A Book Review

Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch”.

There are SO many things that I could say about this book, and I apologize in advance if this blog post reads more like an essay in the end than a simple book review. But it’s a long book and extremely detailed (and it’s been ten years in the writing for the author) so it really deserves a proper appraisal.

First let me say that I am a MASSIVE Donna Tartt fan – have been ever since my teens when I read “The Secret History” – and I have been waiting for this book almost since I first discovered her. “The Little Friend” was a book that I liked, in the end, but do not love and I was starting to think that maybe she just didn’t have it any more and had nothing left to bring to a new story.

Boy was I wrong!

This book of hers, the 700-and-something-page tome, “The Goldfinch”, was published a month ago and is now being named one of the hottest books of this year. And, while for some, it seems that this author is considered to be overhyped – I’ve heard many people say, in reaction to this literary phenomenon, that “Hey, no book is THAT good” – I have to say I think it’s brilliant. (I won’t quibble with people who just don’t want to bother, or don’t like it. To those people I will just say: go and write your own blog post!) This book is truly great, in my view, just because it captures so much and sweeps so beautifully across the life of the main character and in such a way that – and I have to agree with some of the other reviews I’ve read here – with this book, Tartt could easily rival Dickens.

It’s a bold claim, but when you understand something about this book – and particularly when you’ve read it – you might understand.

So, ok, brief plot synopsis, if such a thing is possible here:

The story begins with the 13 year old Theo Decker being taken to an art gallery by his mother after he has just been suspended from school. Whilst there, he is introduced to new paintings, culture etc. and, at the same time, catches the eye of a pretty young girl who is there with an old man – her uncle. All of this meanders along for a few pages before the sudden interjection of an explosion, which caves in part of the building and kills several people, including the old man and, as is later discovered, Theo’s mother. During his time in the gallery, Theo does several things – beyond surviving the horrific event of being caught up in an explosion – the first of which is to talk to the old man and be given a ring which he is then charged with returning to a man called Hobie. This encounter with the old man will take Theo on a journey throughout the rest of his life and will still be with him as a potent memory many years later. But the other, seemingly more important, action that he commits whilst in the gallery is to steal a particularly famous painting: Carel Fabritius’ “The Goldfinch”.

It is a small painting and, from what I can make out, not overly impressive at first glance, but it makes a huge impression on Theo and the belief that he owns it, for so many years, is something that gives him hope even in the most awful periods of his life.

In later years, we see Theo moving from the relatively good care of a family in New York to an empty and neglected existence with his feckless, gambling, ex-alcoholic father in Las Vegas. Theo’s time with his father is pivotal because it takes him from being basically a good kid to being lumped in with his incredibly crooked father, while it is also allows him to form the relationships and overall outlook on life that will take him on to his later, and far more catastrophic adulthood.

In Vegas, Theo becomes a drug addict, meets the boy who will become his lifelong best friend and, in many ways, corrupter, but he also learns the valuable lesson that his family and, indeed, most of the adults in his life, are not dependable and that the foundations of his life are really not very solid. What struck me most about the teenage Theo was how vulnerable he is, and how he places his faith in all the strangest places; presumably because he has so little that is concrete to hang onto. There is no love or trust or loyalty in his life after he loses his mother; his father clearly doesn’t want him; the Barbour’s, whom he lives with for a while in New York after the explosion, clearly have problems of their own and are, despite their best efforts to hide it, glad to see the back of him. Until he meets Boris, then, he really doesn’t have anyone who loves him – and all he has instead is the picture.

The comparison that Tartt draws on most heavily here, or so it seems to me, is the one between Theo and Harry Potter. I’ll admit, this shocked me a little bit because it seemed to be so at odds with the kind of serious, emotive piece that she’s going for here (not that “Harry Potter”, as a series, was not serious or emotive in its own way, but, you know, it was fantasy, and this is adult fiction). Nevertheless, the fact that it is so clearly drawn out throughout the book, to describe the dynamic and overall relative characters of Theo and Boris, is interesting. Of course there are a lot of other comparisons to be drawn here, such as Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger, David Copperfield and Steerforth maybe. But, for me, it is the Harry Potter allusion that stands out. Boris is the first to give Theo the nickname of “Potter” because of his appearance – he wears glasses, and has a similarly slight build, etc. And I suppose that this could, in itself, be a minor and isolated thing. But the name sticks and is still being used in Theo’s adulthood.

Plus, given the fact that Theo’s relationship with Boris is what ultimately changes him and, in the end, makes him look a bit like a Bret Easton Ellis character (Patrick Bateman without the obsession to murder prostitutes, or one of the guys in “Less Than Zero” perhaps), it just kind of made me think that you could see this book as, in part, a more realistic take on what would happen to kid like Harry Potter in the world we know. I mean it’s basically the case that Theo experiences the same sort of meeting that Harry experiences with Draco Malfoy when he first attends Hogwarts in “The Philosopher’s Stone”. Theo has a similarly fateful meeting with a kid who is really just like himself – a kid who gets kicked around by life – and, rather than saying that he wants to go and hang around with the good kids (as Harry does), he just bands together with the not so good one and forms an alliance that will stay in place for the rest of their lives. If you think of it that way then, Theo’s story is the story of what would happen if Harry Potter became friends with Draco Malfoy and they just looked out for each other first and above anyone else. In a weird way, it kind of works.

At times, Boris and Theo’s relationship is quite sweet. They have a love for each other, which probably comes out of dependency and the lack of ability to find anybody else who cares. (There is a homosexual implication in there somewhere too, but I don’t think that’s the point. It’s more like they’re brothers.) And, even though Boris later becomes a drug dealer, steals from Theo, gets him involved in all kinds of trouble (including murder) he is still looking after his best friend right up to the end. All through this book, there is something very loyal and tight about these two guys, and you really get the sense of feeling sorry for Theo, despite the awful and sinister things he does towards the end of the novel when, quite frankly, he starts to look like he’s become a bit twisted; because, inside, he’s just a kid who goes through something truly terrible and needs to cling on to anything and anyone who will love him.

His love for Pippa, the girl in the gallery, with whom he has a very sporadic interaction right up until the end of the book, is something that verges on desperation and which almost everyone tries, gently, to deter him from. It’s almost like a PTSD thing, whereby you believe that you’ve gone through something awful with another person and so they are, quite naturally, the only person who will ever understand you. Theo experiences that for Pippa and goes a little bit crazy in the process because he can’t work out why she does not feel the same way about him.
It’s a tortuous thing to read, but it’s compelling and, when you feel his despair in the end, you can’t help but feel terrible at his absolute devastation.

Mostly I felt sorry for Hobie though – otherwise known as James Hobart. The guy is just a furniture restorer – the business partner of the old man who died in the gallery – and he’s somehow roped into being one of Theo’s guardians during his late teens. (He then goes on to make Theo his new business partner and things go downhill from there.) In many ways, Hobie reminds me of another character from Harry Potter, because he has this kind of big, good natured aura around him, and there is this overwhelming feeling of him being slightly blinkered where other people are concerned, particularly Theo. All of this makes me think that he is, in some way, modelled on Harry Potter’s great friend, Rubeus Hagrid and it just seems to me that you have to feel sorry for him because, like Hagrid, he puts so much faith in other people – some of whom he believes the sun shines out of – and should, in a perfect world, be rewarded for his pains.

As I read, I could almost imagine the good natured, optimistic beam of a smile falling from his face as he realized what a mess he was left with because of Theo – a boy that he’d plumbed so much hope and energy and love into, because he thought it was all going to be worth it – and it really broke my heart. (I suppose, again, you could draw all kinds of Dickensian allusions here too, Mr. Micawber for example, whose joviality should really be rewarded with kindness and prosperity, but who finds himself in a debtor’s prison and reliant – this time with a positive outcome – on David Copperfield, who is one of his only friends. It is heartbreaking that nice people like that have to suffer; you really feel it.)

I suppose what I loved about this book most of all though, was the way it seems to mix old and new styles. There is still the same feeling that this is a Donna Tartt novel. I read it with the remembrance of all the things I first loved about “The Secret History”. The rich, majestic descriptions of the art work and the culture, and the experience of learning about all of those things, are very similar to the evocative description of academia and classical learning that comes through in her earlier novel.

“The Secret History” was written in the 1980s and published in the early 1990s. It is, therefore, set in a time when academia still had a kind of grandiosity and hardworking quality (or at least it was still thought of in this way by some) with people slogging away at typewriters in old-style college bedrooms, staying up until the small hours to read Greek and sitting around in small tutorial groups during the day to talk about it with funny old classics professors. Even in her early phase, Tartt could make a college in Vermont sound like an American version of our Oxford and her first book really gave a sense of the golden time that those college years formed for the narrator, Richard Papen.

When I first read that book it inspired me, it made me want to go to university and have this experience. Although, in the end, I didn’t quite because, as I discovered, it’s not really like that in most higher learning institutions now. And I suppose that’s why, in “The Goldfinch”, all these things are slightly lost on Theo, who really only cares about art and learning, I think, because of the painting he has stolen. In the course of the book there is a move towards the more modern social and cultural concerns – terrorism being the key theme in the book with the destruction, desecration and theft of artworks hanging at the centre of the plot. But there are also more minor references to books and movies that make it feel more contemporary, as well as, more bleakly, to DVD players, iPhones and laptops; all of this makes the world in this book seem markedly different to the one she describes in “The Secret History” simply because, now, it really looks like our world.

I’m making this sound good, and in some ways it probably is, although, in a small sense, I was a little disappointed by these updated, contemporary references. I accept that it’s probably necessary, but, still, the introduction of an iPhone into a book about art, and even a long description of the anguish someone feels when the things dies out on them at a crucial moment, seems a little sad and sell-out to me. It’s the kind of thing Dan Brown would do.

Anyway, I digress . . .

This book is the best I’ve read this year, by far and away, and I would encourage anyone to read it. I know that a lot of people shy away from long books and, in many cases, I am the same. But, if you read one long book this year (what’s left of it), read this one. I promise you, you will not be sorry.

Christmas

Might still be a bit early for this, but I wanted to get it in now because I think that a lot of people are probably feeling the same way. It’s still November (just) and Christmas is everywhere. This is pretty typical for this time of year (in America it might be worse). In the UK, the shops start putting stuff out for Christmas on 1st September and they’re still trying to move the last of it in late January. It becomes depressing more than anything else because it just takes all the joy and spontaneity out of the day. I mean, it’s true isn’t it? The run up to Christmas, and the anticipation of it, is what most people look back on and remember every year when it’s all over. The day itself is just the day when you rip the wrapping paper off and clear the debris out of the way – it’s the three month build up that always makes the impression, because, hey, it lasts longer and it’s got far more time to imprint on your brain.

But, despite all of this, the shiny lights and the tinsel and the nice food all over the place, I still hate Christmas. There are a lot of reasons for this – all of which, I am aware, will make me sound like a scrooge. (Although I really resent being called that!) Basically I think I’ll just list them because it’s probably going to be easier. So here goes. All the reasons I hate Christmas:


1. It’s expensive and wasteful. Think about it. You spend all that money on stuff for other people, ridiculous amounts of money usually that just panders to the commercial roundabout on which we continually pivot and allows companies all over the world to think that it’s ok to try to screw money out of us with extortionate prices one minute and last minute deals the next. Most of the food and plastic, battery-operated junk that you’ll buy in the shops will either be broken, eaten, or thrown away by the end year when, as tradition dictates, people will then be spending whatever money they don’t have to use to pay back their credit card companies on worthless gym memberships and home exercise equipment (to lose all the pounds you’ve put on whilst you were busy eating mince pies and turkey). Why not just save the money and pass that round the dinner table on Christmas Day instead? . . . Ok, moving on.

2. There’s too much food. (I think I’ve covered that one with Point 1 but I thought it needed saying again.)

3. There is SO much shit all over the TV that it’s not even funny any more. Most of it is on repeat and we’ve seen it so many times that we can practically recite the scripts of all those old sitcoms and family films in our sleep. (This one is problematic to me, I’ll admit, because I still fall for it too. Even though I really kind of hate “The Wizard of Oz” and “The Snowman” I still find myself hankering after watching them around this time of year just because I’m tired and it’s winter and I’ve been chasing around so much and . . . yeah, ok forget Point 3 if you like!)

4. Christmas songs . . . Don’t. Even. Get. Me. Started. I don’t mean carols, I mean cheesy Christmas No.1 singles and jingly covers of old pop songs to go along with the cheesy cartoonified, tinsel-happy ads that come on sometime in October and don’t end until the last remnants of Auld Lang Syne have finally rung themselves out of our ears. I HATE Christmas songs and (even though I kind of like Lily Allen and don’t want to slate her for anything) I really kind of loathe any pop star or musician who would actively seek out the place at Christmas No.1. Because, let’s face it, whatever song gets that slot is just going to annoy the shit out of people for weeks on end through early January and then be forgotten again until the next Christmas when someone, somewhere goes “Hey, hang on a minute, what was last year’s crappy single again?”


. . . I could go on with these, but I think, mostly, it’s quite obvious what I hate about Christmas. It’s all the same stuff that everyone else hates about it. But it’s a little bit different for me just because I was never really brought up to like it.

My dad tried to give me proper Christmases – the few times when we would go to his house for it. That was when I was a kid and I didn’t have to do much for it except show up and eat the food – and when most of the presents were for me. Back then I didn’t see much of the pre-Christmas madness either, because I was at school during the week and not usually involved in the shopping nightmares that my mum or dad had to deal with. Christmas was kind of fun then. But my mum wasn’t into Christmas at all. She was a Jehovah’s Witness for a really long time – before I was born and for a while afterwards – and, of course, they don’t really do Christmas, because they don’t believe in all the commercial, overhyped stuff that goes around celebrating “Jesus’ birthday”, it’s just not a thing for them. So when I was a kid, she let me have it all, but she was always kind of sour about it. And she made damn sure that when I spent Christmas with her she didn’t have to do all the decorating and cooking and organizing that my dad would do for the occasion.

Christmas dinner with my mum, if such a thing materialized at all, was chicken and chips (with ketchup). I remember actually eating that for Christmas dinner one year – in my room, aged 15, on my own. It was always just a bit sad with my mum and I was encouraged to kind of ignore it. Now I just think that’s ok.
I don’t begrudge other people Christmas now, before anyone accuses me of that, but I don’t like it . . . or, rather, I don’t see why I should bother. And I kind of wish that I didn’t have to have it shoved in my face all the time by people who think they’re doing me a favour by bringing the Christmas spirit into my life. (Ok, now I do sound like Scrooge.)

But I think that’s just what happens when you get older and you’re suddenly not the one that all of this is for any more. It’s just really all for the kids isn’t it? Christmas? It’s a shiny, bright, happy time in the middle of deep, dark, awful winter, when everything is all about laughter and presents and chocolates and time off school – it’s a time for kids. And when you’re older it’s you that has to think about the logistics and clear up the mess afterwards. That was what I could never understand about my mum when I was younger. I didn’t get why she hated it so much and why she couldn’t just let me enjoy it. But she was just trying to teach me that the joy and brightness was only a fleeting thing – a flicker. And that soon enough I wouldn’t be the centre of attention any more and I’d be the one standing over my kid (possibly) holding the bin liner and waiting for the wrapping paper while, simultaneously, worrying about how to cook a turkey the size of a bread bin in time to eat lunch before everyone died of starvation in the middle of the day.

Of course I don’t do any of these things now because I don’t have kids, or a large family for which to provide Christmas dinner. (So, ha ha ha! I have beaten the rap there!) But still I don’t like all the bleakness of it now. I notice things far more about the plans and preparations that people, and commercial outlets, go through in the last few months of the year (I just saw the other day that my local Tesco have added a little fluorescent green Christmas hat to their logo and set up a giant Christmas tree in the front of their store – complete with fake Christmas presents underneath it that are probably made from old delivery boxes and discontinued brands of wrapping paper). And I just feel like it leeches so much away from what (I am sure) used to be a far more special day. It was, wasn’t it? Because it came up so suddenly and without so much fussing and talking beforehand. I mean, if it was more of a surprise, it would be far better wouldn’t it? If we all forgot about it until about December 20th and then started getting things together for a nice meal and a few gifts, that would be quite nice. Cut out all the crap and the three month stress-a-thon, and just live normal life until it was time to take a week or so off? Why don’t we do that any more? Where the hell has all this rubbish come from?

Anyway that’s almost everything that truly annoys me about it, but it’s not all. Mostly what I find truly offensive about Christmas – I mean the thing that really rankles with me – is the sheer hypocrisy of people who sign up for it. My mum, for instance. Like I said, she hates Christmas, always has done – and she hates most of our family too (always has) – but still, every year now, she writes out Christmas cards to the family, sends out the same routine presents to people (next year’s calendars and grey woollen socks usually) and gets out the sad little plastic Christmas tree from its cardboard box to stand it up in the living room among the cardboard boxes full of junk that, she insists, cannot be thrown away in case she needs something from them. All of this is her idea of observing Christmas – not participating exactly, but going through the motions for the benefit of the non-existent people that won’t be coming over for dinner or to see what she’s done with place. Nobody would notice, or care, if my mother didn’t do anything for Christmas (least of all me since I now really do have nothing to do with Christmas at all). So I just find her behaviour at this time completely ridiculous.

She writes cards to people she doesn’t like and buys food that she doesn’t really want to eat and knows will only make her fat (and then complains when it DOES make her fat). She watches all the crap on TV and laughs at it as if she’s never seen it before; she hums Christmas carols around the house! And she does all of this with absolutely no foundation and no real interest in having a happy Christmas but just because she thinks that she should join in with everybody else and not look like a miserable cow.

*Ahem* *Stands up and takes a proud bow for being a miserable cow*

I know a lot of people do things like that. I mean the hypocritical thing of pretending that you like people you really don’t like just for the holidays. I know that people send cards expressing best wishes to people they hate and invite people round for dinner when they really don’t want to just because they don’t want to face someone calling them mean-spirited and scrooge-like for not putting their differences aside. But why should we? What does it solve? You make friends for a day with someone you hate and then go back to hating them in the New Year? What does that do for anyone? (It’s like the Christmas in No Man’s Land thing all over again – they still had to go back to killing each other after the football match, so what was the point of that?)

I’m mainly writing this because I found out the other day that my mother is, yet again, sending a Christmas card to my dad. This is a man whom she has always hated, ever since I can remember, and whom she has always said she wanted to get as far out of our lives as possible. Even I don’t send him a card any more because she totally trashed my relationship with him (a detail which she seems to have conveniently deleted these days) and her attempts at making friends with him are, to me, not only hypocritical but possibly even vindictive.

I don’t want to moan on about my parents in every blog post I write – but somehow it always seems relevant. So, pocket history, my mum hated my dad because, as far as she was concerned, he and I forced her out of the equation – she didn’t have a problem with him so much (well, she did, but not THAT much), what she mostly had a problem with was that I loved him more than her and we would rather have been left alone together without her. In the end she took him away from me in the cruellest way possible, by turning me against him, and then tried to place herself in the role of mediator to try to bring us back together again. That’s what the Christmas card is for really – that’s all it’s for. It’s just her way of showing how she thinks she’s still got a connection to him, or that she thinks she has some right to know about him over and above me. It’s been like that for a while now. She asks me about him as if she thinks I know anything and then tries to make out that my relationship with him is somehow her personal business.

But, I’m getting off the point . . . Sorry.

All I was saying was that, if you hate people, then putting aside your differences for one day so that you can eat and be merry is not going to make you hate them less later on. All the problems will still be there and you still won’t want to deal with them. So Christmas is a fantasy really, and all the commercialism that goes around it is just our way of trying to perpetuate the fantasy so that we won’t have to focus on the crap of real life.

I can see why people want that. That’s what books and TV and all the other recreational things we do in life are for. But I don’t care about Christmas any more. It’s just another excuse to stuff our faces and get pissed. Let the kids have it, sure. But otherwise what’s the point?

Friends

So, I’ve had a lot of friends in my life; they’ve sort of come and gone a bit like buses. You know what I mean. Well, ok, maybe you don’t.

Here’s the thing though, I don’t get this lifelong friendship thing that other people keep insisting is all important. I see it everywhere, people who hang on to their childhood friends and feel bereft if they lose them. I have friends on Facebook who get really upset when people they have known for years unfriend them suddenly for no reason. They take it really personally.

But I don’t get that – that sentimentality that some people have for others, because it’s ridiculous. It’s like those people who hang on to every pair of shoes they’ve ever owned, or people who can’t throw away carrier bags, or worse, people who keep memory boxes full of old ticket stubs and passport photos, as if that stuff really means anything. It doesn’t. If you’ve got something to remember, then remember it. I do that and it’s great, fine. But don’t hang on to the remnants of it like a limpet crab, as if you think that losing it will be so terrible that you’ll actually feel pain.

In my view, and in my world, relationships are transient. People come and go and I have connections to them at particular times because we bond over particular things. When I was at school I moved from best friend to best friend in phases. There was the Tanya phase in early primary school, then the Jennifer phase, then Fiona in secondary school. Each of these friendships was important to me at the time, almost entirely exclusive (as best friends tend to be when you’re a kid), and this despite the fact that we didn’t actually have that much in common apart from the fact that we went to the same school and, somehow, had latched onto each other.

With Tanya, I was friends with her because we imprinted on each other (a bit like baby chickens do with their mothers) on the first day of school and we continued to be friends for about four years until it finally became apparent that we didn’t share any interests or even have similar temperaments (she was, if I remember correctly, a complete bitch when she got older). Then Jenny. I remember, I didn’t like her to begin with, and then we somehow became friends because we both hated Tanya. We didn’t have anything in common either, but it became a habit to hang around together. Then, when we were both in secondary school, she emigrated to Australia with her family and I ended up being friends with Fiona. I still remember when I met Fi – I was milling about on my own in the dining hall and she called me over and told me I could hang around with her. It was convenient. We weren’t alike, and we didn’t like the same stuff (mostly I pretended to like what she liked), and we weren’t in many of the same classes because she was in all the lower streams, but we were friends.

When you’re at school, you don’t see that you’re institutionalized to the point of being quite ridiculous. The relationships you form with other people are formed, primarily, because you’re all in the same boat and you have to survive somehow. It’s a political thing, and a necessity. But it’s not real usually; it’s just like people who make friends in prison, or mental hospitals or something. You need someone to talk to, to help get you through it, so you find someone and latch on and then, when you get out, it’s sort of over.

When I left school, I very quickly realized that those old friendships and relationships were not built to last, because the thing that bonded us for so many years was no longer present. We weren’t in the same boat any more, we were all in different boats, with new people and we had to make new friends.

And that’s what life is like. It sounds harsh, but I really think that it’s healthier, in most cases, to say “out with the old” and just move on. I’ve done that with a lot of people in the end. You can spend a lot of time feeling depressed about it, mourning the relationships that have gone by, if you like; but I think it’s better just to recognize that people are not meant to be together forever. People come and go.

There are some people, like I’ve said already, who hang on to their old friendships in a curiously nostalgic and, one might even say suffocating way. A lot of the people I went to school with, from the little I’ve seen of them over the years, seem to be obsessed with keeping up with old school friends and reminiscing about old times – as if school was some great adventure we all had together, or some sort of golden time, when in fact we all hated it to the point of wanting to blow the place up when we left and never look back. (I remember feeling this way even if nobody else does. Everybody knows that high-school never ends, right? It’s not news. But it’s not a good thing either; you’re supposed to at least TRY to move on!)

I’ve been cutting ties all my life. If something’s not working for me, or if something goes bad and I don’t want to have to dwell on it any more (toxic or stale relationships basically), then I move away from it. Even if it’s someone I’ve known for years. Because that can happen too can’t it? You can know someone for years and think that you know everything about them, and you don’t see any of the bad stuff because you get along so well with them. And then, all of a sudden, after years of thinking these people are great, you suddenly see their ugly side.
Everyone’s got an ugly side, I know. But you don’t tend to see it in your friends. You become blind to it. I guess this goes for love relationships too, although I don’t know so much about those. But I’ve done that with friends, certainly, fallen out of liking with them.

I had a friend called Claire, who I still think was mostly pretty great (if I’m even remotely capable of love, I think I loved Claire – in every way EXCEPT the sexual!). But I remember, towards the end of our friendship, I really started to not like what I saw in her. The attitude, the opinions, the people she hooked up with. It just wasn’t her – or not the her I knew. And that was the time to stop being friends, as far as I was concerned. Because I’m not someone who’s going to tell my friends that they shouldn’t be who they are – people change, that’s all, and when they do, you have to accept it and decide if the person they’ve changed into is someone you still want to be friends with. If not, you move on, because you have to change and grow up too. That’s natural. I don’t have any bad feelings towards Claire, I just don’t ever want to see her again. (If that makes sense.)

And it doesn’t even matter how much time has gone by in a friendship. I was friends with a guy for ten years; I thought I knew him really well, we had a similar sense of humour, and I could talk to him, you know? He was one of the best friends I’ve ever had because, if I was upset, I could tell him. If he had something to say, it would be me he would want to say it to. I met him in a totally bizarre and random way (the details of which I won’t go into because it would probably be quite tedious and bore you senseless) the day before my 18th birthday and the occasion became a memorable anniversary for us.

(I’m making this sound like we were deeply in love, which was not how it was. I don’t do love, it’s not for me. I only do serious friendship – those are my relationships. That’s as far as I go. He did tell me he loved me, but it wasn’t THAT kind of love, it was something else.)

But, anyway, my point was that he and I were really close for ten years and we were properly in each other’s lives, you know? Even though we had very different lives, we were still kind of on the same page.

And then, suddenly, this year, it was like we weren’t any more. He has children now, I think he’s married too (he didn’t tell me about that but I saw a reference to an impending wedding on his FB page and I assume it was his) and his life is just a lot more complicated, whereas my life has changed too. I’m not just some girl doing A Levels and working in a shop any more (which is more or less where I was when I was 18) and he’s not just some guy dicking around working in a pet shop and memorizing all the monsters and side-gags on “Buffy”. We’re adults now. We’re different. And when I tried to get in touch with him earlier this year it was just a bit sad, because we really had nothing left to say to each other. It was like we were strangers.

I didn’t cry about this, or get upset, or take it personally. I just accepted it, the way I have accepted the death of all my other friendships. It happens. Nothing lasts forever. So, when he unfriended me on Facebook and I didn’t hear from him by mail or text, I just dealt with it.

I’ll probably never see or hear from him again and I suppose that is the way it should be.

Now, I have friends in the sparsest sense of the word. They are a motley collection of people that have, somehow, managed to survive the cull – some of them are people I barely knew at school or college but who, for some reason or another, I have managed to find something in common with now. Other people are friends I made during my PhD (relatively recent) and I don’t know if they will go on to be lifelong or even just long-term friends. We’ll see. I suspect that eventually I will have nothing to say to most of them, since they are now all academics with well established careers and a list of publications to their name. And who am I? Certainly not an academic if the grand finale of my PhD is anything to go by (I left it under a cloud, never to go back). So I think they will get bored of me sooner or later when I cease to be of interest to them. Or I will get bored of them, and then that will be that.

I only talk to people on Facebook now really, and I think that can be deceptive can’t it? Because it fools you into thinking that you know people when, in fact, you know nothing about anyone. It’s almost like courting people to be your friends, because you can find out what they like so easily, it’s all in the newsfeed or on their timeline. So you just latch onto those stupid details and make them reasons to be friends. But if you spent all day together in real life, or if you had to work with them, would you really get on? No, probably not. So my friends are not really friends. In fact sometimes I question the fact of my ever having HAD friends at all.

I do this sometimes when it occurs to me that all of my greatest and most important friendships in life have just been built on nothing – just little things like liking the same TV shows or music or something – stupid things to bond over because they’re so fleeting and meaningless; the trends change and so do people’s tastes, it’s not concrete. But does that matter? It doesn’t to me, really, but then I marvel at the way that other people think this nothingness can be made to equal substance just by dint of them saying that that’s what it is.

Really nobody has anybody, do they? Nobody really has anybody forever. That’s just life.

Doctor Who

Well, I know that this might be a slightly boring subject for a lot of people *cough cough*, but I thought I’d just write a little thingummy about this particular TV show, you know, just because.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s kind of a nice show. I mean, it’s quirky, it’s fun, it’s VERY British and it’s been going for, ooh, I can’t think how many years now . . .

. . .

OK fine, so everybody knows what I’m talking about here, don’t they? It’s a big deal and the whole world is now obsessed with it since Russell T Davies and Steven Moffatt and all the Cardiff crew have put it out there on a global scale for all the world to see.

I’ve seen all the hype all over the internet in the last few months (it’s been going on since January for God’s sake!), I’ve seen references to the show in all sorts of places and other shows. Brian Cox, the well known Professor, is said to be a fan – I’m even pretty sure that I heard Stephen Hawking likes it. I was also watching “The Big Bang Theory” the other day and the character of Sheldon was talking about how he watches it as a part of his obsessive compulsive morning routine.

Actually, it was this last one, more than anything else, that led me to write this rambling stuff that you’re about to read because, while it occurs to me to think how great it is that the world has embraced the new Who and gone mad for all the clever writing on the show, I wonder how much of the old series and the complicated 50 year history of it is familiar territory to the rest of the world? Presumably people in America, and in other countries across the globe, have had to catch up a bit with the old Doctors from 1963 to 1989, because I find it hard to imagine that people around the world were watching it all that time (of course they weren’t) and know all about it.

I’m not being territorial here, because I firmly believe that Doctor Who is for everyone, but the fact is that it has always been a typically British thing. The way it was made for a start, with the wobbly sets and the makeshift monsters, the fact that the spaceship was something as simple as a police telephone box as opposed to some sleek, complicated UFO type thing that the people in Hollywood might, quite easily, have been able to dream up. All of that is typical of British TV in the mid-to-late twentieth century – it was done on the cheap and it showed. It was all like that I think – pretty much. Even for things like ordinary comedy and drama, certainly for soap operas – there are stories about Coronation Street, in the early days, suffering from the same wobbly set syndrome. But I guess that people remember this more in the case of Doctor Who because there seemed to be a running joke, never quite spoken but always half-acknowledged, that this makeshift element of the show provided us with unequivocal evidence that British TV could not make sci-fi. I can’t really think of any other show that really tried to do that in this country; it was just sort of accepted that it wasn’t going to work . . . unless, of course, you did what Doctor Who did and acknowledge that “yes it’s all a bit mad, but that’s all part of the plan”. It was laughing at itself in that respect I think and it was supported by a nation who, without analyzing it, really just got the joke.

There’s a thing that Matt Smith has used in his incarnation, about the Doctor being a mad man in a box. Well, he is. But he was that exact thing more than ever in the old series I think because of the kind of imperfect but always-working-out in the end world that the Doctor inhabited there. All the CGI stuff they use now has taken that away slightly, and I kind of think that that has all been done simply to secure the interest of people in the USA and, probably, here. If we consider that people in the UK have pretty much been feeding themselves a diet of American TV, and thereby raising their standards for quite some time, then it stands to reason that anything they did with Doctor Who from the production side would have to be radically updated.

So I’m curious, I suppose, about how many people outside the UK had seen or heard of Doctor Who before they rebooted it in 2005? And how many, if they have seen the old stuff, think there is anything to it? I mean, if you’ve seen Jon Pertwee or Peter Davison or, outside possibility, if you’ve watched anything of Sylvester McCoy, do you “get” it?

Because it’s not necessarily something that people would “get” in that way. I mean, I’ve seen repeats of old American TV shows from before I was born. Things like “Blakes 7” or “Battlestar Galactica” or “Quincy”. And I have to say that they cross over quite well, because American culture has always been able to invade the rest of the world and be something of an open book. But something about our style of TV in the UK just seems to be different and so much of it is taken to be untranslatable; like I said above, it’s quirky to a lot of people.

When I was growing up it wasn’t on TV, but my dad, who was a massive fan of it, was always telling me that I should see it and be proud of it because it was a classic show that WE made and that we as a nation should remember fondly. He was always really disappointed that I did not have a Doctor of my own when I was growing up in the 1990s and I didn’t actually get to see an old episode of it until I was in my teens. I knew what it was, of course, because people still talked about it, but when I first saw it I just saw one episode on repeat and, without the longer narrative, I didn’t think it made much sense.

When I was 4, Sylvester McCoy was still playing him, and I think I must have seen some of that because I have a fairly vivid memory of seeing Sophie Aldred on the show with him and of recognizing her from her work as a children’s TV presenter on the BBC. But I was always taught not to like these episodes because, according to my dad and anyone else of his generation, by the end of it all it had been reduced to nothing more than a sappy children’s show and without any sort of scary monsters or gripping stories to speak of – even the Daleks were failing to grip people at that point it seems and the new flying feature that they took on somewhere in the very late ‘80s was only seen as a disappointing and desperate attempt to win viewers.

So when it disappeared no one was surprised and Sylvester McCoy is probably kicking himself to this day that he ever took the job since, as the Doctor who killed the show, he is not well remembered. (Sorry to be unfair to Sylvester McCoy because, as an actor, he is very fine and talented, but as the Doctor he was not so good. Sorry.)
The hey-day of the show was really in the 1970s with Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker and this is what most people remember. But later I think the adult audience sort of waned.

I don’t actually think that’s worthy of too much criticism really though – “Doctor Who” has always gone hand-in-hand with children’s television and I think it must always have been accepted that the larger fan-base for the show would be kids. It was actually developed for them, principally, I think. It wasn’t supposed to be a scary adult show when they first made it. In the UK we have a kids show called “Blue Peter”, which has been running as long, if not longer than “Doctor Who”. It’s is a kind of magazine-show, you know where they have presenters who do features (almost like journalists do features for the news) on fun things for kids and they show you how to make stuff from old food containers and sticky-back plastic. It’s not a show I ever liked much, I always found it a bit too wholesome and boring, but it had a lot in common with “Doctor Who” because most of the gadgets and monsters on the show looked as if it had been made by the guys on “Blue Peter” out of old cereal packets and tin trays. You only have to look at K-9 in the old series to know what I mean, he was almost certainly the product of a crazy recycling attempt . . . but I digress.

Aside from this, as far as my memory and general knowledge serves, the Doctor of the era would usually make an appearance on “Blue Peter” at some stage to do interviews and meet kids and generally get involved with the fans. I wasn’t alive when Tom Baker had his tenure, but I have an idea that he might have gone on kids TV and offered people jelly babies and let a lot of kids try on his scarf. It’s the kind of interactive thing that they were expected to do even then.

Now, of course, it seems to be much harder to be the Doctor – almost like being the Prime Minister or something. You know. There are a set of pressures and responsibilities on people like Matt Smith and David Tennant that I don’t think any of the other Doctors had. Not only do they have to play the role now, but they also have to BE the role for the kids they meet, they have to get involved with the kind of cultural impact that the show has – it’s probably done quite a lot for tourism and culture in Cardiff where they film, and I know for a fact that they now have a big, on-going exhibition in Cardiff where they show all the disused costumes and monster masks from the show. I believe it’s very popular and, because of its nature, probably has a close relationship with the show.

Then, there are the conventions they have to go to, not to mention all the spin-offs and side-shows that have sprung up in the aftermath of the reboot, which did not exist before and probably would not have done if it weren’t for the fact that most of the writers and producers on the new show were massive fans of the old series and spent most of their youth writing fan-fiction. I read something recently that said Steven Moffatt was pretty prolific at this and I think Russell T Davies must have been as well since most of the spin-off stuff was actually his idea. But my point is that now, either because it was intended to appeal to a much wider audience, or simply because there was a demand for it, the whole thing has got bigger and more complicated than ever.

So, what we had initially, this quirky thing with a mad man running around with a funny looking electronic wand thing that he, somehow, calls a screwdriver, has now become something else. And I think, for people living in the UK, that is both a wonderful thing and a slightly bizarre one. Because we all, even my generation who hardly knew anything about it at all, all of us grew up with this idea that it was just a show for us. The old show was a part of our history and culture, like music halls, bangers and mash, Punch and Judy shows, it was just a funny little thing on TV that everybody in England watched but that nobody on Earth expected the rest of the world to understand.

I guess what I’m saying is that it’s great that other countries have taken this to their hearts as well, and I’m even more amazed that it’s so popular in America because the USA has notoriously looked on UK culture as something quaint and a little bit strange. In previous decades this has been considered a bad thing and attempts to take our inventions and creations out there have not always gone well. But “Doctor Who” as it is now, has been well received and, perhaps also, as a result of this, the old show has started to receive a fan-base there too. I just can’t help wondering about what would have been the case if they had not re-booted it, and if the old show had been left as it was, with Sylvester McCoy as the last Doctor. No one outside of this country, and certainly nobody without a tendency towards geeky old sci-fi shows, would ever have watched it would they? Or would they?

Tell me what you think anyway, I’m always interested in obsessive telly fans and what kinds of things they love and hate. Who’s your favourite Doctor? Come on. :-)

Schizophrenia

Right, so, I heard something on the radio the other day about the ever present problem of supporting people with schizophrenia. It was a sensitive piece, full of information for the uninitiated about what schizophrenia is, what are the symptoms, what are the problems of managing it, and, crucially, how difficult it is for other people (i.e. families) to handle it.

They were mainly talking about kids on this show – parents’ problems in coping with their children’s psychotic episodes and lack of trust etc. etc. – and I suppose that this might have added to their need to be sensitive on the issue. But still the whole programme made me angry because, aside from raising awareness about the illness and shoving it under everybody else’s noses yet again, the actual segment was little more than a public service announcement, complete with trained health professional whose sole purpose, I assume, was to give practical info and advice in a nicely sanitized soundbite.

What got my back up was this: this is not a new problem. Schizophrenia has existed for a long time – not always under that name, but nonetheless. People know about it. They know it exists. THEY JUST WISH THEY DIDN’T.

People have been talking for a long time about the need for more understanding about mental illness in society. These messages have been out there for a while. I don’t know about other countries, but certainly in the UK there are ad campaigns all over the TV, radio and anywhere else they can find, to show people that there is a significant number of mentally ill people who need more support and understanding and who are not getting it, and who also, perhaps more importantly, are receiving a lot more prejudice than help.

It’s true. My mother is schizophrenic and I know this first hand. There is little support for the people who have these sorts of problems, particularly in terms of the more voracious psychotic disorders, because even in this day and age people don’t know what to do about them. Every now and then there is a story in the news about a schizophrenic patient who has been mishandled and committed some sort of atrocious crime. And when this is reported it is always made abundantly clear that, if something of this nature has happened then clearly even well-trained professionals cannot handle the problem.

This, unsurprisingly, frightens people and then, less surprisingly still, anything that might have been done to allay people’s fears in the first instance will be entirely forgotten.

It has long since made me angry that, despite all these great ad campaigns to show people that they don’t really need to be afraid and that, rather, they should learn to understand, all it takes is one news report about a schizophrenic nail bomber or murderer and we all go right back to where we started. The media always reports these things insensitively; I’ve seen them do it. And they do it because they also want to put the message out there, even if it is indirect, that schizophrenics are evil and dangerous.

Don’t get me wrong, schizophrenia is not easy to cope with, either for the person who has it or for the people around them. My mum has only really had me to support her in the last three decades and, although she has the regulation amount of contact with a psychiatrist, the reality is that her family have always been expected to be her carers. This would have been fine if we were a big family and incredibly close – but we’re not. We are a small, mismatched bunch of loners (we mostly all hate each other in my family and just want to slope off somewhere and forget we’re even related) and most of the people that my mum ever really relied on had their own lives, or they were just too old and in need of help themselves. Growing up I lived on my own with my mum and we had little contact with the rest of the family, and I don’t remember any of them, apart from one of my uncles, ever giving her or me much in the way of help.

They mostly walked away because they didn’t want to deal with it and, looking back, I can’t blame them because I would have done the same if I’d had the choice (which is not to say that I’m not angry with them for doing it).
But the trouble was, of course, that nobody ever took anyone in my family aside and said to them: “Look, this is how you need to cope with this. This is what’s wrong with her.”

No one presented any of us with a handbook on how to deal with schizophrenia, because there isn’t one. And, more importantly, no one ever explained it to me – which was a huge mistake because I was the only one of the family that was left alone with her for long periods of time. I lived with her, no one else did.

When I was six she was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and sent to a psychiatric hospital where she stayed for about ten months. She was taken away in a very dramatic way. The police kicked in our front door and she was literally dragged out of our flat kicking and screaming and thinking that the ambulance men were going to kill her. I was taken away by social workers to my Granny’s house.

Now, these social workers, of course, did not take the time or trouble to explain to me where my mother had gone or what was wrong with her (because no one ever tells a child “scary” things like that when they’ve just seen something traumatic, I mean what would be the point of telling them the truth, right? It’s not like they can really understand! *Note the sarcasm*) And, forever afterwards, by almost anyone who would talk about it, it was alluded to in these terms: “Your mummy went away to hospital because she was poorly and she needed to get better.”

Nobody told me anything because they thought, stupidly, that this was a better way to protect me. They forgot that I would have to go back to live with her afterwards and they forgot, further, that you don’t just “get better” when you have schizophrenia. It doesn’t go away. So these social workers and doctors and God knows who else, came in and took care of the immediate problem, explaining nothing to anyone on the way – not even to the so-called grownups in my family, who, I think, understood about as much about my mother’s problems at that point as I did and who put all their faith in the far more learned doctors who knew all about it. (They just trusted that other people would deal with it and that that would be it.) And then, after they’d done all that, they just went away again and left us to it: me and my mum.

On this radio show that I was listening to, they were talking about the need for more support for families who cope with schizophrenic people – people who are there all the time for those people when the doctors, psychiatrists and other social worker people cannot or just can’t be bothered to be present to help. But this is surely not any kind of new concept? Surely this has been obvious for years? And if not why not?

When my mother was diagnosed it was the early 1990s and, looking back I have begun to think that the system must have been pretty slapdash and incapable at that time (more than it is now), because we were really just palmed off and patched up and sent on our way by all the people who got involved with us. The social workers did follow up visits with us after my mum came home to make sure we were doing OK. But this was only cursory and for the sake of fulfilling a requirement and they didn’t actually try very hard to find out if there was still anything wrong. They certainly didn’t stick around long enough to check up on me properly because if they had they would have known that I was having nightmares, throwing tantrums, refusing to go to school, comfort eating to the point of making myself seriously overweight . . . I also used to be told off at school for chewing on my hair – a classic sign of severe anxiety and stress that the teachers only found mildly annoying and used to call me out about in front of the whole class. But no one noticed the significance of these things – or if they did they didn’t make an issue of them. My teachers at school noticed that I was the quiet kid who was afraid of everything, and they knew about my mother, but they didn’t put any of it together.

Basically, I guess what I’m saying, is that no one ever bothered to properly ask me if I was OK. They all just seemed to assume that if I wasn’t alright it would be obvious. My mum looked like a perfectly normal person, and she did everything that she was technically supposed to do: feeding me, clothing me, etc. etc. No one asked about anything else because it wasn’t their business to.

So they didn’t know about the things she said to me behind closed doors. They didn’t know about the delusions and hysteria and crazy ranting that I was subjected to regularly when I got home from school. All of this was random, naturally, because schizophrenia is an involuntary thing, the moods of that person swing uncontrollably and the way they see things flips around very suddenly so that you can never predict what they are going to say and do next.

I was always afraid when I was growing up – I’m still afraid of my mother now really – but more so then. I craved stability and I dreaded leaving the house every day in case something changed when I was gone. If I left the house I would have to worry all day about what I might come back to. When I was at school and having a good time I was afraid to go home because I was worried that she might be in one of THOSE moods and then I would be in for something horrible. This was enough to make me rigid with terror sometimes and, even now, when I hear a certain tone in her voice, I get a sudden griping feeling in the pit of my stomach, or my heart starts pounding, because I know that something unpleasant is coming.

Other people didn’t see this though. My mother, in herself, is very good at making herself look perfectly normal most of the time, whatever voices she might have in her head, and, as for me, people just thought I was a bit weird. But they didn’t really understand; they thought I was the mental one. I still get that now from some people, because I react to my mother and they don’t know what she’s like, so that makes me look like I’ve gone round the bend as well – they think I’m making it up or being overdramatic.

When I was at school, the other kids at my school thought I was weird, and the teachers, even those who knew about my situation, thought I just needed to come out of my shell. They didn’t think about the fact that I was living alone in a house with a schizophrenic woman without any real support and with hardly anyone else to talk to. (My dad was next to useless and lived somewhere else – but I think they must have assumed he was involved somehow.) And I didn’t consider this much either because, when you’re a kid, if the adults don’t question the rightness or wrongness of something then neither do you. If there was something really wrong with this situation, I thought, then someone would have done something about it. So it didn’t occur to me that it was in any way possible to ask for help from anyone. It was just what it was. I was stuck with it.

But as I’ve grown older I’ve started to feel far more bitter about this. Because now I can recognize that I should never have been left on my own with this; particularly not at such a young age. And, far from supporting my mother, the family and the school and the social system at large, should really have supported me. I was on my own.

So when I heard this woman on the radio talking about the need to start (START!) to support parents and families of schizophrenic people, I nearly choked! I have so many problems with this that I don’t even know if I can get them all down in the space of one blog post. But here goes:

1. This should have been the case all along. Families/parents/children with schizophrenic family members have ALWAYS needed support and where the hell was all this concern twenty odd years ago when I needed it, and even further back than that when others were in need?

2. There was such a strong focus on parents who care for children that it made me think that that was their only interest in providing support – never mind anybody else!

3. And, most importantly, even though some faceless health professional has gone on the radio and said all of this, IT WILL NOT MAKE THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF DIFFERENCE. Because people do not care.

This is the crucial thing that you have to realize about mental illness: you can raise awareness about it all you like, but it will make absolutely no impression on other people who have had no direct experience of it. Those people just count themselves lucky – if they think about it at all. And then they carry on and ignore it because they don’t want to know about it. Even the professionals who deal with it every day don’t really want to know about it. They pass the cases along as fast as they can just so they can get them off their hands. Why would anyone else care? Schizophrenics are scary and, VERY OCCASIONALLY, dangerous people, and, unless you actually know one first hand, you are probably only going to see this angle of them.

This is what I have learned in my life. When you have a problem like this on the rise in society, people get scared. And when people get scared they pass the buck. No one asks any questions, no one pays any attention and no one gets involved because, as long as they’ve passed it on they can assume that someone else, somewhere, will deal with it and that that will let them off the hook.

My teachers didn’t ask me anything about my mother or my home situation, they didn’t get worried about me or ask if there was anything wrong, because they were just busy trying to teach and go about the already stressful task of getting hundreds upon hundreds of kids through exams. They didn’t want to know about problems at home, about mental illness, about what my mother did or said to me when nobody else could hear.

They might have paid attention if I had actively gone and said to them: “Look, my mother is saying things to me about how I’m the one who made her ill, and how it’s all my fault that her life has gone badly and how she wishes she’d never had me, and this is upsetting me to the point where I can’t concentrate on anything and I’m considering suicide.” That might have worked, now that I think about it. I could also have told them about the time when I was 14 when her medication stopped working and she flipped out completely so that I had to shut myself in my room and spend the night terrified that she was going to kill me. If I had told them that then I’m sure they would have done something. But you see, I never did tell them. Because I just thought they all knew that that’s what it was like. I thought they’d just left me there because they’d all decided it was fine. So I didn’t question it. It was horrible and I hated it, but I didn’t think I could ask for help to get out, so I just got on with it.

I’m only questioning it now really because I’m older and I have had the benefit of wider experience – my knowledge and understanding of things is wider and more critical now than it was before – and now I’m angry about it.
That thing on the radio really just made me wonder about how many more angry kids (however old they’ve grown to be now) are out there in the world. How many people are there who’ve had the same experience, or a similar one, as me? How many people have lived with a schizophrenic parent or family member and been left to shoulder almost the whole burden of that by themselves without support? Because I’m thinking there must be at least a few, right?

I want to know this from people. Who else thinks that the system stinks? It doesn’t matter what country you live in, in fact that would be quite interesting to see how it’s dealt with across the world. I live in England, so I know all about us, but the USA? Or the rest of Europe? Is this also typical there?

As regards the problem of informing people, it’s not just about getting people to be more tolerant or rattling off a list of symptoms that people can memorize. It’s about shaking people and waking them up and making them see that this is a REAL fucking problem! And that you can’t just close your eyes and pretend that you can’t see these people and hope they go away. They don’t go away. And they don’t get better. And they really fuck about with other people’s heads.

I needed someone with me to support me when my mother was telling me that all the things that were wrong in her head were actually things I had done to her. When she was projecting her own problems onto me and, actually, doing a pretty good job of convincing psychiatrists that I was the one who had psychological problems. When she was undermining my confidence in myself by telling me, in the most awful, seemingly kind, soothing, motherly voice, that I wasn’t capable of things or that other people who I thought were my friends were not really friends at all.

My mother distrusted everybody and she used to encourage me to do the same. Even now she tries to get me on her side against the world at large whenever she thinks people are ganging up on her. She assumes that everyone else is intent on damaging her in some way and the first thing that she will always say to me is that “We need to stick together.” As if the world is about to end or we’re about to be attacked by flesh eating zombies or something and the two of us will have to smash our way through with baseball bats like the guys in “Shaun of the Dead”.

When I was a kid she tried to tell me, in the most vindictive and head-fucking way possible, that my friends didn’t really want to be my friends and that they were only messing with me and laughing at me behind my back. When I spent time with my dad – whom I loved more than anything or anyone for most of my childhood – she always made sure afterwards that I knew he didn’t really want me. It was her way of trying to cut through the elation and security that I always felt when I was with him. I loved and trusted him unconditionally and she knew, or she felt, that if she let me spend too much time with him he would “convert” me to his way of thinking (the rational way) and she would lose her ally. She did everything she could to destroy my relationships with other people and, if I sided with them over her, that was it; her trust in me was lost and I was deemed a traitor.

This is what it’s like with schizophrenics, really. You walk on eggshells all the time. They have no trust, so anything you do can set them off and, once they become suspicious of you, you’re fucked. They will act against you in all kinds of ways because they think that they have to defend themselves against you. They see you as dangerous.

Now I know that you’re going to be thinking, “Ok, so what’s the answer then? What do we do?” Well, I don’t know, because I agree that schizophrenics need more support. I agree that there needs to be more knowledge amongst the general public about what it is and what it does to people. I would support all of that and more.

But I still don’t think it would do any real good because if you ask me the question(s): “Are schizophrenics dangerous and do we need to fear them?” I would pretty much have to say yes.

I’m not going to say they’re all going to go out and kill people – because, really, very few (1% or less) of them actually do. But, yes, they ARE dangerous. They act irrationally and they lash out at people, and they give you no warning whatsoever that they are about to do this because one minute they’re fine and the next minute they’re someone else. They’re afraid all the time, you see, they think they’re going to be hurt. And if you believed that someone or something was going to hurt or kill you at any moment (whether it’s a random man in the street or an imaginary monster that you think you can see in the middle of the supermarket where, in fact, there are only shoppers) you would probably lash out too. You know what they say about things like fear producing superhuman abilities? I think that’s what happens. Schizophrenics have a level of fear that allows them to lose all sense of what they’re doing and, in that state, they are capable of anything.

So it is dangerous. I’m sorry, but it is. And I think we all have to start realizing that there are people like this everywhere. They walk the streets – of course they do – because they’re not criminals, but they could do anything. Short of locking them away (in that age old custom that we always resort to when we don’t want to handle people any more) there’s just no answer, and pretending that there is and that we can solve this problem simply by giving public information announcements on the radio and telling people not to be scared is really not going to achieve anything.

I’ve spent most of my life locking my bedroom door and doing anything I can to keep away from my mother. But what am I supposed to do? She’s my mum. And she’s only got me.

It is at this point that I start to have all sorts of uncharitable thoughts concerning my mother, so I’ll stop here. But I wanted to explain this to people, because it’s something that other people just don’t seem to understand unless they’ve lived it. I just hope I’ve made an impression.

Television

This is one for the Brits really, sorry to everyone else, but you may not understand this argument as it is entirely concerned with moaning about the state of British television and discussing the age old issue of why it is no longer worth paying the licence fee.

If you live in the UK you will probably be familiar with this argument. It’s something we all moan about, and have been moaning about for years. My dad was banging on about this decades ago and probably still is now. We are expected to pay a licence fee every year in order to receive the TV broadcasts from all the different TV stations; this so we can watch live TV and newly broadcast programmes when they go out and not have to miss out on all the joys and wonders that the telly-box has to offer us, right?

Well, ok, but the problem, for so many years, is that if we’re going to do that, we should get to see something good.

There are, of course, high points and low points to television. At certain times there are loads of great dramas and shows to watch and at other times it all seems to be going downhill. When there is a slump in programme quality we all begin to moan about just what it is we pay for when we shell out money every year for the privilege of sticking an aerial lead in the back of the TV and watching . . . well, whatever crap they happen to have put on. If the standards slip, there is a public outcry because we are, unfortunately, a nation glued to the television.

This is beside the point though because now the argument is changing. Or at least it should. Whereas before we had no choice about licence fees – if we wanted to watch TV there was really little option – now we have alternatives. I have not watched terrestrial television in years and never plan to again. But I don’t think I’ve missed anything.

And here is why:

1. You can now buy most programmes, after they’ve been broadcast, on DVD or blu-ray.
and . . .

2. If you can’t do this, they are usually findable online. The BBC and ITV both have iPlayers now, where you can go online to “catch up” with all the programmes you’ve missed after they’ve gone out on terrestrial TV. YouTube also makes a very good platform for all the ripped videos of different shows, so often put up by helpful people who just want to share their favourite stuff with the world. All free and all watchable at any time of day.

So, whereas before we were beholden to the television stations and the government demand that we pay for the service that we were being provided with, regardless of how useless and terrible that service happened to be, there is now the option for us to just wait 24 hours and watch what we want via these methods. And, not only does this allow, for the curtailing of the channel-hopping “culture” that has sprung up over the last couple of decades since TV remotes were invented – thus getting rid of most of the rubbish that we would otherwise “end up” watching simply by having landed on it while aimlessly surfing around – but it also means that we don’t really have to pay these big conglomerates any more for the things we don’t want.

Some of you, if you have read my previous posts, might have noticed that I hate middle men, so this last point, for me, is highly satisfying.

But, anyway, my point was that the question: why do we pay the licence fees, is still there, albeit in a slightly altered form. Because now it’s not a case of having to. We no longer have to sacrifice anything by staging this particular revolution, because they’ve given us all the things we need so that we won’t have to any more – they’re not losing any money because the BBC, and all these other big companies who might otherwise benefit from licence payers’ money, must make a hell of a lot more in DVD sales these days than anywhere else.

And the beauty of it is that, far from depriving us, it actually makes our lives better. The world really would be a better place if we all just stopped aimlessly watching TV – being handed the same old crap that faceless, suited fat-cat telly people decide to hand us – and just made informed decisions about what we actually wanted, or needed to watch. If we do it that way we can save a lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of otherwise wasted energy. Let’s face it, what do you actually get out of watching reality television? What’s the point, really? Just go outside if you want to see reality. Surely you know by now, it’s all garbage.

There is a song by The Red Hot Chilli Peppers called “Throw Away Your Television”. Go and listen to it. And then do it.

Go on. I dare you!

Culture and Influence

I have been thinking lately about the things that influenced me when I was younger. It always comes up, doesn’t it? Whenever we try to think about who we are and where we’re up to in our lives, it always comes back to the things we did when we were children; the experiences we had, the music we listened to, or the TV shows we watched.
I have always been omnivorous in my interests. Right from an early age, I wanted to know about everything and experience all sorts of things – I soaked up culture, basically.

I’ve always put this down to being a child of the 1990s where, in my opinion, culture went into something of a decline.

I’m not saying there were no good things – there was Tarantino, of course, and “The Matrix”. Musically, there was Nirvana, whose “Nevermind” album was genius. And, for me, a series of angry girl bands that I listened to repeatedly in the late ‘90s when I was becoming a teenager. There was also, in books, Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” (of which, more anon). But the decade itself was not really a cultural scene was it? Or at least not where I was. Mostly it was all cheesy pop bands and big budget/high profile romance movies (examples being “Titanic” or “Bridget Jones’ Diary”) Most of the things I loved around this time were harking back to another era, the ’80s or the ‘70s or further back. It wasn’t a revolutionary era for anything, it was the post-generation; meaning post-everything. Everything was over and all we had was nostalgia for another time.

So, unsurprisingly, most of my influences came from an eclectic mix of things that I gleaned from other, older, more culturally grounded people who gave me snippets of their own interests and loves. My dad, for instance, was a big informant when it came to cultural references. He gave me my first intro into music from the 1960s and 1970s (such as The Beatles, The Searchers, The Kinks), he taught me about Doctor Who which, growing up in an era when it was no longer broadcast, I was sadly missing out on, Monty Python whom he loved, the entire history of British comedy basically from about the 1950s onwards. I loved all of that stuff on sight, or even just from hearing about it, because: a) it was great, and b) it was what made my dad who he was – and I wanted to be just like him. He had taste, my dad. He gave me what he called “a proper education”, and, it’s true, I wouldn’t be the person I am now without him.

Because other people – people I went to school with and spent time with out of school – they didn’t all have these influences. Shocking as it seemed to me, I learned somewhere during the course of my childhood and adulthood that some people’s parents, siblings, cousins and older friends do not introduce the younger generation to this stuff in any way. Instead they assume that the newer generations will have their own things to be concerned with and don’t want to hear about all those outdated, “old fogey” things from bygone decades.

But, the thing is, they do. I maintain this point to the end, no matter how much other people argue with me. People do need to know about all these things, because they are hungry for culture. It’s like taking someone who is starving to death in the wilderness and giving them a McDonalds; yes it will fill their stomach but it’s not really food is it? And it’s not going to nourish them. I have had countless arguments with a friend of mine who, a few years ago, had his first child and who insisted, when that child became older, on introducing them to the wonderful world of Disney films by showing them “The Lion King” and “Toy Story”. Both of which, I’m sure, are fine children’s films. But they are hardly classic Disney (“Toy Story” is a Disney/Pixar film for God’s sake and far too 3Dified for my taste.) If you’re going to show kids Disney films you have to start from the beginning with “Snow White” and “Sleeping Beauty” and all of those, because those films have status and majesty and beauty. When people of my generation, or older, think back about Disney they remember these great, beautifully drawn cartoons, with vivid colours and wonderful, crafted effects. You watch “Toy Story”, where’s the craftsmanship? You can’t tell me that any kid who looks back in twenty years time and remembers seeing that as one of their earliest memories will be possessed of anything very valuable. People need to experience the kinds of great wonderful things that have shaped the previous generations; not just the pale imitations and empty nonsensical “entertainments” that we have now. It’s an old saying, but it’s no less true and it goes for just about everything: “They don’t make it like they used to.”

I think this was a problem that was on the rise for a lot of people my age too. When I was at school in the late ‘90s, so many of my friends were throwing their attention away on “The Teletubbies” and The Spice Girls! I mean, looking back, who can get nostalgic about those things? It’s ridiculous really because, as pointed out above, it means that we have little to pass on to our own children when they inevitably start to ask about what we were like as kids and what we saw and heard while we grew up. People nurtured on a diet solely comprised of “Eh-Oh” and “Girl Power” are not going to be able to say very much, are they? I’ve still got friends now who get nostalgic about the cheesy pop songs they listened to at school, even though those things were considered a bit sad and fleeting even at the time. But they do that because that’s all they’ve got. And that just makes me realize how hungry we were – my generation, I mean – for anything that would define us – we wanted a culture that was rich and vibrant and diverse that would reflect us and be reflected in us, we just didn’t really have one. In the absence of that, people will latch onto anything I suppose.

So, I was lucky, because I had people to guide me and show me things and let me experience things beyond what was deemed appropriate for my age group. When I went to the library I was allowed to read anything, when I watched TV I was allowed to channel hop and watch films, documentaries, cartoons, anything I wanted. When I listened to music I was allowed to listen to anything, whether it was my dad’s old record collection, or the radio, or new stuff on tapes or CDs. Nothing was prescribed for me, is what I’m saying, whereas now it seems to be. There are all sorts of arguments now about what children should or shouldn’t be subjected to. There are so many people who think things should be banded according to what is age appropriate – and I get why, I really do, because there’s a lot of inappropriate material around, of course. But that’s a judgment thing for parents and kids to make together, isn’t it? We shouldn’t be telling kids, en masse, that things are not for them just because they’re not brand spanking new, oriented towards a certain demographic, or specifically crafted according to regulation guidelines. It just shouldn’t be like that.

All the things you experience as you grow make you into the person you become and will go on to be as an adult. And that, however you slice the onion, is the crucial thing.
I said I was omnivorous, and I am. When I think about all the things I love, or have experienced with fondness, I come up with a huge, sprawling, eclectic list of things that you would not think would all go together as interests for the same person, but which, over time, have all converged to make me who I am.

When I was a child I loved old Hanna Barbera cartoons and classic Disney. I loved ‘60s music and ‘80s music, but not “contemporary” ‘90s pop. Most of the films I saw were repeats on TV because we didn’t really go to the cinema or rent/buy videos very often. So I loved ‘80s movies, because they were repeated frequently, but knew nothing about what was coming out in the ‘90s until much later. I loved old British sitcoms because these got repeated on all the TV channels and were always hilarious to me – my whole family are also comedy fans, particularly my dad, so I am now well versed in British comedy history and could probably write several books on that subject alone. I had seen all the Carry On films and almost all of Only Fools and Horses by the time I was 10. (This I announce to you proudly because, to me, it seems like something of an achievement.)

Then, when I was older I started to find my own influences; just things that I discovered while I was curiously casting about for things to read or watch. I have mentioned Donna Tartt – she featured quite heavily for me when I was 14 and, when I discovered “The Secret History”, I immediately became fanatical about it. This book was a big influence on me because it got me obsessed with academia and, I am still convinced, it inspired me with the need to learn and become that oh so elusive thing: “erudite”. I wanted to be like Henry Winter, one of the characters in the book who knows everything and is allowed to be a quiet, studious, largely left alone genius in whose orbit other, ordinary people, just sort of hover. Obviously this was not what I became because, the mere ambition to do so, rather than just being that by nature, would have made me insufferable to other people had I gone on with it. But I later went on to do a PhD and, whatever the outcome of that, I know for a fact I would not have wanted to do it had not this idea of the glamour of academia been planted in my head by the aforementioned book.

(N.B. Donna Tartt is a great writer and I am currently reading her new book, which I might review at some point. Stay tuned!)

There were other things too that I only discovered by myself and by accident. Most of these seem to have been TV shows. “Blackadder” for example. Alan Bennett’s “Talking Heads”. Stephen Poliakoff’s “Shooting the Past”. “Red Dwarf”. All of these and more I saw when I was about 14, which makes me think that this age must have been particularly impressionable because these things, now, have gone into the file in my head that is indelibly marked with the words “Important Stuff”. They might not seem all that interesting to other people, but they were great things for me and I still follow them even now.

As I said, I am reading Donna Tartt’s new novel and marvelling at her updated but still so familiar style. But, at the same time, I keep remembering all the things I loved about her writing to begin with and wondering if, had I not read her previous books and fallen in love with her then, I would have chosen to read her now. Rather sadly, I think I might not, which makes me even more glad that I discovered her early.

Similarly, I still follow the work of Poliakoff and Bennett and, yes, if they make a new series of Red Dwarf I am going to be watching it (even though most of the cast are old and flabby by now). I love all of this stuff. I soaked it up as a kid and I love it still.

But, as I look at most of the things I loved, it seems that most of the reasons that I loved them were the fact that they showed me another life, and other things in the world that I did not know anything about and which I was painfully aware had already happened and gone by. Poliakoff’s work is often concerned with bygone eras, and the essence of those eras. “Shooting the Past” was all about the fascination and intrigue that can be invoked when we look at old photographs. It’s set in a picture library in an old manor house in England and, over the course of three amazing episodes, it shows people telling stories and weaving together incredible arcs of narrative just from these old shots. Other projects from Poliakoff have seen him trying to capture the 1950s, the jazz era, the war years, all sorts of things, and I have loved all of this stuff too. But that initial idea of his, of bringing to life the past in that beautiful and compelling way had me hooked from the first titles of “Shooting the Past” and it played on my mind because I, too, wanted to go back to those times and live there.

I was born in the wrong era, I suppose. I always felt that. I did not belong with the rest of the kids my age, who didn’t “get” my references and were thoroughly confused as to why I couldn’t just fit in and love all the crap that they liked because that was “normal”. But, as I’ve explained above, I couldn’t do that because it was not a proper culture – not like the one I had been shown. It was just a scrabbling, desperate attempt to cover up the lack of anything more meaningful.

Through my teens, of course I read Harry Potter and watched “The Lord of the Rings” movies and everything else. I loved those things and I really hope that people will look back on them and remember them fondly, because they were great. But mostly there’s still a struggle to find really great things that will be remembered as cultural highlights. I have followed Tarantino – sort of – through his “Kill Bill” era but not out the other side. I saw the trailer for “Inglourious Bastards” and just thought “Nah, he’s lost it now.” I used to like Woody Allen, until I realized that all his old stuff was way better than anything he writes now or probably will ever write again. I heard his new one is supposed to be great but I haven’t seen it.

I dunno. Maybe it’s true that things are never as golden as they seem when you’re an adolescent. Then, everything seems like it’s got promise, doesn’t it? Whereas, the more you experience and the more you soak up, the more jaded you become about it all.

I think that’s what’s happened to me. I know when I’m looking at crap because I’ve seen so much of it; I’ve immersed myself in all sorts of things and I think I’m only now beginning to sift and think about what it is I really like and love. It is still a long list, but, if I’m ruthless, there are only a handful of things that properly stand out for me.

The most useful thing about my omnivorous nature, probably, has been the fact that I am now able to converse with almost anyone on some subject or another, because, wherever I go, it seems, I have something in common with someone. When I did my PhD I once went to a conference on Iris Murdoch – the least fantastical author you could name – and ended up having a conversation with one of the other, much more established academics there about Terry Pratchett. This, for no other reason than that he happened to see me reading “Mort” in one of the breaks. It’s funny how it happens that things, minor things, like the books and films and music we like can bring us together with people who, in any other sphere, we would not be able to say much to at all.

Because, of course, these are NOT minor things. They are the influences and the driving forces of our lives. They make us who we are. And we should not only celebrate that fact, but we should also keep it in mind for the next generation. Give them the “proper education” they deserve, or where will they end up?

Men

Men are stupid.

Ok, I know this is an awful way to start, but nevertheless I’m going to. I mean it in a specific sense though, not just in a childish exasperation sort of a way because I’m an angry feminist (which I’m not really – I am angry and feminist, but separately not together), or because I’ve been wolf-whistled at or something silly like that.

I’m talking about the lack of thought and general analysis that men give to things before they jump right in and make decisions. I could cite any number of things that are affected by this, but this time, I suppose I’m talking about relationships. More specifically, I guess, when you boil it down, I’m talking about sex.

Most of you are probably already rolling your eyes because you all know this but just hear me out ok.

So, what happened was that, quite recently I was asked out. Not a horrendous experience you may think, although it doesn’t really happen to me very often and I never really know what to do about it when it does. Because when I get asked out it always seems to come out of the blue and from people I hardly know and who hardly know me.

This time it was the postman.

Now, you might think I’m overreacting, but for the postman to ask me out while he was handing me my morning mail seemed grossly inappropriate to me and, while other women would, I’m sure, have been flattered, I just became convinced at first glance that the guy must be a nut. I mean, aside from anything else, I have hardly ever seen him before and, before he asked me out, I actually do not recall a time when I have seen or spoken to him at all. Who notices the postman right? Normally he leaves the mail in a little box outside the block of flats I live in and I don’t have to see him at all.

So just how the hell can he possibly have been gearing up to ask me out? As if we’d been having some sort of ongoing acquaintanceship for a while and he’d been gradually sizing me up to decide that he liked me. (This was more or less what he admitted to me when he asked the offending question.) It just seemed to me that he had randomly decided that, without any sort of thought on the subject. You know what I mean?

And when I think back over all the guys who have ever asked me out, it seems that all of them decided the same way. Men don’t think much about how they feel do they? Or not in my experience of them anyway. If they’re attracted to someone, or if they like someone and want to see them again, it’s a kind of an instinctive thing; they just go on appearance . . . maybe. (But then this makes no sense to me either because I’m not actually very good looking – I mean I’m not hideous but, you know . . . I’m human, I don’t look great first thing in the morning.)

Women, if they’re anything like me, do not tend to act on impulse and like to analyze whether things are right or not. Which is why it’s always best, I think, to actually know the person who’s asking you out and to have had some kind of conversation or friendship beforehand – because otherwise they could be anyone, right? And how can you possibly make any sort of informed decision about how you feel when you don’t know who you’re feeling it about?

As you can see I don’t subscribe to the “Love at First Sight” thing, that is assuming it’s even love we’re talking about; is there such a thing as lust at first sight, do you think? Probably. And it’s probably more common than the other option. But, either way, I just don’t get it.

I don’t get how men can be so monumentally stupid that they think it’s flattering to profess some sort of affinity with a total stranger.

I was once sent a Valentine’s card from a guy who my mother picked up in the DSS (Social Security) office – I don’t mean picked up as “picked up” I just mean she met him and brought him home for tea. My mother does strange things like that with total strangers. Anyway, when I opened this card I found a note telling me how beautiful he thought I was and how he wished we could be friends. He also included his phone number and an “I hope you call”. Desperation multiplied to the Nth degree there I think.

The attention in itself might have been fine, except that he was one of my mother’s mentally ill friends and he had only met me once for about two minutes, during which time I scowled at him almost constantly and refused to say a word to him because I could see, on sight, he was a total creep. My mother did, eventually, take it upon herself to explain that he had just been made redundant and was clinically depressed and she had brought him home because she thought he would be a friend for both of us. (Yeah, she has weird ideas. I mean, the guy could really have been a serial killer or a rapist for all she knew.)

But what really bothered me, and still bothers me now really, was the nagging question of how he managed to make up his mind that he liked me, and how all the men who ask me out on dates seem to decide that they like me, because they have no criteria for it usually. They don’t know me. Often they just sort of sidle up to me at bus stops or, I remember, one guy actually rode his bike past me one day while I was walking up the street to the shops and asked me, en route, if I would give him my phone number – not in a loud voice or as a random quip, but casually as if we’d already been having a conversation and with the full expectation of an answer. People seem to think that I’m approachable this way. Why I have no idea because I’m as hostile towards other people as it’s possible to be! It’s a manner I’ve cultivated over many years of trying to get people to leave me alone.

I’m not being unfair here. I just have to be wary of nutcases, because they so often seem to target me. As if I’m easy prey! Now, if a guy wants to be my friend – and I HAVE had friends who were men before now . . . I still have some, in fact . . . then that’s great. I’ve got no problem with that. Because that means that they want to get to know me and they are prepared to find out all about me as we wind our way through our friendship; and it gives me a chance to find out if they’re nuts before I decide about how far I want them to be a part of my life.

Case in point: I have had a male friend for the last ten years who has come to know me very well and he’s very dear to me, but when I met him – which happened almost as abruptly and accidentally as my “meeting” with the postman and my mother’s nutty friend – I informed him straight away that I only wanted to be friends because I was wary of new and sudden relationships and I didn’t want to get into that. And he accepted it, totally, because he had other girls he could go out with and he just wanted someone to talk to who liked all the same stuff he liked. So that was our friendship. He only told me he loved me a few months back – and I don’t think he meant it quite that way, it was a much deeper, friendlier sort of a thing – but that kind of meant something. It felt natural.

But I don’t like this thoughtless throwing around of liking and interest that most men do. They see a girl who looks pretty to them, or who looks like she might sleep with him or . . . I don’t know, whatever, and that’s it, they’re away. They just try their luck. And I don’t ever see it coming.

Someone explain to me how men are unable to see that they are not going to find anything deep, meaningful or even remotely worthwhile by just picking up random strangers and expecting to have a great time. That’s just stabbing in the dark. If you find love that way it’ll be a bloody miracle. And I just don’t believe in those. It doesn’t happen that way for most people, just like most people who play the lottery don’t win. The odds are just stacked against it and you’ve got to think sensibly about what you’re going to do.

Me, I’ve never been big on the idea of falling in love. I am one of those rare, possibly very screwed up people who would be quite happy to end up alone and have a small, quiet life, rather than have to deal with the bad habits, constant needs and dirty socks of some man who, according to society, I need to make me complete.

I don’t feel like I want that. I don’t want to fall in love. Or be married. Or have children. And that’s me. Anyone of my friends who tries to set me up on a blind date will no longer be my friend. And they all know that. Or at least I think and hope they do.

It’s just not what I want.

So maybe when I’m faced with all this dating malarkey forced on me by happy-go-lucky guys who, basically, just want to get laid, I take it a little bit personally. It just makes me angry, the presumption that someone like me is fair game when I’m just here, minding my own business and not asking anyone for anything. It’s like they don’t even think I’ve got a personality, I’m just a pretty pair of eyes or a pair of tits or something. Well, I don’t know what they look at really, but I assume it’s something like that, and most of these guys haven’t even said one word to me before they’ve come up and started asking for my phone number. And it’s not even in a bar or a club or something, where you expect that sort of shit, it’s in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day, in broad daylight, when I’m just going about my business!

So this is where I came in. Men are stupid. They don’t think. They just leap at the first available opportunity and hope for the best, and then when it all turns to shit they just move on. Women are the ones who think about love, sex, relationships and all that. We’re the ones who work out the logistics and decide on what is sensible, or not. It’s us who have to consider where we’re going to end up when we accept a date with one of these guys.

It seems, to me, to work a little bit like precognition. Because as soon as the guy has finished asking me the question I’m already thinking about all the horrors of the potential relationship I might have with that person. Meeting his family, fitting in with his friends who I probably won’t like, finding out what he likes and pretending, for the sake of appearances and ingratiating myself with him, that I like them too. All that stress and mess and fuss, and for what? Just so I can decide in the end that I never really liked him anyway and move on to somebody else? No.

Something about that just does not seem necessary or worth it to me. Other people disagree, I know. They talk about taking a gamble and seeing where it comes out. But I’m a pessimist, I guess. I expect that most things are not going to work out well and I believe in trusting my instincts. Instincts are good things and, if I know from the outset that it’s only going to be hard work and stress, then why should I bother?

But try and explain that to a man and they look at you as if you’re crazy because, as far as they’re concerned, they’ve only asked you out for dinner. They’re still in the moment, they’re not thinking ahead. And they don’t want to either.

Like I said, it doesn’t happen to me often so I don’t want anyone to think I’m bragging about beating people off with a stick, because I’m really not. But sometimes I wonder if the slightly hostile, put-offish manner that I tend to adopt around men doesn’t just encourage them more, because they think it’s so interesting that I’m not clamouring for their attention – when in fact I am just trying to avoid their attention so I can live my life.

Why does everything always have to be about this?

I like to think that I’m out of that particular rat-race and that the obsessive love-chase that everyone else seems to be embarked on just doesn’t apply to me, but then I am surprised, continually, to find that other people still think it does apply to me and that there is a feeling amongst other people that I must be co-opted into all this nonsense for the benefit of someone else.

I am a prize, it seems (although what kind of prize I have no clue!)

Nevertheless, I will not be won.

And, I maintain – childish and overly simplistic as it might be . . .

Men are stupid!


N.B. I am not a lesbian, a man-hater, or a nutcase (well, I don’t think so on that last one :-/). I am quite happy to explain this to people if they want to know and I don’t subscribe to all that, “I don’t need to define myself for people” stuff, because I will. I don’t see why not. I am, if anything, a largely asexual fantasist with an overall hatred of reality and the ability, on and off, to fall in love with fictional and completely implausible men. Other people can have the real ones. I am only ever disappointed by how little they have to offer.

That is all.