there’s a place for us

a propos of nothing, i had occasion to revisit that intrepid investigator of parliamentary corruption guido fawkes. quite why i visited the first time i don’t know, as it’s a place calculated to raise my blood pressure in a most worrying fashion.

however, it dawned on me that for the first time in history, there clearly aren’t any scandals involving the conservative party, because the site is entirely taken up with tales of naughtiness from the ghastly commie pinko faggot subversives in power (c.2/3) and the pathetic pseudo-commie pinko faggot subversive libdems. what a coincidence…

he says bad nick clegg (’cleggover’ tee-hee) used to be a conservative - but i thought he liked conservatives. it’s just too much for this addled brain. if so he must be the first and last member of the acne-ridden cambridge university conservative association to get their end away.
he trots out his ’son of immigrants’ past (file under strawman arguments with: ‘i have black friends, you know’ and its false syllogism of ‘can’t be a racist then’) in order to support some frothing brilliance of boris’s about taking the vote away from illegal imigrants (i think that was it; rather busy trying to keep the vomit off my keyboard) tho i wasn’t aware they were on the electoral role anyway.

just warming up now…
see also iain dale, although at least he has the grace to make no pretence at impartiality. it may be my age catching up with me but i was sure i saw him on the box with a truly horrendous dye job - the sort of red that might have looked unconvincing on a ford fiesta. or maybe that was another of ‘em - i really have lost it now! i apologise unreservedly if that wasn’t him. even a tory shouldn’t have had to carry the can for a ‘do like that.
his blog proudly quotes someone (oddly enough a conservative…) saying he’s wittier than the average tory - high praise indeed - should perhaps have added that he’s warmer than liquid oxygen.

at least the ‘humour’ section won’t get sued for misrepresentation: there’s a great story from an ‘acquaintance’ who went to tesco with his wife (not a sad lonely tosser at all then) and was forced (probably at gunpoint)(by an immigrant i wouldn’t wonder)(not a racist though - family owns several black people) to have his few items wastefully packed: ‘We came out laden with five bags to do what two bags would have previously done!’…

‘What on earth is the logic behind this decision?’, bleats mr dale impotently, though he refrains from telling the daft bastard to pack his own fucking shopping.

it’s like the daily mail - just free!

thank god my mate big dave is doing his bit with a wind turbine - can’t imagine why everyone doesn’t get one. you rock, big d!
another inhabitant of that same shitty bucket, the mighty boris, was on telly yesterday - spoke for about 5 minutes and you couldn’t actually work out whether he’d said anything. well no; you could and he hadn’t - he just works his jaw like a goldfish on ecstasy in a cheap wig and nothing but bubbles emerge. guido compares him to (wait for it) ronald reagan. at least we agree about something!

boris was however fortunate to have a ringing endorsement on the spectator website. i reckon he must know someone…

coverage of the poole secret surveillance scandal now (pooleschoolfoolgate) by one of the tory commentators - i apologise for not accusing them individually but i’m so busy frothing now they merge into a rancid heap of hate. he manages simultaneously to blame tony, gordon and labour’s culture of paranoia and fail to mention poole’s a tory council. some comments were even posted to that effect but went unnoticed in the maelstrom of  blather about 1984 (not again). one comment i particularly liked was the person who assumed it was a labour council because the bbc (see under ‘commie pinko faggot subversive’ above) was silent on the point (in their desperation to manipulate the news for gordon…). they obviously hadn’t managed to work out you can spend 7.4 seconds on google and find out. even the bbc could probably manage that - though not the individual posting the comment. hard to type with hooves i guess…

and while i’m on one,  pope ratzie couldn’t work out why catholic priests who were meant to ‘heal’ and spread ‘love of the god’ (bless him and his crap english - every other bloody german speaks it better than wot we do fgs) would abuse children. what’s a chap to do, eh? wonder if there’s someone in charge of the church who could have a word…

there we are. all better now. i’ll be doing requests later if anyone wants…

a while ago we had a party. one guest seems not to have left.

he wandered over the lawns for a while, casually savouring the delicate aroma of his 25yr old tullamore dew. as a lover of the irish he had gone straight past the highland malts - not even the islay malts could tempt him - if it was whisky, better make it whiskey. i don’t think he had even glanced at the taylor ‘48 we had in magnum, still less the latour ‘59 (the last two single bottles from the cellar - though, as this is fantasy, we will certainly unearth more if we are deserving).

as ever, he was drawn to the water - the calm repetitive lapping of the stream beyond the formal garden hypnotised him as it had in childhood. he had stood by the shore with his father, impossibly tall strong and youthful, a moment frozen in eternity. now that was a memory, remote as if it had never been and he was the one supposed to be tall, and still the water drew him. water of life. uisgeah beatha.

within the bushes, a shape loomed in the half-light of the midsummer midnight. the bushes parted, he found what might be a door and pulled. his reward was his own forgotten world; a hideaway comfortably furnished and set out to please nobody else. and a bottle of the irish; enough glasses for him and whatever guests should find it; and space to… that was the magic, the space was his to choose, to share, to own.

but he was not alone. in one of the cosier chairs was a figure, just out of the light. one he had never seen before, but familiar to him now as breathing.

‘infidel?…’

i hope he has a small bucket.

and i hope, to avoid confusion, it doesn’t already have any shit in it. if boris’ good ideas were controlled drugs (go with me here; there will be a point)(not necessarily an interesting one, but hey…) and he was arrested, he would be found not guilty because the quantity has to be discernible. and that’s without a electron microscope, before you ask.

that 7.5K i pissed away on this year’s law course has been money well spent. no? what will i do now? i know - spend another 13 on next year’s course.

woo (ntm hoo)

i know i owe the world a longer post. maybe mugabe feels he owes zimbabwe a few more years of enlightened liberalism. peter tatchell certainly owes him a big slap.

a very belated happy new year to you all. i know it sounds precious but i love you all and i’m grateful for what you have given me in the past year - violet, aradhana, sarah, witchy (who started me on this nonsense), ehj, paul, softcentre, tartette, talldoc, kingcod, sparkle, stormy, broke - everyone who has bothered to leave a comment here even the ones who don’t exist (i have new spambot chums!).

in blog terms, my thanks go above all others to the two people who have with their illimitable, inimitable, impossible, unstoppable ideology of idiocy written way more of this blog than me (not that hard, i suppose) the inseparable and insuperable infidel and daisy.

respect to you all. i hope the world is kind to you and those you love. you deserve it.

i have no idea whether i will be able to blog much at all; here is a post i started at the end of last year to explain matters (it appears to contain some capitals - can’t imagine what i was thinking):

It is clear I have not been putting in the hours (or more usually minutes) to keep this blog in the state you, my dearest readers, might wish.My comments have been sparse as good ideas in the mouth of the Dave (I do hope you noticed….hmmm?). Posts have flowed from this keyboard like voters rushing to join the conservative party. While it does mean there is generally less crap to wade through, you might have been prompted to worry about me.

No? Oh well. (small stoical sigh…)

But I am OK - be still your beating wotsits. Call off the search teams with their unnecessarily cute, cocaine-addicted dogs (actually, my car got searched the other day. It was a peculiarly British stop and search in every way. I was at King’s Cross station picking up my Aunt off the Durham train. A policeman came up and bid me a good morning. In the most sheepish tone I have heard outside a sheep farm, he informed me that he was going to take some details and search my car under the prevention of terrorism act. I expressed the fervent hope that his searching my car might indeed help prevent terrorism. I asked him what he was gong to put down under ‘hair colour’ - he said ‘grey’. I told him the last time I was stopped it had been ‘fair’ - tho to be realistic it had been rather late at night. He removed his helmet to reveal his gleaming pate and said ‘you have one on me’. The sniffer dog dutifully hopped in my car and had a good sniff at my dirty cricket kit - I apologised for the obvious lack of drugs or explosives.He gave me the pink form detailing the details he had taken and we parted amicably as my rather surprised aunt arrived all silver hair and smiles. (It could only have been more English if we had shared a pot of Earl Grey.)

Ok, we were calling off the search teams. Or even cancelling an international googling campaign to see what the heck I was up to - less effort all round and equally unproductive. Well, in a turnaround as unexpected as Big Dave suddenly being handed an open goal by Gordon, i decided to become a lawyer…
i started a law course in september and from having initially had a lot of work to do, i now seem to have more. i will be thinking of you all and will post as and when i can. no doubt if ever i throm the merest scrap of a train of thoughtlessness daisy and fidel will devour it like me with an overwritten simile. or not. forces of nature and all that.

and in the meantime i hope the tories’ soft parts go a nasty shade of green and drop off.

over a period of months.

the story broke some days ago in the evening standard (or, to be accurate, i spotted it in evening standard lite - come on guys, the original is hardly a news titan; just letters from a bloke who doesn’t want black people to have cars because ‘i was at these traffic lights in south london and there was a coloured man in his car and it looked expensive i mean i don’t even know where they get the money from and they all have loads of kids probably on the social bad as travellers if you ask me i’m not a racist but yadda yadda…………’, three old sudoku puzzles and a recipe involving a fish you’ve never heard of that you won’t have time to cook even if you don’t get stuck on the tube for 2 hours on the way home. ‘roll on the olympics’, sez me.)

ahem….

the story is that the mayor - not the mayor of where you live, or even ken the mayor of london, but the mayor of kensington and chelsea (which can’t be that hard a job, even though it sounds like he has two bits of london to sort - actually, the qualification is to be head of the ruling-in-perpetuity tory group on the council; if you have a funny name like merrick or warwick or two or more surnames it helps - if you don’t believe me, just look up the list of councillors at www.rbkc.gov.uk) has bought a new car. it couldn’t be ken the mayor of all of london because he hates cars and goes on the tube like the rest of us. not a perfect human being, but he does at least suffer the public transport network with real people - the patron actually eats in his own restaurant as ’twere).

the car, a bentley, cost £115,000. well it’s a bentley.

well of course.

it’s also a very bad car which puts out ‘5 times the emissions of a prius’. so they wheel out a spokesman (NB the royal borough of kensington and chelsea are not mealy-mouthed bleeding heart liberals; oh no - they pay no dues to political correctness; they have spokesmen and all their committees have chairmen - some of whom, i admit, are women) to make these very relevant points:

we haven’t had a new car for 30 years (and this was really nice and shiny)

we don’t want a scuzzy old prius because it’ll probably be junk in 4-5 years (how i’d love the toyota legal department to get their teeth into that)

we need (really need)(like my 4yr old son really needs a power ranger) a car that reflects the profile and position of the mayor (of kensington and chelsea you remember) - ie a big penis extension for a posh man with rather a small one

all of which means that: we are actually using the council’s money wisely and being good to the environment (no i didn’t get that either).

it does at least have the claim to be the fastest production car with some fantastic topspeed over 100 mph. which isn’t all that useful in the crowded streets of kensington (or chelsea). it will also attract the new higher rate of congestion charge and parking permit charge as levied by the … yes … royal borough of kensington and chelsea to stop people buying silly expensive cars that needlessly pollute the planet. (though see above the bit about really really needing it.)

i am the chair (no chairmen for us you note) of a community nursery in the Royal Borough. we have letters from madonna’s mother-in-law who runs the provision of things like nurseries in the borough saying we are really really good (so it must be true); we cater for a socially diverse mix of children from working parents (many single parents) and target those on low incomes. in the good old days we had all of our funding from the borough - now we get a certain amount every so often which is used to keep fees affordable for those working parents. maybe 15-20k last year. the day i read this heart-warming story, i had a meeting with the new civil servant in charge of whatever business they deem looking after children to be (everything is in a business group for the borough - terribly gradgrindian) who informed us we probably wouldn’t be getting any money any longer. no real reason, we just wouldn’t. she did tell us we would in the future get free tickets every friday night when they close off a circuit of roads around the central library and council building so our poor wee bairns can watch mayor bidswick blitherington-browne chuck a few laps round it at 115mph or whatever the car does. they will also be allowed to tip their caps and shout ‘gawdblessee guv’nor’ as he whooshes by in a smog of greenhouse gases.

okay - i lied about the last bit. still; not particularly helpful, is it?

which is a random way of saying i got tagged with a meme (which you will know, if you read the awesome dr socks at reclusive leftist, i don’t yet have a definition for, but i imagine someone is e’en now writing one for me). too many whiches (as the mayor of salem was heard to mutter) and not enough woo (as i would add). i hope you are all following this - though of course my readership is sufficiently small in number and broad of imagination to allow for endless in-jokes. and in the spirit of collaboration i would love fidel and daisy to complete the task with me: we have been tagged twice, both by the fragrant dr socks above and sarah of ethically speaking. let’s give more than we are asked to and do it three times. and given our propensity for randomness without encouragement, i am almost afraid of what may soon be written here.

random facts about me…

1 i like not using capitals when i type - despite being a grammar and spelling nazi; i believe they (grammar and spelling) are what give us control over language and allow us to communicate more forcefully; and without command of our language, there goes a large part of our ability to have any power over elements of our daily lives.

2 i do not physically possess a soapbox, though i may one day consider making or acquiring one.

3 i bat left-handed and bowl (when asked - which is rarely) right arm; this is not particularly unusual.

4 one night i slept on the sand (actually this bit was rather stony) in the open in the sahara. that same night, i unloaded and changed the tyre on a beaten-up old nissan pickup. as i did this the elderly female relative of the guys giving us a lift got out her mat and prayed towards mecca.

5 i think visions of johanna is the most sublime piece of music i have heard- or the slow movement from beethoven’s 5th piano concerto, or rainy night in soho, or the bit of mozart played at both my parents’ funerals, or… no i just don’t know

6 i have no real idea where my life is headed - i don’t even understand the concept of a life heading anywhere.

7 part of me yearns every day for the north east of england … or is it the past?

8 i believe “god” is, in fact, people.

if fidel and daisy would like to add their facts, it would be delightful. if they choose randomly to do nothing or to do something entirely different then that would be almost expected. the ball is in the air - catch it if you wish…

blimey - i’ve just fought my way through the door, past a pile of junk mail as towering and phallic as a priest’s ego, choked on dust as thick as a tory councillor, the gas has been cut off and just from a brief inspection of the lifeforms that have evolved in my fridge, i have to admit it’s been a little while. i will answer your sarky comments on the thread where they appear and i am preparing a post that will truly change the world. however…
in the meantime, it’s not as if i don’t have many and varied things to be delighted and furious about. it is truly gratifying that no sooner does the primordial ooze in the tory party get extra daring and bubble up a policy for my mate dave to wrap his gorgeous pouting lips around than the voice of reason speaks from the shires (or wherever that bloke hails from) to whine that the dark ages are a glorious place to live (wow the sentence is so long; my stay at the henry james academy of period was indeed worthwhile) and some people just don’t deserve better than a secondary modern anyway. hoorah for the tories and their ability to keep opening their mouths every so often to remind you that:

a ) they’re still alive (bother it all)

and b) ah yes… THAT’S why we hate the bastards

however, the subject of our competition (and focus for my all-too-often-aroused ire) is a scottish bloke in a dress who reckons some old chap in the sky tells him abortion is “an unspeakable crime”, a “social evil”, “the wanton killing of innocents” who are “murdered in their mother’s womb” (at the very least, someone has misplaced an apostrophe - just saying). my challenge to you, my beloved writers/readers - for are we not all both of these? - is to put in the comments exactly what you’d like to say to the delightful, insightful, tastefully clad Cardinal Keith O’Brien (can’t be too many other Cardinal Keiths around, can there?). prizes will be awarded for conciseness, wit and pure old-fashioned rudeness. and if anyone wants to say anything to these dangerously emotive words of feminazi Ann Furedi from some wooly liberal baby-murdering group: “abortion is a safe, legal and medically-legitimate procedure” not to mention her radical assertion that “Women should be able to make their own decisions about their bodies and their future” (HAH!!!) then feel free to open fire. prizes as ever are yet to be decided (not to mention entirely imaginary) but will each include a free eucharist for two - with food and drink; a week in a mud hut featuring lots of unpleasant diseases; and definitely NOT the chance to look through Galileo’s telescope - courtesy of our new sponsor the Catholic Church of Scotland. wonder what big dave would think of that!

oh yes - we’re back… flagellate at will.

well apparently i have to make some list of stuff about things - why do i participate in such blog-related chain-letter stuff which means i have to write about me… ahahhhh! i have just realised it is an illuminating and artistic exercise that will be of interest to my vast readership. how can i deny my public?.

A - Available or Single? no idea; ask my CLP and see what response you get.

B - Best Friend? CLP as above.

C - Cake or Pie? pie eternally, pastry being the food of the gods. (preferably with potato and onions therein)

D - Drink of Choice? tea - virtually any style any way any where, but preferably no teabag and no sugar

E - Essential Item? probably my cricket bat (or should that be my box?)

F - Favorite Color? you know… i’ve never really been able to decide. it’s all so visual and (as one may deduce from an entirely word-based blog) i’m not. let’s say whatever colour you, my readers, prefer. it’s so interactive round here.

G - Gummi Bears or Worms? worms - liked them as a kid and we never had gummi bears (filthy german invention); anyway, they are so good for the soil and leave the door open to the possibility of a really weak mediaeval christianity-related pun. (diet of worms - for the one person on the planet who is yet to groan at it)

H - Hometown? North Shields - always in my heart (no really - sad but true)

I - Indulgence? good wine; doesn’t have to be expensive, but made with care and dedication and drunk with friends - but not champagne, that’s just muck with bubbles in it.

J - January or February? January - you get more for your money and there’s less of the year gone so less guilt at having done nothing with it.

K - Kids? horribly, stupidly in love with mine

L - Life is incomplete without… art - specifically theatre; not the rsc stuff, particularly, but small productions with good actors up close where you can see their eyes, working inventively and honestly. it lights up life and has been lighting up mine ever since i first went.

M - Marriage Date? nobody’s told me about it…

N - Number of Siblings? classic spoiled only child

O - Oranges or Apples? apples - off my tree on the balcony in my urban oasis

P - Phobias/Fears? - i’m not sure i fear anything. when my dad died i decided if i could handle that i could handle it all - i’m not so certain that’s true, but i don’t have anything to fear as such. we deal with anything - that’s what my mum managed to do and she had so much more to deal with than me, so i should be able to have a go at that too. there are a lot of things i would hate to happen, but oddly i don’t feel like i fear them - what difference would it make?

Q - Favourite Quote. none or too many and as this is my choice, i shall opt for too many:

‘ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet…’ - and the whole bloody lyric, damn you, bob

‘the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on: nor all your piety nor wit

shall lure it back to cancel half a line nor all your tears wash out one word’

prospero’s speech beginning ‘ we are such stuff as dreams are made on …’

‘let’s go’ ‘ we can’t’ ‘why not?’ ‘we’re waiting for godot’ ‘ah yes…’

ode to a nightingale - one long quote; it’s so good it’s like dylan

‘and now abideth faith, hope, love; these three - but the greatest of these is love’ (sorry; i’ve bastardised the king james because i want sugar on my jam on my chocolate)

R - Reasons to smile. CLP, the boys being good, the boys being bad, coming back and seeing the boys after a week, a day, 10 seconds…, friends, that first pint on a summer evening, taking a good catch, taking any catch, people who enjoy writing and reading at my blog, someone being kind for no apparent reason, reading over a piece i’ve written or edited and thinking it’s as good as i can make it, walking round the boundary at a certain time as the afternoon just starts to become evening with a pint in hand, seeing my chillis grow, having been up against it on a tricky pitch and finally hitting a ball for four after overs of grafting, anyone getting my sense of humour, the cork coming out clean from a bottle of 40 year-old port, dylan, moments when for no particular reason you feel the shaft of sunlight hit your soul, a successful run chase, just breathing sometimes, life, death, anything, nothing, everything

S - Season? summer - the first half of the cricket season when you remember that you can still score runs after all and stiff limbs manage to move quicker than you dared hope

T - Tag Three. do i even know three who haven’t been tagged? i’d love to tag daisy and fidel, but you’d have to do it here, so i’ll try teacup newt, manxome and aradhana. i don’t even know how you tag someone - great playing a game without quite knowing the rules…

U - Unknown Fact About Me. i have appeared naked on stage and screen

V – Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animals? i am frequently nasty to pigeons and imprison small dogs to power my home using treadmills; would probably make cutting remarks about cats but i fear their powerful lobby of supporters.

W - Worst Habit? laziness, lack of concentration (probably laziness) - or agreeing with people putting almost directly opposed viewpoints

X – X-rays or Ultrasounds? who cares, but i really hate the conservative party and wish the blight on the planet of right wing politics and hatred would just fuck right off and leave anyone who cares remotely about people not money to try and run this place a little less horribly.

Y - Your Favorite Foods? potatoes, onions and anything that contains them… also everything else in quantity please with just a little more of that thank you very much - oh i couldn’t … well if you insist, just to be polite (oh yes alphabites and potato waffles - that’s for me online mum and her boring friend sarah and her annoying kids who are so not as grown up as me, whatever she says)

Z - Zodiac? scorpio - couldn’t you guess???

i can exclusively reveal that there’s a place for us features on a search for ‘hot north eastern women’ (admittedly on tiscali). assuming big dave c has not started working as a transexual escort service in the percy main area, it can only be sparkle’s occasional numinous presence (perhaps a link to that one of her in her jamees and a rather fetching wheelbarrow) or the odd mention of my gran. take your pick.

it’s unfashionable - even over here on the left - to celebrate may day as the day of the working people. nobody flies red flags, nobody even complains they aren’t allowed to celebrate it like st george’s day. it is rarely mentioned at all.

but on may day i like to think about where i came from; about my great grandfather Thomas Milburn, a cumbrian lead miner until the work dried up and he came east to the durham coalfield and became a durham pitman; about my grandad, who followed his father into the pit and never became a deputy despite passing his exams, because Thomas was the lodge chairman - no masonic lodge, this, but a trade union and the chairman was its shop steward - and lodge could never be management. coal cutters both; ‘hewers’ as they were both precisely described on my grandfather’s wedding certificate - as was his new father in law; men who worked for hours at a time with a pick, cutting the coal by hand as it was done until not so long ago. and my grandad worked the thin seam - 18 inches at its narrowest - he told me about it without drama, without making any of the obvious points about how easy i had it - an actor rehearsing a play about what he had lived - he did mention it was a wet seam, which meant you lay in the water to cut the coal. he survived a roof fall to be invalided out of the pit relatively unscathed - though he showed me how he couldn’t raise his arm above the horizontal; fortunately he wasn’t a great drinker.

he bought a shop from one of his wife’s family - if you see the picture of it, shop is much too grand a title - a cross between a phone box and an outside toilet - and sold cigarettes at the pithead as the men came out from shift - presumably just in case they weren’t dying fast enough from silicosis or pneumoconiosis; many of them his old pit marrers. in time he graduated to a real corner shop which he kept until a little before his death. i went past it the other day and there was a mercedes parked outside.

two great ironies - a great grandad who got on his bike and looked for work (or would have if he could afford a bloody bike) and a grandad who ran a corner shop like alderman roberts (never became an alderman - too much against the grain for that; still too much a lodge man). but neither of them ever would or did believe those two great tory lies, of tebbit and thatcher that combine in the myth that anyone can make it if they pull themselves up by their bootstraps. they lived and died socialists; men who were strong enough to fight for their rights and the rights of those around them, because they realised that humans are too big to be bought and sold and humanity too precious to be commodified. or more likely because they wanted their family to be able to eat. and because of their efforts, my mother became the first in her family to continue her education after school; i in turn ended up with an education deemed (rightly) to be among the most privileged. not because capitalism allows everyone a fair chance if they work hard - but because they organised and combined with others like them to claim their rights as human beings.

when people decide that my education and new place firmly among the middle classes make my socialism of the champagne variety (my best friends will laugh at that - they know i would always hold my hand up as a vintage port socialist), it has as much logic as the accusations leveled against some feminists of being ‘academic’. the implication is somehow that both socialists and feminists should eschew education, which might indeed find favour with those who wish both women and the working classes would know their place and keep to it. as the starving artist loses his magic when he graduates from his garret, so the feminist and the socialist should not avail themselves of education (or presumably a good meal).

the subject of feminism is pertinent because, while socialism may not always foster the feminist cause, i am certain that socialism, is a natural partner of feminism. and equally certain that conservatism, built on the commodification of the individual, has no place for feminism.

blair and new labour have been here for ten years and things are bad - but ten years earlier it was a different prime minister, a different party and the same bloody stupid war with even less excuse; a couple of years before that, she was fighting her war on working people in this country. to reclaim a popular phrase from those days: ‘if an etonian in a loud waistcoat is the answer, it must have been a bloody stupid question’.

i don’t imagine Thomas Milburn would have thought much of either of them, but he knew where he came from. i, in my turn, am pretty sure where i have come from - i live in a world a million miles from theirs, but built on their strength and courage, bought by their blood and the blood of those like them. i owe them. and i won’t forget it.