Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Obama BAMAMA

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

I got home this evening vaguely pissed off with the entire universe and especially those parts of it that have got to their mid-forties without realising that, actually, they are not entitled to stand in the train doors and bellow into their phone when others are trying to board and/or dismount from said train. I had spent the entire afternoon ‘doing metadata’, which is nowhere near as cool as it sounds and frankly, my eye-balls have screen-tan. Lunch had been eaten with one hand at a cafe table outdoors in the drizzle, other hand fending off falling leaves and pigeons. NaNoWriMo’s lack of ‘Wri’ and also lack of notebook was beginning to prey on my mind. I was tired. I had spent entirely too much time the night before last dancing about infront of the telly shouting ‘Ha ha!’ every time another county turned blue. Wednesday morning all the Americans in the office were delirious with joy, and there was much Avoidance of Work and festive biscuitry (or, I suppose, cookieness). Yesterday was fun. I think I have an optimism hangover. Today was positively Stygian in its gloom and existential ‘meh’.

But there it was, when I got in. A small flimsy envelope all over slightly crooked University stamps, and a wildly excited husband standing over it and jigging impatiently from one foot to another.

Ah. Yes. That MA I was doing. Yes.

I opened the envelope. I read the first few lines of the letter. I passed it to S. I felt bemused. I felt… empty. Oh, I said. Oh. There was much hugging.

And S got out the champagne.

At which point I started grinning like an eejit.

Ah well, what’s another happy hangover between friends?

Pirates of the Iron Road

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007

(It is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I am so sorry).

I think I may have mentioned, on occasion, that when stressy, I lose the off-switch for my brain and develop insomnia (fret me not with your counsel, I have been like this since I was six weeks old and frankly, the only thing that really works is not getting stressed in the first place). So, currently, I am not sleeping. To sleep, at this time, I need perfect warmth, perfect stillness, perfect pyjamas and perfect darkness. As the bed partner has developed a cold (another cold! What in hell do they feed him at work?), I am faced with the idiotic choice between staying in the warm comfortable bed thinking: ‘Stop coughing. Stop coughing. Stop – oh, he’s stopped. Now his nose is whistling. Wake up. Wake up. Now roll over. Oh, dammit, now he’s coughing again. Oh God, he’s snoring. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it,’ ad infinitum, or moving to the spare room and thinking ‘This bed is too hard. I’m cold. I need the loo. This bed is really hard. Why’s it so quiet? I need the loo. It’s cold,’ ad infinitum.

I could always get up and read, but that rather defeats the object of being a hard-core whiner, don’t you think?

Anyway, two nights of that, and approximately three hours sleep, no, not per night, but in toto, yes, I know, not good, and no I did not fall down in a deep sleep smack in the middle of the lunch queue but believe me I wanted to, what was I talking about? [One moment please. I must just reach over there and slap her awake - Ed].

Ah yes. this morning, the one thing hauling me onwards through all the vagaries of commuting (what is it with trains? Why do they not turn up? Why do they not turn up when you’re tired? Are they allergic to yawning?) was the thought of AMT, the Best Little Coffee Stand in London. Organic milk, Fairtrade coffee, giant squishy pretzels, a scary fresh orange squeezer, and the smiliest staff. Smiley staff. On a Wednesday morning. With nothing to look at but a bazillion snarly commuters and pigeon-spattered paving. Oh, how I love that coffee stall. It can power me all the way to nearly lunch-time. Oh yes. And it’s right next to Boots, so I can top up on Rennies and aspirin while I’m at it. Ahhh, drugs.

The coffee stand is gone.

There is a square, rusty shadow on the pavement. There is no coffee stand.

Now, I knew their contract with Network Rail was up for renewal. I vaguely knew that they had been out-bid by Caffé Nero, who, while not actively sucking (Costa, I’m looking at you. Expensive and crap? I am so not transferring my loyalties), are not my lovely smiley 100% Fairtrade organic milk providers, and will not make me feel like a Good Person while I stagger woozily towards the buses.

What I did not know, is that AMT, thanks to Network Rail’s cheerfully rapacious decision-making, have now lost 40% of their retail outlets. That probably means that 40% of my amazingly smiley people, including Aziz, who was so polite and smiley he regularly made me almost tearful at the wonderful goodness of my fellow humans, have to find new jobs. I can only hope they have found new, better, jollier jobs. And I did not know that AMT were shafted by their own desire not to shaft us, their snarly commuters, by upping the coffee prices so they could out-bid Caffé Nero. See that link to Network Rail above? I linked it to their contacts page. I have already politely emailed them my displeasure. And now you can too, if you wish.

Oh, and not that this story was in the National news. Oh no. I found it on New Consumer, and Hippy Shopper. You did know that London is trying to achieve Fairtrade City status, didn’t you? Not very heart-warming, is it?

Fucking Pirates.

Fit for purpose

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

In that I haven’t been; fit for purpose, that is. First I had surgery (results, inconclusive, difference to health, indeterminable owing to vast quantities of drugs I am plying myself with), then I caught flu and spent two weeks staring bewildered at the thermometer which seemed to have got itself stuck in the hyperactive range, and then I developed eczema all over my hands, and meanwhile I went back to work and everyone else promptly went on holiday, leaving six of us to carry on preparing for the ceremonial re-opening of the New! Improved! Now with added Omega 3! version of the library in a fog of dust, paint-fumes and collapsing shelves, which left me with an unnatural quantity of bruises and a general desire to slap the next person who told me they couldn’t help out as the dust upset their breathing.

But what was that thing I quite enjoyed doing, back in the dim and distant past when my belly-button was quite a different shape? Oh, yes, blogging.

So, chez Reed, we are adjusting ourselves on the tenterhooks for the sake of Youngest Sister’s A-levels, apparently in postal transit somewhere about the South East of England. While Youngest Sister is spending her days in completely ignoring the subject, oh wise young mortal that she is, her mother and I are gleefully working ourselves up into a foam of anticipatory worry.

Which makes this as good a time as any to discuss A-levels. As for the annual Journalist’s Jamboree of blame, opprobrium, aspersions, whining and self-congratulation that engulfs the comment pages, I can remember it repeating itself word-for-word when I did my A-levels, *ahem*tumpty years ago. I put it down to jealousy. These students, look at them, they get to be 18, have iPods, have sex, they can afford to drink like the proverbial Lord one is as drunk as, and still, still they do better year on year. Bastards.

No, the problem with A-levels, truly, is most certainly not that they are getting easier. Rather, I think it likely that teachers are getting cannier and students are being more carefully groomed to be able to do said A-levels. The year is spent learning what sort of information to retain, and how best to regurgitate it – exam-passing is a skill, and the kids are picking that up superlatively. Talented little oiks.

I am far more distressed by the stories about students with ninety-seven As and an A* turning up at the portals of OxbriLondrews to do Literary Literature and Philosophical Musings Thereon and finding themselves utterly floored by the Gerund. Or Science Genii of the future having to spend their first year being painstakingly taught to spell ‘Socioeconomic constraints on biological determinism’. (Incidentally, is this truly true? Do universities now offer remedial classes in Writing Like a Person of Normal Intelligence and Maths Without Fingers? [In which case, can we enroll Reed in the maths one? - Ed]). While it seems to me perfectly obvious that the Teenager of Today is perfectly capable of learning a great deal of stuff and, vitally, being able to regurgitate under conditions of controlled torment, it is not nearly so obvious that they are being taught anything they really need to know. I know of English students who simply don’t know who Samuel Richardson is [Lucky, lucky swine], Biology students whose grasp of Darwinian Evolution is somewhat more shot than my own, and in any case have never heard of Alfred Russell Wallace, Politics students who leap back with shock on being told that Fascism and Communism are not after all one and the same thing, despite historical results, and therefore calling me a communist because I won’t let them take a reference book home makes me laugh hysterically for quite some minutes, because, dear reader, I was.

Back in the year *vigorous coughing*, when I attended my very first lecture, admittedly in a narcotic haze of aspirin and liver toxins, because after all I do believe in doing things properly and that includes spending Fresher’s Week plastered, I did have a vague notion of how to spell every author on the curriculum, and a vaguer notion of what exactly their books were about, as such, except in the case of James Joyce, but then, that was the point, and indeed anyone claiming to understand Ulysses in the first year was made to clean the Arts Block toilets. And this was because my English A-level was mostly dedicated to two Shakespeare plays, two Victorian novels and an untidy heap of poetry, the teaching of which entailed things like ‘context’ and ‘background’ and ‘what everyone else was up to at the time’; a somewhat old-fashioned proceeding, admittedly, but one that was fit for purpose, in that while I did indeed spend most of my first year at University feeling stupid and overwhelmed, I knew what I was feeling stupid and overwhelmed about and how to improve the shining hour [i.e. live in the library, and now your life is irredeemably blighted]. The Student of Today does not even know what they do not know. For the A-level they took was not intended to give them a shallow and somewhat patchy grounding in the subject while hammering the set texts in with the Hammer of Desperation and the chisel of Midnight Espresso. Their A-levels were about passing A-levels. For that is what everyone, students, parents, teachers, governors, ministers, all wanted. For students to pass their exams. And now they do.

And now they must work out how to understand what they’ve learnt, all by themselves.

[Apologies for any fall in standards in this blog - the Fragile Flower is still draped over the ottoman, so to speak, and can't take much kicking. Which is boring of her]

Letting things get under my skin; or, being an idiot

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

I assume you all know about the failed car-bomb attacks we’ve been having lately. As you can imagine, discovering your local tube is closed off by stern people in neon jackets is a bore, and being told the perpetrators are doctors, of all things, is, well, horrible. Wasn’t there this oath thing that doctors took, promising to do no harm?

Anyway, it rather derailed me because I felt it was somewhat underhand to poke fun at Gordon Brown and his zippedy-doo-dah new Cabinet of Young Things when the poor chap was having to start his new job at Critical, also known as ‘Hello, is that your country that has just burst into flames?’

And onwards to Today’s Petty Whinge:

The stupidest little incident has been irritating me for nearly a week now.

Allow me to contextualise a little. There is another website/ set of fora where I hang out and talk drivel. Hanging out and talking drivel is far much less like hard work than having all my words standing or falling on their own merit, so even though I have been lackadaising all over the blog, I have been persisting over there. And of course we got the news on Saturday that a flaming car had been driven into the doors of the Glasgow Airport terminal, and the drivers had possibly even thrown fire bombs before being flattened by police and by-standers. Naturally we were all shocked. A person, who I shall name Person (because, OK?), posted something-or-other, which was promptly removed by the moderators. So Person wrote another post saying, basically, that whoever had alerted the moderators to his post, ‘clearly think it is OK to try to throw petrol bombs at children in airport terminals.’ And then Person stormed off in a huff.

Now, I was all for being horribly cross that one’s post had been removed. But I was not at all amused by the implication that one of the other ‘regulars’ had done it (we are not that kind of people. We are all rabidly free speech), and that therefore one of the other regulars was pro-terrorism. However, many of the other regulars took time to contact Person, explain that the forum in question had all sorts of other readers who don’t post but could’ve alerted the moderators, and also, if he used language, the post would be automatically moderated by a profanity filter. As it turned out, the post had been automatically moderated for the liberal use of the words ’sod’, ‘bastards’ and ‘bloody’, and the human moderators decided the subject excused the language and re-instated it within 24 hours.

Did Person apologise for the hissy fit and the utterly unwarranted accusations? No. Did Person acknowledge calling us pro-terrorist was a bit rich? No. Is this what I care about? Not really. Anyone’s allowed the odd burst of soddishness. Especially when upset by scary news. What does bug the absolute britches off me is that I am the only one who said anything (and that a mild, ‘I’m not sure I like the implication that whoever removed Person’s post is therefore pro-terrorism.’). Everyone else was busy being reassuring and explanatory and hunting Person down so they could encourage said Person to return to the forum. The very forum that bases its raison d’être on civilised, polite, rational conversation, no shouting, no ad hominem attacks, even on difficult subjects. It’s why I could make the effort to stay there when the rest of the internetty boiling was too much like hard work.

Now, either I have missed something in my lackadaisicalery, and Person is allowed lee-way the rest of us aren’t and wouldn’t dream of claiming, for reasons I have not understood, or I am excruciatingly thin-skinned and up myself. But because everyone is refusing to discuss it, I can’t find out. And because everyone is refusing to discuss it, I am highly reluctant to open the subject and start a truly unwelcome shit-storm and put myself firmly in the unwelcome category. It is for this very wimpy reason that I am not linking to said forum.

This being my blog, I shall say what the hell I like though. I think Person’s reaction was rude and unwarranted. I think even if Person did assume (and why? Person has been posting for years, surely Person understands that there is automatic sweary moderating?) a regular had yanked his post [heh heh heh; oops. Sorry. - Ed], and therefore let fly in extremis, Person should have said sorry. More to the point, the other regulars owed it to each other to remonstrate with him, politely and mildly of course. As it is, one rather gets the impression you can say whatever the fuck you like in whatever unpleasant tone you like and everyone will butter you up big-time. Just like any other damn forum. Obviating the point of this particular special forum.

I have avoided posting this for nearly a week to make sure I wasn’t merely being a snarling bitch and making mountains out of molehills. Does the fact it still bugs me to hell mean I have a point or that I am a very snarling bitch? Or is it the fact that Person is allowed off and I didn’t think anyone else would be – what have I missed abut Person? Am I being an idiot?

The Editor, by the way, is disclaiming all responsibility for this post and thinks I am indeed being an idiot. So I may well take this post down later. Also, am off work with high temperature, so judgement probably severely impaired. But hey, like I said, my blog.

I only went out to get a sandwich

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

And I came back with a whole new Prime Minister.

Now, I did spend a few possibly delusional months, some time ago, announcing that I thought Gordon Brown could well be a good PM. I am no longer nearly so sanguine, partly because Brown tried to tax my underpaid little arse off – see the bit about scrapping the 10p rate? – and partly because I’m not entirely sure our marvellous fiery economy is layable at Mr Brown’s feet (I’m thinking, economies bounce up and down in cycles, don’t they? Well, make sure you’re chancellor on the up-bounce (and run away to Number 10 before it goes splat, the which splat you can then blame on the current Chancellor/ global warming/ the Tories)), and in any case, I feel a little jaded about an economy that prevents me from ever buying a house anywhere at all in the British Isles. And as you can see, discussing the Economy, stupidly, turns me into Bernard Levin. I promise to lock all the parentheses away in their drawer for the rest of the post.

Anyway, there was some cause for schadenfreude. I can’t be the only one who danced up and down in the street on hearing that Patricia Hewitt has resigned. I can only assume she resigned now because she knew Brown is not so much of a flaming eejit as to keep her on, and she may as well jump with some fluttering rag of attempted dignity clutched about her rather than be picked up by the foot and wrist and flung into the middle-distance. If only the silly bitch had had somewhat more dignity and buggered off in April. What am I talking about? I’ll allow Aphra to explain.

And I see that the departing Mr Blair is being wrapped in olive-branches, loaded into a giant catapult and fired at the Middle East. I was about to get good and cynical about that. But in Sierra Leone they see him as a hero. Northern Ireland also seems to have gone rather well. Nevertheless, Iraq is an unspeakable hell-hole somewhat of his own creating, which makes the whole thing soap-opera interesting, don’t you think?

Not too shabby a burst of developments for a quick sandwich-related absence, eh? Tuna, thanks for asking.

Electioneering [Late, as usual - Ed]

Monday, May 7th, 2007

No, I did not vote. London doesn’t do local elections when the rest of Bucolia does. London is far too busy pontificating in any case, on whatever-it-is the dear little hayseeds think they could possibly be doing by voting in the first place. Bless their little hopeful hearts. A difference? Ah ha ha ha. They’d actually all have to vote at that point. Oh yes.

Sorry, do I sound sarcastic? I do hope so. I was trying very hard. I’ve been silent so long I worry I’ve got out of practice.

So, Elections, Local, Welsh, and Scottish. Just at present I thought I’d keep my own political views out of it. For the record, they are dyed-in-the-wool crimson and somewhat to the left of Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and Tony Benn*. Allow this information to influence your judgment as you will. So, leaving entirely aside the question of who you may have voted for [Unless it was the BNP, in which case Reed will come round to your house with photographs of a) tortured asylum seekers and b) of every famous and useful British citizen of less than utter Anglo-Saxonity and wreck your afternoon], let us stick to the mere subject of voting per se. I thought I’d waste a tea-break trawling through all the intelligent and thoughtful comments left by my fellow citizens on the subject of voting in general. The BBC had set up a ‘Have Your Say’ page especially.

Dear God, people, but what’s wrong with you? So many, so very many snitty claims that none of the parties represented them, so they wouldn’t vote for any of them, or that it wouldn’t make any difference who they did vote for, so they couldn’t be bothered, or in one spectacular case, that they were ‘revising’ from 7am to 10pm and the polls should have been open at a more convenient time. Oh, all right, those of you who will insist on being students, bloody well be students then, but you’re letting the side down. I never let some daft exam or other stand between me and the ballot box.

Those of you who think it makes no difference who you vote for, so you won’t, you’re wrong. You seem touchingly to believe that They (as in the politicians) will notice your refusal to engage and indeed, even be concerned about it. You seem to think, for some daftly naïve reasons of your own, that They actually want you to vote.

Oh my dear saps. The last thing They want is your vote. They love it when you sit down and shut up. They each have their own inner hard-core of trusty eternals, who they can rely on to vote for them come fire, thunder, floods or the Judgment of Heaven, and they only really care when the hard-core start dying of old age and it’s time to indoctrinate a new generation. If the don’t knows, undecideds, issue-considerers, and just generally needing-to-be-convinced don’t vote, it’s wonderful. No having to waste oodles of cash trying to convince you to vote for Us not Them. No worrying that you’ll break loose and vote the other way at the General Election. No having to keep promises just to keep you on board. They can get on with fossicking about in each-other’s stationary cupboards and being self-serving and power-mad. If, on the other hand, they knew that they had been voted for, marginally, by a bunch of people who were really only choosing them because of the road-resurfacing thing, do you think they’ll fail to resurface the damn’ road? Or, at least, do you think the new lot will fail to resurface the roads, seeing that the old lot got junked for not doing it?

And yes, it is perfectly true, oh individual voter, that your vote as is straw and peanut-shells in the grand scheme of anything at all. Quite right. But the fact you voted, oh now that is an entirely more cheerful matter. As a student [incoming smug mode] I got a house of eight other students to all come down to the Polls with me and vote. All I did was announce loudly that I was going to the Polls and was anyone else coming with me? Lord knows who they voted for, or if it made any difference, but one vote suddenly became nine, as far as I can tell solely because I got off my then-much-perter bottom. How many of your friends, acquaintances, colleagues even, do you think you could dredge out of the Slough of Despond by the simple announcement ‘Well, I’m going home via the Polls. Anyone else?’

And who cares if they are all foaming idiots who vote with their scrota? They voted, they will be noted as voters, and the politicians with any kind of brain at all will panic like ants under boiling water. It’ll be hilarious. I promise.

*(No, I cannot see how leaders of great dictatorships can actually be considered left-wing regardless of what anyone’s propaganda machines say, so let’s leave Stalin for a less civilized argument some other time, because, yes, I was brought up a Communist, so yes, I do know what I am talking about, and yes, attempts to tell me that Mao is left-wing can lead to unpleasantness. But now you know).

Hypocrescendo

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

Let me see if I have got this correct. The Equality Act, due to come into effect pretty shortly, outlaws the denying of goods and services to a person because of their sexual orientation. Adoption agencies, therefore, may not automatically deny a gay couple the chance to adopt based soley on the fact that they are, in fact, gay. So, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, has written a letter to the government declaring that should the Equality Act fire up unopposed, Catholic adoption agencies will have to shut up shop. You can read the full text of the letter here.

Read it? Yes? Oh, but it gives me far too many things to scream about. I have spent all afternoon mentally reviewing the troops and carefully adding, say, sarcasm, to the weapons pile, eyeing it, taking it off again and laying it down next to swearing, sighing, chucking it back on again. I have certainly carefully removed foul-mouthed personal abuse from the pile several times but it does keep recrudescing [Oh, hey, don't look at me. I'm trying to keep you out of trouble - Ed]. So. Let’s get this exploration of the acme of hypocrisy over and done with, it’s giving me heart-burn already.

  1. The worthy archbishop begins: ‘The Catholic Church utterly condemns all forms of unjust discrimination, violence, harassment or abuse directed against people who are homosexual. Indeed the Church teaches that they must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.’ Yes, well. Note careful use of the word ‘unjust’, which neatly leaves a loophole in which one can be just as discriminatory as one likes as long as one can argue that it’s ‘just’. (Also, note use of word ‘accepted’. I don’t know that many gay couples who want to be ‘accepted’ any more than they want to be ‘tolerated’. I think they’d all rather be so far within the continuum of normalcy that the whole issue of having to to be ‘accepted’ does not arise. How would you, oh straight married readers of mine, feel if some nice vicar or other told you he ‘accepted’ you and your relationship? Well, quite).
  2. Despite the Church teaching that homosexuals ‘must’ be ‘accepted’, he then points out that it also teaches that homosexuals are not adoptive parent material. Basically, acceptance of a homosexual most certainly does not include acceptance of his or her being a parent, a role that is not only accepted in but expected of, if not outrageously forced upon, straight women, no matter how young or unfit or unwilling to bear a child, in a kind of Munchausen’s-by-Proxy of reproductivity, by yet other Catholic teachings. Which makes NO SENSE.
  3. Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor then goes on to point out that: ‘We place significant emphasis on marriage, as it is from the personal union of a man and a woman that new life is born and it is within the loving context of such a relationship that a child can be welcomed and nurtured. Marital love involves an essential complementarity of male and female.’ Oh. These kiddies that need new homes, they were not welcomed and nurtured within the loving context of a personal union of a man and a woman at all. Yet, nevertheless, this ‘personal union’ is the Cardinal’s prerequisite for a loving relationship. This sorry, messy, biological, instinct-driven, ungoverned, thoughtless, even violent and cruel, personal union, is somehow a better foundation for a loving relationship than the fact that two people, in a minority, in the face of discrimination, bullying, a whole media-fed nation of mindless jeering stereotypes and ugly expectations of misery and disaster, have nevertheless found in each other the love and strength to make a family. I, oh, but… [Words have failed her. She is currently biting her nails and muttering 'argh argh argh'].
  4. Moving swiftly on [Chance would be a fine thing], the Cardinal announces that it would be ‘unjust discrimination against Catholics for the government to insist that if they wish to continue to work with local authorities, Catholic adoption agencies must act against the teaching of the Church and their own consciences by being obliged in law to provide such a service.’ Yes indeedy, unjust discrimination. I did say the distinction would be important. You see, it is perfectly just for a Catholic adoption agency worker, funded, no less, by the bloody government, to refuse to consider a gay couple as potential parents, but it is unjust for said government to ask them to spend our taxes in a manner consistent with the laws of the land. I am running out of fingernails here.
  5. And for the full what-the-bloody-buggering-fuck moment, apparantly, ‘Homosexual couples are referred to other agencies where their adoption application may be considered. This “sign-posting” responsibility is taken very seriously by all Catholic adoption agencies.’ Let me see if I, lapsed and atheistical as I am, can understand this. A Catholic agency will not let gay couples adopt their own batch of kids, but will tell them where they can go and find other kids to adopt. So, a Catholic, who deeply believes that homosexuals should not adopt, will nevertheless make a discrimination not only between who can and can’t parent, but between which kids they are and are not prepared to protect from the horrors of GayDad. And they take this sorting of the infant sheep from the goats very seriously.
  6. Finally, well, probably not finally, but really, the subject is beginning to make me boke, this Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who is so anxious to protect his Catholic staff from having to face the repellant task of agreeing that a gay couple could actually be decent responsible parents, is the same man who ‘naively’ shuffled a child-abusing priest to a fresh parish a few years ago. (Because, allegedly, his Church taught him to, which is a whole ‘nother rant, but it unavoidably involves mentioning the current Pope’s track record and I just. Can’t. Do. That [Not without a great deal of beserker foaming and gnawing of shield rims, at any rate, and she never can remember what she did when the fit was on her]). A vicar of Christ, therefore, may be allowed any amount of contact with small vulnerable children, regardless of how inappropriate or horrible that contact, and the Church shall carefully pretend that there is no problem at all in this, but a couple who might show the child that homosexuality is not incompatible with having only the one head with no horns on it, may not have any contact with said child at all.

Gentle Readers, if I were not already a very lapsed Catholic indeed…

And yet smugness is so unbecoming.

Saturday, January 13th, 2007

I am memeing, as a way to deal with the vast echoing blankness that is the inside of my head. It’s still, vaguely, Resolution Season, so here is one I found over at Helen’s, which she found at Charlotte’s, which Charlotte created after reading this Newsweek article listing ten tips to help save the planet. I had always thought of myself as irritatingly, primly, green and eco-friendly. So this has been… interesting.

1. What do you for the birds and the bees? Nothing. I live in London, I have three house-plants and a tarmacked yard with two cars parked in it. My main interaction with the local wildlife consists of me leaning half-naked out of the bedroom window at three am to scream abuse at the exuberantly noisy mating foxes.

2. Household products. Chemical or organic? Organic, biodegradable, made lovingly by hippies and bottled in refillable and recycled and recyclable bottles. AND I use a lot if vinegar and bicarbonate of soda. As far as cleaning goes, I am the planet-loving queen. And too lazy to do much cleaning in the first place, which is also good.

3. Do you junk? We registered with the ’send us junk mail and we will SUE your asses’ services, we recycle the inevitable ‘to the occupier’ rubbish and leaflets that turn up anyway, and mostly we fantasize about shredding a year’s worth, finding the company owner’s home and using a leaf-blower to cover his front garden irretrievably with it all.

4. Air-dry or tumble-dry? What is this tumble-drying of which you speak? I personally, after a hard childhood spent washing my own smalls by hand in the bathroom sink and wringing them out in the salad-dryer, find having a washing-machine the height of luxuriant decadence. And we wash at low temps with ecologically friendly detergent. Smug mode.

5. Old gadgets. Recycle or toss ‘em? My current and beautifully functional mobile phone is approximately the size and weight of a house-brick and can just about do predictive texting. I will keep it until it breaks irretrievably. We also still use the stereo (with tape deck and no CD player) I inherited when I went to University. So, what old gadgets? Ooh, even smugger mode.

6. Lightbulbs – incandescent or fluorescent? Speak to my landlord. Him and his snazzy multi-bulb light-fixtures. Bah. Though we do have a several-year-old florescent bulb in the hall, and it does just about cast enough light to let you see if those are your keys you are clutching, or random cutlery.

7. Meat or veg? We only buy organic meat. I grew up on an organic farm (by default. My parents were mostly too cash-strapped and too soft-hearted to have more than a few outrageously pampered animals). I could no more buy battery chicken than I could buy the Daily Mail. But, yes, I should probably eat less meat [Or just eat less - Ed].

8. Loo paper. Virgin or recycled? But totally recycled. We’ve even found a brand sturdy enough to prevent the dreaded finger-goes-straight-through-when-it-gets-the-least-damp problem that has been my friends’ main objection to recycled.

9. Tap or bottled water? At home I drink tap. I feel twinges of guilt whenever I buy bottled water when out and about. I realise feeling a twinge and buying the bottle regardless is not good.

10. Dating – metrosexual or ecosexual? He’s about as green as I am, especially now that I have brow-beaten him to jelly as regards electronic gadgets, purchasing of when old one is still intermittently functional. Oh, and he’s better than me at turning lights off, and worse about leaving gadgets on stand-by.

Do you like me? Do you?

Monday, January 1st, 2007

This is, of course, where I retrospect, elegantly, no doubt while clad in satin pyjamas and sipping espresso from a Wedgewood coffee cup.

I won’t disillusion you, the reality is far too squalid for a sunlit New Year’s morning. Let’s just say, Rita Hayworth does not belong in the same sentence as Vicks.

And I do not know what to say about 2006. The year I became, finally, so cynical and fed up I found myself merely going ‘huh,’ at the News, rather than breaking into my usual ten minute full-volume rant on the personal integrity and intelligence of the smug politician leaning back in the chair and circumlocuting the question. Though I did have a highly therapeutic and energising shout at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s New Year’s Message yesterday morning, spineless platitudinising disappointment that he is. So perhaps 2007 will be the Year of Passionate Re-Engagement [Ooh, yes, watch Reed bore entire pubfuls of the politically apathetic into going out and voting just to get her to Shut. Up. - Ed].

I had tried to keep this blog ‘pure’ ['monotone'] by trying to stick to the subject of all that is writery and leave my political views out of it. You know, so as not to annoy anyone or find my comments full of people I really rather liked telling me what a raving asswipe I am. [You big jessie]. I have also utterly failed to do any of that book reviewing I kept muttering about, for much the same reason. I think my need to be liked is turning me into a giant rice pudding.

NaNoWriMo rather rubbed my face in that. I didn’t have time to run through my usual mental check-list of ‘is this too smug? Too culture-vulture? Too prim? Nobody’s going to like the female lead except me, are they?’ I did find the male lead unbelievably tedious. I couldn’t work out why. I ran out of time to work out why and had to keep going. He became increasingly interesting to me. Good, thought I. I wonder why? And then, over Christmas, the dispiriting truth dawned. He had been so insufferably blank because I had carefully amputated any character trait I thought The Readers wouldn’t like [And who the hell are you going to show this novel to, if not A Reader? Market realism, my petal]. Being me, I am not talking of the usual unpleasant traits detectives are supposed to suffer from, such as alcoholism, world-weary foul temper, a tendency to live on takeaway and be vile to their side-kick, insubordination, un-PC language and attitudes, border-line personality disorders, and being nevertheless devastatingly attractive to posh bints. Oh no. My ‘tec was shy, quiet, bookish, good with children, somewhat depressed and lacking in self-esteem, and rather sly and secretive. He can also cook, and eats salad. So of course, I was trying to make him more ’sexy’, more obviously troubled and angry when he is naturally sulky, more ‘me against the world’ when actually he quite likes his bosses, more rock’n'roll’n'whiskey when really, truly, he’s quite keen on Science Fiction and mocha lattes. He is genuinely nice and diffident, and the story arises out of the moral problem of being nice and diffident when faced with a story of two generations of illicit passion and thirty-five years of repressed rage, anxst and lust. In rushing to the finish, I just had to let him read Lord Dunsany and eat chocolate and quote from The Screwtape Letters.

[Is this not getting a little long-winded?]

So, the point is, this point that I am finally, digressively, getting about to making, is, err, if you lot don’t mind, of course, and it’s not too much trouble, my New Year’s Resolution could be to just expand the remit of this blog a little, and, maybe, opinionate a tad. And should any of you lot disagree with me, rejoice and vociferate, for there shall be Thinking, and possibly even a Changing of Minds. And less rice-pudding and tepid fretting about just how very cute I am, or am not, or could be, or would be, or should be.