I've Got Summink to Say

Robert Jackson’s Magnum Oafus

  • An Ode to George Orwell

    Good evening my small band of disciples, after a slightly fractious assessment with my Psychiatrist I appear to have managed to get my medication cut in half from low to very low so there appears to be some cause for cheer. I’ve had a few small vodkas but I’m not drunk and fancied writing something tonight but didn’t know what. My original plan to suggest men and women shouldn’t wear scent on a first date but should instead rely on natural hormones doesn’t appear to be backed up by science so instead I’ve decided to try my hand at writing a short story.

    There are some very talented writers on WordPress and I won’t claim to be counted amongst them but I had a lot of fun when I tried a bit of simple scriptwriting and I paid for the privilege with hard currency so I’m reserving the right to free speech here.

    So here it is, a short story in the style of 1984 titled:

    Comply, Conform, Cooperate

    The day started normally enough for Derek Simpkins, the alarm sounded at 6.00am sharp and he rubbed his tired eyes as he rose and prepared himself a breakfast of juice and cereal.

    After freshening up with a shower Derek put on a newly pressed work uniform; today was an important day, he was going to find out if the editor was pleased with the article he’d written for the Authority periodical. He’d been given free reign to write and had based his article on a conversation he’d had with his father when he was a child.

    “When I was growing up we had freedom of speech” his father had told him. Derek knew how important freedom of speech was and how the Authority guaranteed it for all citizens.

    Just as Derek was putting his pass on his uniform the emergency siren sounded and Derek heard the safety bolts automatically slot into place on the exits to his premises and heard the quiet motors of the safety shutters as they slid down to cover the windows.

    Wondering what the alert was for this time Derek turned on the information portal in his room to be met with an increasingly familiar warning ‘Subversive activity detected in your zone. You must remain inside until safe’.

    This was the third time in the last year that Derek’s zone had been locked down due to subversives. The first time was shortly before his partner Adam had been promoted to an out of zone role working in the Crypto mine. Fortunately the security authority was excellent and the threat was usually extinguished by the end of the day.

    There was only one thing to do, join the multitude playing the Nation’s favourite multiplayer game of strategy ‘Comply, Conform, Cooperate’.

    Logging on Derek noticed that he was now on level 3 ‘Social Acceptance’. The first mandatory task was to read the lengthy instructions on how to complete the level before joining the game.

    It took Derek around 4 hours to complete the level and his final assessment informed him he was in the top 10% of all participants, his usual rank.

    Wondering what to do next and when the subversive activity would be quelled Derek used his mobile portal to check his credits. Noticing he had been debited three days of his monthly allowance for the cost of Comply, Conform, Cooperate he consoled himself that it had kept him occupied until early afternoon and went to prepare himself lunch. He was hoping this lockdown wouldn’t last as long as the second one which left him without food for two days before the all clear was given.

    Fortunately around an hour after lunch the all clear sounded and Derek used the opportunity to video chat with the editor.

    “Sorry old bean” started the editor “we didn’t publish your article but don’t despair we really like your style and want you to write an article reviewing Comply, Conform, Cooperate. You can take the rest of the day off work but remember to start first thing tomorrow at 8.00. We can’t pay your allowance for today, Authority policy.”

  • A Little Bobby Drizzler

    It’s a pretty miserable day here, cold, windy and wet but I still ventured out early this morning to the Sandon boot sale having discovered it was on.

    I didn’t expect too much and unsurprisingly there were only about two dozen stalls there today and not so many buyers but I still found some interesting things.

    In fact I only bought off the one seller but a number of items. First a couple of pieces of old Royal Crown Derby which I paid £2 for and promptly sold to another stallholder for £6 (I bought him a cup of coffee as a gesture of goodwill).

    Next a Royal Doulton Carnation part dinner service in varying condition for £12 (about 40 pieces). I bought this because I already have a dinner service in this pattern but I wanted the bowls. The rest will get sold when I stall out next spring.

    But the two things I am most pleased with are here:

    The cup and saucer are 19th century Spode and the backstamp dates them to about 1840. The set’s in lovely condition and cost me just £1. It’s joining my collection but if I did decide to sell it I would hope to get £20-£30.

    The mug (not me!) is a Royal Doulton King Edward VII coronation cup from 1902 and is also in very good condition. It cost me just 50p. That said it’s not particularly valuable as these were produced in large numbers and I’ll probably add it to my collection until I decide what to do with it.

    Do I really need any of this crockery? No; I really need this crockery.

  • My Potty Pottery Proclivity

    Daily writing prompt
    What is one thing you would change about yourself?
    View all responses

    Yes folks it’s time for another potcast, I just can’t stop buying pottery and porcelain of dubious worth because it’s interesting to me (it may be an autistic trait).

    Here’s today’s charity shop find (along with some CD’s I’ve been listening to all afternoon).

    It’s a little Japanese egg cup (I suppose it could double as a sake cup!) that probably dates from the 1950’s or thereabouts. There’s a few similar for sale on ebay but not too many although they really don’t appear to be particularly sought after looking at prices.

    I particularly like the decoration in bold primary colours but now I’ve bought it I’m wondering whether it’s not my eggs that are hard boiled but is in fact my wits that are completely scrambled.

  • A Middle Aged Man’s Lament

    Daily writing prompt
    What technology would you be better off without, why?
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    I’m gonna go against convention and think of a technology I have to live without but wish I didn’t.

    And here it is! in all its glory:

    The mobile phone key finder and spectacle finder app.

    It can’t be that hard can it? An app on your phone that sends a signal to a small receiver in a key fob or your specs that causes them to screech their current location to you for those senior moments.

    Maybe that’s the problem, the bright young things of today that design these things won’t experience those frustrations for another 30 years.

  • Curioser and Curioser

    WARNING: I am not a medical practitioner, please do not take any action based on what you read here unless recommended by your doctor.

    I’ve perked up a bit tonight thankfully and feel I am having interesting thoughts again, whether they can also be considered intelligent is for those more knowledgeable than me to decide.

    I came round to writing this post after reading a couple of fellow bloggers’ posts about the Alice In Wonderland Syndrome that can affect migraine sufferers and thought how on its own it could be mistaken for the delusions common in schizophrenia. This is not the topic of tonight’s post but is related.

    While wondering whether there really was any merit in my theory of nutritional changes to help treat serious mental illness I started considering scientific articles I’d read that suggest both the flu and covid could lead to psychosis in some cases and also how an expectant mother who contracts flu during the first trimester of pregnancy may have a child more likely to develop serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

    Looking at the development of the organs during the first trimester all of the liver, kidneys and brain start to function near to the end.

    But then what if the mother contracts flu during this time? Could a combination of the resources the mother’s body needs to fight this infection coupled with the debilitating effects of being unable to function during this time end up starving the placenta and hence unborn baby of much needed nutrients for healthy brain development. It seems so.

    Maybe there is a lot more to the old saying “feed a fever, starve a cold” than there first appears.

    This all makes me wonder whether pregnant women should be having more frequent blood tests to check essential vitamin levels or regular tests for viral infection.

    I know I’m trying to teach the medical profession to suck eggs on this one but it was interesting to me to find out for myself with a bit of research.

  • Just Because You’re Paranoid…

    It’s not quite 4am here and having been put back on 40mg of Depixol I have found that I am getting increasingly stupid in thought, many of the things that I had great pleasure in reading and trying to understand, anthropology, philosophy, poetry, foreign languages, science are becoming a memory so this morning’s missive from the massive is more of a bitter rant at the injustice of it all and the corruption that permeates my life.

    In the previous incarnation of my blog I posted that I had been diagnosed as having autism spectrum disorder (whilst on remand in the psychiatric wing of Pentonville prison of all places) and given family history and my own understanding of myself it seems like a good assessment. At 53 I’m only so bothered about the diagnosis, I’ve got by this far one way or another but did want the diagnosis formalised simply because I am considering trying to return to work next year and can blame everything on myself without HR being able to do a damn thing about me.

    But this is where I come on to the main subject of my post: who the hell is out to get me?

    It sounds paranoid, particularly from someone who has spent time worrying that MI5 had taken an interest in them some years ago. On that front I would say that the reason for that was time I spent arguing the toss online over the Blair administration’s policy of mass open door immigration and multiculturalism which I never approved of, preferring a smaller, targeted immigration policy. The point is I appeared to occasionally have an appealing way with words and got picked up on and quoted by the conservative press (Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail). That is, my fears that I had come to authority attention were maybe not entirely without foundation.

    But on the other hand as far as I can see I’ve also led a largely blameless life, trying to get by the way I was brought up to, an ordinary day’s work, a trip to the pub after with friends and colleagues, none of whom were likely to have been any bother to anyone themselves.

    That brings me on to NELFT mental health services. Firstly I would say I truly regret trusting the NHS and psychiatry, they have ruined important years of my life and having ended up in a dispute with them at a time when they are under intense scrutiny for the parlous, sometimes fatal, standard of their care and their reputation for corruption, crime and cover ups I wonder whether once again they haven’t decided to far exceed their legal powers to brush me aside.

    For example a large amount of important paperwork from them has simply disappeared from my room as has my passport (I was exploring the possibility of leaving England to claim asylum elsewhere to escape the NHS). I will now have a far harder time proving many (but not all) of their lies and falsehoods, a number of which are criminal in nature.

    Also, although I am trying hard to like my new psychiatrist I’m not convinced she’s playing with an entirely straight bat and inconsistencies which stop being deniable if assessments are voice recorded are starting to crop up.

    I do not wish to take antipsychotic medication any more, when I got off it fully the hard way I was in fantastic mental and physical health, but fear there is an attempt at damage limitation, writing off the last two disastrous years as merely a medication problem whilst trying to hide the fact I never should have been on antipsychotics for any of the previous years.

    I’ve chosen paper mache

  • Happy Holidays

    Daily writing prompt
    Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?
    View all responses

    As a Brit I’ll be having a M&S pasta microwave meal for lunch today but since most of the few of you who visit my blog are either American or Indian I thought I’d take this opportunity to wish the Americans amongst you a very happy holidays, I hope you all get to spend it in the manner you wish.

  • Sweet as a Nut

    I said in one of my previous posts that I was worried about the effect eating 250g of monkey nuts would have on me once I found out they were rich in choline (on top of a huge dose of paliperidone) and unsurprisingly it seems to have caused me three miserable days (fatigue, constipation, vomiting etc.) from which I may just be recovering.

    Anyway, here’s a song that made me laugh, you’d have to have known the town from the ’80s and ’90s to know all the places he mentions.

  • The Sky’s The Limit

    Daily writing prompt
    If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?
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    I’d solve the problem of faster than light travel, build a spaceship cum time machine and defeat the Kelads before they became a problem: they were always one of my pet peeves.

    I’d confine the Cybermen to cyberspace.

    And thirdly I’d get one over the Doctor.

    He equals MC squared,

  • It Was a Crafty Business

    This delightful little dish is the subject of this morning’s potcast.

    Distinctly unremarkable you may think but this is actually an Arthur original. I made this in Miss Theodolou’s art class almost 40 years ago to the day and I still have it and use it to store coins and keys.

    It was made by layering tubes of clay one on top of another and then smoothing them into shape before glazing and firing.

    It even has a backstamp:

    3J means I was 13 years old at the time, in the 3rd year of secondary school.

    I also have one my older sister made at about the same age.

    After we mastered this technique we moved on to a foot operated wheel which was immense fun, flicking fingers of watery clay at fellow pupils.

    The problem was the wheel spun pots tended to collapse under their own weight or crack when fired in the kiln so I don’t have any I made.