Just before I start, an aside. Because as I was preparing supper the other day for ‘the monsters’, who obviously have completely different meals from each other, Joey was ‘helping’ me. And I looked over and saw he’d found a jar of peanut butter (and not just ANY peanut butter but deep-roast, crunchy, MANILIFE!, MY fucking peanut butter!!!). And he was eating it off his (grubby little) fingers. So being a good grandparent, I gave him a spoon. Ya get more that way. But I thought: nuts… allergies… hmmmm. Joey is dairy intolerant. But not as much as he is intolerant to the word ‘no’. Because sometimes he will ingest small amounts of dairy, as long as its in frozen form or comes from a bakery. But he’ll never tolerate “NO!”, ever. Yet I was concerned that people may enter my home with allergies and intolerances and we have every allergen known to man and beast, all ready and open. So I have had a sign made for over the front door. It reads: IF YOU HAVE ANY ALLERGIES AT ALL YOU’RE PROBABLY GOING TO LEAVE HERE ON A STRETCHER.

I couldn’t get to Glastonbury this year. Shame. As it represents the 54th consecutive time I’ve missed it. So far. But much as I love music, wallowing in mud is better left to hippos (rather than hippies, ha, ha, haaaa…). And its not like I’m missing Bob Dylan or Crosby Stills and Nash, just a bunch’a rappers, tossers, ex-Disney child stars and Neil Young!!!! Who really didn’t wanna be there. As for Rod Stewart, I’d only go to Glastonbury if he was playing at the O2.

Though i really wanted to see Kneecap. They’re so… Irish. They’re so… IRA. They’re angry as fuck, though they don’t know precisely why, they’re aggressive as swarm of wasps and they are anti-establishment to the point of terrorism. Perfect credentials for me to be their biggest fan.

But as I waiting for them to come on the tv, I watched Bob Vylan. My first thought was ‘who???’ followed quite quickly by ‘this is rubbish’. But then it got good. The geezer (Bob? Vylan?? who knows) started talking about Palestine. In the interests of both Glastonbury and the BBC’s specific mandate of ‘no politics at Glasto’. Then he started chanting, which is good, because chanting is meditative. But instead of ‘ohmmmmmm’, he chanted ‘DEATH, DEATH, TO THE IDF!!!’. And then broke into a great rendition of ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, which was really cool. What was best was the even though inciting people to kill is completely illegal, and even though ‘from the river to the sea…’ is an incitement to genocide, all I knew was; this is great!!! So in keeping with the Glasto zeitgeist which is roughly “I’m too fucking stupid and ignorant to know what any of this means, even when I’m not stoned out of my head, but I’ll shake my Palestine flag and sing along anyway; it looks like fun”. We all joined in. Death and genocide; all in the name of peace. Which is why the BBC played it in its entirety and even put it on iplayer in case any Hamas members missed the show and wanted to catch up.

Then Kneecap came on. Dressed like ‘provos’ as we used to call ‘the Provisional IRA’, the ones who shot, maimed, tortured and killed, and invented ‘kneecapping’ as a punishment. Where the victim (or in their eyes, the villain) is shot in the kneecap(s) so will never walk properly again, if at all. Nice to name your band after historical events. Unfortunately, one of the band is awaiting charges for terrorism offenses after claiming allegiance to Hezbollah. Which, along with every other group this band aligns themselves with, is a terrorist organisation. So I watched them, as non-politically as I could, just enjoying the music. Which is nice, pleasant, peaceful. Its like ABBA with machine guns and grenades.

To be honest, I expected nothing less from fucking Kneecap. They are simply anti-establishment scum. And I’d never heard of ‘Bob Vylan’ before and probably won’t hear from him again, until I read about his imprisonment. But what really appalled me was the instant, immediate and almost total compliance of the massive crowd to follow the words and actions of terrorist sympathisers. Waving their flags and singing along, oblivious to the meaning of their words.

The ‘new narrative’ put forth by such people and so heartily embraced by the legion of middle-class, over-entitled, spoilt little rich kids, is that ‘zionism is evil and if you support it in any way, sympathise with it, condone it, then you are evil too’. Which is dangerous.

Happy Monday. I wonder who’ll be wearing ‘Hamas green’ shorts at Wimbledon today?

A xxxx