a power generator, sucking up methane gas from the foundations where 100 years of waste is rotting. The fowl gas now rises up through every drain, every ditch, every canal and waterway, and hangs low in the watery smog over the plane. The sun hangs like a giant orange bowl of soup over the horizon as if stranded in a constant sunset, and all the scrubby tower blocks are bathed in a strange twilight glow.

The Falcon hears a bang echo from the far corner of the otherwise silent city centre, and fixates it’s stare in that direction, what does he see? Then a second noise echos around the buildings, and from behind a bullet slices through the air pelting just past the falcon’s head in the direction of his stare, and the startled falcon flies off, but now we travel with the bullet, zooming over dusty streets below, rusty trams parked in the entrances of stations, roofs of buildings rushing past us on both sides and then we come to a small window on a tower block. Each window glows a faint blue. The window is shattered as the bullet flings against it in one last act of defiance and glass falls limply onto a man’s desk.

The man sits silently as if nothing has happened, leafing through one page of documents after the other, and he tosses some away down a shoot - the paper falls like a bird’s feather down the shoot, casually fluttering off the metal sides, until it lands on top of yet more paper. Our view of this widens to reveal more and more paper, until our view is so far away from the document that all we can see is a football pitch sized underground rubbish bin. Suddenly, a liquid is sprayed in from jets on the walls, one after the other the jets start up, and then…. with a ferocious noise they ignite into flame throwers, fire burning everything inside this football pitch sized bin, providing heat for the thankful inhabitants of the tower block.

These inhabitants are hard at work, along with the power generators these are the other vital foundations of the city, without them the city wouldn’t exist. They have perfect management in place, management of laws, management of crime, management of travel and the economy. They control and they administer.

Without these people, everyone would perish, everyone would starve, everyone would be unable to maintain the heat and energy required for the administration of survival. And survival - life for ALL the unfortunate children of this warped city, is nothing but administration and documents.

The city is a living breathing thing, which is more than you can say for this man, stood on the edge of a bridge above a silent train line. And from a distance I see him fall, like a moving dot on the landscape, a tiny movement on a huge vista, yet it still effects me. The only impact his passing has is the faint thudding echo as he hits the ground.

Then I see a vehicle arrive on the bridge. Uniformed men leap out and go down the embankment to the railway line. They pick up the body and together, it takes 7 of them to carry his fat corpse back to the hydrogen powered vehicle above. As I watch this, an identical pristine gleaming van goes past me on the side of the street, towards a tower block.

At the tower block, the roads converge. One after the other, the vans arrive, dumping the bodies into the giant document incinerators below. The guy who just jumped - his name is Anull, we know this because a thousand layers down through the stack of documents lies his birth certificate, and besides that is his most recent purchases, on a database print out. Just food, nothing special. And I can’t show you any more because now flames burn through the papers with such force that they vanish in seconds, vaporised. And Anull’s actual and written existence turns to heat, rises heavenly and ends up in Administration Office 74.

Old man as I am, I remember where all this started, in the Manchester Council Tax office in 2008. The collection of waste was outsourced to a private company, who began to charge the proud inhabitants of the city a surplus charge on top of what they already paid the council in tax.

Eventually, all the tax paid to the council was used to fund the collection and administration of the tax itself.

The council became like a cancerous parasite, feeding off it’s host but offering nothing in return. Eventually as the years past and the system drained the lifeblood from the city, the children of tomorrow are born into a present concerned only in generating yet another pointless tomorrow.

Standing on a building looking down, I jumped and for a moment I remembered the falcon I saw drifting with his wings outstretched through the air.

Ahh - that feels good for a moment…

But I’m a ghost, I died 50 years ago, and I wasn’t expecting this as my afterlife. I’d become part of the universe. A floating piece of information - a digit in a huge mathematical structure. Here was my mind, but everything around me was no longer physical, my senses were no longer human - everything was a structure, a collection of data. I had even less fucking freedom than when I was alive!

I thought how ironic it now was, that the godless and soulless world had become closer to the real God after all.

Dateline: 2009. Location: Gotcha City

A panoramic view of the clouds from above, we hurtle through the atmosphere and into the streets of Gotcha City. A flat! Somewhere down town! A seemingly normal couple sit on the sofa for their millionth night of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire.

But just like the celebrity pairing of Jordie and Andre with their disabled child in a cage, who are just about to ask the audience to progress to £10, this is NO ORDINARY COUPLE.

THEY ARE: SUPER COUPLE.

Night time, and an atmosphere of calm descends on the city. Down below and also above, many inhabitants are going about their daily business without so much as a care in the world. Suddenly, hurtling out of the sky comes an evil baddy, in fact not one - but two evil baddys! (They are married).

Meanwhile back in Super Couple’s flat, and just as Jordie answers correctly to win £100 with one lifeline remaining, a lifeline of a completely different kind is required! Screams reverberererberberberate from the streets below. TOGETHER they stick their head’s out of the window. “Oh no! It’s Evil Couple down there!”

Evil Couple: hand in hand they stride down the street, knocking shoppers and old ladies out of the way, while occasionally admiring a baby in a pram, stopping to cooo.

Cooooo. Cooo. Coooo! Cooo. Couchy coo! 

And then they’re on their way. Glum faces, but proud, striding forward. Where are they going? Why - oh no - they’re heading straight for a divorce!

Cars fly through the air, dustbins are overturned. A giant gas tower is hurled like a kitchen plate into an apartment block, and thin skinny inhabitants wail out of the window, their straggly arms limp, pathetically dangling and swaying below them as they struggle to get away from the flames. 

Suddenly, calm is restored. It was only a trial-separation after all!! But uh oh - now they’ve made up, they’re heading straight for a gig!

Now the TV quiz show has ended, they’ve done the washing up and had a cup of tea, Super Couple know it’s time to save the day. In a blink of the eye they change into their honey moon clothes, and after a quick snog to make them feel a bit more secure, they rush into the lift on the way to the ground floor. The lift rushes down the shaft, *woosh* *woosh* *woosh* goes one floor after another and then a brief pause and a *ding!*. John gets into the lift. John, a single guy on his way to meet his friend to play on ‘a computer golf game’. He’s sad! He’s pathetic! He enters the lift, head bowed low. Super Couple look down AT THE TOP OF HIS BALDING HEAD. John feels small, and whilst doing so, he nervously reaches for his iPod and the lift goes on it’s way. At the bottom, with a quick flick of their hands Super Couple pushes John out of the way and exits the building as quickly as they can. They’re here to save the day!

Gig. 42nd Street. Just off 41st Street. The band - Twisted Cans of Piss, are playing when suddenly - BANG! Super Couple enter the room, the music tails off. “We have an emergency people! Get out…get out as fast as you can!!” But before anybody can bother to listen, a second bang reverberererberberberates around the room! It’s Evil Couple!

Evil Couple slowly rise a shiny object to the air - oh no - it’s their wedding ring! Immedately, a spait of desperate single people fall to the ground and shiver in a ball. A guy called Dave turns to his girlfriend - “Look…we betta get outta here!”…”No…” Says the girlfriend, trailing off. “The ring…the ring…”. “What is it Jane??” says Dave, intently. “It’s so beautiful!”.

“Noooooooooooooooo!”

Dave grabs Jane by the arm and wizzes her through the crowd, who are all beginning to panic. A small girl with wirey arms and thin wrists falls to the ground, and is trodden on by a heard of people rushing in all directions, trying to find the exit, pulling their doey eyed girlfriend’s by the wrist.

“Over there!” shout Super Couple, firing a flaming arrow into the wall above the exit door. The door is illuminated immediately.

“Oh no you don’t” whispers the Evil Couple to each other, a flash of laser light imminating from the wedding ring, destroying the wall which crumples around the door, blocking the exit.

To be continued… 

Lunch time, a busy day at the (house arrest) office, and I pop out to pick up a penguin (parcel). From the wrong branch of the post office. So after going half way to Rochdale I went back into the city centre and to Newton Street, to a post office I didn’t know existed, to pick up my penguin.

In the cue was a dear old lady clutching her credit card. She wanted to pay for her 30 pence stamp with her Visa. She put the card in the wrong way up in the card PIN machine, and then when instructed otherwise put the card into the slot at a wonky angle and less than half way in. She didn’t appear to be very fussed about it, she just looked at the machine assuming it would work, or somehow suck the card in with it’s cheeks, before doffing it’s hat and bidding her good day.

Well, 20 minutes later the spectacle was truly unfolding, as she struggled gamely to put the card into the slot straight and all the way.

Now look - I know that the dear old generation of yesteryear has had to put up with some huge changes in the world…but if all that the frightening new technology I have to deal with in 2050 consists of is a keypad and a slot, I can’t see myself struggling.

If it was a giant robot with arms trying to prod my eyeballs to the back of my skull with big flashing lights on it’s belly to distract me, then fair enough - I might, as an elderly gentleman of 70, struggle a little. But in the post office of 2008 there are no such technological challenges - just a machine with a slot in it for a plastic card.

Call me cruel, call me insensitive, but I feel she should have done better.

It’s not a new thing, I’m sure in the flushes of youth as a toddler she was gamely putting round pegs in round holes, and telling her teacher all about the day she tried putting the triangle block in the square hole and made it fit with a hammer.

Maybe that’s what the elderly need to be equipped with. Not an instruction book or a new brain, but with hammers.

When encountering a unit of machinery that annoys them, they’d simply get out their hammer and mash it in.

It’d be the start of a fight back against technology, elderly mankind against the shiny new machine-race. (Or would that be unacceptable and machin-ist?)

Why only today I had the urge to gather my massive penny jar, take it to the spangly new HSBC at St Ann’s Square, stride up to the brilliant new automatic note scanning paying in bucket machines with a giant smile on my face whilst opening it’s little plastic mouth and pouring my jar of penny’s into the delicate laser guided note dispenser, whilst shouting STUFF THAT IN YOUR GOB YOU FAT LITTLE BASTARD!

Footnote: the parcel wasn’t at the post office after all that. They’ve lost it. I asked the poor foreign postal worker sarcastically if ‘I’d find it on the moon’ but she too me seriously and said no, it was more likely to be back at the sorting office for redelivery.

This weekend was absolutely brilliant. A long bank holiday, REM dropped in at the cricket ground, Emma dropped in on the flat warming party in 210, everything went according to plan.

On Saturday night I had a wonderful time at the party with Andy and his new girlfriend. Matt was there with his fiancé, and earlier Emma had texted me wondering what I was doing, so I said “Hey, why not come to Andy’s party”. Andy was glad to meet her, I think he thinks she’s really down to earth and normal, which is great because you can’t have such strong friendships without respect.

I was wearing my new Ed Hardy panther t-shirt all weekend, just wearing that made me feel good. It’s amazing what a difference clothes can make, especially if you can identify with the designs and labels. I’d always choose a label over anything else though, because what’s really important is that other people see that you have taste.

It was great to hear from Gee and Tabby again too. It’s been a while, but they seem to be settling into Prestbury now and it was good to get a message from Tabby on Facebook, asking when they’d get to see the owl t-shirt. See - again! Clothes are important, and the owl t-shirt has been with me for a whole year now. It’s inspired by my favourite band of all time (after REM don’t forget!)…rap group the Black Eyed Peas.

Well, the crowd at the REM gig was a huge mixed up group of people - people of all ages really, but what surprised me most of  all was that there wasn’t any drunken louts to spoil it. When I went to the front of the stage at the start of the gig and squeezed in to take some photos, two guys who looked like they might be a bit rowdy simply put their beers down and began admiring my new camera, saying how they thought Sony were beginning to make some really good digital SLRs.

All in all I take nothing but positives from this weekend, and the tram ride back from the cricket ground after REM finished was really smooth. It just makes me confident that Manchester is being well run, that the transport is so good and I bet the new trams due in 2012 will be even better. I can’t wait.

I am also really pleased that my mate Sam is turning things around, his attitude is brilliant at the moment. He says he’s going to put his illustration business to one side while he gets a job as an accountant. I think he’ll really enjoy having the money and being able to do whatever he likes with his free time, because after all is said and done freedom is very important. Recently I found some really cheap flights to Germany, and I was very excited about them. I think Sam felt the same way, saying he was really glad I’d found them and would look forward to going on holiday himself at some point. Me - I’m just glad to still have my health and youth, 28 is such a brilliant age to be. You can travel the world with no strings attached, and these cheap flights are great. I’m going to Berlin next month, and after working so hard recently I could really do with the break. Sam was pleased for me, saying that it’d be “good for you”.

At the party…well I’m glad Andy has got a girlfriend almost as soon as moving to Manchester. I hate these people who moan about their mates spending all their time with their girlfriend. It’s not as if you’re Ringo Starr in The Beatles whilst Yoko Ono is in the studio. Get a grip lads!

I really feel positive about the future me and Emma might have, because we really clicked… she shares a similar sense of humour, quite dry and sarcastic at times. When we left the party together I accidentally dropped my beer bottle outside Andy’s door! Whoops. How we laughed about that. I made sure I appologised to Andy though, and he didn’t mind at all. I actually think he reckons I’m a pretty chilled out guy.

Well, next month my sister finishes her jail term, so that’s also something to look forward to. She’s been in Cornwall serving time, but I hear she’s made some good paintings with all the spare time she had behind bars. When she comes out I’m going to make sure I buy her a £2000 dress, just because money speaks volumes about how much you care for your family. In fact, when my website starts making more money, I’ll probably give it to my mum so instead of living in a nursing home with her dying dog, she can instead stay in a cottage in Scotland, painting the wilderness on her canvas up on the moors, and in the evening relaxing by a classical fireplace with her new dog, which I’d also buy for her.

Without money, none of this would be possible of course.

That’s why, I’m really looking forward to working even harder this week. 

It’s summer and Facebook has become a boring twitter in my ear.

“So and so is counting down to the festival”

“So and so is buying a tent for the festival”

“So and so is counting down to the festival every day for the next 30 days”

Andrew Reid is counting down to Berlin at 100hz. How would you like that, festival goers? How interesting would it be if I uploaded my entire travel itinerary to your laptop with a Steven Hawking voice reading it out every single day until I fucked off on a plane?

Is this constant stream of counting-down there to drown out the sound of an empty void of a life, the occupier of which has nothing to say and nothing to do until the next big piss up? *

I have also noticed another strange facet of human behaviour, as revealed by the summer festivals. a) that students can afford a £300 weekend in a muddy field and that b) girls get very excited about sex in tents.

Isn’t it kinky, having sex in a tent?

Just don’t thrust too hard or the airbed will explode like a burst balloon, powering out of the tent and down the road like a kamikaze military hovercraft on it’s way to Vietnam.

Yes, isn’t it kinky. Once you finally get all the images of Barbara Windsor in a Carry On film out of your mind and get down to business all you need to worry about is that nearby tractor, which could reverse over your naked arse at any moment.

Don’t scream too much either, as you might wake up your single friend in the other tent - actually don’t worry about that because he’ll be awake all night anyway, with images of Barbara Windsor’s tits flapping about in his head whilst pondering the meaning of not having a girlfriend - i.e. that the meaning of his life is somehow lacking in this context (or along those lines).

I guess the students all spending my money on £300 festival jaunts don’t need to worry about at least one of these things while enjoying the music and sex in their tents. Mercifully they’re too young to remember Carry On Camping. Instead they feel very trendy about paying £300 to sleep in a muddy field in the middle of nowhere.

At the British Grand Prix, the atmosphere on the camp site and the partying was one of the main features of the weekend. But I find it strangely puzzling that girls going to festivals get so excited about tents when you have 40 of the best bands in the world on your flap-step. I’d even be so cynical to claim that the girls don’t actually go for the music and that they just want to escape modern life.

Could it be that tents at a festival give people a feeling of intimacy and togetherness which office work just doesn’t quite provide?

I’m all for getting back to that way of living but when all is said and done I don’t share the excitement about sex in a tent, buying a tent, or anything to do with tents, especially when it costs £300 to see the Kaiser Chiefs.

* Disclaimer: no offence intended, its not your fault your life is shit**

** Again no offence intended, I was only joking there ***

*** To all my festival going friends I was only joking throughout the entire blog ****

**** Accept if you’re a cock, then all offences intended *****

***** Disclaimer does not apply for cocks

People are a victim of their own success.

Better than dogs, more intelligent than monkeys, stronger than cats but pretty weak compared to tigers, we really seem to be ruling the planet at the moment.

It won’t go on.

We have a fatal flaw: pleasure. It’s pleasure that overrides everything else.

Put simply, we’d rather go shopping than save the planet and we’re too busy earning money to give a shit about each other.

Previously I thought he was a bit of a Tory tosser but the political columnist for the Times (Matthew Paris) got it resoundingly right when he pointed out that there were an unusual amount of rude Italian tourists pushing their way onto the tube every day. Every year it seems to get worse, he wrote. 

He wonders how to reconcile the new generation, the Italian tourists obsessed with “Consumerism, junk television, brand addiction and mindless celebrity worship - with the Italy of Venice, da Vinci, Verdi and the Medicis?”

Most people would cast this off as the bizarre ramblings of an intellectual snob. But have you walked down the street recently? There are so many annoying people about.

Image conscious, obsessed with the tabloids, rude and go-getting, utterly spellbindingly selfish, amazingly ungracious, stunningly beautiful and well dressed.

At least they do have a couple of positive traits. 

Then there are the genetic failures littering up the streets, the dregs of society who drag their arms along the ground and up escalators. To them it doesn’t matter that they’re like something from a zombie film, as long as they’re wearing a label and some gold.

I don’t have a low opinion of people generally. But I’m not blind.

It doesn’t take da Vinci to work out that something has gone wrong.

I know for a fact that bastards exist in huge numbers. The irony is whilst I am judging them purely on looks, its one of the major traits of the Bastard Generation that they put such importance in looks.

I went out with a friend at the weekend, whom I’m sure he’d be the first to admit, is not in the fittest human shape that is deemed possible at the moment. He’s not Brad Pitt. 

I have socialised with mates who aren’t exactly Johnny Depp and with friends who are actually very good looking. The difference in people’s reactions is amazingly clear cut in terms of respect, adoration and attention. Nobody likes a racist but how is it any different judging people on how pretty they are? The scary thing is, the ‘lookist’ in all of us is inherent to our human nature. We’re all racist when it comes to looks. Whilst the judgement is automatic in your brain, the only thing you can change is how you rationalise it. If you have an ugly friend, does it matter as long as he’s a good person? Sadly, to most people, it does. Because they have social pressures on them, ever since school, not to hang out with ugly people.

This will be the result of all this consumerism, junk television, brand addiction and mindless celebrity worship. A million broken hearts for no reason, a million people with no friends because everyone in their town is obsessed with the things in life, which frankly, do not matter one jot in the grand scale of things.

The thing is, people who look like God’s accidental scribble should not have anything to be afraid of. They should not have to have low self confidence just because everyone has turned on them and victimised them.

How’s this for a call to arms, to love, to live and to sleep together: 

“All you need is love”.

John Lennon was no oil painting, but he was RIGHT.