Death Becomes Him

Just how dead is Sean Bean?

I always picture him full of life, pulsing and throbbing with it. (Well, actually, I usually visualise him giving Joely Richardson a damn good seeing-to in the BBC version of Lady Chatterley, and wishing it was me).

But if you take a wider view across the breadth of his oeuvre (as opposed to looping re-runs of the sexy bits of Sharpe and Chatterley), he doesn't do too well at the staying-alive part.  In fact, more often than not he dies. In a lot of different ways.

Turns out I'm not the only person who has noticed this. Someone has gone to the trouble of mashing this video of Sean's last gasps - dozens of them. If you're having a bad day, reassure yourself that it's not as bad as some of his.

Sham 66

Maybe the reason I am able to keep calm and carry on through all this turmoil is that huge parts of my life never felt real to me in the first place.  So much of what I have been, what I have done, the life I have lived was not for the likes of me.

I always suffered from Impostor Syndrome, that feeling that someone was going to tap me on the shoulder and explain that had been a dreadful mistake and that someone else was supposed to be in my seat.

So now it's all slipping away, and I am numb, watching it slide through my fingers like sand.

Veni, Vidi, Vendidi

I went to speak at a conference about vending machines today (yes, my life really is that exciting). My very first task in my very first full-time job was to choose and procure an automatic drink machine - however that was quite some time ago so I thought I'd better bone up on more recent developments.

I recalled being fascinated once by a vending machine at a motorway service station in Belgium that sold fries (with mayonnaise, bien sur).  Perhaps there is something more unusual?

Well, well, well. Not only can you buy crabs from a vending machine (yes, that's what's in the weird photo). I discovered you can also purchase from a machine:

• bread in a can
• porn videos
• pet rhinoceros beetles
• Smart cars
• 25lb sacks of rice
• eggs
• used schoolgirl panties

Yes, you read that right.  (You can insert your own tasteless Jimmy Saville joke here if you like).  Rather a surprise. In Japan, naturally. Pretty useless as a snack, I'd have thought: I bet they taste awful.

Anyway I decided to tweet about this, as a kind of off-the-wall trailer for my conference session.  I have now attracted quite a lot of new followers, not my usual sort. I don't think they'll stay long but it makes me feel popular, even if I know it's for all the wrong reasons. 

Once on my previous blog I put up a post, with picture, about some new red shoes I bought.  I got 5,000 hits in one day. I thought this was because I was coming up on shopping searches, but a kindly social media egg-spurt explained that it's about shoe-fetishists. Nowt so queer as folk, eh?

Coupling

Research this week tells us that men called Brian and women called Helen have the best credit ratings in the UK. Other research tells us that they live in Slough and drive a silver car. What very sensible people they must be. Are they terribly dull? Are they blissfully happy? And would that, if so, be happiness of a sensible, unquestioning, kind?

I used to have a terror of living a Helen-and-Brian life. But maybe it would be nice? I'm not sure.

Another couple, Vera and Maurice, have been married for 53 years. Every night they go to sleep hand-in-hand. If they wake up in the night, they hold hands until they fall asleep again. We know this because Vera phoned a radio programme to tell us.

I almost cried when I heard about Vera and Maurice  -  because I was so envious.

Prune

Seems like I have reached that time of life where I look in the mirror in the mornings and think, "Surely not".  Despite face creams, exercise and fresh air, facials and all the rest of it, my whole body seems to have drooped into a limp, disappointed slump of middle age.

I suppose this might be connected to the fact that I sometimes feel like a limp, disappointed middle aged woman  -  but I hate it. All my features are fading into sepia, so drained and washed out that you can hardly notice I'm there without at least a smear of lipstick and mascara to point you in the right direction. Yet I am so full of life, chock-a-block with ideas and urges, blood hot and busy in the rich reds and purples of my arteries and veins. On the inside I am as fresh as raw meat, as brightly hued as a jungle bird. My inner landscape is not the grey of a November Monday but greens, purples and yellows, the roar and splash of waterfalls, the searing orange lava of volcanoes.

I want to laugh, to shout, to run in the rain, roll in the leaves, tumble into bed. I want to sweat, to tremble, to bite, to curse, to sing. I do not want my film to fade to grey, I want full-on action, right to the credits. I want to die with my boots on, and preferably my suspenders and basque as well.

Meanwhile people around me are giving in, giving up, or giving themselves over to the temptation to become a modern-day vampire. As if drinking the kisses of younger women will be like supping at the spring of eternal youth. (I don't think this works. The physical contrast is so visible that for neither of you to remark on it becomes a burden. And you cannot find something on telly that you both enjoy, to entertain you in the inevitable "in between" times that a younger man doesn't need).

Don't write us off, these faded autumn leaves of women. We are smart, and funny, and sexy, with the joie de vivre of the last-chance saloon. I'm not going gently. No way.

Access All Areas

Two days of poetry readings as part of my local literature festival have been summarily cancelled.

For several years now, they have been held in the upstairs room of a local tea shop. Free entry as long as you buy a cuppa and a cake. Excellent poets, many of them extensively published, travel from all around the area to perform free of charge.

This year, a disability group has complained that the event is not fully accessible because of the stairs, and so it will not now take place. This is quite likely the group that previously led to the cancellation of another regular poetry event in a neighbouring town for similar reasons.

So now the event is equally inaccessible to everyone and we should all be equally happy with this outcome, I guess.

It's a tricky one, isn't it? I'm all for equal access, clearly.  But in my day job I have seen many businesses have to close down, and many landlords go bankrupt, because our country's property portfolio  -  sometimes many hundreds of years old  -  cannot always be adapted to meet the new requirements.  And as a poetry performer I have seen that only running readings that are fully accessible has the net effect of making live performance evenings less easy to hold and therefore over all less accessible.  A pub or tea shop can't give up it's main trading floor without charging a fee and therefore less events like our readings and poetry nights can take place.

Probably now I'll be hoisted up and made an example of, as if I were unsympathetic to the rights and indeed challenges of people with mobility issues. I know, I know, the problems we face in our family trundling about the place with a profoundly disabled child, his chair, his paraphernalia, his occasional disturbing seizures and (in my view) even more disturbing episode of random Exorcist-style projectile vomiting. I'm just saying, it's tricky to tell when something is right, and when doing what seems like the right thing leads to the wrong outcome.

Meanwhile in this politically correct day and age, discrimination and bullying of gingers continues unabated.  Yes I know we are ugly, and pale, and every freckle points to a soul that we have stolen with our evil carrot-headed mischief. And I had heard it rumoured that we smell.

In my day at school, gingers were reputed to smell of piss. Apparently that's not correct.  According to the latest teenage lore, we smell of cake - and not in a good way.

This is another thing I don't really understand. Oh my golly. I think I'll retreat to bed with a cup of tea and a gingerbread-person.

I Spy With My Lorgnette...

Have you noticed that posh people like to start the day with foods that begin with the letter K?

They had to choose a consonant because they'd already swallowed their vowels for the day as soon as they uttered the word "brkfst". Can't gulp down too many of those pesky vowels in one go, of course, in case they get tangled up in the silver spoon.

Kippers. Kidneys. Kedgeree. What on earth are you thinking?! These aren't foods for the morning. No, no, no. Much too rich and savoury. Only suitable if you've been out fox-hunting for a few hours first. They are also foods that involve special equipment which normal people don''t have. Chafing dishes. Sideboards. Those special kipper jugs.

Get off our letter K.  It belongs to us plebs and our pleb foods. K for breakfast stands only for Kelloggs, and if you want a double dose, Special K. It's for Kit-Kats, kebabs and ketchup. Or if you're out and about, it's for Krispy Kremes and KFC  (which is not a football team, before you try and prove your common touch).

Proper breakfast is tea and toast, as any fule kno. Knickers to you, fancy-pants posh boys.

Whatever

I know that the universe is indifferent to its ants.

But I still want to think I matter  -  to some people, at least. When I feel that my absence would be like taking a beaker of water from the Atlantic, I wonder whether the superhuman effort of clinging on is really worth the trouble.

What am I for? Would it make any difference at all if I wasn't here? The sun would still rise and set, all the wheels would still turn, the trees would grow and drop and grow and drop their leaves. The world would not notice if I were gone, the sound of my voice would not be missed in the clamour and babel hubbub.

The people who would notice my absence could be counted on my fingers. And their wheels would still turn and churn and move them on. Nothing we do makes any difference. Nothing we say makes any difference. Acts of kindness leave no impression. Love leaves no marks.

An ant leaves no footprints.

Sleeper

Sometimes it takes all my effort not to lie down on the railway line. 

I mean all my effort, every fibre of my being intensely concentrated on clinging on to clinging on. I did not want to get up and face the day, go to work. Then when I was at work I did not want to go home. I did not want to be anywhere. I did not want to be.

After those boys got killed in the miners strike, coal picking on the spoil tip, I used to dream about their death, rattling black rushing down and pinning them under its dark weight until the dust stopped their breath. This part of my life feels like that dream. One wave after another of black dirt piling down, heavier and heavier until I can hardly urge my chest to rise and fall under its burden.

I always wondered whether, when it was time, I might be able to simply let go of the will to carry on -  and find that I just gently slid over the edge of the sunset. I thought this might be when I was ninety or so.  Now I can vouch for the fact that wishing you weren't here doesn't make it so. 

Death by my own hand holds a terrible allure like the urge to approach the edge of a waterfall. Two problems though. Firstly, the children. Secondly, the life insurance doesn't pay out. I'm resigned to crashing my car and making it look like an accident, although this also has two problems. Firstly, I might injure someone else. Secondly, I might not die but be horribly injured, trapped in mangled wreckage being cut free for hours then permanently maimed but still alive. So, yes, I guess life could be even worse than this. And interesting that I am much more afraid of being injured than being killed, more scared of living than of dying.

Lack of real imminent possibility (this evening at least) does not prevent me from having a list in my head of favorite spots.

1. Drop off the back of the ferry in the dead of night.

2. The viaduct at the port.

3. In the sea with stones in my pocket.

4. Beachy Head.

All of these places are far enough from home, far enough from anywhere I normally am,  to give me time to reconsider. Perhaps that's no coincidence. Not tonight, Josephine. 

Pin Up

If I looked like this, I don't reckon I'd be all that stressed about photos of my buff, bronzed body turning up topless on the interweb. Let's face it, she's going to look amazing.

Privacy aside, I'm struggling to understand why Harry's nuts are in the national interest, whilst photos of Kate's tits are a national outrage.

If I gave a damn, I might be really confused about this.

Compulsion

There are a couple of things I simply have to do.

One of them is get fit, the other one is get writing. These things are particularly important given that the thing I've been working towards for the last 20 years has led me, via a very roundabout route and a large amount of graft, back to the place I started.

So I'd better strive at something else, otherwise the overall outcome of my endeavours will have been pointless.

I can't be trusted to get on with things without some sort of external encouragement, targets, goals. Maybe at least I have learned how to understand myself, if nothing else.  Therefore I have set myself two challenges.

The first is a six week poetry course. I've just finished a two week poetry course as a sort of limbering up, and come up with 3 pieces I quite like. This longer stretch should get me back in the writing saddle, so to speak.

The great thing about poetry is that it doesn't require the same amount of sitting down that, say, a novel would dictate.  Most of it happens inside the head while doing other things, and as long as there is the possibility to jot or record a voice memo, it doesn't always interfere fundamentally with the daily timetable. Writing a poem is a bit like waiting for a plant to grow. You can get it started, sow the seed of an idea but then it has to do its own mysterious thing in the dark before it's ready to begin emerging.

Even so, I thought that I should offset the temptation to stay on the sofa drinking comforting red wine while my poems mature in the aged oak barrels of my brain, by also signing up for a fitness challenge. 5 x 50 will commit me to covering 5k a day for 50 days, running, walking, cycling, swimming or a combination of these.

Truth be told, it's not that much of a challenge on the days I'm exercising anyway - 5k is my standard running route. It's a kick start for the sedentary days though, as I will have to go for a walk for an hour or get on the exercise bike in the evening.  It can only do me good.

My brave little hero nephew has just had an operation which will leave him in plaster from hip to ankle on both legs for 7-8 weeks. And even after that, he can't walk anyway. So I thought the least I could do is be grateful for the ability to get about independently, and do a bit of extra walking in his honour.

In between, I need to fit in my work. Less said about that the better.

Here's To You

Met my sister for lunch this week. She lives in Australia now so this is actually quite a rare occasion. We have had a rather tense relationship in recent years (or perhaps always?) and we barely saw each other last summer, just at a busy wedding and a large family lunch.  We chat on Facebook but we don't really talk or Skype.

We met at the Malmaison. She was wearing black designer clothes and very high heels. She was heavily made up, Kate Middleton style with lots of dark eyeliner.  She ordered Veuve, although she didn't offer to chip in for the bill at the end. She has a 26 year old boyfriend.

I wondered what we had in common now. It's true that blood is thicker than water, but only perhaps in a strictly scientific way. Theoretically we have a shared experience of childhood, but the way she talks about her makes me think that she must have been switched with another girl and didn't live in our house at all.

Apparently, doing things with younger people keeps you feeling young yourself. I am sitting in the office drinking orange squash, eating Hula Hoops, and feeling a bit tearful because I didn't sleep very well.  Does this count? I feel five. Fine. Wine. Whatever.

Coitus Interruptus

Miss me?

Think of it as a breathing space. Sometimes it takes so much effort to keep breathing that there is no space to do anything else. Sometimes there simply isn't anything to say, even for a jabberjaws like me.

So what's new? On the plus side, I can now run 10k. On the minus side, I now need to wear reading glasses to look at emails on my iPhone. Alternatively I can just let them blur into into a yammer of horrible workstuff, these days nothing can't wait until the next day.

On the minus side, I have to buy my clothes at Sainsburys now. You can get a decent pair of work trousers for £9  -  who knew? On the plus side, I have learned a lot about how the High Court works.

In my next life, I have decided not to come back as the proprietor of a school uniform shop after all. Lucrative and ludicrously easy though this may be, it will involve too much interaction with both children (bleargh) and Proper Mummies (bleargh). I have decided instead to come back as a barrister.  I am quick at understanding things, good at writing, good at talking and showing off. And I like the idea of being able to earn £40,000 for two days of work.

Meanwhile, the brainchild languishes like a Victorian infant consumptive, pale and barely breathing.  Which brings me back neatly to my breathing space.

Think of this as an oxygen tent.

Valentine

This year for Valentine's Day, I am going to fall in love with myself. Not only because the last couple of decades have shown me that no-one else is going to. But because I have a sneaking suspicion it might do me some good.

Yes, I am still here. But you know I can't do February.

Silver Spoons

The Ladybird Guide to Being Stuck Up

This is Charles. Charles is posh. Charles is sad. We must all feel sad for Charles. He is so sad he has been interviewed about his sadness in a newspaper. You can read his sad story in full here, but the easy version is on this page. Poor Charles.

Charles made a lot of money buying up all the properties in a little town called Barnsley. Even though the houses were quite cheap, the local people couldn't afford to buy them, because men like Charles have pushed the prices up. He made millions of pounds but it still wasn't enough for him. Poor Charles.

Charles is greedy. Charles decided to gamble all his money, and his lovely house, on making even more millions of pounds in another place where houses are quite cheap. This place is called Romania. The plan did not work out. Poor Charles.

Charles has lots of children. The children are posh too. They like doing posh things, going to posh schools, wearing posh clothes and living in a posh house.

All Charles has left now is 84 houses in Barnsley, a mansion and 214 acres in the countryside, lots of expensive things, his health, his wife, his children and his dog. Poor Charles.

Charles and his family are sad because now they will have to live like ordinary people. They will have to wear ordinary clothes and shop for ordinary food in ordinary supermarkets. They draw the line at going to ordinary schools or meeting ordinary teenagers, this is too, too much and will compromise their poshness. Poor Charles.

Charles is too posh to work in an ordinary job. His wife Iona is too posh to work in an ordinary job. His grown-up son is too posh to work in an ordinary job. His teenage daughters are too posh to have ordinary Saturday jobs. They are not eligible to claim benefits like ordinary people because they have 84 houses. Poor Charles.

They cannot face having lodgers in their enormous house. Lodgers might be ordinary. Charles might have to sell his big house and move to an ordinary one. He might have to live in one of his 84 other houses in Barnsley. He might have to live like the other people who live in Barnsley. Poor Charles.

Extra information: you can click to read about poor families in Barnsley.

Mucking Out

We live like pigs, and it just can't carry on. There is too much mess everywhere, too much STUFF. I reckon it makes us all stressed because we can never find anything we need. And I think we waste money buying duplicates of things we've already got (music books, CDs, school uniform items).

I found a brand-new unworn pair of ballet shoes in a box yesterday, in the size I was just about to go and buy at the weekend. And two copies of the same CD because we bought one then forgot we bought it or thought it was lost or something then bought another one. I reckon we have two million navy blue pony-tail holders in this house.

We did a lot of tidying up over Christmas, which made the place look much better. But now we've begun to tackle the mess at a deeper more fundamental level and it's made it all untidy again as we move stuff from one room to another, put things into archive boxes, transfer stuff to bags for the second-hand shop.  Stuff, stuff, stuff.

I want to live in the Barcelona Pavilion with only a toothbrush, iPod and Kindle. Although in truth I don't think books and CDs count as stuff. They count as essential items. It's just the rest of the stuff I can't bear.  Every time I take something to the dump or the hospice shop my soul feels a little lighter.

Isn't it a Buddhist thing, this detachment from the material world? Maybe I'll be finding my spiritual side this year as part of my journey. You have permission to kill me, though, if I Find The Lord (or if He finds me).

A Nice Piece of Wensleydale

I am reliably informed (by the respected authority of the Daily Hate, no less) that cheese is the most shoplifted item of 2011. How much of this lies at the feet of Anthony Worrall-Thompson, filmed stealing cheese from his local Tesco on five occasions in the last fortnight, they did not say.

It's not suprising to me, though, that contraband cheese is in such high demand. I don't believe that the gods would have supped on something as sickly and sugared as ambrosia when they could have been tripping out on casomorphin.

It's not surprising to me, either, that the addictive properties of cheese rival that of nicotine and morphine. Apparently it also makes you want to eat other things too. Cheese and bread. Cheesy pasta. Cheesy mashed potato. Cheese and onion pasty. The cheese-carb combo can take many forms, all of them rather wonderful.

I can't eat any of these things now. Actually I can't eat anything at all for a while.  Since I have a lifetime's-worth of cheesy-carb abuse stacked about my body, this shouldn't present too much of a problem energy-wise. It fits very well with my 2012 reinvention  -  I'm going to be amazing.

And in the meantime, I'm going to be cultivating a taste for consomme.

Forceful

I spent some time thinking. Resting, building up my strength, putting my stuff in order.  I wanted to be ready for this year, to look it in the eye, to square up to it. One main resolution: not to have a year like last year.

Let's summarise so we can put that year to bed. Began the year in a slough of despond on anti-depressants. Filed a loss in my business for the first time this century. Had more radiotherapy on my cervix. Stumbled over my husband fucking one of my friends in our office. Put the holding company into administration. Discovered a big lump in my neck. All this against the backdrop of massive global recession, riots, and the stress and misery and illness and death of my friends. Hurrah for 2011. Not.

However I survived all these things and got my act back together, and I ended the year feeling surprisingly good.

And that is the last looking-back I'm going to do. 2012 is going to be a good year. It's going to be a year in which I make lots of positive changes in all sorts of areas of my life. I'm more than ready. I'm excited, energised, full of life and optimism. Watch me catch fire  -  this year is the year of new beginnings, of transformation.

I'll keep listening to Ripley, of course. But this year I think I'm going to be mentored by Yoda, since he's wise and calm, and I like his advice on making things happen.

Do or do not. There is no "try".