Bitching..... about shit

Greetings travelers, (that’s a metaphor as you have traveled through the internet to get to this blog, I’m not calling you all gypo’s or pikeys so please don’t take offence…yet).

Well in an attempt to scrape some level of coherentness and completication to my work, I have been doing two things this week, making up words to use to importify my selfnessishness in my writing and studying other popular columnists and opinionators of our time, and seeing what the secret is to a successful career in blog-type writing…. The results were astounding.

Astoundingly predictable that is… I looked at the most popular writers of our generation (well the last 3-4 months) and after intense cross referencing, deciphering, and studying I have found the common ground that links these stalwarts of British media… And it is a doozy. The answer is plain and simple, its what the English, nay the British are better at than almost any other peoples of the world, it’s the thing that makes us who we are and controls what we do. It is the insignia of Blightyness, without this overriding sense, this behemoth of an emotion, this nation wide ethos, this single characteristic which has acted as a giant magnet pulling people of a like mind to these shores for best part of 3 millennia, this one trait that makes us, us. It is of course the noblest of all writing styles, conversation, verse and prose… I talk of: Bitching About Shit.

Yes Bitching About Shit, we do it all the time, about sports, politics, religion, telly, music, people we know, people we’ve seen, people we might see, people other people have seen and we have just heard about, you name it we bitch about it. We do it in groups, at work, at home, with friends, with strangers, even on our own… I have been known, as I suspect we all have at times, to mutter under my breath when I see something truly repulsive. For example, morbidly obese people in MacDonalds who, not content with their own type 2 diabetes, feel the need to force their chubby affliction on to their ever round faced children. I was there one Saturday with my 2 girls (were not fat, so its ok) and I heard a woman scream at her child for not finishing all of his (large) meal as he wanted go and run around in the indoor climbing play area (you know, most MacDs have them, they smell like urine, fries and bleach… ideal for your kids). And this was a really fat kid, it looked like he hadn’t run around anywhere, ever in his entire chubby little life… he had one of those fat kid faces that looks like its being squeezed out a tube, you know the ones that are funny and desperately sad in equal measure….. Anyway what was I saying, oh yeah I uttered under my breath “stupid lazy bitch hurry up and lose a leg” .

Well the tangent above proves the point, bitching is a force more powerful than any of us can really, truly comprehend and it is the cement which holds together this rag-tag little island I call home. So why do we bitch so much? How long have we been bitching, and what would we ever do if one day we woke up and there was nothing to bitch about? God help us…

I have been hitting the history books pretty hard this week looking for the first instances of bitching in modern man, as well as researching I have been speaking to many noted historians and asking their opinions on what was the dawn of bitching, and what makes it so ingrained in to the DNA of your average Brittainese. (Ok I haven’t, I just made some stuff up, you know like a real journalist would).

The earliest recorded bitch was in 300BC when the Romans arrived and chased all the native gingers up north and to Ireland, and in true Brittania style, it was about the weather… One centurion was punished by death for calling the British weather “a great shower of shite” (Showerdium Crapshiticus). For his disdain he was fed to the wolves and as they did with most things, the old Romans made a note of it. However acclaimed BBC history man and posh old fruit Simon Schama believes that Bitching was around long before then he claims that “When the dawn of man arose in Africa, two camps were set up, those that were happy and content at their ever evolving brains and new found abilities, and those that thought that both the wheel and the fire needed proper regulations and health and safety checks. The content tribe spread out to sunny lands and enjoyed and embraced life, the other built a boat and sailed to a grey/green lump, they called it Britain and invented awesome sports that the happy tribes could beat them at just so they would have extra things to moan about”. So bitching has been part of us for a very long time, and the triumphs of British history are littered with examples of it. As Nelson was beating foreigners in boats, people were moaning about the weight of cannon balls, and asking “who does that Nelson think he is”. As Shakespeare wrote plays and sonnets, people were moaning about the uncomfortable seats at the Globe theatre and asking themselves “who does that Shakespeare think he is”…

Although the overriding context of bitching is one of negativity, the underlying result is truly one of marvel and positivity, it helped shape a nation of handlers of ballsy get up and goers of, well you know, people with a good work ethic and stuff. The popular myth of the “Blitz Spirit” is one of jollyness and crap songs in the face of adversity, but that is a fallacy, the truth is we bitched our way through it, as we do any great ordeal or dilemma, and we will the next time a problem arises.

Bitchyness and Bitching about shit are now so popular that they have their own dedicated mediums and now we have bitching aficionados, connoisseurs of bitching about shit. Now in the 21st century there is a wealth of styles of bitching and a multitude of types of shit to bitch about… and now thanks to the internet more people are bitching about shit than ever before. We live in bitchy Britain, and it is truly a wonder to behold, and then moan about… So a big thank you to the pioneers of modern bitchyness, to those who are there to make us raise a narky smile, to the ones who help us raise a sadistic chuckle about just how crap life is… to the Clarksons, who remind how change is evil and foreigners aren’t to be trusted, to the Brookers who put in to words far better than our own, our dislike for celebrities and television and people, to all the daily newspapers who have married together bitching about shit with their own selfish agendas, and even used the powers of bitching about shit to divide and partially destroy all forms of harmony left in the country… To you noble misery-merchants, you publishers of pestilence, you writers and commentators of crapiness, I salute you and offer this bitch as a token of gratitude for your good work… Long may you inspire me to moan, and to put any sunny dispositions to the sword.

Life is all great pile of dirty mucky shit any way, we may as well moan about it and get some sort of satisfaction from it all.




Ok then, that was it, episode four of the Woes, and a truly woeful episode it was too, if you have read this far, well done… you’re a glutton for poor grammar with a thirst for ignorance that has hopefully been quenched upon this diatribe of shite. I hope you enjoyed it, but only enough to go and bitch about it to some else, and then in turn I hope that they go and bitch about your bitchyness to someone else, who then goes fourth to bitch about that bitchyness and so and so fourth till the bitch circle is complete and someone tells me about some gobshite on the intyspace running his gums about bitching, that has everyone else bitching… that’s the dream people…

You can’t follow me on twitter, as I am too damn fast for you!

Woeing me Woeing you… Ahhhhaaaaaa! (thanks blogers me old china)