Disjointed - Oh Happy Happy Day

Tony Blair has announced that he is standing down on 27 June. Oh Happy Happy Day! At last an end in sight. Days are numbered for the most corrupt PM in recent UK history.

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I can remember at my first school that children used to copy each other and that I couldn't work out why. For example, all the children used to call wasps "jaspers". I didn't understand it, and no one seemed to be able to explain it. So I carried on calling them "wasps" while everybody else called them "jaspers". My mother tells me that this was fairly typical behaviour for me. I never ran with the pack just for the sake of it. I can remember flared trousers the first time round in the early 70s. I liked them as a child. Then they went out of fashion. I carried on wearing them. It could be a form of martyrdom.

All this comes to mind after yesterday's speech about grubby hooded youths. I find it genuinely very difficult to understand the hoody culture. To me it suggests inarticulate, unwashed, teenaged boys of low intelligence. The whole thing conjures up images of anti social behaviour, drunkenness, and vandalism. Why would anyone want to associate themselves with a such a culture? Why would anyone want to advertise the fact that they have so few original ideas that they have to copy everyone else?

Today I noticed that the window of the Samaritans charity shop has been smashed. It is not completely destroyed, but large, circular cracks extend like a spider's web from a large chip in the centre. I imagine some grubby hooded youth has lobbed a brick at it. I really don't understand senseless vandalism like that. I can understand theft and mugging to a certain extent. There is a reward there. But why break a charity shop window? What is the point?

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I forgot to record that I had my eyes tested on Saturday. It was depressing. Apparently I have become more far sighted and my prescription has become stronger. I now need reading glasses and ordinary glasses. I've ordered some new specs, three pairs at a total cost of just over £230. That's an ordinary pair, a reading pair, and some sun glasses. I don't mind glasses, but I mind having to to admit that I'm wearing out. At least I will have new glasses for the new Harry Potter book in July.

I've now read all six Harry Potter books again in readiness for the final instalment. I was sort of planning to complete the sixth book as the seventh came out, but I got a bit ahead of myself. I'm now reading "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" by Philip K Dick. This book has been sitting on my shelf for months waiting for me to open it. It's a classic work of science fiction that inspired the Bladerunner film. It was written in 1968. I was 1 year old. It's an amazing piece in many ways. It goes much deeper than the Bladerunner film into politics and ethics. It twists and turns constantly. I'm about half way through and I have no idea if Deckard is an android or not. I've changed my mind about three times. Dick however writes like a child. The punctuation is strange, to put it politely, and one sentence actually begins, "I wonder, he wondered, ...".