Hail to Alan Cartridge

This splendidly-named printer shop is right by Leeds-Bradford Airport. This kind of ingenuity in retail is highly worthy of laudation.

What's even better is that their website makes no attempt to capitalise on the joke. Maybe it's not a joke. Maybe the owner is called Alan Cartridge. Who knows?

Anyway, it is infinitely superior to any use of the word "plaice" in the name of a chip shop, or any kind of punning hairdresser's title – and I include in that my own (imaginary) chain of Weimar cabaret-themed barbers, "Mein Herr".

Sadly I don't have a picture of my absolute favourite-named shop in my home town of Boston – "I Can't Believe it's Not Stolen".

I do however, have this one (above, if the reference to "this" is overly confusing), also from Boston. I pity the fool who buys cheap underlay!

By the way, I now have a Twitter account for this blog, under the handle @RogerofSicily if you're into that kind of thing. Become my follower and I will lead you to salvation! All I require is 10 per cent of your gross earnings, for life.

What I have learned about babies

Our youngest had his first bottle of ordinary cow milk today. OK, that was the product of a slight misunderstanding on my part, but oh well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Tancred – pictured here shortly after his emergence into the outside world - is now one year old and is on the brink of walking. He can do it pretty well when supported, but simply prefers to crawl around – it being generally quicker and less likely to end in falling on his face.

So, as I was leaving the house, Elvira and I agreed that Tancred is now not a baby, but a toddler – meaning that the baby-owner/operator stage of our lives is (god willing) over.

This is sad in some ways. Four years ago, I didn't like babies at all. Now I do. I even like babies that are not related to me. I particularly like babies that I have no responsibilities towards other than to briefly amuse before moving well away. And babies are a hell of a lot nicer than toddlers.

Anyway, I thought that at this time it would be appropriate for me to share with you all what I have learned about babies before it all leaks out of the rusty, corroded and poorly lagged pipework of my memory and all that's left is mouldy patches under the lino of history.

1. Baby poo is not frightening

The fear of poo is a big concern for non-parents and new parents. In fact, it is considerably less unpleasant than many day-to-day substances. Cat food, for example.

Newborn babies produce something called meconium, which is greeny-black and alarming to look at, but not generally a problem because it soaks straight into nappies.

Thereafter, what they produce while on a purely liquid diet is no problem either. It typically looks like bird seed in a korma sauce and doesn't smell of anything much. You have to change this kind of baby's nappy every hour or so – so you get plenty of exposure.

It's only when you start weaning them onto solid foods that babies start to produce the kind of noxious, sticky and highly mobile substances that you rightly fear. By then, you should be well prepared.

2. Newborn babies are not fun

Culture and social pressure all assure us that, as soon as you see your new baby for the first time, you are overwhelmed with love for it. Naturally, if this does not happen, you (i) feel immensely guilty and (ii) pretend that it did happen, because you would be publicly marked as a psychopath otherwise.

Well, I'm going to let you on in a little secret. This takes time. Newborn babies are no fun at all. They don't do anything other than flop about and react extremely badly to pretty much every stimulus. Or lack of stimulus.

Your newborn baby will not smile, laugh or even look straight at you with any kind of recognition. They don't do that. Until they are about three months old, babies are pure burden.

Plus, as a new parent, you will have to get used to the kind of self-effacement that does not come naturally to a generation that is used to putting itself first, second and third. You won't sleep, you won't be able to do anything you want to do and you'll be driven to distraction by perpetual crying for which you can find no reason whatsoever.

Sorry, but it's true. The first three months of a new parent's life is really hard because you have to dedicate yourself completely to this little lump that just takes, takes, takes and gives nothing back – and you have been led to believe (i) that it does and (ii) that you're entitled to "me time".

Of course, the love is building up unconsciously – and when they do finally smile, laugh or otherwise acknowledge your existence it bursts through and you realise "Aha! That's what they meant!" and it all falls into place. But unless you've been brought up around babies – which most people these days haven't – you'll be on the brink of collapse into full-blown insanity until that point.

3. Babies are philistines

No matter what your good intentions are in kitting out your baby with lovely old-fashioned wooden toys straight out of the imaginary Dickensian childhood that neither you nor anyone else you know ever had, it will always prefer a gaudy piece of non-sustainable plastic that makes a shrieking noise composed of pure migraine.

The only circumstances under which babies prefer wood to plastic is when they are chewing it.

4. "Baa Baa Black Sheep" is THE SAME as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"

Most of the horrible shrieking toy noises you will have to endure will be one of these tunes. And it will gradually dawn on you that they are THE SAME.

They differ slightly at the "one for the little boy who lives down the lane"/"like a diamond in the sky" parts – although you can still, a la I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, easily sing one to the tune of the other – and "Twinkle Twinkle..." has an extra line at the end. But for all intents and purposes, they are the same.

You will come to hate them both.

And that, dear friends, is everything I have learned about babies. I hope it hasn't put you off – because much like learning to play the piano, it might be a real drag to begin with, but it definitely pays off if you stick with it.

If anyone else has learned anything about babies, please do share with the class below.

The mind is not a muscle

Suppose you have a 35-year-old car. It probably has a bit of wear and tear and a lot of miles on the clock, but you want to keep it in good condition. What do you do?

Most people would lock it up in a garage, put a sheet over it etc etc – broadly, they would not use it so as to prevent further deterioration.

So why is it then, that my efforts to preserve my 35-year-old body and brain by not using them have been so unsuccessful?

I'd say they've actually made things worse.

And if - as when presented with a crappy gift - one instinctively leaps to insist that it's "the thought that counts" have the hours, days, week and months I've spent thinking about getting physically fit had NO EFFECT?

I'm starting to think that the thought doesn't count at all. The hypocrisy of it disgusts me.

Like Berlin 1930

Anyone who thinks that identifying the beginning of the rise of the next wave of neo-fascism in Europe will be as simple as keeping an eye out for bulk purchases of Matalan's discount black shirts is going to be disappointed and surprised.

1930s fascism was totally discredited – more than any other ideology, ever – by the comprehensive defeat of all of its exponents in the Second World War. The trouble is, the stresses and urges that created it haven't gone away. In fact, I'm worried that they are back big time and that an inability to stop obsessing about the superficial exterior forms of 1930s fascism – specifically the Nazis – is blinding us to this.

OK, I completely accept that it would be utterly ridiculous to suggest that there has been any catastrophic dislocation remotely comparable to the First World War and its aftermath in recent times.

I don't think it would be crazy to suggest, though, that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have altered the nature of the relationship between the government, the military and the public in this country.

Eight years of unsuccessful war and a steady drip-drip of casualties have directed public sentiment against the government's conduct of the war, while boosting sympathy for the "betrayed" armed forces. The meteoric rise of very new groups like Help for Heroes is evidence of this.

At the same time, the wars have, if not themselves created, then cemented and reinforced the position of a visible enemy without and within – "radical Islam".

The Cuts, meanwhile, are shortly going to be putting thousands of demobilised ex-military personnel onto the streets without much hope of getting jobs. Many of them will have been fighting overseas, ostensibly for their country against radical Islamism, and they will find themselves out of work, back in a country that – in their eyes – is being infiltrated by the very people they've been trying to kill for nearly a decade. The government and the political class, they will quickly conclude, have given up on them and on the cause they were fighting for.

So, we will soon have a whole lot of trained fighters who are anti-Islamist and very pissed off at being stabbed in the back by the political class on our streets.

Enter groups like the BNP and, I think more significantly here, the English Defence League. "Political militias" were at the heart of the rise of 1930s fascism – alleged patriots defending their nation from communist conspiracies, by going out and kicking the shit out of their enemies.

Of course the EDL don't dress up like a bunch of South American paramilitaries and give Hitler salutes to one another (not officially, at least). Expecting them to do that is to fall into the trap of imaging that fascism is all about appearances. That's like expecting Nick Griffin to sprout a toothbrush moustache overnight. They probably won't use as much BrylCream or have such good posture as Oswald Mosley either.

Surveillance technology today means that thugs – political and apolitical – go around hooded and masked, not wearing their medals.

Ah, surveillance technology... don't forget that most European fascist movements never actually came to power, but instead created atmospheres of disorder and subversion where the governments moved further and further to the authoritarian right, on the one hand to co-opt them against the communists and on the other to suppress them. Again, the uniqueness of the Nazi example blinds us to the perhaps more relevant examples of Romania, Hungary and indeed Italy where battling crazies on the streets led to governments turning to dictatorship in the name of "order".

Civil liberties in this country are being eroded as we speak, thanks to the "enemy within" trope (maybe with Iran playing the role of the Soviet Union).

At the same time, what have we got? Collapse of faith in the political class as a whole and "conventional" political institutions? Check. Unfocussed anger against "international finance"? Check. Unemployment AND inflation? Check. A whole load of newly-democratic East European countries under massive economic and social strain? Check. Popular anti-science sentiments, belief in social decadence and growing millenarianism (only this time environmental rather than "biological")? Check.

Gosh, it does look remarkably like history is repeating itself. Just don't expect them to come wearing tell-tale "baddie" uniforms this time.

Asphodel Field journal

The ancient Greek underworld had three main areas: the Elysian Fields, Tartarus and the Asphodel Fields.

The first two correspond roughly to the Christian concepts of heaven and hell – although admission to the former was more achieved on the basis of heroism than virtue, while the latter was reserved less for the evil than for those who had simply pissed the gods off.

On that, the Greek gods do have a certain compelling appeal. Rather than having to perform logical and verbal contortions to explain how an all-powerful, all-good god allows the world to be such a bloody awful place for most people, most of the time, the Greeks had simply to declare that their gods were a bunch of spoiled arseholes and have done.

Indeed, with its sexual incontinence, all-consuming egocentricity, tendency for random violence and a general attitude reminiscent of an over-tired toddler, the Greek pantheon was a lot less like the Christian god than a bunch of Premiership footballers.

Having three principal zones, the Greek underworld was mathematically 25 per cent less good than The Crystal Maze then, but 50 per cent better than the Judaeo-Christian afterlife.

"Hang on," I hear you say: "What about Limbo?"

To which I'd reply, no thanks it's a bit early in the morning and my back still hurts. PARP PARP.

Well, rather than turn to centuries of theological discussion on this point, I'd simply refer to Wikipedia, which says:

1. Limbo (and Purgatory, before anyone else starts on that) are sub-parts of hell.

2. Limbo is not an officially doctrinally recognised part of any Christian tradition.

Plus, I'm only saying it's not as good as The Crystal Maze.

Obviously, only when Richard O'Brien was running it. For all that "Swords of a Thousand Men" was a fine record, Ed Tudor-Pole was neither a patch on O'Brien, nor was his maze 50 per cent better than the whole heaven-hell combo.

Anyway, you may recall that some time ago, I mentioned the Asphodel Fields – the third and indeed largest part of the Greek underworld.

Before we return to it, another slight digression. The Greek underworld was commonly held to be accessible to mortals via caves and tunnels. Go into the cave, down the tunnel – there's the River Styx, Cerberus, Sisyphus pushing his rock up a hill and all the other familiar stuff of legend.

Now, I accept that the Greeks lacked our sense of scientific falsifiability, but it's hard to imagine that the following conversation (or one like it) never took place:

First Greek: "I hear you went down that tunnel to the Underworld."

Second Greek: "Yeah."

First Greek: "Was the Underworld there then?"

Second Greek: "Well, I didn't find it."

They should then, of course, have concluded that the Underworld was not in fact there. Although I expect – faith playing a typical part in leading people to deny the evidence of their senses and their sense – that they concluded it must, in fact, have been down a different hole.

Greeks, of course, were famed for having long arguments – although the course they took and the conclusions they reached rarely resembled anything you or I would regard as probable. That is, none of the works of Plato relate a tired and emotional Thrasymachus calling Socrates a knobhead and smashing him over the head with an amphora.

It has long been an ambition of mine to rewrite the works of Plato, so that Socrates' interlocutors respond with slightly fewer leading questions and less arse-kissing, and treat the insufferable tit with the degree of patience he deserves. For example, from Book 4 of "The Republic":

Socrates: Let us suppose that philosophical minds always love knowledge of a sort which shows them the eternal nature not varying from generation and corruption.

Glaucon: Not this again.

Socrates: And further, I said, let us agree that they are lovers of all true being; there is no part whether greater or less, or more or less honourable, which they are willing to renounce; as we said before of the lover and the man of ambition.

Glaucon: If you say so.

Socrates: And if they are to be what we were describing, is there not another quality which they should also possess?

Glaucon: I'm sure you're about to tell me.

Socrates: Truthfulness: they will never intentionally receive into their mind falsehood, which is their detestation, and they will love the truth.

Glaucon: Shall we go to the pub? Maybe there will be some hot vestal virgins in.

Socrates: 'Maybe' is not the word; say rather 'must be affirmed:' for he whose nature is amorous of anything cannot help loving all that belongs or is akin to the object of his affections.

Glaucon: What?

Socrates: And is there anything more akin to wisdom than truth?

Glaucon: I'm going now. See you tomorrow.

Socrates: Can the same nature be a lover of wisdom and a lover of falsehood?

Glaucon: (from afar)....Bye!

Back to the Asphodel Fields – pictured here in the imagination of Stuckist Elsa Dax – which, I'm sorry to say, is where most of us are heading if Greek eschatology is correct.

This part of the Underworld is set aside for those who lead unremarkable lives, neither good nor bad – those of whom (in one of my favourite quotes) Thoreau says:

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

The Asphodel Fields are just like real life, only more boring and rubbish. No one quite remembers who they were before, and they just aimlessly wander around like nutters in a giant bus station. For us moderns, I expect it would resemble an endless out-of-town retail park, when all the shops are closed...

So that, dear friends, is the ancient Greeks' message to us and we'd do well to remember it: you are going to be bored forever unless you live a life that is heroic or which really pisses the gods off. If you're really unlucky, you might even end up stuck talking to Socrates for eternity.

I recommend...

If the internet has a purpose, it is presumably to share stuff that one likes.

Well, I love Tom the Dancing Bug's cartoons. And you should too.

You should read his blog too and "Like" him on Facebook and all that other stuff.

If I could draw and I was as funny as in my own head I am - I'd like to think I could come up with something half as good as Tom the Dancing Bug.

ODHSNM Interactive!

Today, ODHSNM begins an experiment. I've been asked to remove the requirement for people leaving comments to be signed in to a Google account – and so desperate to please my audience am I that I will face down the risk of trolls, Russian pr0nographers and Nigerian scammers running riot, just for you.

I reserve the right to delete any comments I don't like or end this experiment at any time, without prejudice or explanation. If I can work out how.

So, as of today, anyone with a finger or a forehead to type with can leave their mark for posterity here on what will undoubtedly come to be regarded as the 21^st century's answer to the diary of Samuel Pepys. Or possibly a minor footnote in the history of bollocks.