The Final Prayer of an Atheist.

Chairman, I love you; your comrade is coming to see you.

Strange thing to say isn't it? The comma and semi-colon are mine as the phrase was written in Chinese: something like, 主席，我爱你;您的同志来看您or maybe 主席，我愛你;您的同志來看您。

This was written by Mao's widow, the leader of the gang of four, who was supposed to be an atheist, who followed him and his little red book, when he was alive and then when she killed herself she left that as a suicide note. 

Who and how and what was she going to do about seeing him if she didn't believe in the afterlife?

I wish I believed in the afterlife then I'd know that Jimmy Savile was burning in hell!

But back to Mao's widow. Mao Zedong as they say, written in English, was married to Jiang Qing (pronounced King, I reckon) and known as Madam Mao; she was also an actress and was dumped in prison after Mao's death when she and 3 others carried on doing what they were doing when he was alive. 

Madam Mao

before                                     after

Namely murdering people – she was accused of killing 34,274 and that she was her husband's attack dog. She would kill those that tried to get near him. She stated this after his death and, as I say, she and the other members of the gang of 4 were sent to prison.

She was, in fact, on temporary release from prison for health reason and killed herself before returning.

So let me go back to the original question – did she pretend not to believe in God so she could spread the communist message or did she, in fact, think that Chairman Mao, with his little red book, was some kind of god who was waiting for her in communist heaven?

I mean, the reason communism didn't catch on at all in America is that the only things some of the American people knew about communism was that communists were 'godless.' So there it was, killed at first base!

I just looked it up on line and her quote should have been “Chairman! I love you! Your student and comrade is coming to see you!”

So there! I was wrong; but as I've said before I don't know a lot about anything.

Let's leave Mao for a moment: when I went to India I was told not to drink the water and not to put ice into my drink; why would I ever put ice into any drink? – anything that is chilled like that is tasteless; like stuff being too hot.

So when I got there I didn't drink any water at all. I drank beer; drinking beer in hot weather is not good for you, really, which is why people who live in hot countries drink tea. Except in California.

The other people in my party didn't drink any beer but now and then they would clap their hands or swipe the air – and what were they doing? Swatting mosquitoes, of course, and getting bitten or sucked by them or whatever a mosquito does!

But the mosquitoes didn't like me; didn't come anywhere near me. Maybe it was the alcohol they didn't like. I could understand if it was something a bit more potent than the glass of Kingfisher I was drinking so I looked up the connection between malaria and alcohol and it seems that if you drink beer the odour your body/breath gives out, actually attracts mosquitoes; so what can I say?

A doctor once told an alcoholic patient that he had drunk so much gin he was malaria immune.

Now – I have just realised that gin is made from juniper; it was invented by a doctor who mixed juniper berries with grain alcohol and every time I hear the word juniper I think of the following lyric:

We'll just lay there by the juniper 

While the moon is bright 

Watch them jugs a filling in the pale moonlight

My daddy, he made whiskey

My granddaddy, he did too

We ain't paid no whiskey tax since 1792

How did we get away from Chairman Mao? Just shows that you should concentrate on what you are doing and not to let your mind wander. But it is a beautiful lyric isn't it? Written by someone called A.F. Beddoe – and his brother. Sung by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan etc.

Someone said it was written during the prohibition era but was in fact written by the fella above and in a letter to Time Magazine in 1962 he wrote the following:

"Sir: I am extremely thrilled that you printed my song in your folk singing article . . . . . Copper      Kettle was written in 1953 as part of my opera Go Lightly Stranger. A. F. BEDDOE, Staten Island, N.Y. "

Now isn't that something, the business of it being written during the Prohibition years is totally false but, as you can see, was written during the years Chairman Mao was distributing his little red book and his acolytes would hold a copy of the book firmly in their right hand and go around shouting happy, happy, happy to all and sunder - or words to that effect – and taking no notice of some of the wonderful songs and poetry being written in the west as well as in his own country and that word I use wisely there – acolyte (s) – is what his followers were and so the dying note from Madam Mao – or Jiang Qing - “Chairman! I love you! Your student and comrade is coming to see you!” was really the final prayer of an atheist!

Scotland, the brave!

Trinity College, Dublin, Library.

I cannot let this day go – Thursday September 18^th 2014 – without mentioning that today, Scotland are voting to be independent of Britain; it will no longer be part of Great Britain (short for Greater Britain, I suppose, like Greater London where I live or Greater Los Angeles, where I used to live).

After centuries fighting for home rule by politicians like Parnell etc, in 1916 there was an insurrection in Dublin, Ireland, for Irish Independence and today Scotland are getting it without a physical fight; I can't believe they will vote no. 

Thousands died over the years for Irish Independence and Scotland have a chance of getting it by a vote.

The union with Ireland was made through bribery and corruption – let me quote Wikipedia and I'm sorry if you don't like Wikipedia . . . The passage of the Act in the Irish Parliament was ultimately achieved with substantial majorities, having failed on the first attempt in 1799. According to contemporary documents and historical analysis, this was achieved through a considerable degree of bribery, with funding provided by the British Secret Service Office, and the awarding of peerages, places and honours to secure votes. Thus, Ireland became part of an extended United Kingdom, ruled directly by a united parliament at Westminster in London, though resistance remained, as evidenced by Robert Emmet's failed Irish Rebellion of 1803.

Now bear that in mind when you read this:

Back to Scotland:

As soon as recent opinion polls reported a rise in the Yes vote the Westminster party leaders, including the Prime Minister, decamped to Scotland like squealing jackals and then the ex-leader of the Labour Party, Gordon Brown, spoke with the passion he should have shown in 2010 when Labour lost to the Conservatives in the General Election. They were there to beg the Scots not to vote yes.

As with Ireland they offered bribes to the Scots – the so called Devo-Max, empty promises and dreams which will turn into nightmares, and there was a Tory MP on the radio the other day who confirmed that promises would be broken, by saying he wouldn't be voting for the so called promises if there is a no vote.

The same kind of bribes from 211 years ago? I think so.

By the way, 30 years after the insurrection, after the uprising which followed and after the civil war which gave Ireland a kind of freedom (they could never claim Ulster – most of it - in the north) and were left with 26 of the 32 counties, the King of Great Britain, Edward VIII abdicated.

A notice was sent to all the countries where he 'ruled' – amongst them Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland . . . yes Ireland!

The transformation from the Irish Free State to the Republic of Ireland didn't happen till the late forties and then in 1974 that ex King – Edward VIII – who had abdicated in 1936 died; and it was only then that he, officially, ceased to be King of Ireland. The reason is that the rest of the Empire and consequently the Commonwealth, ratified the abdication in 1936, but Ireland didn't bother; this is supposed to be true – what is true is that an Irish woman, The Countess Markievicz, was the first woman elected to the UK House of Commons in 1918 although she never took her seat.

I was in Dublin a few weeks ago; we stayed at Trinity College for one night and had a private tour of the wonderful library where we had a good look at The Book of Kells; the oldest book in the world. I had seen it before but my wife hadn't; the book was created in the year 800 AD.

Afterwards we stayed with family and it was wonderful to see them and they really pushed the boat out for us; wining and dining us – well, whiskeying me as I don't drink wine!

On the way back to London, we were waiting in the departure part of the quay, we had travelled by sea, and my mind was transported back to when we lived in Los Angeles when I went to El Pollo Loco on Sunset Boulevard; in fact I wrote a post about it on here a few years ago.

We were having coffee and a fella came in to the place and, as he carried his coffee from the counter to his table, it became evident that he wasn't wearing a belt, and as he struggled with his coffee, whilst holding his trousers up with his other hand, he let them go slightly exposing his arse; I remember that happening in El Polo Loco: a down and out let his trousers go as he tried to make it to a seat but his went almost all the way down which made a poor woman in front of him go hysterical. And as with the fella in Dublin the arse was as clean and tidy as a whistle and you would have been sorely tempted to give it a gentle tap as you went by – but we didn't go by, we travelled across to Wales were we stopped at the following station:

 Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

Yes from the oldest book in the world to the longest place name in Britain, in Wales of course and definitely the longest domain name without hyphens; will that be the next place for a referendum? Wales I mean not Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

So what's going to happen today? I have worked in Edinburgh a few times and I have a lot of relations there and love Scotland dearly – it has the 2^nd best accent in the world – and we might even have lived there at one time.

Will they vote to get Britain's Nuclear Weapons off their land and keep their own oil and get the government they vote for at General Elections?

I don't know but we shouldn't be giving opinions as to how it will affect us - it's how it affects the people living there that count.

The Post Office and Alan Johnson.

Alan Johnson; MP.

I suppose in a kind of a way this is a bit political; but what is politics – or what are politics? They are our every day relationships and meetings with people. 

I mean if you never read anything more than the 'red top' newspapers or listened only to snatches of news on a pop music radio station you will believe all the BS that the barrack room politician, the loud mouth in the pub – you know the one with the loudest voice who's only argument to your point of view is a very loud Wrong!! - you will believe all that: that immigrants are taking your jobs, that we - the royal we – are paying for all that.

Well, you know that kind of stuff is not true – but that's not all I want to say. 

There he is above – Alan Johnson, MP – the Right Honourable Alan Johnson, I might add; Right Honourable meaning that he held high office in the British Government and he is a member of the privy council which means he is or was, privy to all the top top secret top secrets of this country. 

If that isn't all correct look it up and write in.

He has a similar profile to mine except that he passed the 11+ and I sat through it. I had to get my 'O' levels (and an A/O level) years later and then only because I was interested in the subjects – Sociology, English Literature and Film Studies (that was the A/O and the hardest).

He went to work at the post office when he was 18; I started to wind down my career at the post office at that age as it was mandatory for us to leave the telegram motor bike delivery service then and become a postman, I did not want to be a postman but I stayed for 3 years and still can't believe it.

But my point here is that in those days everything was done by hand at the post office apart from the automatic machine for date stamping the letters. And that automatic date stamper – or whatever it was called – had to have the date changed by a very trusted supervisor; a postman higher grade or a PHG – or even an Inspector - and why?

Let me tell you.

On the walls of the sorting offices were big signs warning us that we were not allowed by law to do the fixed odds football pools. And I can hear people from other countries saying 'call that a free country' etc or what are the pools?

The Fixed Odds were what they say – fixed odds. Every football match on the coming Saturday fixture list had odds for the outcome – betting odds. All legit. All Kosher. If you wanted to take part you would get the fixed odds coupon from a newsagents or the like, look at the fixtures for the coming week and then predict what the results would be, say Manchester City to beat Manchester Utd having odds of 2-1 or Utd to beat City having odds of 3-1.

Then you would put a stamp on the envelope and mail it but . . . . if you worked at the post office what you could do was get the envelope on the Friday, put it through the date stamping machine and then put it in your pocket. Then on Saturday you see the football results, fill your fixed odd pools coupon with the correct results, put your postal order in the envelope and then put it in the mail when you go back to work on Monday. 

Simple. 

The pools company would see that you've won, check that the stamp on the envelope is date stamped prior to the date of the matches and hey presto!

To be honest I can't remember anybody doing it or even heard of it but the opportunity was there.

In those days letters would be delivered to every part of Britain by the next day. That's if they were fully paid (or first class) and the second class would get delivered the day after.

That's all it took. That's when the post office was run by the government before it was made into a corporation by the Conservative Government in 1970. The first thing they did was to sack the chairman and then later in 1970 there was a short post office strike. In 1971 there was another strike which lasted about 6 weeks which coincided with the introduction of decimalisation – you know no longer 240 pennies to the pound but 100 new pence or eventually pence and if they'd have left it at that or maybe left the post office as a governmental organisation with all the workers being civil servants my auntie may have had testicles and been my uncle; who knows?
That's why you will never see the first decimalisation stamps with the first day date stamp on them - unless, well I've explained it above.

I mention Alan Johnson as he is an inspiration; he was orphaned as a child and he and his sister fought to stay together (she was 16) in their house and that's what they did. He got a job as a postman and eventually joined the UPW (which I did) then he became a Labour MP and eventually Home Secretary after other cabinet jobs; Home Secretary being one of the big four jobs in the government.

I kind of listened to his accent – which is a well spoken North London one – when I was doing my cockney accent for the play I did last week; I kind of took something from him but eventually did all the bits of the London accent except for the glockel-stop.

Bit ironic really as I had promised myself that when I came back from America I wouldn't do any accents in my work; you never hear them in America (apart from being done very badly) unless it's Meryl Streep, and because you are not putting an accent on, it makes the naturalism in your performance easier. 

There is always a little bit of an impersonation, a caricature in a performance if you have to do an accent which I hope I overcame on Saturday when I did my secret play. 

20 pages of a monologue all learned - that's why I didn't write anything here lately.