The second, annual, fast becoming traditional, J2H Christmas special.

As with last years offering, it's not for the little ones.

Plenty of sweary fucking words and some Nazis.

Merry Christmas my arse, I pray God it's my last.

#BUMHUG.

Once upon a time there was a tavern.

I thought I'd be good at being a grown up, once upon a time.

Like all fairy tales, turns out it was pure fantasy. I didn't do bad, for a while. I bought a house while many of my friends were still on their YTS courses, I had a lovely motorbike and a sexy car and I went to work in a suit. But I was never really happy.

I suppose it was just nerves, maybe I was amazed at my good luck and couldn't quite believe it. I think I was always scared I would lose it all, that I wasn't really worthy and sooner or later someone would surely notice, bringing the whole charade crashing down. Slowly, I dismantled the fledgling life I'd built and spent as much time having as much fun as I could.

And it was the late eighties and the early nineties, there was a lot of fun I could have.

Then came children, punctuated by a marriage, and a vain attempt to act as if I were worthy of this honour. I attempted to pretend to be something I wasn't and wound up failing, becoming a man I neither was nor wanted to be. I enjoyed it, being a family man. I was lucky enough to have two sons, what man doesn't enjoy bringing up two sons?

It's fucking brilliant, I heartily recommend it.

My marriage didn't really collapse, it fizzled out slowly. I was immature and wasn't suited to it and, inevitably, I took on the role of absent parent.

MacDonald's on a Saturday, football on a Sunday, museums, cinemas and DVDs. I was better at being the absent parent, something to be thoroughly ashamed of, but eventually I failed at that too.

At some point during my transition from shit family man to bitter old bastard I began living a life that was something like a mixture of Withnail and I and Train Spotting. During this time I had a brief relationship which ended after, I think, I'd gotten myself pissed and disappeared off the face of the earth for a day or two. It didn't matter, I'd given up on relationships and so it was easy to move on. Then I heard she was pregnant. Although I knew it was almost certainly my child, I'd discovered I'd not been the only man she'd slept with during what, if I stretched the maths enough, was the critical period. I got pissed again, for a very long time, and lied to myself.

Of course, chickens always wander back home come roosting time. Although I've never met my daughter, she did contact me a few years back. She is both beautiful and bright, the image of my own mother when she was the same age.

Unfortunately, I wasn't any good at being that kind of parent either (No matter what those American sit-coms tell you, it's not all loft apartments and baseball mitts) and so, aged forty six, I have three children and two grandchildren that I never see, along with a mother and sibling whose life I am also absent from.

The separation came slowly, so slowly I didn't really notice it. During the time I was losing contact with everyone I had a few problems, some quite challenging, and have spent much of the last three or four years struggling with one thing or another. That which should have caused me heartache sat on the back burner and eventually became just how things are.

Last week, contact was made. It was quite a shocker. A comment on a blog post, one of the many entries that mention my children fondly, from a member of my family. I snorted derision and deleted the comment. But I couldn't stop thinking about it.

I wondered why my initial reaction had been such that I had immediately gone on the defensive without having felt a pang of guilt or moment of sorrow. Surely I should? I'm an emotional guy, after all. I cried at a Danny DeVito movie the other day, for goodness sake. So I gave the situation a good coat of thinking about. Maybe the person that left the enquiry will check back and see this, maybe they stumbled across the blog they commented on accidentally and wont ever see another post, but here's what I came up with, just in case.

Please bear in mind, you're only getting my side and for all you know I could be a right lying bastard, but I'm not. You can ask Robert DeNiro, he'll tell you I'm as honest as the day is long.

The longer the daylight, the less I do wrong. [Thank you, Suggs]

Don't ask Dustin Hoffman, he tells lies. He's still angry at me for getting sand in his Vaseline when we went to Formby.

So, back to my side...

As the fractures developed and my family became more and more distant, they began in-fighting and one or two tried to drag me into situations I had no connection with or interest in. When I wouldn't agree with whatever point they were making some spitefully told me what other family members thought or had said. 

I'm glad they did.

I discovered I'd been accused of something really quite horrid and, rather than anyone tell me, it had been decided that if I were to be given a particular decision to make I would have decided upon the course of action they decided I would decide on. Maybe they were right and maybe they were wrong, but I wasn't very well and, by then, I just couldn't be arsed correcting them. As anyone who actually knows me will tell you, I am a stubborn bastard and, though I'm not proud of it, I unconsciously said "fuck 'em" and got on with things. Not over night, there was a period of mourning, a feeling of loss, a couple of years of crossed fingers on father's day and a few tears over messages received but I'd become poor and hungry, those sensations muffled all else. Anger and self righteousness, I discovered, feels very much like hunger.

I shouldn't have deleted the comment, things like that shouldn't go unaddressed. I should have replied, but I didn't.

So, here is the next best thing, an apology for deleting in haste and a blog dedicated to answering, that wont get shared by me and may quite possibly go unread by the questioner. It's the best I can do.

I have no excuses. I could have tried harder, not focused on the things I focused on, but

I didn't. That was a mistake and I apologise. I can do no more.

Pertinent to the continued separation, I have my own questions, although mine are rhetorical.

• When I had my heart attack, where were any of you?
• In the middle of the night, when I wished I still lived in a high rise flat so I could throw myself out of the window and escape the pain I was in from the nerve damage in my knee, when my screams caused the neighbours to complain, where were you?
• When I sat alone in the waiting room at Salford Royal before the doctor could tell me how much damage my lungs had suffered, where were you?
• When I had to wrap my foot in plastic bags, socks and rags and hold it in place with gaffer tape because my only pair of shoes had one sole between them, where were you?
• When I wore the one soled pair of shoes to walk thirteen miles in the rain to collect a food parcel after not eating for four days and only eating sporadically for several months prior, where were you?
• When an elderly lady in a Salvation Army uniform held me while I sobbed after she turned up unexpectedly at my door and gave me the ingredients for Christmas Lunch, where were you?
• When I was scared, where were you?

I'd watched you all, for a while, keeping an eye on things. It's not difficult, in these wondrous times, to do so. It might be a bit creepy, granted, but I had the best intentions. Everyone of you, thankfully, were having a great time and doing more than fine without my ham-fisted, half-arsed help. Eventually, I stopped checking. I was busy. I'm sorry. In my defence, I'm of little practical usefulness these days anyway.

When I mention my family fondly, write about good times or bad, there is no pretence. Those memories are from a time when my love wasn't in doubt by anyone. It was real, and continues to be. I have little else, I won't be allowing anyone to refuse me access to those happy snippets of my uneventful existence that preceded this portion.

The years of "fun" in the late eighties and early nineties must surely have shortened the functioning lifespan of my long term memories, they'll be gone soon enough and then I'll just blog about which soup I had for lunch or how my home-help steals my tea bags. 

And I'll have some nice memories to revisit if I scroll back on my blog far enough. 

If my prostitution of the past offends anyone, then maybe anyone'd be better served not reading my nonsense? 

They should probably steer clear of YouTube too.

Some love is unconditional, the spring doesn't run dry. When no one takes a sip from the stream the spring water eventually joins the river and is lost, but it's still there, somewhere. Lost, but not wasted. Nothing we enjoy giving is ever wasted. 

I sincerely hope that all of you reading and all those I mention in these blatherings flourish and live long, happy, fulfilling lives. Take care.

N.

Black cocks and tatty tits.

My high school was massive.

At some point in the early 80s the head of our sports department was becoming increasingly sick of his wards standing on the touchline with their hands down their shorts complaining it was too cold, with hacking smoker's coughs punctuating their expletive peppered entreaties.

And the boys he had to endure were no better.

He came up with one of those rare things, a solution to a problem that was welcomed by all. He called his master-plan the "elective initiative".

It sounded cool and was even cooler.

Electives were what we could choose to do instead of learning to dodge around dog shit at high speed on an inclined football pitch, the result of our school having been built on a hill. The teachers came up with a short-list of activities and, to everyone's surprise, there were some pretty good options on there.

Through my last two years of school I spent a couple of afternoons a week doing and learning things I wanted to do and things I was interested in learning about. Sailing and canoeing, rock climbing and abseiling. I became a fencer (of the fully buckled swash variety), a toxophilite and much more besides.

And I learnt what a toxophilite was.

One day we arrived half an hour late back to school after a hard afternoon capsizing Toppers on Rivington Pike, a brief but powerful downfall of snow having brought the motorway to a near standstill. My school bag had gone missing whilst I was out on the water pretending to be a pirate and I'd been provided with a Kwik-Save carrier bag to cram my wet clothes into for my journey home. The bag had a little rip in it. It was a shit bag.

As I crossed the main road from our school gates I spotted a gang of lads from the neighbouring school sat on the wall of the park. Our schools were forever fighting each other and I jokingly said to the only other of my schoolmates that had left by the same gate as I, "Look, we're going to get battered now".

I really didn't think we would. I'd done nothing to these chaps, had never clapped eyes on a single one of them in my life before, why would we?

As I crossed the road and stepped onto the pavement the little rip in the shit bag became larger, reaching it's event horizon and tearing itself in two, depositing my wet clothes in the crisp, white snow. I stopped to pick my things up as my schoolmate walked on.

I saw two of the boys from the other school jump down from the park wall and jump him from behind, dragging him to the floor and beginning to administer a damn good kicking. Two on one, that wasn't fair. Like a complete knob head I ran, arms flailing and notions of a heroic and righteous battle ahead filling my head, to even the odds.

I completely disregarded the other eleven members of the neighbouring school's assembled war party who hadn't joined the fracas. Yet.

I remember a hand on my shoulder, then I was on the floor and could see my schoolmate fleeing down the hill. Doc Martin boots rained down on my face, chest and stomach. Toe caps mashed my testicles into my pelvis. I curled into a ball and tried to roll away.

As I rolled onto my right side a blue Ford Cortina mounted the pavement. It skidded in the snow, snow that was now scarlet with my blood, and the tyre came to a halt within a few inches of my shattered nose and cheekbones. I rolled away from the car, driven on purpose into the crowd of feral school kids by a man who made the decision that yes, he might kill me but if he didn't I was surely to die. He later told the police the attackers were taking it in turns to run up and jump, stamping on my head with two feet. As I rolled back onto my left the last of the attackers decided to give me one for the road. He aimed a foot at my face and swung.

I have no idea how but I caught his foot and held it, managing to struggle to my feet. His face changed from a contorted grimace of hatred to a picture of pure terror, he looked so young as I head-butted him. I was red with my own blood, my shattered face already swelling and the wounds wide and raw. I roared and he began to sob and plead through the mixture of our blood that surrounded his mouth and nose, mine dark and lumpy and his bright and frothy. I don't think I cared.

That's the last thing I remember before waking up in the back of my sports teacher's sports car and apologising for the blood on his seats, then I was in hospital.

I gained quite a reputation, returning to school within a few days with battle scars that brought forth promises of retribution from boys who, until this point, hadn't even liked me and made the girls either cry or swoon. I'd have made full use of the latter effect were it not that my genitals were now black and, although three times their more usual size, really rather tender.

And just because that's the way life pans out for me, the swelling went far earlier than the pain. The whole kit and caboodle was both pretty much non-functional and aesthetically un-pleasing until well into the new year.

I had a new party trick, though. My nose was now sideways across my face and would remain so for a year before I could get it fixed. If I closed my right (Or, to be pedantic, "bottom") nostril and sucked hard through my left (Top?) nostril I could make a noise similar to that which the comms system on the Star Ship Enterprise made when a call came through.

No one was charged. The police said they couldn't put any one injury down to any one assailant. That made my parents angry, but I wasn't bothered. Many of those lads had already been on the receiving end of violence done in my name but without my prior knowledge. This, of course, led to more gangs waiting for our pupils in the park, more running battles across the pitch and putt, more fights, more stitches, more shattered jaws. Blood spattered jumpers in the noble grey of our school or the shitty blue of theirs littered the hedgerows.

My mashed face wasn't the catalyst for this spate of violence, our two schools had been involved in fights for decades, I was just the first victim of this most recent escalation. My injuries were still raw, my nose still whistled and the left side of my jaw would occasionally drop out if I tried to say a word that began with a "P". I was immature, I'd been hurt and my nice persona was still decades from perfection. I rejoiced in the stories of another settled score and I joined in wholeheartedly whenever a fight broke out at the bus stop that both sets of pupils had to use. No one, not even me, cared whether members of the original hunting party were the ones on the receiving end. More innocents were hurt on both sides, more victims became aggressors, more comrades joined both sides and more anger resulted.

Many years later I discovered I was working alongside one of the chaps from the original hunting party during a chance conversation in a building site crew cabin in Birmingham. Up until that point the chap in question and I had got along swimmingly, both he and I being from the same home town and being of a similar age. We'd spent nights in the pub together, covered for one and other at work and mocked the accents of those around us. He mocked my big nose and I mocked his lisp. A lisp that he hadn't had for the first fifteen years of his life but, it turned out, that had arrived after he'd bitten off a portion of his tongue when head-butted, by a boy with a bloodied pulp where a face had recently been, on a snowy street corner in Salford two decades earlier. He didn't laugh when he told us the story. The passage of years hadn't changed his tale into a clever, funny tale. He described himself as a coward, said he'd joined in right at the end and had deserved what he got. The whole story bookended by two very different shitbags.

Maybe he'd recognised me, maybe he was confessing. Whether he was or not, the remorse was certainly there. His leathery face did a fine job of remaining neutral, but was betrayed by his watery eyes.

I didn't tell him. I no longer cared. I'd bought a car with the compensation, had my nose fixed (fixed as in straightened, to this day it no longer works, but I can now breath through my left ear. An anomaly that has made me even more popular with the ladies than the big, black cock of '85) and had briefly had my pick of the girls at school.

He'd got a lisp leading to a new nickname, "Lizard".

He'd been that kid that tried to get one last kick in. Unlucky number thirteen. The child that might have killed me, that may have dealt me the camel's back breaking straw of a blow and ended my time on this earth but instead led to years of hatred and an escalation in violence until no pupil from either school was safe. Vendettas were formed that lasted long into adulthood. This, of course, would still have been the case had he killed me and not bitten off his own tongue. It had been a lose, lose situation from it's very inception.

I didn't socialise with him after I'd found out who he was and he never asked why. We just settled into civility.

And let's not forget, I got a bright yellow, MKIII Escort out of it. Every cloud, and all that.

It had only hurt for a minute, but something like that can't be over in a minute. We don't let things like that be an end. Those things require a response. Someone hurts us, we hurt them, creating justice at the same time we create a new, injured party, who then seeks justice of his own.

If we decided something had to be done about world hunger but we couldn't figure out how and some bright spark said "lets make more people hungry and see if that helps" they'd be laughed out of the room. If we listened to them, we'd be adding to the problem. We're not so stupid.

It would seem, though, that violence is the one problem we treat with like. Tit for tat and an eye for an eye would leave the whole world full of tatty tits, though fortunately we'd not be able to look at them.

Fighting fire with fire, it must be remembered, at least briefly creates a much greater fire. That's why firemen use hoses and not flame-throwers and why today, given our nation's decision regarding military action in a land thousands of miles away, we're all just a smidgeon less safe.


J2H.

Geronimo's rifle, Marilyn's shampoo.

An incredibly sexy storm has raged around my house for the last few days. Blustery wind whistling through the letterbox, gusts rattling the door knocker, rumbling clouds and rain of biblical proportions. It's really very atmospheric.

This morning, I watched the rain trickle down my window pane as I smoked my pipe. It filled me with a sense of nostalgia, transporting me back to a half remembered time decades ago, the seven year old me taken on an uninspiring journey to an uninspiring place.

Blackpool.

The nostalgia inducing raindrops running down the misty window and the cloud of tobacco smoke surrounding me combined to take me back to that year's trip to "see the lights", an annual event that I had to endure for a good portion of my childhood.

My dad knew I hated it and I knew he did, but when I'd begged not to be made to go he'd pointed out that my mother and sister enjoyed it and so it'd be unfair not to. I wasn't convinced. He asked me why I didn't want to go, I said I didn't know. And I really didn't. I just knew I didn't want to go. Apparently, though, "I don't know" isn't a good enough reason. So I had to go.

"Can we have some rock this year?"

"'Course we can, sonshine. Now put some bloody trousers on."

Sat in the back of my fathers Renault 12TL, I spent the next hour and a half feeling nauseated as my parents chain-smoked their way through the traffic jam to then spend a further hour sat in a queue looking at some poxy lights. To my sister and I, seated in the back, the radio was nothing but a tinny hiss of white noise that made conversation impossible. Then, at some point, my mother glanced over her shoulder and caught me yawning.

Just like my father and myself, my mother hated the trip. By the time we reached the golden mile my parents cigarette packets were exhausted, offering my asthmatic lungs brief respite. The sudden nicotine withdrawal meant mum's temper was near it's limits and, having mistaken the tiredness of a small boy's yawn for boredom or disdain (in fact, it was both), she exploded in rage, loudly proclaiming that she didn't know why she'd bothered bringing us (a sentiment shared by a her husband and at least one of her offspring) and demanded my father turn the car around and cut short the evening.

"And don't think we're stopping for any rock, either."

Unfortunately, her rage hadn't broken the surface until we were already stuck in the procession of cars crawling along the windy prom with their passengers oohing and aahing and eating candy floss, and so we had to endure forty minutes or so of silence interspersed with occasional, loud reassertions of her earlier point before we could take a right and head back home. I placed my forehead against the glass, settled into the corner and watched the rain drops trickle as my sister nervously clawed at the flesh on my left forearm, drawing blood and leaving tracks (Tracks that should probably have raised a few spurious suspicions regarding my well-being, but didn't) and steadfastly refused to join in with the game of I-spy that my dad later suggested just when she was dozing off and slackening her grip.

The raindrops were catching the orange light cast by the ordinary, non-garish street lamps that lit our route home and pissed about with it, creating amber lenses through which brief images of a distorted world that had never existed and that would never be seen again in quite the same way as I was able to see it were visible. A twisted reality captured briefly within the walls of a shimmering, transient bubble. The rain was far more entertaining than a few shining clown's faces and a neon representation of a tube of Smarties. Quite possibly this was the beginning of my appreciation of the little things, a way of escaping the world around when the world around was passing through one of those periods when it's just not worth not escaping. Those boring, pointless periods that come between the interesting portions.

You can always find something to stare at and lose yourself in, even if it means giving your eyes a rub so you can watch the sparkles dance.

Many years later and a parent myself, my mother suggested we take my kids to see the lights. I have no idea why on Earth I'd do such a thing, but I agreed. I remembered I didn't like going, but I couldn't remember why, just that it hadn't made me happy.

The lights were a different type of shit to the lights of my youth, but at least equally shit. There were a lot more of them, but basically it was just a series of advertising screens like those you see in the petrol station. The boys politely smiled and nodded whenever their grandmother said "oooh, look at that one" and both toyed longingly with the Nintendos they weren't allowed to turn on.

We stopped and bought some rock, and it was raining.

There were no arguments. The car had speakers in the back so the kids could hear the music too and, of course, there was no cigarette smoke. As we began the journey home, I glanced over my shoulder and saw that my youngest son's forehead was resting against the glass.

Worried about him falling asleep too early and being a right, royal pain in the arse at stupid o'clock the following morning I instigated a game of I-spy. He joined in, begrudgingly. He was four years old at the time and so hampered by a limited vocabulary and ropey spelling skills, but he eventually managed to win.

"Your turn, sonshine."

"A"

"Do it properly."

Arms folded, he sat up and, through pursed lips, spat the words.

"I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with A."

His brother, grandmother and I began guessing, but he really had us. Eventually, we requested some clues.

"It begins with A."

"Yes, but is it in the car or outside."

"In."

"Is it in the front of the car or the back?"

"The front", He made eye contact with me in the rear view mirror and continued, sternly, "It SHOULD be in the back as well, but it's not."

Try as we might, we couldn't get it. Meanwhile, despite my employing such tactics as winding all the windows down and turning the radio up full blast, both my sons began to nod off.

"Do you give in?" Number two son mumbled from his slumped position as he fought an increasingly hopeless battle with slumber.

"Yes, what was it?" In the mirror, I saw satisfaction spread across his sleepy face as I conceded defeat. Nothing cheers a child up like beating his old man.

I could've kicked myself. Not for not getting the answer, but for not thinking of it myself when I was a little lad. The answer that meant I never again made my kids sit through that bloody rigmarole, the one thing that makes any period worth not escaping. The thing that should have been in the back, but that wasn't...

"'Appiness".

If something doesn't make anybody 'appy, what's the bloody point?

J2H.

Eight times eighty-three and a quarter.

The night of my youngest son's birth was a long one.

On the day he was due, the very date the doctor had given for his arrival, I arrived home from a shift working behind my father's bar on a bright, autumnal Friday evening to be greeted by my eldest boy.

"Mum says to tell you it's started. She's in the bath. Are we still having a chippy tea?"

"You can have whatever you like, son", I called over my shoulder as I disappeared up the stairs.

The bag had been ready for a week or two, so once I'd got her 'dressed', but before she'd stopped being angry with me for every bad thing that had ever happened in her whole life (To be fair, I probably was responsible for the majority) we set off.

A storm broke as we left the house, lightning flashing across the sky. I laughed and made a joke about the Anti-Christ and she told me she hated me and that I was never to touch her again. Such a special time, the birth of a child.

Having deposited the existing offspring with his grandfather and agreed that "you can have whatever you like, son" meant he could have a kebab, a shandy and a new game for his Nintendo we drove, through driving rain and howling winds, to the local hospital.

The unusually dark, local hospital.

A lightning strike had caused a power cut, but the emergency generators were in operation and so dim lights lit the interior. We were deposited in a delivery room to get comfortable, the general consensus being that the demon's seed gestating within my wife's gizzard was several hours away from unleashing Armageddon upon the world, and I drew her a bath as the thunder crashed outside the little window.

Whilst she soaked in the warm water and moaned about how shit I was at everything, I wandered off to find a phone. Unable to find a payphone I asked at reception, only to be told that the phones had gone the same way as the electricity. A chill ran down my neck as the storm continued to rage. The nurse I was speaking with made a joke about the Anti-Christ and I giggled nervously, interrupted by a blood curdling scream.

He was coming.

I dashed back into the delivery room as a flash of lightning lit the little window revealing a crow, oily and black with beads of rain on his bill, sheltering from the weather on the window ledge. It cawed. I gulped.

Another scream brought me back from my stupor and things began to get busy. I cracked inappropriate jokes whilst my wife gave birth to the second drain upon our resources in what has to be the easiest, most text book of deliveries. He was even clean, just a tiny spot of blood on his pointy head from the probe that had been attached. And he didn't cry. He was breathing, he was moving, everything was fine, but no screaming.

He was placed on the scales and left there, safe in the stainless steel bowl, whilst those people whose names I wish I'd bothered to ask tended to business.

It was dawn. The storm now over and the sun's early rays beginning to cast long shadows outside, birds were warming up their cheeps and chirrups in preparation for a hard day's chirruping and cheeping. I hadn't noticed it cease, the storm. I've no idea at what point during the labour, but given the night we'd just experienced I assume it was the moment he took his first breath.

There was a clunk and the power came back on, the strip lights flickering into life at about the same time a young chap put his head around the door and told me I could use the phone now. Then we were alone.

I looked at my new son in my arms and smiled down at him. I laughed with my wife about how we should call him Damien and I made some joke about how I'd have to execute him on an altar, a comment which thankfully went unheard by anyone but us.

There was another storm, on his first birthday. As ferocious as the one the previous year, surely this must be proof? That child wasn't mine, he was demonic, he was GINGER for Christ's sake! How could there be any doubt? The spawn of Beelzebub born into the perfect hiding place, the home of a devout Atheist. Someone who didn't believe in all that shit, someone that would let the black soul of the cloven one flourish in his care without ever suspecting...

But I was on to him.

As I sat in my armchair watching the future Lord of Flies mash birthday caked into a paste with his fists and wearing a paper hat at a jaunty angle, his brother singing Happy Birthday to him for the umpteenth time, it all became clear. I knew what I must do. If he was the Devil, if he was the one that would bring Hell to Earth...

...then I was on the Devil's side.

J2H.

Utterly reject harm and mischief.

The junior doctors are going on strike.

Lazy bastards.

If you ask me, they're just using it to get some time off for Christmas shopping. The Trafford Centre will be rammed with the work shy, loony left leaning, parasitic, junior doctors.

The Government have done everything they can to avert the strike. They've bent over backwards to accommodate the juniors doctors demands, even though the junior doctors kill so many people at the weekend.

If one single word of what preceded this lovely, italicised paragraph rings true with you then please, get a fucking grip.

Generally, the most obvious answer is the correct answer. Yes, occasionally a bizarre and random series of unfortunate events leads to the answer. Maybe the dog really did eat the homework or someone broke into your house to put the cigarette burn in the cushion that appeared while you were on holiday and your son wasn't misbehaving in any way, shape or form during your absence, but it's more often that the homework never got done and your son is a twat.

So, if I pose the question, "Which guys are the good guys in all this?", then what would the most obvious answer be?

The Government will talk, but only if the junior doctors agree to the majority of the new contract in advance. But that's the bit they need to talk about, so that's bullshit then.

The Government did their adding-ups wrong, so they changed everything a bit, did them again and got them wrong again. For a while they said they'd got them right, then mostly right, then we forgot.

The junior doctors left school and took out enormous loans to learn how to make you and your loved ones better, to stop people dying whenever they can and to earn a decent wage. They work hard and their product, the nation's well-being, is more valuable than any Government contract with a foreign power to take wealth from our shores and jobs and prospects from our people.

Even more valuable than a bank.

The Government is filled with career politicians preparing the finest feathers for the nests they'll one day look down on us from. They can't add up. They have told lies. None of them need rely on the NHS for their own health and well being, or for that of their loved ones.

If the Government can't get it's own way, it changes the rules a bit until it can. If the junior doctors can't get their way they protest, debate and challenge, they follow the rules and they get little or no support from most of us until they arrive at the point where they are so exasperated and feel so undervalued that ninety-eight percent vote to go on strike. Ninety-eight percent. Is it possible that ninety-eight percent of junior doctors are lazy, greedy, liars or a combination of the three? Or is it more likely that we, their patients, have taken their service with the gratitude of a pigeon pinching a pie crust and let them be battered and bullied into a corner by a Government that thinks it can behave in whichever way it wants?

If something is valuable to you, you protect it.

If you own a gold bar, you bury it on a deserted beach under a coconut tree, if you've a secret you keep your fat mouth shut and if you've a gorgeous partner you make them grow a tatty beard and wear a hat.

I'm optimistic that most folk will agree with my sentiment. That they, like I, will wish things could be settled differently but that they can see through the lies and half truths of the so-called Conservative Government. Your taxes paid to save the bankers after they'd fucked everything up, shouldn't they also be used to provide the NHS with the resources it needs and the doctors with the respect they deserve?

Non-essential operations are going to have to be cancelled. That's a shame, but at least they weren't essential. Some people will shout loudly about how unfair it is. It is unfair, and unfortunate that those people weren't so vociferous when first the junior doctors asked for support.

We've let the situation develop, so busy in our own little bubbles that we forgot to keep an eye on the world around us. This hasn't been sudden, it has been looming on the horizon for ages.

Time doesn't sneak up on us, it's the most predictable thing known to man. Every year, Dickfingers has a panic as Christmas approaches. There's never enough time and, eventually, she'll utter the words "...but it's Christmas day TOMORROW!" amidst the now traditional, frantic, rabid, yule tide preparations, and I bite my tongue. Yes, it is tomorrow, the tomorrow that has been sitting behind the last doors on all of the many advent calenders she's been working her way through for the last three weeks.

If we leave things until the last minute, we lose the NHS and have sausages instead of turkey.

When it comes to the decision about whether to back the junior doctors or to side with a guy in a suit and a polished face, it all boils down to just two questions:

If Jeremy Hunt gives you a pill, should you swallow it?

If the doctors themselves tell you that you're running a health service wrong, should you listen?

The Government couldn't be more obviously the bad guys if they donned eye-patches and decorated their fucking hats with little, silver skulls.

J2H.

Exactly what it sounds like.

Mrs Mattapier stirred the porridge in the pot

And glanced at her wrist where her wristwatch tick-tocked

She called up the stairs to her daughter above

"You're going to be late, get a bustle on, love"

Her daughter came dashing her way down the stairs

And sat at the table on one of the chairs

"Careful", said mother as she placed down a bowl

Of sizzling porridge to fill her daughter's cake-hole

A splash of cold milk so her mouth she'd not scold

And a dollop of honey the colour of gold

Her rumbly tummy now filled with hot oats

She went and collected her bag and her coat

She pulled on her hat and her scarf and her gloves

Then tickled her dog who replied with a "woof"

She stepped out the door and into the street

The dry, autumn leaves crunching under her feet

"Good morning, Russell", she beamed at her friend

Who'd waited, as ever, down the road on the bend

Unusually, though, he was on hands and knees

Staring at a pile of crisp, golden leaves

"What on earth are you doing?" she asked as she knelt
"And what the heck is that disgusting smell?"
"Shhh", hissed her friend from his spot on the ground
She did as he bid with a bewildered frown

"If you listen hard and tilt your head right
You can hear those two ants, there, having a fight"
She held her breath and listened intently
But all she could hear was the breeze blowing gently

Then, far away, a new noise, a grumble 
Growing until that deep, distant rumble
Grew louder and louder and was joined by a roar
Then a hiss and a clunk and a whole heap of sounds more

A clatter and crunch and a grumbly groan
A squeak and a squeal, a mechanical moan
A hiss and a pish and a blast of cold air
And the bus sailed past, leaving both children there

Down on their knees with their ears to the ground
Watching two ants fighting atop a mound
Of leaves that exploded and fluttered and flew
Revealing a dried up piece of dog poo

The girl and the boy stood and chorused "Oh, great"

Left behind at the stop, now they'd surely be late

"Now we're in trouble", said Russell as they

Rose to their feet and set off on their way

"We're not going to make it now we're on foot"

"Don't worry," said she, "For I know a short cut"

She ducked and disappeared through a gap in a bush

And called back to Russell, "Come on, Russell, rush"

Dashing hand in hand through the fields and trees

Laughing and grinning and buzzing like bees

They leapt 'cross the stream that babbled gently

Downhill to the river then far out to sea

They passed by the ducks that waddled and quacked

And the derelict farm house with windows all cracked

They asked a lone horse if they were going the right way

And laughed at the nag when he answered them, "neigh"

A large, woolly sheep tried to baa the kids path

And a flatulent goat had made the friends laugh

They splashed through the puddles and squelched through the mud

Heading for lessons as fast as they could

They ran by some chickens who "bock, bock, bock bocked"
And climbed an old gate an old farmer had locked
Then laughed as they carried on up the small hill
Watched by a crow with an oily, black bill

The crow caw-caw-cawed out his early warning
Of danger approaching on that autumn morning
A swallow gulped and a robin did, too
Then they took to the air joined by a cuckoo

Swooping through the sky, larking around
Whooshing and swooshing far from the ground
Watching the children who dashed far below
Under the beady, black eye of the crow

They crashed through the trees standing proud on the brow
Then sped through the field, past a miserable cow
Who tutted and mumbled as green grass she chewed
No smile on her face, she was in a bad mooed

Fields and streams crossed and one final fence climbed
They zipped down the street at a minute past nine
Heads down they whizzed in through the school gates
Puffing and panting and red in the face

Late they had been, though late only just

And, surprisingly, they'd beaten the bus

It had broken down a mile from the school

And the unfortunate driver carried no tools

Russell pulled out his best friend's chair

As she pulled a twig from her best friend's hair

They sat side by side, both wearing wide grins

And awaited the rest of their class to get in

Mud on their shoes and leaves in their hoods

Collected on their journey to school through the woods

And fields and fun places between here and there

The smiley kids looked a right scruffy pair

But what a tale young Honor had

To entertain her mum and her dad

When, home once more and safe and sound

Their tea-time chatter came around

The noises they'd heard and the smells they had smelt

The things they had seen and the feelings they'd felt

The squeaks and the squawks, the clucks and the clatters

The end's just the end, it's the journey that matters

J2H.