Lager Time Paul Cree

Look then at what is happening now. Only the intelligent creatures have forgotten the urge to be unified with each other: only here will you have no confluence
BOOK 9 - 9.3
Based on what I witnessed and experienced, growing up around Horley and Crawley, there was a lot of low-level isms - racism, sexism, classism, homophobia - ism and probably more isms - maybe even Marxism, but I didn’t know what that was until after I’d left the place, and too many people had done alright off of Maggie Thatcher and bought their council houses for that ever to take hold. There was one guy I remember, who was the father of a kid I went to cubs with and a nice man. He had a long beard and wore sandals with his socks; maybe he was a communist lone-wolf, quietly and unsuccessfully trying to lead local workers away from Benidorm, towards a glorious workers revolution. Alas, I digress.  
Most of the racism, seemed to me, to take two forms: the first being jokes: which mainly saw Pakistanis, reduced to the P-word and serving as the main ingredient for crass punchlines, sometimes just puns on typical names, sometimes about skin-colour and culture. The P-word would get thrown around a lot, and was often just a lazy, very ignorant, catch-all term for brown and also darker-skinned people in general, not just limited to Asians: this could include people from Greek, Turkish, middle eastern or Portuguese backgrounds, or sometimes it was just aimed solely at Muslims. Perhaps this was relative to the area I grew up in, as Crawley had large Indian and Pakistani communities. It also had a big Irish community, and there were plenty of jokes about them too.
Some of these jokes were fairly innocuous, some were plain nasty, and sometimes they weren’t even jokes, it would just be the P-word hurled casually out of a car window, speeding passed some ordinary person just going about their day.
The second form would take the lazy parroting of thought-lacking negative tropes, to diagnose broader social-ills, like immigrants our taking our jobs etc. I heard these sorts of ones quite a lot. My guess was, looking back, that a lot of these statements, or accusations, were sometimes made out of fear - fear of losing something, like employment, or identity, but more often than not, like the above jokes, were made innocuously and in ignorance, with very little thought given to the consequences of saying those things.
When I was in cadets, I once got caught telling a P-word joke to another kid, and was made to stand-up by the commanding officer, in front of the group and given a severe bollocking. He was a white guy, but he was really angry about it, and fair enough, though I meant nothing by it, I learned my lesson. I remember feeling ashamed, and wished I hadn’t said it. I certainly wasn’t thinking about what the kid sat in ear-shot of me, who was from a Sri-Lanken background, might be thinking or feeling.
There was a third and much nastier form too, which from what I saw, was a lot rarer, but I encountered a few people who would probably fit into this category – and that is those who actually believed in the supremacy of white people, but more relevantly, had a severe hatred of those that weren’t them. That also included gay people, Jews and the Irish. There was a pub in Crawley which I forget the name of, which me and my mates would often drive passed, which had a reputation for housing BNP meetings; we never went in to validate those claims, we just knew to stay well away. The couple of people who I came across, who would fit into this category, were as you might imagine, pretty scary. There was occasionally one or two of them in the pubs I’d drink in; and there were always stories that accompanied them - doing jail-time in this prison or that, or running with the Chelsea hooligan firms in the 80’s. One of them had a spiders-Webb tatoo on his forehead. Again, just steered well clear of them.
Though Horley was predominately white, Crawley was a lot mo

Greetings, bonjour, what's happening
This week, I look at a quote form Book 8 of Marcus Aurelius's Mediitations, talking about computer games and not ever completing them
On Eating That Marshmallow
In the constitution of the rational being I can see no virtue that counters justice: but I do see the counter to pleasure – self-control.
BOOK 8 – 39

If you’re able to, these are ways you can support my work
Romeo & Julliet@ Polka Theatre
https://polkatheatre.com/event/romeo-and-juliet/
THE SUBURBAN BOOK
My 1st book collection of stories and poems
www.paulcree.co.uk/shop
Beats & Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy
2 plays I co-wrote plus Denmarked by Conrad Murray
https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/beats-and-elements-a-hip-hop-theatre-trilogy
BUY-ME-A-LAGER
https://ko-fi.com/paulcree


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Greetings, bonjour, what's happening?
Welcome to Lager Time.
This week's episode is called On Good Help vs Bad help, and is inspired by a quote from book 7 of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius 
Enjoy
BUY-ME-A-LAGER - https://ko-fi.com/paulcree
The Suburban Book: - https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/thesuburban
Romeo & Julliet @ Polka Theatre
https://polkatheatre.com/event/romeo-and-juliet/


Get full access to Lager Time at cree.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings, bonjour, whatt’s happening?
This week's episode I get stuck into a quote from book 6 of Medittaions of Marcus Aurelius, it's called On the Good Catholics
Enjoy
Romeo & Julliet@ Polka Theatre
https://polkatheatre.com/event/romeo-and-juliet/
BUY-ME-A-LAGER
https://ko-fi.com/paulcree
THE SUBURBAN BOOK
My 1st book collection of stories and poems
www.paulcree.co.uk/shop
Beats & Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy
2 plays I co-wrote plus Denmarked by Conrad Murray
https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/beats-and-elements-a-hip-hop-theatre-trilogy


Get full access to Lager Time at cree.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings, bonjour, what’s happening
Welcome to Lager Time, legions of lager-lites, grab your tins, your bottles and your pints. My name is Paul Cree and this is my little podcast and blog where I share bits of my writing: stories, poems, thoughts, sometimes music etc.
So what’s been happening? A fair bit. Last week I was in rehearsals for a theatre show, Romeo & Julliet at the Polka Theatre in Wimbledon. It’s a modern retelling, set in Merton, and is all done through live music - Rap, beatbox, singing, guitar and a loop-station. The show opens this Saturday and is aimed at young people, between 9-12 but there should be something for all the family in it. There’s over 26 songs in the show that I have to learn, as well as almost a hundred ques that I need to remember. I’m one of the understudies but will be performing between the 10th – 14Th April, much later in the run. Alongside that, it’s my usual work with Dream Arts and Fourth Monkey Drama School.
Before I get round to introducing the next piece in this little Meditations series, I wanted to hark back to the intro post for this latest season (and also the reason why I started this latest series) where I took about reading books, to chat a little bit about what I’ve been reading, as I suppose it’s relevant. I tend to have a couple of books on the go at one time, one fiction and one non-fiction or light-ish  book.
I recently finished ploughing my way through Mister Good Times, which is the autobiography of soul DJ Norman Jay, the man behind the Good Times sound system. It was a decent read as it charts the development of lots of the music that came out of London from the 70’s onwards. The book was given to me as a birthday gift, from a good pal of mine, Richard Purnell, who himself is a writer (and wrote one of my favourite blogs about old books with the old dick and balls scibbled in them) Richard has recently started his own Substack blog, which you can find a link to HERE or in the notes of the podcast.
So in that Norman Jay book, when he talks about his younger years, getting into football and the like, he mentions reading these Skinhead books by a writer called Richard Allen. The way he talked about them, was that at the time they were some kind of street phenomenon, lots of working-class teens were reading these books; which took my interest. Last month, whilst having a few beers with my two oldest brothers and a few of their old mates, one of them, Dom, by chance was telling me he was re-reading all those Skinhead books. He consequently sent me a link to a BBC documentary from back in the 90’s, about the books and the writer, Richard Allen, who seemingly no one knew much about, and was pretty far removed from that culture, yet, he wrote a boat-load of these cult classics, which have become collectors items. So I’m currently reading the first, Skinhead, and it’s alright. There’s a lot of violence, racism, and sexism - the main character and his mates are horrible, it pulls no punches in that regard, but if it’s a snapshot of those times, even if it’s somewhat exaggerated, then I think it plays a part. I certainly don’t find myself rooting for this main character, he’s an anti-hero in that respect – but I’m enjoy it. It reminds me of a lot of Irvine Welsh books, many of which I’ve read, or that BBC film Made in Britain that Skinnyman sampled on his first album Council Estate of Mind. I wonder if all those people were influenced by these books.
Aside from Skinhead, I’m ploughing my way through a book I first read a couple of years ago, called New Class War by Michael Lind, which came out in 2020 I think, if you want to get a good understanding of the political climate of the last few years in the UK and the US it’s well worth a read. And I’ve also been reading a book by the comedian Rob Becket, off the back of other comedians’ books - Romesh Ranganathan and Geoff Norcott. All of which make me a laugh a lot more when r

Greetings, bonjour, what’s happening?
Welcome to Lager Time, legions of lager-lites, grab your tins, your bottles and your pints. My name is Paul Cree and this is my little podcast and blog where I share bits of my writing, stories, poems, thoughts, sometimes music; I don’t get out that much these days, outside of my work, so this is my little outlet for the creative things I like to do.
And so onto this week’s piece itself, continuing with the Meditations theme, this week’s piece is based on a quote from Book 4 where I talk about why I didn’t like Grime.
Keep it Larger Than Life
Peas and taters
Paul
LINKS
Dream Arts - https://www.dreamarts.org.uk
Pictures from Devon show - https://doorsteparts.co.uk/scratch-share-night/
Romeo & Julliet @ Polka Theatre Tickets - https://polkatheatre.com/event/romeo-and-juliet/
BUY-ME-A-LAGER - https://ko-fi.com/paulcree
The Suburban Book: - https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/thesuburban


Get full access to Lager Time at cree.substack.com/subscribe