Shiny Happy Bastards

“HELLOOO”

This is the call of a shiny-happy-bastard, a common sub-species of humankind that infests the workplace, the high street, the extended family get-together, in fact pretty much everybloodywhere.  Like jollified vermin.  It is a distinct call, shrill and almost breathless, with the emphasis on the superfluous O’s.  It is a misleading call; it reeks of some kind of warped pleasure at seeing you, contrary to the fact that you yourself are recoiling in irritation when faced with the source of that sound.

You can categorise shiny-happy-bastards into the genuine and the false, both as bad as each other.  The genuine must be considered as being simple in the head.  You observe the engulfing shroud of happiness with which they adorn themselves in social situations, a flagrantly garish garment of colour and extrovert-ism, and you think to yourself, “My God, what the fuck do you have to be so happy about?”  Indeed.  Life is never EVER quite that good.  So either they’re too stupid to realise or they have been lulled into an hypnotic trance by a misanthropic magician who gets his kicks from the shotgun blast of despair that this poor fucker will suffer once the fingers click and send him plunging sheer-cliff-style into a morass of grim realisation.

The genuine shiny-happy-bastard is incapable of showing any discrimination in life.  You could serve this hapless freak a Masterchef finalist’s three-course meal or a simple poo on a plate and the response to each will be equally celebratory and include the word AMAZING.  You could chainsaw this bastard into two halves and running through his flesh, like it might a stick of rock, would be the words to some trite positive zen-bollocks happy-crappy fatuous fortune cookie mantra.  The deluded sod has probably feasted on dozens of volumes of coffee table books full of that shit, the sort you buy a family member with no proper interests or hobbies in life.

The other kind of shiny-happy bastard is the false one.  Deserving of some respect, yes, because deep down they are hurting and this fantastically fabricated fun-filled folly of a façade is nothing more than a shield, a prop, a disguise.  But obviously, a very fucking annoying one, which you don’t feel you deserve to suffer just because they have shit they’re trying to cope with.  It gives YOU shit to cope with.  Them!

This is the shiny-happy-bastard who regularly assumes the mantle of the Fun Fascist (see other blog post). Even when they’re being less autocratic with their insistence on everyone being happy, they still retain an over-enthusiastic jolliness, a grinningly inane disposition and a disarmingly feckless outlook that drives you to want to kick them, hard, in the cock.

Especially when they see you looking less maniacally smiley than they are, and instruct you to “Cheer up.” 

Fascist.

Now don’t get me wrong, I wish happiness on all people.  I want everyone to be happy.  But it should be like a prize, something precious and earned, something fulfilling to attain, something not taken for granted or complacently  wrapped around yourself.  But most of all, it should be something you insufferable shiny happy bastards fucking well keep to yourselves when I’m anywhere near you.  GGGRRRRR!

My Dad’s a Marvellous Bastard

Inspired by the consistently excellent blog of one Mr Cyril Cacoethes (www.stupidrubbish.co.uk) I feel that it is time for me to take a voyage round my father. Not sentimentally, not poignantly, not even seriously; because that would bore you all shitless. So, by “voyage” I kind of mean a quick paddle about in a pedalo just for frivolous amusement.

To get the syrupy stuff out the way, by means of a disclaimer in case you think I don’t like him, let me just say that my Dad has a heart of gold and has put his kids and grandkids above himself ever since I was born. But he’s also a funny old bastard, a product of his times and environment and an incorrigible cynic and wit. He drives a black cab in London; and on any given day you might climb inside to be confronted either with a sociable and garrulous Jekyl or a beautifully rude and confrontational Hyde. Whichever one you get, you probably deserve it. How he’s kept his green badge in view of the number of people he’s told to “fuck off” beggar’s belief. To demonstrate his approach to customer service, I’ll cite one of hundreds of exchanges:

Passenger (gets into taxi): Russell Square!
Dad: Which one?
Passenger: Which one? There’s only one, isn’t there?
Dad: No, there’s Russell Square and there’s Russell Square please. Which one do you want to go to?

My advice to anyone entering his cab is to say please and thank you and don’t insult him with a tip any less than a pound or he’ll throw it on the pavement at your feet and suggest that you’re a tight cunt.

You can see we’re related, right?

I think the misanthropic strain may have been developed during his 20s when he was in the Met. One of my oldest and best friends, John, himself a copper, describes my Dad as a wonderfully “’orrible bastard, real 70’s Old Bill, ready to dish out some Sweeney-style justice in the back of a van.” It’s a rather exaggerated but affectionately-meant compliment.

Certainly, growing up, we felt that our Dad could handle himself, despite not being a big bloke and any car journey was made all the more interesting for the bouts of self-righteous swearing at fellow road-users and occasional excursions out of his door. As he grew older and certainly when his livelihood tied him to the road all day, he started to calm down. Nowadays, he lives according to the cliché, “Don’t get angry, get even.” And he don’t half go out of his way to get fucking even.

Like I said, we’re related.

He raised us as cynics and Catholics and the two just don’t go together, so something had to give. Nonetheless, he feels that he has “done enough time as an altar boy” and “gone to enough fucking masses” to have got himself into Heaven, should there be one, and therefore has no time for any religious cant or bollocks these days. But he loved the superstition surrounding religion and brought us up to fear the Devil, the Banshee and the Bogeyman. From when me and my brother were first allowed to watch The Omen, probably aged about 8 or 9, Dad used to regularly give us the willies by turning all the lights off in the house and shouting up to our bedroom just one word, “Damian!” This sent us screaming and scampering back downstairs.

When he wasn’t inflicting on us these psychological scars and making us fear the dark, he was instilling in us a deep sense of amusement at anything lavatorial. There’s nothing like a good poo anecdote to bring the male members of my family to the point of tears. As a copper he once followed through while on duty and threw his soiled y-fronts in the cleaner’s cupboard at the station. The next day he saw the cleaner, asked him how he was and received the reply, “Some dirty bastard has left a pair of shitty pants in my cupboard!” My Dad sympathetically agreed that this was disgusting and may well have suggested someone else who might have done it.

Being related to him, both my brother and I have soiled ourselves in public. Keep up the tradition, you know.

As I entered the self-conscious years of adolescence, Dad was very supportive in ensuring that I avoided making any decisions that might lead to me being accused of homosexuality. For example:

“What do you want to buy those poofter shoes for?”

“You want an ear-ring? What are you, a fucking poofter?”

“Adam and the Ants? Why have you got posters of that bloody great tart on your wall for? You’re not turning poofter are you?”

Pop stars were poofters. Footballer were poofters. Unmarried men in their 30s were poofters, including the mechanic whose garage backed onto our house, Robert the Iron. Dad would say “he’s harmless enough, though” and let him take me and my brother to Arsenal a couple of times, on condition that we didn’t let him touch our bums.

If you weren’t a poofter you might well have one of many other characteristics that my Dad would seize upon. Anyone who was dull or boring or a bit wet would be part of the “Willow family” because “they’re fucking limp.” Anyone who wasn’t a priest but involved in our church was a “mad monk.” And any member of the extended family who didn’t spend more than £10 on presents for us, or buy rounds at family get-togethers, were “fucking tight.”

Should you ever meet him, he’ll judge you in advance based on whatever group in society he might choose to classify you as belonging to; but faced with an individual he is warm and magnanimous. Such is his fundamental mantra in life: Expect the worst and you’ll often be pleasantly surprised.

(Assuming of course, that you say “please” and don’t wear poofter shoes.)