Having a glum day, listening to HMHB because some days you just really need to go and do that. It’s not just the jokes that get me through.
Idly thinking about the social media clowns that are Sleaford Mods and how much more on point, how much more angry in the right direction – not complaining the world is shit and everyone else is a wanker – just the first verse alone of Oblong Of Dreams is compared to their entire oeuvre.
“Move him onto his side —
Give him dignity, give him some warmth
Which he’d possibly not received of late
I’m not a mate as such
I just used to see him around and about
And I could never work out if he was heading
For a food bank or a pharmacy
A field path or indecency
Either way, he’s out of it now”
You couldn’t imagine them ever being able to write something with the righteous, direct, fury of A Country Practice, which 26 years on is still way, way too fucking relevant.
”She died with her telly on, eighty-seven and confused
With not enough hospital beds ‘cos all the money’s been used
On the end of the century party preparations
And they reckon that the last thing she saw in her life was
Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican”
That’s what kind of gets me, has always got me, about Half Man, Half Biscuit. I can sit here talking for days about being in love with the jokes, the wordplay, everyone can hear Vatican Broadside and have it stuck in their head forevermore, but there’s a deep, deep compassion that comes with the jokes, the prodding at the absurdity of the middle classes and shaggy dog stories. And the anger at the things that are wrong.
26 years on and A Country Practice shouldn’t be relevant. The way 2025 is going, it’s fair to say the now three year old Oblong Of Dreams shouldn’t be too. But it is. And here we are.
I’m having a bad day, thank fuck for HMHB.