Back in the day when poor folk still lived in cardboard boxes, licking road clean for two bob a week, and I was keeping my lice ridden head down in the cream of the English Public School system, avoiding buggery and worse, in the years following the Summer of Love (when paedophilia was the predilection of Rock Gods); back when the lines were drawn more clearly than at present; back then, a somewhat loose-tongued and over-eager teacher let slip the truth that the petty and puerile rules that we  were so energetically trying to subvert were merely a distraction from really major deviations that they didn’t even want us to encounter lest we  seriously transgress. Y’know the kinda rule: Hair length, the cut of yer jacket, tie width, the shape and hue of yer shoe. Fashion rules really.

     Didn’t work. The trail of drug addled rich kids dribbling from squats around the country into heavyweight, raucous demonstrations demanding (with futility it turned out) an end of the class system and its limiting status quo ended, where all junkiedom always ends, in the gutter and the morgue. Somehow they musta known that long hair and serious drug taking weren’t a very good rebellion, but it was a good two-fingered salute to those who perpetuated the myth of respectability, whilst bending all manner of private morality to suit. And, the Junkies might well have had a better time of it than their straight-laced cousins who took the City shilling, bought the suburban domicile and settled for Valium and Viagra. A gutter and morgue all of its own, but with prettier curtains.

     The point here tho’ is; not much has changed. Except that, the edges are less distinct and we have become more complicit in the fudging and transgressing. Bob says (and he’s right, of course) ‘To live outside the Law you must be honest’. We can no longer delude ourselves that our Society is anything more than a flatulent, wasteful generation of Obese Onanists receiving mediated prescriptions with barely alert senses, wanking before the Big Screen and gorging ourselves on obscene quantities of fodder, organic or otherwise. We have allowed ourselves to slide, without resistance, into those terrible Sci-Fi movies of old where Troglodytes eat space food from plastic tubes and march like lemmings through the 7 ages into the furnaces of Oblivion. All our delights along the way emblazoned with guarantees of unending joy, price reductions, bright smiles and tiny waists. And They LIE. All the time.

     It was brought to my attention recently that, because we can not bear the hideous truth of our lost, formerly svelte, selves, clothing manufacturers have taken to lying about the girths of their pants, trousers, skirts, jackets etc by a coupla inches, few centimetres, maybe entire feet. The jeans you buy that say 34” are in fact 3 foot wide, and then some. Because they know that if they told the truth we’d become too distressed to visit the shops and wave goodbye to our youths, so they came up with the stunning Master Plan of lying to us! And we BUY it. The lie, the trousers and the complicity.  We want to be the tight, bright teenagers we probably never were and will listen to anyone who’ll perpetuate the myth. Anything rather than give up the dream. Who was it said that dreams are fine for those who are still asleep? He was probably talking about the Yanks, but let’s face it, we’re blithely following them into the very same Frightmare. Anything wrong with growing up, may I ask?

At the same time I have become aware that no-one’s getting busted for driving at 80/90 mph anymore. People sail past me, on any manner of road, hitting the ton and over and there’s never a flashing blue in pursuit. None of my mates, and let’s face it they all like a bit of virtual rallying, has ever been done by the camera except for breaking a 30 in the ‘burbs. And so my suspicious mind starts to wonder; given the proliferation of Buzzards in the sky and their Pigeon serfs on streetlights, is it because we are actually travelling within the limits, but are being allowed the illusion of rebellion and recklessness? Have Car-makers colluded with the Law and rigged the speedoes? Are we so addled in our motorised sedans that we have forgotten what speed feels like? Do we actually only want the sensation of breaking the law, in the same way that we like the idea that we can still squeeze into the pair of jeans that lies so sweetly? You could ask such questions about any number of consumer goods; the food we eat; the homes we furnish; the news we hear? Do they actually do what the say on the tin? You’d probably haveta come to the conclusion that the answers are lost in a fog of statistics, advertising and celebrity; camera angles, opaque lighting and the digital airbrush (Photo-shoppery, I believe they call it).

And the conclusion to all this? All this conspiratorial, paranoid, jive-talking? What good does it do? Where’s it all heading? Am I suggesting home made clothing, garden shed skunk and marathon speeding sessions down the M1? Wanton carbon emissions, allotment poppies and a wardrobe to make that f@*kwit Clarkson proud? Well, allow me a few more seconds of your valuable peace before yer train stops and disgorges ya at your place of servitude. All of the above is only possible with our tacit agreement: Our unquestioning acceptance of all that is given to us so readily and comfortably (some would argue too readily and much too comfortably). If we stopped to think about the true measurements of our clothes, we might begin to realise that we don’t actually need more clothes. If we would ponder our need for the sensation of speed, p’raps we’d let the train take the strain. And so we must wonder why we don’t ask those questions. Why do we remain complicit in this rampant deceit?

And it seems to me that our complicity is borne of dissatisfaction; with our surroundings, our colleagues, our standards and our selves. Of these, the one that we can most readily take a measure of control over is the self. If we take a long hard look at ourselves and re-member all that we have been through; the grief and pain, the miseries and joys, failures and successes, the wounds and scars, without blinking, we might realise that we aren’t half bad. And that that much goodness is worth nurturing, fostering and sharing. As we do that we might find that our observations on our environment, friends and families are transformed and we don’t need to be that person that squeezes ourself, berates ourself, deceives ourself anymore. A song I never much liked has hoved into my mind, so I’ll steal the melody and change the meaning ‘if you can’t be the thing you love, love the thing you is’. It is, in the end, the best revenge and our only hope. (There is, of course, a part of me that would much rather sing: “I fought the Law and The Law won. But it was a damn good fight!” but where’s the Hope in that?)

In retrospect I should never have kept my head down, I shoulda looked potential buggerers straight in the eye and said ‘No thanks’. I read recently that the Poetess/Singer Patti Smith suffered rape at a tender age, let alone the stigma of not meeting the Prom Queen criteria for beauty that that land holds so high. She shrugs it off saying that it all gets channelled into something else. I thank God that I have this opportunity to unburden myself and turn it into something else and I thank you for reading. Love the Thing you is, you are beautifully and wonderfully made.