A year, that was…

In 2009 I took a 33 % per cent pay cut, played in the snow, bought a flat in Hove, got engaged, helped my fiancée find her father (whom she saw last through the eyes of a baby), started my own copywriting business, and played in the snow again. That’s right. It snowed in Brighton – twice.

In the midst of all this I have started writing creatively again. Why did I stop?  Life got in the way I suppose. Will it be easy to maintain any momentum? I doubt it. So much vies for our attention these days.

I am staggered when friends tell me they have written ‘one or two novels’. I have started one and find the whole process almost impossibly hard. I end up revising the same passages over and over again or pressing delete on huge tracts of prose. I’m not getting anywhere. Perhaps I should know my limits.

My favourite authors are those who document everyday life in a seemingly guileless way, while transforming the mundane into the poetic – the Anne Tylers and John Updikes of this world. The problem is these two are amongst the finest writers to have graced the planet.  Plot usually nudges the reader forward. Tyler, Updike et al just have to write. If I am to get anywhere I should be spending more time on plot –and  less on the words themselves. Only the very, very best , those blessed with a searing intelligence (far greater than mine!) can get away with writing – seemingly – about nothing. But we try to emulate those we love. It’s a conundrum.

I have also started writing poems, inspired by my dad who has just had a collection of his own – The Blue Bridge – published. Most people are shockingly bad at poetry. With other mediums  – painting, music, sculpture – there is clearly a huge reservoir of untapped, undiscovered talent. You see and hear it everywhere. The same can not be said of poetry, which tends to be face-achingly bad. My dad’s poems are excellent though. If I can write poems as well as him one day I’ll be very happy indeed.

2009 is also the year I started writing this blog. I am not sure what a blog is supposed to be really. For me this is just a space where I can get my thoughts down. A vent basically. Sometimes I get visitors, which is odd. But nice at the same time. I am coming round to the idea of the internet and social networking. The barriers between what counts as public and what counts as private are being blurred all the time. At first this repulsed me. But I suppose it could be seen as a bit of an adventure…

Here’s to a new decade. Let’s hope it’s a good one.

I am very bothered when I think…

that almost one in three people in the UK tuned into the final of X Factor …but less bothered when someone reminds me that two in three people in the UK did not. I suppose this makes me a glass is half empty person?

Pretentious? Moi?

Noun 1.

snobbery – the trait of condescending to those of lower social status

I am sometimes accused of being a snob.

But given that I happily admit to coming from pretty ordinary, lower-middle class stock, and to enjoying many of life’s earthier pleasures, I am not sure people are using the right word, exactly. I don’t think I am a snob. I have never condescended to those of a lower social status – which is the dictionary definition. I have occasionally dumbed down my preferred level of conversation, certainly, but I don’t think that’s the same thing. Afterall, there’s not much point spouting Roth and Chomsky when your drinking partner regards Hole in the Wall as the highlight of their cultural week. That would be rude. So the S word is contentious, but…

1)   I detest bad table manners

2)   And that includes holding your knife like a pencil

3)   When hosting friends and relatives the TV should be OFF (at least until day three when you’re sick of the sight of them).

4)   Only one TV per household. Maximum.

5)   H is – and should be – pronounced ‘Aitch’.

6)   Michael Jackson was not a modern-day Mozart

7)   City or village. Not town.

8)    Strong regional accents are a social handicap

9)    I genuinely find it difficult to say thank you when someone offers me a glass of Yellow Tail wine.

10)   Shoes not trainers

11)  Homemade gravy

12)  Discussing money is vulgar and deeply embarrassing

13)  Especially when you haven’t got any

14) Names containing less than four syllables should never be abbreviated*

15)   *Unless you drive a white van**

16)   Names containing one syllable should never be lengthened

17)  When people call me Jimbob or  Jimbo  it makes me cringe

18)   Cricket above football, football above rugby

19)   Real ale not lager

20)   Clothes should not have any writing or logos on them

I don’t think any of the above marks me out as a snob, particularly.

**Ok – that was a bit snobbish.

Pass me the control

I have been watching a lot less television.

As a result I have nothing to say about the dubious talents of Jedward, the puffed-up controversy surrounding Katie Price’s appearance on I’m a Celebrity, or the rise to fame of Scottish washerwoman Susan Boyle. I couldn’t tell you who is pulling pints in the Rovers Return or who has fallen out with whom in Emmerdale. About all of these things I am ignorant. I used to tune in for (slightly) more sustaining stuff like The Culture Show or Late Night Review, but find even these a struggle now. I am less interested in what ‘they’  –  that small and tediously familiar band of pundits – have to say.

My disillusionment with television is not driven by some pious impulse towards self-improvement or cultural snobbery – although, let’s face it, there a lot of crap on the box – but by a small, nagging question.

How am I spending my time?

In 1950 the Daily Mirror radio critic wrote an article about television, in which he argued:  “Television is the biggest time-waster ever invented. People will sit watching for hours – even when they don’t care much for the programmes they’re viewing. It’s so easy to sink into an armchair and switch on entertainment until bedtime.”

He wrote this when there was only one channel. Television is a powerful narcotic, one which has – almost effortlessly – installed itself at the centre of our social and psychological lives. People have become totally dependent on television. I know people who have sets in every room of their house. They hang 40-inch flat screens above the fireplace. They talk about television as though it were a vital part of life, rather than just a gadget. It always has to be on, like a life-support machine.

Television wants nothing from us, apart from our most precious, most finite resource. It wants our time. And how cheaply we give it away. TV leaves us feeling weightless and fried and gobbles up our time in return for a vicarious and unsatisfying thrill.

There is something called the ‘myth of moral neutrality’ which, when applied to technology, counters the theory that technology is ‘value neutral’ and used according to individual choice. The myth of moral neutrality says there are instances when technology is bad for us and when it pushes our buttons rather than vice versa.

Those who defend the march of technology use the ‘neutrality’ argument all the time. Television is not the problem, they say, it is how people use it, ditto the new digital and online technologies which are now competing with television for our attention. I have always found this disingenuous in the extreme. Technology can be extraordinarily addictive. Switching off is not always that easy.

See also: http://www.whitedot.org

My friends and I…

If, on the subject of the social provenance of a good number of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition, one more person rolls their eyes and asks in an ohforgoodnesssake tone if it “really matters”, I might ram the business end of a pencil up their bottom. For surely they are missing the point?

Let’s not confuse things. This is not about Higher Education.

Of course it doesn’t matter if the front benches of our two main political parties are full of people who got first class honours degrees from Oxford and Cambridge universities. That’s a good thing. We need bright people running the country. A quick glance at the letters page of your local newspaper will give you some idea of the alternative. It’s what comes before Oxbridge – and after Oxbridge – that matters. Cronyism. The Old School Tie. Jobs for the boys (and girls). That sort of thing.

You don’t think it exists in modern-day politics? Well here’s something to chew on: seventeen members of David Cameron’s Shadow Cabinet were privately educated and 14 of his frontbench team went to Eton. Does Alma Mat(t)er? Of course it does. Unless you believe in a ruling class, in which case…I am your humble servant.

A little game. Think back to your days at secondary school. Now think of 14 of your friends and associates at that time. Now imagine that this time next year you and your playground chums will be running the country. It’s unimaginable isn’t it? Absurd. And yet for some people this bizarre scenario is as natural as rain..

In nine months’ time , the chances are the Prime Minister, his Chancellor and the Mayor of London, will all have been at Oxford at the same time. I honestly don’t care. But I do care that two of them went to Eton and, while at Oxford, they all belonged to the same, elitist, drinking club; a club whose chief reason for being was to  belittle restaurant owners by smashing up their establishments and then paying them off with large sums of money. It is hugely unrepresentative and it undermines democracy.

And it spreads to other aspects of public life.

Boris Johnson has just been rapped on the knuckles for trying to use his influence as Mayor of London to get his old chum Veronica Wadely –  the erstwhile editor of London’s Evening Standard – installed as  Director of the Arts Council London. It’s unbelievable. Len Duvall, the Labour London Assembly Member for Greenwich & Lewisham, wrote to the Mayor saying that his conduct calls into question his “ability or willingness to put the interests of the public” before those of his “political allies and friends.”

Too bloody right it does.

We like to kid ourselves that we live in a meritocracy, that nowadays it’s not so much who you know as what you know. Don’t believe it for a second. This is England and old traditions die hard. That doesn’t bode well for the fox (the hunting ban is likely to be repealed if the Tories get in) and, ultimately, it doesn’t bode well for us. I am not stupid enough to believe favours are not called in across the political divide. It’s just the Tories seem to do it so much better than the rest.

Not breaking not breaking news

They are designed, I gather, for the chronically insecure (what if I’m missing something that other people are NOT missing?) and for people with extremely short memories (duh, play it again Sam): 24 hour news channels – television’s answer to Propofol.

Here you’ll find the most mundane, trivial events ramped up to the tits by panicky presenters who look like their involved in some  sick and twisted reality game show: Don’t Stop the Camera, I’m talking Bollocks!

Sometimes in a clamour to report ‘breaking news’ they end up getting all sweaty-gusseted  about things that have already been reported by other news agencies. So not so much breaking news as breaking breaking news. But that doesn’t sound so clever.

Another thing that doesn’t sound so clever is when the breaking news turns out to be not really news at all and, as a  consequence, not really breaking. So, that would make it not breaking not breaking news.  But there’s a double negative in there which probably means we’re back to breaking breaking news. But anyway…

One example of “breaking breaking news which turns out not to be news” came from Washington on the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York. The anchor on BBC 24 News ‘broke the ‘news’’- with dilating pupils and almost visibly swelling cock! – that the Coast Guard had opened fire on a vessel on the Potomac River! This was significant, he told us, because it was happening at exactly the same time as a commemorative service for the 3,000 victims of 9/11 was taking place 225 miles away in New York. He didn’t bother to explain why this was significant.

After lots of jerky-camera action and long-range footage of nothing in particular we got a live feed from the BBC’s Washington correspondent. He told us that the information that was coming out of Washington was ‘confused’. The first sign of a story collapsing on its arse that, ‘confused’.

The next report, inevitably, was to inform us – albeit without a hint of sheepishness – that the Coast Guard was actually involved in a training exercise and it wasn’t a Real Life Terrorist Attack afterall. Which meant no real ‘significance’ either. There goes another five minutes of my life, I mused.

Rather than shut the fuck up for two minutes, aforementioned anchor  prattled on about the “extraordinarily unfortunate timing of the training exercise” and how the “heightened sense of blah blah blah”. Proving himself more adept at delivering asinine opinions than good old fashioned facts. And then, as if to prove television news has gone way, way beyond parody, a fresh ticker banner appeared at the foot of the screen: “breaking news…coast guard incident on Potomac River ‘training exercise’ Washington officials confirm’. Yeah, erm, thanks for that.

Ape Man

God, I love a good ruckus!

Watching the West Ham and Millwall fans piling into each other on Green Street last night made compulsive and, at times, exhilarating television. Anyone who thinks man – and I use the word pointedly – occupies an exalted position in the animal kingdom must surely pause for thought when they see hundreds of their kin chanting, goading, beating their chests, and occasionally pummelling each other senseless for the sheer fun of it! The football hooligan makes monkeys of us all.

From an anthropological – or should that be zoological? – point of view, the footage inside the ground was even more interesting. Look carefully at the pitch invasions and what you see is not so much violence, as lazily reported by the national media agencies, but sheer, unbridled exuberance. Joy even! Sure there were a few skirmishes getting out of the pens, but for the most part it was grown men bouncing up and down, leaping into each other’s arms, lollipop-sucking smiles split across their faces. This was about the restraint of animals and the bolting of barn doors! Let them play, that’s what I say. Life can’t be all CCTV, tax inspectors, and traffic wardens.

The anger and indignation that followed was as predictable as it was muddled. The meaningless platitudes started with Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe, who described the incident as a “disgrace to football”, presumably without thinking about what he actually meant. The BBC spoke of  “angry young men” running through the streets. Angry young men? I didn’t see anger at all.  In fact, to hijack the slogan of their favourite restaurant, most of the unruly mob seemed to be ‘lovin’it’.  Bloody hell some of the boys had even come out of “retirement” to get in on the act!

But I ask, in all earnestness, what’s the big deal? Men with too much testosterone and too little brain have always behaved like this. It won’t stop just because it offends the sensibilities of those with less testosterone and bigger brains. Do you get angry when a baby craps itself? Of course not,  he or she knows no better. And neither do the knuckle-draggers who get their kicks out of mob violence. Most of them are as thick as breeze blocks and have an inclination to violence hard-wired into their DNA.

The singer Morrissey once said he envied football hooligans their lawlessness and I know what he means. Haven’t we all, just occasionally, fantasized about getting caught up in a “spot of bother”. To run with the pack, cover someone’s back, to throw a brick and not care where it lands. I have. But never will.

Yew trees and weird orbs

On the subject of God and the afterlife it’s become fashionable to nail one’s colours to the mast; fence-sitting on the subject regarded as a symptom of woolly brain or weak bladder. Or both. Anyway, who wants to invite a hand-wringing, piss-drip Agnostic to the party when a verbal slugfest between the rabid Atheist Christopher Hitchens and  the  rabid “Christian Zionist” Julie Burchill would be so much more entertaining?

As a dedicated follower of fashion I have been trying to be more ‘out and proud’ about my Atheism – but it’s been a bit of on ordeal. I suppose I am having a crisis of faith. For some reason whenever I say the words “I am an Atheist” I feel pebbles shifting beneath my feet. I can rail against the absurdity and wickedness of religion, but, sometimes, declaring myself  to be an Atheist strikes me as equally demented. Considering science still can’t account for  95% of the universe (23% has been labeled dark energy, 72 % dark matter) isn’t it a bit early to be getting all thin-lipped and Richard Dawkins about the big questions?

He’s become a  bit of a pin-up this Dawkins chap, and I admire his ‘merciless rationalism’ – as one reviewer put it. He is brilliant for his clear thinking and bravery. But on human experience – you know, the stuff that makes us all tick – I find him a bit thin. He dismisses the notion of a human soul,  or a human spirit, as a mere by-product of religion. In other words it doesn’t exist. Everything we do, he argues, is a product of the brain and, ultimately, evolution. We are brain machines; blobs of flesh being pushed around by our own highly-evolved computer. But – like the universe – there is much about these computers that we don’t understand…

Last week Anna Long Legs and I visited the quaint village of Wilmington in Sussex to gawp at the oldest Yew tree in England, estimated to be 1,600 years old. This tree, supported by chains and crutches, takes up most of a small graveyard next to the church of St Mary & St Peter. To cut a long story short Anna Long Legs – a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic and vocal disciple of Mr Dawkins – left the graveyard in tears, utterly convinced she had felt hands prodding her in the small of the back. She was icy to the touch and had come out in a cold sweat. Studying a photograph taken in the graveyard later that day, we noticed a strange cloudy sphere in the exact spot where this strange ‘event’ had happened. It was probably a speck of dust. But maybe not. Time to call the fashion police?