Dean's Blog

Well here we are again! The end of another year as we say goodbye to 2008 and hello to 2009 it is time once again to think about changes in my life.

In reflection 2008 has not really been a bad year, I moved house, moved to a new county and whilst work is slow and often difficult I guess that in these financial times of woe I am lucky to have one. I know that 2009 is going to be a VERY DIFFICULT year for the entire world as the financial crisis gets worse, but in the midst of all this I am making ten resolutions to make my life better than it has been.

So here are my resolutions for 2009

1. Stop spending huge amounts of money on nights out with friends and save


2. Learn two new languages


3. Visit Colombia in the Summer :)


4. Finish writing my new book by July


5. Spend more time doing outdoor activities instead of staying in most weekends


6. Not to worry about the pressures of work too much


7. Learn to turn my Blackberry OFF at night


8. Be true to the woman I love and make her life as special as it can be


9. Spend more time visiting family, they are the ones who always remain loyal to us


10. Be happy and healthy and live the dream!

A new year is a new start, a time where hopes and dreams can become a reality. Nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it.

Dreams really can come true. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing.

Happy New Year!

I was rudely awoken in the guest room of my parents house this morning at 11am.

"Dean, are you awake?" asked my mum

"Guess I am now", I replied.

"Good, Nick is coming around to pick the TV up for his gran in ten minutes, can you put it on the hallway for him".

So I casually awoke, got out of bed and lifted the small portable TV to the floor.

"Oh no not that one, the big one, your old TV"

My old TV?....you mean the TV that I left here last year as it was too big to fit in the removal van, the TV that had been with me for five years?.

"Yes that one", pointed my mum.

It turns out that my mum had agreed to give this TV away to her best friends mother who is 89. Not one to begrudge an old lady a TV I sadly looked at the hulking great box and felt a bit heavy hearted. Sure I had since replaced this TV with a 37" LCD Widescreen TV. Sure I now had surround sound and its hooked up to an X-Box 360 but this old TV was like a good friend.

It was the first TV I ever purchased on my own, and back in 2003 even cost more than the newer model I now owned. This TV was the peacemaker when I had an arugment with my ex girlfriend. It was also the perfect excuse to escape to a different world when my ex had her friends around, just plug in and transport yourself to a new world.

This was also the TV I dragged home from Dixons on the tube, in the pouring rain. It was more than a TV it was an old friend.

I hope that this 89 year old lady has just as much enjoyment with it as I did, just don't try and lift it, I still have the scar.

I will miss you old friend.

You are always more than "Just a TV"

Have a wonderful day everyone!

This is womans Dart's World Champion Anastasia Dobromyslova.

This week she took part in the PDC Dart's World Championship. The first time that a female has taken part at this professional level.

During her first round match, which she lost, her opponent's throws were being booed. This is not unusual in Darts. Anyone who has ever been to a darts match would know the crowd often play up to those who are popular and those who are not, it is much like a pantomime.

But this blog is about six times former World Champion Eric Bristowe and his rather sexist comments about Anastasia's participation in the event.

Before this match Bristowe stated in an interview that she had no place in the event.

""There are a lot of top players who are not very happy about it. "They are paying a lot of money to travel around the world and she's just been invited", said Bristowe.

"If Anastasia wants to join the PDC, travel the world earning ranking points and earn her way through then we could have five women in it next year and no-one could complain", he added.

It is this type of sexist comment that irritates me to the core by sportsmen who are still stuck in the past. My opinion is if she is that good then let her play. I was not watching man against woman when I saw her game, I saw darts player against darts player and it was a very close game, which the best player one.

It has done wonders for the sport, it has been a great thing to see and I hope more and more women take part in the future. For Bristowe, a man who is still stuck in the 1980's I feel sorry for his sad opinion.

As another year comes to an end we often reflect about how it has gone, the highs and lows and of course make those resolutions that we will most certainly break.

On the whole, with the exception of yesterday, this year has been a good one, better than 2007 and 2006 but still a lot of room for improvement.

Whilst I see a lot of my friends are off to parties, some if not most are heading home. Now I do not get to see my family a great deal during the year, usually at a Summer gathering or at this time of year. But going home for Christmas is always something of a tonic.

Home made meals, laughter, arguments and silence. It is what makes a Christmas. But no matter what the highs and lows are of spending Christmas with your family I know that there will be years to come when I will no longer be in a position to enjoy them with such anticipation.

So no matter how similar they always seem year after year there is no better way to end a year.

The perfect tonic.

In a world that's filled with darkness

Exists a shining light

She lights the way through life's cold days

And guides me through the night

Her words raise my soul so high

Like it is soaring in the sky

Akin to a phoenix from the flames

Soaring up so high

She must be an angel

As there is nothing more beautiful than she

Each time I see that lovely smile

My heart it fills with glee

At night we waltz into a dream

Where just two people dance devine

The music plays into the dawn

The moment feels just fine

If she is ever feeling down

I will lift her up with love

That to her is my gift of life

That is sent from up above

Today as I boarded the tube from Canary Wharf following a meeting I had the pleasure of bumping into leader of the opposition and Conservative party (and without a doubt the next Prime Minister of the UK) David Cameron. Whilst I admired him for taking public transport, even with a plethora of photographers, it was the paper he was carrying that grabbed my attention.

It is not often a headline makes you stare at someones paper intently, the last time was when actor Christopher Reeve died and the headline read "Superman is Dead!", much to the horror of the young boy sat next to me who began to cry.

But today I read that Bernard Maddof, the former chairman of NASDAQ, has admitted fraud totalling £33 BILLION (£33,000,000,000).  In the time of the credit crunch this means not only putting more of a strain on the ever tightning economy but also the tax payers, once again, will have to front the bill.

Now excuse the language but HOW THE FUCK was this not picked up? Is there no audit process involved when monitoring finances?

One woman quoted today "It will be difficult to see finances return to normal in America for a while £33 billion is a lot of money"....no shit.

This world is falling into economic decline, whilst America maybe celebrating the new President replacing a bumbling buffoon in GW Bush, here in the UK we have a clueless idiot involved, who was never elected Prime Minister, to announce last week that he had "Saved the world"

If he had any decenecy he will call an election tomorrow for the Spring, accept defeat and maybe, just maybe the man I met this morning can put the Great back into Britain.

They are not about me...they are just about things I see in life each day :)

One Christmas party down.....4 to go :)

The Summer days spent on the beach

Laughing with new friends

Those endless nights of happiness

For which my heart depends

Your all caught up in the moment

Yet I am here to stay

You enter my life and leave just as quick

Now your gone away

The sea washes away the footprints

Of the journey that we shared

You have gone to distant shores

I wonder if they cared?

Winter replaces summer

And I here I am alone

The pattern will repeat itself

That much is now known

I hope your feeling happy

And remember each day with bliss

For I am just alone here now

In my isolated abyss

George Bernard Shaw liked the tidy approach

Are we able to think clearly when surrounded by mess because chaos is inherent in all our minds, even those of the great writers and thinkers, asks Clive James.

The great thing about this slot is that I can pontificate. But a wise pontificator should always remember that he won't solve a global problem in 10 minutes, or even do much more than usefully touch on it in 10 hours. There are two main reasons for that. One reason is that the global problems are, by their nature, devilishly complicated. But everyone knows, or should know, that.

The other reason is less obvious, because it lies within the nature of the pontificator. He, or she - in my case he - speaks with a special pontificating voice: integrated, judicious even in its doubts, purporting to contain the distilled wisdom of a lifetime's experience. Almost always, I suspect, this voice is at odds with the personality from which it emerges, and in my case the discrepancy is so glaring that even I can spot it.



(Above is writer Will Selfs Study)

As I prepare this script, tapping away at the keyboard as Socrates might have done if he had owned a PC, it seems to me that my brain is at my fingertips, with all its scope and knowledge. But then, after looking up at the screen and noticing that the last two sentences are all in capitals and include various chemical formulae for substances unknown to science, I bounce my forehead off the desk and make the supreme mistake of looking around my room.

It's in chaos. The pontificator with plans for fixing the world can't organise his own desk, and as for what lies beyond the desk, forget about it. The evidence that I've spent years forgetting about it is all out there. Piles of old newspapers and magazines. Stacks of box files containing folders containing memos about the necessity to buy more folders and box files. Hundreds of books uselessly hidden behind hundreds of other books. A small statue of a Sumo wrestler, or else a life-sized statue of a small Sumo wrestler. A bag of random receipts that my accountant might have found quite useful in their year of origin, 1998.

But let's start with the desk. Or rather, let's not. The desk is too much. Little of its surface is visible through piled notebooks and shuffled papers. But observe this vertically striped earthenware mug full of ball-point pens. If the phone rings with information I must take down, I reach for one of these pens and find that it does not work.

Shambolic

In the same vertically striped mug there are 15 other pens that do not work either. Vaguely I remember the day when I planned to sort through these pens and retain only those that did work. But I got distracted. What else is in the same mug? Jelly beans, several of which have grown fur.

And that's just the mug. What about this desk drawer over here on the right? Ah, there's a touch of organisation here. Every year I put a new set of vital names and addresses in the designated section of my appointments diary. But I never get round to transferring vital names and addresses from previous diaries into the current one. So there are 10 years of diaries in this drawer alone, to supplement the line-up of 20 years of diaries standing over there in the corner of the room behind that valuable stack of obsolete phone books. Or, as I have just typed, obsotel nophe kobos.

All over again I count my blessings that I have not been chosen as one of the subjects for Eamonn McCabe's series of photographs called Writer's Rooms. In London, an exhibition of these photographs has just opened. The photographs have been running as a series in one of the upmarket newspapers. When I looked at the early photos in that series I was envious. Would I be chosen? Then I started praying that I wouldn't be, a prayer which has mercifully been answered.

There are some prizes I would like. I would quite like the Nobel Prize, if the money could be delivered tomorrow in a suitcase, clearly marked "Nobel Prize money: bank immediately or it will burst into flames." I would quite like the Booker prize, the Whitbread Prize, the Forward prize and the UNICEF prize for the chronically disorganized. I can hear myself pontificating while accepting any or all of those awards. But what I don't want is to be photographed in this room, because any shred of credibility I had as a pontificator would evaporate instantly.

I noted with shame that even the most shambolic of the writer's rooms in the photographs was better organised than mine, and the majority of them might have been deliberately arranged to remind me that I myself was working in a skip. These paragons had got it all together without it getting on top of them.

Force of nature

You could tell that everything was there for a reason. If a woman writer had the propeller of a Sopwith Camel mounted on the wall, it was because her great-grandfather shot down Baron von Richthofen's second cousin in 1917.

Writers had their books arranged by category, in alphabetical order. I moved into this office 10 years ago, the books came out of their tea chests in any old order, and any old order is still the only order they maintain on my shelves. There are books I know I own but I have to buy them again because I can't find them.

Let me add that everything is well dusted. A cleaner comes in once a week and she does a good job. But she is under instructions not to move anything, in case I need it. So she has learned just to polish the whole lot as if it were an installation at Tate Modern.

Other writers clearly find it easier to get their act together, and no doubt most non-writers do too. But judging from my own admittedly extreme experience, they can only get things under control by striving mightily against a force of nature that wants things to be disorganised rather than not.

Scientists call it entropy. Back in the early 19th Century, Carl von Clausewitz, in his great work about military strategy On War, called it Friction. Clausewitz said that you have to have a plan for the battle but the plan had better include plenty of room for the absolute certainty that the plan will start growing fur from the first moment of its execution.

I have just been checking up in my copy of Clausewitz - I had to buy another copy, because my original copy is somewhere in my bookshelves, which means that it might as well be on Mars - and I can tell from every sentence that he was writing with the insight conferred by self knowledge.

I'll bet all the money in my foreign coin collection - it's over there in the fruit bowl, and some of those hundreds of obsolete francs and deutschmarks are sure to be worth something to collectors a hundred years from now. I'll bet all that money in the fruit bowl - and if you're asking where the fruit is, I gathered up all my powers of organisation and threw it out only a month after I forgot to eat it. I'll bet all that money that Clausewitz, when he was working on his magnum opus in his last years, was sitting at a desk that looked like the morning after the Battle of Waterloo.

His name for the accumulated effect of Friction was the Fog of War. When I read that, I could tell straight away that here was a man who, like me, couldn't toast a slice of bread without filling his apartment with smoke. When his widow prepared his manuscript for posthumous publication, she probably found sandwiches in it.

Dangerous signal

When DVDs came in, I rarely played my VHS tapes again, but the VHS tapes did not move out. There are several hundred of them here, stacked on the floor. My first copy of Clausewitz might be somewhere behind them. I know there is a squash racket behind them because I can see the edge of its frame sticking up.

Will I ever play squash again? Of course not, so why is the racket still there? Perhaps it's trying to remind me that the best equipped pontificator is the one who is aware of his own propensities towards chaos. Unable to organise his own breakfast, he will be less ready to condemn officials who can't organise an efficient system for sending out student grants, or collecting private information onto a CD-ROM that won't be left on a train.

But even the most self-aware pontificator is still likely to expect too much of the world. Rarely will he be sufficiently amazed that society functions at all, considering some of the human material it has to work with. In ancient Greece, the philosopher Diogones, wedded to simplicity, lived in a tub. But he still roamed the streets of Athens by daylight while carrying a lamp. He said that he was looking for an honest man, and everybody wrote it down, saying that Diogones the cynic was a piercing analyst of the human condition. But maybe he just didn't know how to turn the lamp off.

Sitting at this computer, on whose keyboard I have just typed the word "lamp" and actually written the word "lump", I am face to face with an item of technology that Diogones would not have known how to switch on. I barely know how to switch it on either, have often failed to switch it off - why does it ask me "do you wish to report the error" when I don't now what the error is? And yet I do know that its mere presence in the pile of rubble I call my desk is sending me a dangerous signal.

This miracle of machinery is telling me that order can emerge from chaos after all. Well, yes, it can, but only against heavy odds, because chaos is inherent even in the minds of those who make the miracles. And it is certainly inherent within the pontificator. I can pontificate about that with some certainty, even as I type the last words of this sprict, scirpt, script, reach for my mug of coffee and get a mouthful of ball point pens.

Eamonn McCabe's Writers' Rooms exhibition is at the Madison Contemporary Art gallery in London until 17 Januray 2009

Sunshine follows thunder like lightning follows rain
A feeling of such immortal bliss she takes away the pain
She is the bridge across the river, the flame in the night
Her heart shines like a beacon, now everythings allright
A fool can say I love you but the wise will offer their heart
Distance only equals desire now that were apart

I follow you into the sun so please girl take my hand
Two hearts entwine like butterflies across the broken land
If dreams are meant to come real then let this one be true
Every broken promise that has let you down, now they will come true

Each journey begins with one footstep, I guess we should now run
Fate is saying "You can't win", but I guess thats half the fun
Overcoming any goal, thats the will we have to keep
I'll shelter you from harm in life, protect you in our sleep
Now if the world is angry we smile back in its face
We are the hear and now my love we lead the human race

I follow you into the sun so please girl take my hand
Two hearts entwine like butterflies across the broken land
If dreams are meant to come real then let this one be true
Every broken promise that has let you down, now they will come true

Every person has a wish, send yours across the shore
Let my key be the kiss I give that opens up your door
If I could own your heart this life then my soul is one
You are the flower I want to grow in our eternal sun
Everything happens for a reason so lets not tempt fate
Kiss me now upon this night, before it is too late.

Celebrity - 1) noun, a famous person: a show-business celebrity

Well done to Joe Swash who has won the 2008 UK "I'm a celebrity get me out of here", a year of Iceland supermarket ad's await him. Those who know me will tell you I loathe reality shows like this but this year I watched it for one reason, an actual Celebrity was present.

The contestants this year consisted of the winner, Joe Swash, a cheeky cockney actor famous for playing..er a cheeky cockney. Mr Sulu from Star Trek, a man who was in a pop band 23 years ago, a man who was in a boy band 8 years ago, two failed politicians, an old TV presenter, some footballers fiancee, and a girl with a huge false pair of tits.

After three weeks of viewing I'm convinced there were more than just a few tits in the camp and just as false as Nicola's.

But above it all stood a legend, a true icon, in her field the greatest of all time.

The woman who won 18 Grand Slam singles titles, 31 Women's double titles, and 10 mixed doubles. In total 177 championship wins. She is head and shoulders the greatest tennis player of all time.

Rubbing shoulders with a page 3 model and TV presenters whose claim to fame is shouting "BLAAAAAH" must have been daunting for Martina. After all her skill and tennis prowess have made her one of the greatest sports women in history.

The others will milk the 15 minutes of fame for as long as they can, Mr Swash will be on telly as much as he can.

Martina, your legacy is immortal. Thank you for defining the word legend.

Staring bewilderingly into space the mother of missing nine year old Shannon Matthews looks drawn, haggard and gaunt. It should be down to the countless hours of worrying, the sleepless nights wondering where the daughter that she loved so much was.

Yet in reality for twenty four days Karen Matthews not only knew where here 'missing' daughter was yet she orchestrated the whole story. Drugged, tied up and held hostage nine year old Shannon Matthews was kept in a small divan bed, not big enough to turn over in whilst her mother and goggle eyed porn addict of a boyfriend played the hearts of millions hoping to gain the reward that The Sun newspaper had placed, £50,000.

The plan was to release Shannon into a market where her Uncle, also in on the act, would find her and then claim the reward. But thanks to the more than observant scrutiny of the local police force and detectives they not only saw through the whole lie but more importantly found Shannon alive.

Karen and the uncle were yesterday found guilty of Kidnapping, Imprisonement and Abduction and face "lengthy jail terms". All for £50,000.

They will no doubt be the target of much abuse, they will never see Shannon again. Shannon has been in care since, and the worst crime of all is that she will now grow up without a mother. The price of stupidity, £50,ooo. The price of love, that is priceless.

She stared deep into the cataclysmic abyss that gazed back with beckoning eyes.As the rain lashed against her face like shards of broken glass, sharp enough to hurt but not enough to cut she gently began to sway. Like a rag doll playing in the wind her body moved in random directions, undeceive in which way to go, a euphoric feeling of being out of control.

Silhouetted figures moved slowly in the distance, up and down they bobbed they were animated yet made no sound. Maybe the noise they were emitting was being drowned by the banshee screams that echoed through her ears. The wind howled violently, seemingly humming to her to "Jump". She was out of control; fate was out of her hands only certain death awaited her if the next step forward was to be her last.

The only thoughts that ran through her mind were how she had arrived at this point, the events, the promises and broken dreams of the last year all seemingly pushing her forward towards the point of no return. As the raindrops dripped down her face masquerading her tears into a path of drowned emotions the pain suddenly snapped her back to reality.

Where was she? Had she abandoned her child again? The daughter that she had bought into this world yet abandoned time after time as her own selfish addictions took over her body snapping her desire and murdering any last ounce of willpower she possessed. How many more times will the social services give her a final warning, she had lost count. Vicki was the saviour of her life, the only thing that had stopped her from engulfing herself in the darkened cataclysm that offered her such a tempting invitation.

Was it fate that had led her here? How can a soul become so decayed in such a short space of time? The willingness to feel wanted and accepted was the cause, that much she knew, but what she still could not fathom was why she had let herself be abused by those she trusted. There was no element of friendship in her life anymore, family were there to protect her but they had abandoned ship a long time ago.

The racism portrayed when she invited Joel into her house by her family were inexcusable, the blunt outburst was unforgivable. But her kin turning their back on her had to be the straw that not only broke the camel’s back but crushed the poor bastard. Alone and frightened the year ahead saw a path of self destruction she would not have wished on her worst enemy.

The silhouetted figures were getting distant, the sun had replaced the rain and was etching pain upon her blistered skin, and it was all too much to bear. There was nothing left to live for, nothing to hold her back ending it all. The wind picked up pace and pushed her further to the edge, leaning over she looked down into the infinite hole that waited for her choice...a choice that would change everything.

The make-up hides my pain so good

I masquerade my smile

The tears of this clown have all dried up

If only for a while

An act to entertain you

I am your ringside toy

You are lion tamer

Whipping me for joy

I dance the jolly jig for you

A prisoner, your daily muse

Yet underneath the painted face

Spent up anger lights my fuse

Suddenly I'm free from you

The enlarged shoes are of my feet

Now I fly on my trapeze

The air it feels so sweet

I enjoy the air as it rushes past my head

But I will soon come crashing down

You shoot the cannon to my head

Life is just a circus

I am the painted man

One day I will be free from this

Once I have the master plan