I am spitting nails about Roman Polanski and the cock sucking Hollywood deadbeats who are calling for this child rapist to be released. He raped a 13 year old girl and then hired a fleet of expensive lawyers to keep up with the extradition laws of the all the countries he could visit as he fled the US to avoid a prison sentence.
He admitted having sex with a minor. He drugged, sodomised and raped a 13 year old girl, but hang on, don’t forget the man is an auteur, he won an Oscar for fuck sake, Woody Allen is crying for his release – we cant possibly jail this man, he knows Harvey Weinstein and Harvey is going to speak to Schwarzenegger to get these insidious charges dropped. Its just a load of rich famous people excusing child rape, even women’s rights campaigner Whoopi Goldberg said “ it wasn’t rape-rape” really? There is such a thing as rape-rape? I never saw that kind of rape in the film the Colour Purple did you?
Speaking as a woman who was raped as a child, I am aghast at the attitude of people who can excuse this behaviour. The man who raped me told people I was promiscuous and coerced him into it; I was five years old at the time. His defence in court was that I was often seeking his attention, my uncle got three years in prison and people screamed ‘Rapist’ at him, but then he was a lazy, wife beating, debt ridden ex Orange Walk flautist and not a Hollywood pal of Tilda Swinton, David Lynch and Martin Scorsese. If only my Uncle Rapey had friends in high places, the attitude towards his child abuse would have been different. (The abuse continued into my teens- I was 13 years old when it stopped, which was just the prime age for Polanski)
I read an astounding article by Michael Deacon in The Telegraph newspaper in which Deacon said “I reread an extraordinary interview Polanski gave to the novelist Martin Amis in 1979, the year after Polanski went on the run.
The interview originally appeared in Tatler and is collected in Amis’s excellent book Visiting Mrs Nabokov.
Here’s a section of the first quote it contains from Polanski.
“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”
It doesn’t astound me that Polanski would say this kind of thing in public; it just amazes me that people view that kind of behaviour as acceptable if the person in the frame is famous!
We just need to look at the Michael Jackson debacle to know the veil of stupidity people drag over their morals when a ‘hero’ is involved.
Friends of Polanski have screamed out in his favour that his family were murdered in the Holocaust and his wife was killed in a horrific attack, so he should be left alone now!
That is a terrible insult to the families who died at the hands of the Nazi’s, and a slur to men whose wives were murdered, to suggest child rape is part of the recovery from such atrocities is just plain daft, and don’t get me started on ‘it was years ago, lets forget it’ as we all know that’s just begging the comment- so was the Polish Ghetto’s but you didn’t forget those did you Mr Polanski, and quite rightly so. Traumatic events do not fade with age and neither does their legalities.
Roman Polanski needs to serve the sentence he deserves. Apparently he is married with two young children; well let’s hope they grow up safe from the predatory eyes of a sexual beast who likes his victims ‘young’.
So now I have gotten that out of my system, I want to talk about Nick Cave. I didn’t really know who he was, but my niece Ann is dotty about him. We knew he was appearing at Borders Bookstore in Glasgow, so Ann and I headed off to the Rogano restaurant for our usual outside table for Oysters and tea. I love the Rogano, husband and I celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary there and the place is just lovely. Anyway we sat outside, she smoked and I bit my finger nails and made yukky noises as she slurped on oysters (I really can’t do food that you can’t chew) anyway, we hatched a plan to see Mr Cave.
We both ignored the long queue of people who had official tickets (we had none) and we barged past security (We had determined looks on our faces) and we stood near the table that Nick Cave was signing books.
He is a slight wee man with terribly odd dyed black hair.
“God, why are they playing whale death music over the crowd Ann?” I hissed. Of course that was Mr Cave’s music; I was too stupid to know that. It sounded like the tapes you get free to help with child birth.
The security man came over and said “if you don’t have a ticket or his latest book with a receipt then you don’t talk or approach or get anything signed”
Mr Cave is very snooty about these things and what with the whale music and his tiny peanut head dyed very black I wondered why people liked him. Apparently he nearly drowned Kylie, so he can’t be all bad eh?
Ann got all hot and excited and stared at him longingly as I chatted to an extremely agitated autistic man in his 30s.
Yes, I met an autistic man who was trying hard to find out where the blonde girl assistant who was ‘stood there, right there with her arm like this’ had gone to. He staged the scene for me by being ‘him’ and then ‘her’ and how she stood and how she looked. Then he blurted out “My jacket melts in the heat and it this isn’t yellow its citrus colour” as he pointed to a yellow bit of his flammable top.
He was getting agitated and the crowd who had come to see Mr Cave started staring at him. “What is it you need to know?” I asked him.
He rocked back and forth a bit and stared at me wide eyed, I didn’t look away. “I need to know where I can get a magazine called Shortlist; this book has pictures of it”
He thrust the book into my face and there were photographs of a magazine called Shortlist, I recognised it. “You get them free in airports”
The man nodded and wrote down ‘airports’ in a book and then slapped his two hands over his ears and shouted “this music is making me sad inside”. I could only nod in agreement.
He then spotted a Borders assistant and ran after him in a sideways run with arms flapping, scaring the Mr Cave fans, who hadn’t seen a man in flammable fabric run sideways in their lives possibly. I giggled and Ann said quietly “Why do you always find Aspergers or Autistic people no matter where we go and why he is running about mad?”
I shrugged and quite liked the odd man in the bright jacket and was sad to see him go; he was infinitely more interesting and accessible than Mr Cave.
Ann and I decided to leave; we headed back to Rogano and watched the local Big Issue seller get photo shoot after he had had a make over and new suit. He was dressed like a proper toff and given a lobster dinner to celebrate a birthday of the Big Issue campaign. The bloke sits outside the Rogano for years and is well loved; he looked amazing in his suit and his shiny shoes. It made me gulp back tears as he stood there drinking champagne, but somehow underneath it all, I felt he was being patronised and said so to the photographer.
“Well, he got a new suit and some good food” he snapped.
He doesn’t need a new suit and the chance to drink booze with the people he normally begs off, he needs a home and it’s appalling to know he had been homeless for 18 years and got a suit for good behaviour outside the Rogano.
I suddenly felt odd and wanted to leave, there was a sad feeling inside me when the homeless guy was walking about suited and booted, he looked happy but discontent at the same time. I couldn’t quite process what I was feeling and kept thinking things like- how can he beg in a suit?
Where will he keep it when he sleeps on the street? Will it be harder to lose it now or was it easier for him not to have the nice clothes in the first place? I didn’t know the answers and no matter which way I formulated them in my head it all felt wrong.
So, to top the day off Frankie Boyle came into the Rogano and we had a wee chat, he is looking a bit better after being unwell lately.
Ashley is getting better and wants to thank everyone for sending her love.
