A review...

A review from the excellent RnR magazine...

The sad end of Izzy the cat

The death of our cat Izzy last night (I’m writing on 5^th Jan 2018) has turned me into a 7 year old.  I lie awake in the middle of the night with tears in my eyes asking God if he would please look after our little cat.  I worry about her padding into heaven in her presumably rejuvenated little furry body and her wondering what’s happened and where she is.  She might need someone to feed her, find her somewhere warm and cosy to sleep (in fact all manner of places as her favourite places only last (lasted) a week or two before somewhere else would be favoured).  I think that maybe God will ask my lovely grandma (who as I remember ticks all the ‘lovely grandma’ boxes from story books) to look after her – to give her little furry head and ears a rub and talk gently and reassuringly to her and take her in.  My grandma used to buy proper cream.  Perhaps Izzy can have some now, she wasn’t allowed it when she was alive, not that we buy it much.  She loved yoghurt too.  I wonder how we can let Grandma know that Izzy really likes yoghurt and if she’ll understand because you didn’t really get yoghurt in this country when grandma was alive.  And as a 7 year old I don’t think much further than that, I just want someone to look after our lovely friendly old cat.  I want to think that if she can’t be in our good hands then she can be in someone else’s until we can all see her again and like she did in real life she can pad down the road to meet us as we come home, seek us out for company and pad across the pillows as we try to sleep before curling up on the bed.  She’s the first pet I’ve had (though not just mine of course) and when I get to heaven myself I think I’ll be met by Izzy first with my dad and grandma somewhere close behind…

Then I wake up a bit more and it all falls apart.   

In real life her stiffening body lies in the corner of the vets in a plastic box waiting presumably to be picked up by someone in a van, maybe refrigerated but probably not – a van that’s probably a bit stainy and smelly, to be taken away to be dumped into a big incinerator with all the other cats that have died in the city over the last few days – the fat old over-indulged ones fed on virtually fished to extinction tuna (actually they’ll probably be disposed of in other ways), the neglected ones, the kittens found in a sack in the canal, the feral ones found at the side of the road and all the others.  Some will never have had a person to look after them, some will have been suffocated with attention.  But soon they’ll be dust on a mound somewhere no-one knows and no-one talks about. 

We could have had her stuffed.  This seems morbid and weird (and expensive).  We could have had her individually cremated and received her ashes back to scatter in her favourite places.  But where?  Under a radiator?  Next to the tumble drier or in the cupboard under the boiler where she crawled off to (presumably) feel safe when she was ill and, as it turned out in the end, dying?  In some randomly chosen ‘favourite place’ where we imagine she (or somehow her ashes) can watch the trees and the birds?  All seems a bit pointless and still just a tiny bit weird and morbid.  We could have had her remains put into some sort of souvenir casket or turned into some sort of memento.  That also seems a bit weird.  And what happens to that when we go?  Does it get passed lovingly down the generations – the remains of a random dead cat that no-one alive knows or cares anything about being passed down the years, added to the growing pile left by the previous generations?  To be quietly tossed in a bin when the house is cleared I guess. 

We could have buried her in the garden.  But I reckon the garden will be full of 1960s rubble a couple of feet down or near the edge there’ll be endless tree roots - and there are stories of cats buried 6 feet deep being dug up by foxes months later.  And no-one fancies seeing the remains of some black and white fur stuck to some thin bones being dragged across the garden in future months.  And I don’t think we have a decent spade so that’s a few quid too.  And it’s raining heavily.  

We found her not moving in the morning as we got ready to leave for work.  We have a quick look round and are worried she’s gone off somewhere either to die or maybe just in a confused state.  Last night she didn’t seem very with it.  After a suggestion I have a look and see a sort of cat shape at the side of the tumble drier towards the back - but ‘sort of cat shapes’ abound in half light and I can’t count the number of times I’ve nearly spoken to a small pile of clothes or a bag or whatever thinking it’s a cat.  We get a torch and can see she’s lying curled up with her paws out with her head pointing towards the back wall.  We can see a little ear sticking up perkily as it should.  We can’t see her eyes but we shine a torch at her looking for the slightest movement convinced that the light will wake her if she is asleep.  We’re grateful for the fact that she’s not died in the litter tray where she was the night before seemingly not wanting to be moved and showing the first sign of pain as we tried to move her. 

One of us quietly turns the central heating down as we leave.  During the day we read the ‘death bit’ of the cat book and / or look on line for various cat death information - how sometimes wee and poo comes out after death and the body might need cleaning up a bit.  We know now that decay and rigor mortis can set in quite quickly.  When we get home she’s clearly not moved so there’s little chance of it being some sort of deep sleep.  So after arranging a time with the vets we move the table and tumble drier, litter tray and everything else and she’s picked up with gardening gloves to be put in a box – which somehow seems more suitable than a bag of whatever kind.  We know we’re handling a corpse and the gloves seem a good idea.  We talk about what we need to do and quietly ask each other who wants to do what.  We decide to put her in the box and go to the vets in one go so we don’t have her sat in a box while we contemplate what’s happened.

We don’t talk to her body and our daughter doesn’t want to see it at all.  Before we move everything we talk about taking a last picture of her where she lies.  She looks peaceful and asleep next to the back of the tumble drier.  We decide we will and it’s quickly done.  Just one.  More seems tasteless.  I later think that we can show our daughter that she was peaceful and that’s maybe a partial justification.  But I don’t know if, when or where this photo will be filed, if it’ll be labelled and kept or quietly deleted.  But we have it now if we want it.  In a similar vein I guess there’s probably been a debate about having photos taken at people’s funerals.  I think that a few discreet ones of family and friends are taken in the corners of funeral teas these days but that not many people have an 8 by 4 of grandad’s coffin on the mantelpiece…    

We go for the easiest, second cheapest option (after the garden burial) and take her to the vet’s in a plastic box (not the see-through one we initially find) covered in an old pillow case.  We’re not expecting the box or the pillowcase back.  We wonder about going in the back entrance at the vets and I also vaguely wonder if we’ll bump into a little girl or boy in reception who might ask us what’s in the box and want a look.  The pillowcase covers all of her apart from a bit of her tail that pokes out.  This once again turns me again into the tearful 7 year old. 

So back to heaven.  My 7 year old self wants God to look after our cat and make sure she’s OK.  My older self thinks that there’s not a God at all.  My older self thinks that if there were a Heaven then my Grandma would probably be looking after some of the cats that never had a home, or that she’s simply beyond earthly things including cats.  My older self thinks that heaven can’t really have cat friendly places and temperatures.  Heaven can’t have trawlers or abattoirs that mince up other animals so cats can be fed.  And what would be the point in being some sort of disembodied spectral cat?  If a cat is anything it’s a physical thing.  And unlike a person a cat might not get all this afterlife stuff at all. 

Christianity doesn’t seem to think that animals go to heaven - and what religion would want a cat heaven where birds and mice are routinely torn apart for fun?  And after a few decades chasing what presumably must be faux prey or alternatives to prey (balls of wool cut from all the dead sheep?) even cats must get bored and long for it all to stop.  Or perhaps that would be just all the miserable dead people sick of eternity longing for it all to stop.

We tell ourselves various things.  She’d has a good life.  She was quite old, she died in what we presume (there’s a lot of presuming) was her sleep in no particular pain.  We got her from the RSPCA in 2009 and she’d lived (with a woman who died apparently) somewhere else in Leeds for a few years before that.  She’d been ill recently and we thought we’d lose her then.  She bounced back and was quite well for another 3 or 4 weeks so we appreciated her in her last days.  She didn’t linger at the end, she died at home with food nearby (one of those small posh tins – inherited from another tragic dead cat) and water and in a warm place.  She didn’t cost us a huge amount of money in vet’s fees for fruitless operations and whatnot and we didn’t have to feel guilty about putting down a purring cat for want of 2 grand for that potentially (though temporary) life-saving operation.  She sought out company though didn’t much like being over-petted though would occasionally let us get her tummy (and she our daughter do this more often).  She was a lovely friendly cat with her own personality.   

So Izzy the cat has just gone.  We loved her and love is supposed to conquer all but it’s actually just horrible irredeemable pitiless cold death.

But I’m still 7 and I still want someone nice to look after my lovely old cat wherever she is.  I think I will still say ‘please look after my little pussycat’ in the middle of the night.  I think she must be somewhere and I’m crying for my little dead cat.  The boy is the father of the man I suppose…

A couple of days later I’m wondering if she’s been cremated by now and if what’s left of her is flying about on a hill somewhere – or just in a hole on some wet industrial waste site.  I find a clump of her fur where she’d been sleeping a couple of days earlier.  For some reason I don’t put it in the bin where I usually would.  I take it outside.  It blows away in the wind in the garden.  I feel silly and sentimental.  I do it quickly feeling vaguely uneasy that I might be seen by someone.  But I think I’m glad I did.  And it still seems vaguely possible that she’ll just turn up as usual any minute.  My 7 year old self knows that that’s possible and will keep a lookout. 

But my adult self knows that that’s that.  That’s that cat.  No more Izzy the cat. 

   

Wakey Wakey!

The final vid from the Virtually Alive EP...

Filmed mainly from the top of a 110 bus to Wakey from Leeds (it's all glamour being an international artiste y'know...)  When I say 'top' I clearly mean from the top deck, not from the actual top of the bus...Just so as you know...

It's the 'Sapphire Service' by the way - run by Arriva, the state-owned / nationalised company that are allowed to run (some of) our transport.  Every half hour or so from Leeds to Wakey btw...

Treating you once more...

And here's the 5th video for the 5th song on the Virtually Alive EP for your perusal - Treatwise.  Please feel free to put it abart...

Treatwise on the Tube of You...

Armistice Day...

11th November...quite pleased with this song - which is still free from Bandcamp if you'd like to download it. 

 
https://johnparkes.bandcamp.com/track/the-fields

And yet again...

Blimey, another video - this is for Unicorns - live in the studio as they say - take 4 I believe.  But it is a bit odd seeing a video of me actually playing the actual version that appears on the actual EP - because that doesn't happen very often, actually.

The video for Unicorns

Yes, we have got a video!

And almost before you'd seen the last video 500 times here comes the new one - for 'News' from the new Virtually Alive EP. 

Here's the link...

The new video - 'News' from the Virtually Alive EP

That's me old mate Simon Smith on the sort of looped drums...and me on swinging singing and guitar...

Hope you like it - feel free to send everyone to the John Parkes 61 channel on the Tube of You to watch it and t'others.

And the second video is...out now!

And here's the link to the second song on the Virtually Alive EP - 'The Devil Takes'.  I think this is probably the best one - starring Simon Smith and Alaric Lewis as well as me in various unflattering and disrespectful guises...

'The Devil Takes' video on YouTube

Bookings Fees? - I'm out

Here's a mad idea for you.  If a ticket has a price on it how about there being a way to buy that ticket for that amount?  I think it should be illegal to advertise a price for something that is actually not the price and that you can't actually buy it for.  Call me a crazy muddle-headed fool  but the price to me is the amount you actually pay to get the actual thing.  No ifs, no buts, the price of a ticket should be the amount it says on the ticket.  Totally at odds with modern business practice I know. 

Here's a small example, I turned up to the 02 Academy in Leeds recently.  I took a special trip to the box office.  I didn't even want to pay by card (which incidentally is usually free except in the world of concert tickets) - and there was still a fee of a pound - to print the damned ticket!  The man pressed a button on his computer next to the ticket window and the roll of cardboard blank tickets rolled through the machine - that's a quid then - and the possibility of paying the face value of a ticket gone.

Another example - you used to be able to turn up to the First Direct Arena booking office and not pay a booking fee.  They've now introduced one - to keep them in line with others or some such we-saw-you-coming-you massive-mug nonsense.  It's several quid a ticket.  My back of the fag-packet calculation tells me they're adding a cool 15% and helping themselves to an extra up to about £75,000 for a sell-out concert - and the chance of buying a ticket at what is still euphemistically called (and I quote) 'the full ticket price' an impossibility.  Presumably the poor sod in the booth is getting minimum wage or something close...

So...that's me done.  I'm not going anywhere unless I can buy a ticket for the ticket price.  The rip off set of ****s 

Roll up Roll up etc - New video

The Hoam Maid video for The World's End (from the Virtually Alive EP) is now 'live' / available / watchable etc on YouTube:

The World's End video...

Updates, just updates...

It's all about updates this week at AAZ Records (North) as we change and update stuff on here ready for the release of the Virtually Alive EP.  We've discovered that Blogger isn't perfect at saving font sizes and changing colours and whatnot so you'll find the odd inconsistency on here that we may have spotted and  unsuccessfully tried to fix.  There may of course also be some user error.  At some point we may re-design this whole thing but for now it's got stuff crammed on and it's sort of organised though you may find the odd bit of information in more than one place.

So...we're directing everyone to Bandcamp to buy stuff initially - this is certainly the best way to buy a CD rather than a download.  Hopefully everything will pop up in iTunes etc. soon.  Between you and me the release date is a bit flexible.  It's available quicker in Bandcamp and you get a free bonus track there (though that's download only it's not on the CD) and that money comes fairly directly to those of us who need it to feed hungry studio bills and manufacturing costs etc. though the Orchard do get things around globally which is marvellous of course.  They're our digital distributors, the people (or bots probably) who get things to iTunes and the rest.  

Damn you Helen Lederer

Somehow, wading through the swamp of shite that is  MSN or somewhere I came across a mention of Celebrity Big Brother.  You'd think they'd have a new one of these every year but it seems to be every few weeks.

As ahem, 'regular readers' will know I'm a fan of the contention that the modern definition of a 'celebrity' or celebriddy as I prefer (to honour Smashie and Nicey) is a person that hasn't done anything, isn't famous and no-one has heard of.  So I'm always slightly disappointed when I see a list of who's on 'Celebrity' Big Brother to find out I know who they are.  I feel I'm getting closer and that my definition of celebrity is also getting closer to reality - but still not quite there.

But today I mistakenly clicked on a link to a list of the latest Celebrity Big Brother contestants - and Helen Lederer has come along to spoil it - the one person on CBB who I've heard of.  Damn!  To be fair I had heard the name Derek Acorah though I couldn't have told you what he did - not much by the looks of it, but then that is part of the definition.  And to be fair I recognised that bloke who used to be in Eastenders when I saw the picture, though I didn't know his name.

But if it wasn't for Helen L I could (sort of) have claimed my 100% prize.  It is a bit depressing though.  Apart from her the others are mainly an assortment of teeth, jaws, stubble and suits (the men) and teeth, cleavage, hair and make-up (the women).

Presumably some people know who they are and some of them must have done something or other if nothing productive or interesting - and I expect some of them are good people.  Who have stumbled into a swamp full of shite.  Which is where I came in.

Damn you Helen Lederer...

PS am |I being patronising and sniffy and needlessly dismissive - you're damned right I am! 

The advertising agency, the whole advertising agency and nothing but the advertising agency

KFC.  The chicken they sell in their takeaways is full of claws, combs, beaks and feathers.  I didn't think it was but they tell me it is.  Who does?  The eco-green left?  Anti-capitalist protesters?  Internet click-bait spreaders?  No, KFC themselves.  I saw a poster - It had their logo all over it and everything - and a picture of a 'colonel' as I recall.  The advert said "The chicken, the whole chicken and nothing but the chicken".  They even had a massive picture of a chicken on the poster to illustrate the point.

So...KFC tell me via their ad agency that they use the whole chicken.  They didn't say 'except for some of it', 'except for the nasty bits' or anything.  No they're clear.  It's 100%.  The whole thing.  The whole chicken.  Anyone out there that thinks that the concept of 'a chicken' doesn't include beaks and claws and feathers etc?  Thought not...

Also - it's 'nothing but' the chicken.  So presumably there are no added special secret herbs and spices and battery stuff (battery stuff, see what I did there?!)*

So...KFC tell me that their chicken has got all the inedible bits in as well as the bits I thought might be in included and that it's only the whole chicken.

Their advert told me.  Presumably their advert actually meant something other than what it says.  But I take them at their word.  Actually I don't, but I do wonder yet again how this got past the most junior member of staff saying 'er, hang on a minute, that gives a really shit impression of our product'.
I'm told not to take it literally by people I know but I don't have time for thinking about what on earth KFC thought they were trying to get at only what they actually said.      


*If you did miss it I meant 'battery' as in 'like batter' i.e. the coating on the chicken bits but clearly the word 'battery is associated with battery farming of chickens.  I hope you're grateful to me for going to the trouble to explain this - I could have left you in the dark - the whole dark and nothing but the dark...

A Festival ad and nowt else this post...

Normally my posts are moans about things.  This one is just to say that I'm playing at the Staxtonbury Festival near Scarborough on Saturday (8th July) at 5pm on t'acoustic stage.  And that's not a moan

Btw if you go round to rob my house you will find people in so don't bother.  Ta.

http://www.staxtonbury.com/

Maintaining an election at 65 grand a year plus expenses?

Just a quick question...since the BBC has been telling us all day that from today there are "no MPs but only candidates" until the election presumably they don't get paid until and unless they get elected to the paid job of MP? Just a thought...

No need to run out of toilet paper...

Tescos today.  18 items bought.  Receipt is 80cm long.  Didn't even need a receipt really.  Waste paper.  Planet doomed.  Tescos fault...

Flowers solved! Cognitive dissonance dissolves...

Phew...flower mystery solved!  The answer to the question I posed re International Women's Day turned out to be...(opens correct envelope and pauses for effect for 30 seconds)... 'Polish wife'...

So, yes, it's an old Soviet / Eastern European tradition thing this giving flowers to women on IWD and not some weird commercial warping take over of feminism by Interflora or whoever...For once cognitive dissonance dissolves.

International keep 'er indoors sweet wiv a banch a flaars?

Well, here's a thing.  I came across a bloke taking flowers home for his wife today as it's International Women's Day.  Took me aback a bit.  I did make some sort of joke, though it wasn't quite as neat as what I might have said.  That would have been something along the lines of 'you're not going to bring down the Patriarchy with them mate'.

I've always associated IWD with equality and women's rights and feminism.  When I were a lad the idea of buying a woman flowers was suspect to say the least - trying to buy women off with 'I know you don't have rights and equal pay and whatever but there you go love, here's some pretty flowers to occupy the space in your fluffy little head'.  Something like that anyway.  And it seems to me that flowers in this country have been the traditional attempted get out of jail free card of choice for the male chauvinist - so he does something dreadful but it's all fine again after he presents her with a bunch of flowers from the petrol station in 1970s sitcom style.

Have I missed something?

Suite 6 Phase 2 - Mind the doors please...

I do like a good bit of bureaucracy.  And a meeting of dubious necessity.  Here's a recent (and real) email: 

Dear Tenants

Xxxxx Xxxx will be  holding  a meeting in Suite 6 phase two building at 10.00am  on the 9^th February -  regarding the new front doors phase two

Could you please arrange for one member of staff to attend the meeting – this person can then pass any information on to the other members of staff

Thanks you for your cooperation 

Thanks  

Get there early I guess!  I don't think these doors are like new doors to Westminster Abbey or anything btw (btw stands for 'by the way' btw - someone asked me what it meant by email today.  When I told them they said 'I'd never have got that'! - Just goes to show...)

Update on celebrating the death of millions

Just a quick additional comment on the pie that Marks and Sparks created to 'celebrate the death of millions' (which they really actually did obviously...)  I missed something.  Something obvious.  That is that there are people out there working for (or interned by I suppose) 'news' websites whose job is to generate clickbait.  One of the ways of doing that is of course to trawl Twatter to find somebody saying something 'controversial' (must take them minutes sometimes) that they can put on their website as a 'controversy' - and in some cases it becomes a click-through baitey solid gold storm in a Twattery for 5 minutes and traffic increases as people check it out - and then click on adverts and buy stuff as everyone does obviously (almost as obvious as the M&S policy to celebrate mass murder...)

The celebrate mass-murder pie was of course one of these.  I mistook it for an actual debate not a 'that lad over there called you a puff'' type 'controversy' from school.  Must either pay more or less attention...