Easter mistakes or: How it sometimes takes more than three days to rise again

I really like Easter weekend. It's better than Christmas, in my opinion. You get a bunch of time off work, except you don't have to spend it visiting everyone you've ever met, and you can just stay in eating M&Ms and mini-eggs, watching Raiders of the Lost Ark and laughing. 

There are some particular significances, for me, as well. As I write, on Easter Saturday 2020, it is eleven  years since Easter Saturday 2009. Which was quite a day, and not just because David Tennant was on TV, sharing chocolate eggs with strangers on a bus in space. 

Eleven years ago today I was in the middle of a very, very big mistake. 

Have you ever done that thing where you rush madly towards something, absolutely convinced that it's a good idea? Everything feels right, the music is playing in your head and there's no way that this is anything other than the most glorious, triumphant conclusion to all your wishes and desires?

Well, I'd done that. I'd run towards a number of things over the preceding twelve months. If you've seen Braveheart, try to imagine that bit where Mr. Braveheart runs at all the bad English guys, utterly confident of his ability to take them all on and chop their stupid racist heads off. 

If you've not seen it, try to imagine a very stupid Yorkshireman staggering around with a bottle of wine, getting engaged to someone for no good reason and then buying her a house. He doesn't chop anyone's head off, although you may be forgiven for thinking that his own brain has been removed. 

It wasn't a good idea, you see. The engagement was not a happy one for either participant. I became increasingly miserable and angry, and all my previous confidence melted away like the butter of optimism on the... um... toast... of... erm… realising that you can't even stand going on holiday with someone, let alone spending the rest of your life with them. 

Good metaphor. Wonder if it will catch on?

So, anyway. Easter Saturday found me very much on a cross of my own making. That's right - I'm comparing my suffering to that of Jesus. Except in this case Jesus isn't the Son of God. He's a cretin. And he's the one who made the cross. And bought the nails. And spent ages trying to hammer nails into himself, even though all his friends were saying, "That's probably not the best idea. Plus, how are you going to do the last hand?"

I didn't want to get married, but here I was with a wedding all booked and planned. I didn't want to share a home with this person, but, oh look, there's a big expensive house with both our names on the mortgage. I was scared of alienating everyone I knew because of my stupidity, and I was terrified of the emotional damage this would cause a number of people, and the way this damage would ripple out and bounce off surfaces, and hurt and hurt again. 

Eleven years later, this seems like no decision at all. The disruption caused, the ensuing depression, the several years of battles through solicitors - all that was worth it, to make the right decision in the end. 

But at the time, this seemed insanely difficult. Impossible, even. I only made it due to the help of a few friends who, quite wisely, encouraged me to take the right path. "You are an idiot," they said, "But this is not a new thing for you, and we expect you to continue living."

A few months ago I had a conversation with someone who'd made a mistake of their own. They were in a bad place, and couldn't see any way out. Could not envisage any time in the future when this mistake would not be the defining feature of who they were. 

And I was able to say, "Great news. I am also incredibly stupid, and have made many stupid decisions. But behold - I am still alive, and have an amazing collection of BluRays and action figures! So, you see, there is hope!" They did not look as reassured as you might have wanted, if I'm honest, but maybe these things take time. 

It might have seemed flippant to compare myself to Jesus earlier, but it wasn't without reason. There's something very significant, isn't there, about that story - of failure and the death of all hope. Of even the Son of God going through the worst of times, and trusting that this, also, shall pass. We can do that. Our defeats are not, necessarily, the end of us.

Not because we're 'fighters' or 'winners'. That kind of narrative is weak and helps us not one jot. We're losers, and fools, and we get things wrong. But those things don't define us forever. My particular tomb - made up of depression, financial loss and legal struggles  - lasted about three years. Bits of it linger, I suppose, and I can still get pretty angry about some of the injustices that never really found resolution. 

But, I got out of that tomb. Thanks to my friends. Thanks to some good luck. Thanks to time. 

And thanks to the story of a God who fell, and died, and lost the battle. And somehow got better anyway. 

Happy Easter

Ruminations

My mind is full of fascinating thoughts. Because I am full of love, I share the following ones with you. Warning - none of it is in the slightest bit useful or relevant to actually achieving anything.


My thoughts...


1.

If I spent as much time watching things on my Netflix List as I do browsing Netflix for things to put on my Netflix List I would have fewer things on my Netflix List and thus it wouldn't be so intimidating that I can't face watching anything on it and so spend all my time browsing instead.

 

Too. Many. Things.



2.

There should be a sequel to the film 'Once' and it should be called 'Twice'.

Then there should be another sequel to that, but probably starring different actors, called 'Thrice'.

Then they should make a fourth one, set on a plane,  and call it... um... 'Frice'?

Then there should be a reboot of the whole thing called 'The Once'.

This is a good film and you should watch it. 

3.

The most annoyed I ever get is when I am browsing the internet and, as I go to click on a link, the page reorganises itself so I have clicked on something else. I mean, it waits until the exact microsecond I click, and then changes where everything is. The thing I was going to click on is now way down the page, and in its place is a link to something else. Something I don't give a toss about. It makes me howl with rage. I'm convinced it does it deliberately.

 

The Internet, seen here annoying someone.

4.


There should be a sequel to the film It Follows called They Follow.

Then there should be a sequel to that called We Follow.

And then He/She Follows.

And then I Follow.

It Follows is great, and quite spookington.

That's a word. It means spooky, only better.

5.

It pleases me greatly that Bates Motel - a programme about the young Norman Bates from Psycho - is an anagram of O Let Me Stab.

See?

6.

There should be a sequel to Suicide Squad, called 'We're Very Sorry'. In it, the producers of 'Suicide Squad' should apologise, for ages, to camera, for the terrible script they inflicted upon us. It wouldn't be very entertaining, but it would be better than the nonsense they made in the first place.

Lovely imagery. Awful waste of time film.

That's all. About your business now.



Fascist Bully Boy

 

When I was at school I liked English, because English was good and all the other subjects were stupid. And by 'stupid' I mean, of course, that I was no good at them.

The worst subject of all was PE, obviously. Cold, miserable bloody PE, with its mud and its shouting and its complete lack of sitting down reading a book. I was - and still am - completely rubbish at every sport. It wasn't so much that I was chosen last, as that the concept of 'last' was redefined to include 'after the eventual death of the Universe'. One of the things that worries me most about the afterlife is the possibility that I'll eventually have to be in goal for Jim McNulty's five a side team.

Next worse was languages. All languages. Because they are impossible. That's not hyperbole. I genuinely believe that they are impossible to learn. Oh, you can say some different words instead of the ones you were going to say, but that's just dicking about with sounds. A whole other system of communication, that you can think in? Poppycock. If you ever meet anyone claiming to speak another language, they are lying. They speak English and they are just trying to impress you. Have none of it. Report them to the authorities and call them 'a whore'.

Third worst was science.

Now, in principle I liked science. It was indoors, it was provably useful and it featured a great many things which you could set on fire. But our experience of science, back in the late 1980s, was subject to some form of localised teacher's crisis which meant that we never had the same person at the front of the class for more than a few weeks at a time. An array of supply teachers came and went, leaving us with little in the way of continuity. Mr. Johnson. Mr. Wright. Miss... Babadook, or something. And Mr. Pillay.

Poor old Mr. Pillay. He really didn't stand a chance. For a start, he was called 'Pillay', which, of course, sounded enough like 'Pillock' to make our adolescent minds jizz themselves with delight. Added to that was his status as our fourth or fifth supply teacher. Even relatively good students like myself had realised by then that having a supply teacher was pretty much a licence to do what the hell we liked. And so we did. I shudder to think what it must have been like trying to instil order on the selfish little bunch of pyromaniacs presented to him every Thursday morning.

To his credit, he always seemed pretty happy. He would sit at the front, grinning benignly and pretending not to know what 'pillock' meant. Maybe he was just waiting it out, knowing that we were bound for cold, bleak futures because of our frankly appalling attitudes, while he knew the love of a good woman. I don't know. Either way, I eventually got a B, but I still can't remember the difference between amps and volts. I do know that if you put too much of one of them through a resistor, it fills the classroom with smoke and gets Paul McGrath suspended.

Anyway. The reason I bring Mr. Pillay up, apart from possibly to exorcise some small measure of guilt, is because I've been thinking about language. No, not languages. We've already established that they don't exist. Especially Russian. Whoever invented that didn't even use real letters - just triangles and such.

No, language. Specifically its misuse.

You see, one of the many shameful things I did in my teenage years was to be genuinely abusive to poor old Mr. Pillay. He had issued me with a Code of Conduct. This was our school's version of lines - a print out of the school behaviour code, which a misbehaving child such as myself had to copy out on the back. Whoever devised it correctly worked out that it was a massive pain in the arse turning the thing over and over to copy the words out.

Anyway, I was even cleverer. Rather than copy it all out, I simply wrote out one sentence, again and again, on the back. Hilarity and mirth were mine as I handed back my code of conduct, covered in the phrase 'Mr. Pillay is a Fascist!'

This did not go down well. His happy grin fell away, the Head of Year was sent for and boy was I in trouble.

Did I know, asked Mr. Crowe - our terrifyingly large Head of Year - did I know what 'fascist' actually meant? Well the joke was on him, because of course I did. It meant someone who told me to do something I didn't want to. I'd learned it from television - specifically The Young Ones. I told him this, and threw in some free advice about how school might be better if it was more like television, with its creativity, its lack of PE and its relaxed attitude towards facts.

He was not impressed and rightly so. He did his best to give me some context for the words I was so carelessly throwing about, and tried to impress upon me the importance of not just using phrases for the sake of it. He said that words carried not just meanings, but the weight of their history and usage. They can be used thoughtlessly and, indeed, to avoid thinking.

I don't think I particularly listened, at the time. And I'm probably conflating some of what Mr. Crowe said with things I've learned from other people, in response to other dickish things I said. And he probably looked less like a cartoon eagle than I remember. But the essence of that encounter stays with me.

It seems that I was something of a trendsetter in my thoughtless use of 'fascist' as a catch-all insult for my intellectual opponents. I should have patented it. But then I would probably have found that I wasn't being original at all. Rather, I was just expressing a basic human instinct: why make an argument when you can use a catchphrase?

I get why this instinct exists. It's loads easier to deal with someone's point of view if you reduce it to a tiny set of ideas. And indeed, if you reduce them to a 'type' of person. Mr. Pillay could be safely ignored, because he was a fascist. That's why he resented my young, independent spirit of freedom. Not because I was an idiot. Because he was a fascist.

It's started to become a flag, for me, of a poor argument. Just look out for a regurgitated phrase and sure enough, the argument following it is likely to be half baked and tedious. And, thanks to the joys of internet arguing, this is becoming something of an epidemic.

Here's the ones that really get on my wick:


Social Justice Warrior

Dreamed up by people who don't like the fact that non-men and non-whites are encroaching upon the 'normal' world.

You don't have to follow an argument about injustice for long before someone will vomit this one up. Apparently, if you are a bloke who thinks that women get a bad deal, or a white guy who thinks non-whites suffer terrible injustice, then it's not because you've thought about it and come to an honest conclusion. No. It's because you want to impress others with your pretend virtue. Neat.



"Sticking it down our throats".

Used exclusively, it seems, by people fed up of the fact that they occasionally have to acknowledge that some people are gay. It's always seemed odd to me that a phrase with such a blatant homo-erotic charge should get used without fail by people who presumably wouldn't want anything sticking down their throat. Maybe that's the point. But how come they all use the same phrase? Was there a meeting, where approved homophobic language was set in stone?

Or is it, maybe, that mindlessly repeating half understood arguments leads to a tendency to repeat the language in which those arguments were originally made?

 Regardless, whenever I see someone complaining that gay issues are being 'thrust down their throats' I    a) dismiss their argument as derivative and thoughtless and    b) mentally picture them deep throating Freddie Mercury.



Heartless Tory / Bleeding Heart Liberal

Could we just agree that yes, there are some dickheads on both sides of the political spectrum, but there are also plenty of people who just have different opinions? And that those opinions lead to political affiliation, rather than the other way around?

My political views don't come from a desire to say the correct 'left wing' things. Rather, calling myself 'left wing' seems to be a 'best fit' way to frame the various thoughts and feelings I have on the world. I'm sure there are plenty of conservatives who feel the same - their right wing thoughts are a product of a thought process, rather than an identity.

Although they'd be lying, obviously, because they are Tories.

Joke.



Mansplaining

Ah, controversial. Plus, I'm a man, so what do I know? How dare I try to mansplain mansplaining?

Well, hopefully I'm not. And that's my point, sort of.

I think I understand the intention of this word, and I can see its value. It gives name to a phenomenon whereby men assume that they know more than women, not by virtue of actually knowing more facts, but by virtue of being more male. Is that about right?

And I guarantee I've done it. Absolutely. It's not just science teachers I'm horrible to. I bet there's plenty of times I've talked over a woman when I should have shut up and listened.

And I also bet that my theoretical understanding of 'mansplaining' seems pretty shallow compared to the experience of actually living it, all the bloody time.

Listen to me. Social Bloody Bleeding Heart Justice Warrior.

But I'm not doing 'mansplaining' now, I don't think. I'm just pointing out something I've noticed. Which is that 'mansplaining' seems to be getting used, quite a lot, to mean, 'How dare a man disagree with a woman!"

I've genuinely seen this quite a lot in online conversations. A man and a woman disagree. The woman accuses the man of doing the 'splaining. The man tries to argue that he just has a different point of view. This is, of course, just making him even more 'splainier. That's a word. Splainier. Look it up. No, don't. The dictionary will only lie.

And it sucks. Partly because it's bullshit. I've every right to disagree with a women, as long as I do it respectfully and not on the assumption that my sex makes me right. But more, it's a problem because I think it robs a potentially useful word of its true meanings. It stops 'mansplaining' having a real, proper use as a signifier of a social issue, and just becomes a slogany, argument-strangling piece of nonsense.


Feminazi

I know I've been saying we shouldn't group people by language, but... I think if anyone uses this phrase, they are probably a massive cockwomble.




Anyway. That's what I think. Of course, in saying this I'm probably using a whole load more assumptions about people, and using unhelpful words to do so. That's the problem with language, isn't it? Use it enough and it starts to accrue all sorts of secondary, stupid meanings that make it impossible to properly articulate thoughts. And once you stop being able to articulate thoughts, is it possible to really think?

Damn you language, you slippery, un-pin-downable beast. You are a pain in the arse.


Still. You're not as bad as PE. Bloody PE.

Old Acquaintance

Here you are, at the season finale of another series of 'Your Life". In an ideal world you will stand, surrounded by the key cast members, who listen in reverent, beautifully lit silence as you give a speech about everything you've learned in the series just gone. You will mourn your losses and celebrate your victories. Reflect on some of those really good episodes that defined your character's personal growth this year. Maybe you'll seed some of the major plot arcs of the next series. Then you'll all file out to watch the fireworks, but the camera will linger in the deserted room. And then fade to black. And credits.

In your mind, the new year is not just 'tomorrow'. It's a whole new series. A new title sequence, revamped sets, a brand new Big Bad and a fresh narrative direction. And it's in that new opening credit sequence that we see the biggest change of all. Unfamiliar names, as new cast members join the ranks of the show. And names that are missing from last year. Actors who have moved onto other projects, their characters written out or - like Mandy in the West Wing series 2 - just gone without comment.

 

I wonder how many names have been effectively written out of the credits of my show this year? Or, to be less self centred, I wonder how many other people's credits no longer feature my name? This time of year does make me realise that there are some people I simply don't connect with any more. I'll compile invite lists for Christmas parties and become aware that there are people on those lists who have drifted away.

Some of them are names I just skip over - faces on Facebook that no longer exist in my real life. Why are they still there? Should I delete them? No, we're still friends. Aren't we? Are we? I do click to like their posts once in a while...   But if we are friends, why has the entirety of 2015 passed without me seeing their actual human aspect even once?

Some of them are people who I wish I still saw, but for whatever reason never get back to me. Maybe I did something terrible to offend them. That's not unlikely, actually. I'm often saying dumb stuff online. And because we don't see each other, they forget that most of what I say is subject to nuance, or irony, or part of a complicated set of evolving thought processes that can't really be summed up in a tweet or Facebook comment. And I forget that they are human beings, with thoughts and feelings, rather than abstract opinion on a screen, good for a critical kicking. So those friendships become part of a circular loop, whereby our lack of understanding of each other contributes to an exponential erosion of relationship.

I finally find someone I can agree with.

It's an oddness. And one that until a few years ago might have passed us by. We don't really have opening credits. Well, we might have, I suppose, but we don't get to see them because we're stuck inside the narrative. Buffy the Vampire Slayer never got to look at her opening titles and think "Oh good, Angel's in it this week - I'll spend a bit more time on my hair." And in the same way we can't step outside our own stories and say "Oh, I see they've dropped Sharon from the title sequence. I guess she's not that important any more. No Christmas present for her!"

No. What we have now that we didn't have until about ten years ago, is a list of 'Friends' on social media. Whereas once Sharon might have drifted out of my life without either of us noticing, now she has a virtual presence that exists as a constant reminder. Here's a human being that you used to know. She's still a 'friend', but you know that's not the truth. Because it turns out 'friends' is a complicated idea that doesn't really fit into that catch-all definition.

Some people have hundreds of online 'friends', don't they? Fair enough, obviously - they can do what they want. But that can't be 'friends' in the way that I define it. I get a bunch of friend requests each year from people I've never met. I'm sure you do too. People who seem to collect 'friends' like you might collect whisky bottles on a shelf or ticket stubs of gigs. Really odd.

Because friendship is about action, isn't it? About choosing how you relate to someone and what that means. It's not a state of being, that just exists in space without you doing anything. Yet that's how some people treat it. I had a conversation this year where someone told me that they couldn't spend any time with me because 'life moves on in different ways.' And I thought 'OK', because I knew there were circumstances behind this, but then I thought, "Actually, no, that's total horseshit. Life doesn't move you anywhere. You decide to do things. I've got friends - good friends - who have in the past been utterly furious with me for very stupid things I did. And they've forgiven me. And there's people who have made my life very difficult here and there, but whom I have learned to value and respect anyway, because that's where friendship comes from.

Picture of me and Ric Neale for no reason whatsoever.

I'm very glad that my friends are not a series of narratively useful characters, thrown at me by the scriptwriters of my life. These are not characters who find their way into the show because that's where life has led me. They are people who have chosen to spend time with me, despite my constant demands for wine and attention and my propensity to try stroking everyone to see what they feel like.

And I've chosen them. There's no point me pretending that I 'lost touch' with certain people, as if it just happened without my consent. If I don't keep in touch with you any more, that's because on some level - possibly subconsciously -  I've decided to prioritise other things. That doesn't make me feel very good about myself, but it's a more honest evaluation of 'friendship' that generally seems to exist.

I think I did lose a few friends this year. Some are still 'friends' by the definitions of social media, but one or the other of us has decided not to make the effort. Some have probably deleted me and I haven't noticed, which means that the relationship didn't really exist any more anyway. One person deleted me and wrote me an essay on why. Credit to that person at least for making it an active choice and not just blaming the universe.

On the other hand, the friendships I do have are frankly amazing. I am constantly delighted that middle age has not consigned me to a dull circle of tired old forty-somethings, shaking their heads and saying, "No, I can't come out to play wizards, I have to stare at this wall all night and then die." I know a lot of funny, clever, creative people, from teenagers to pensioners, who definitely all deserve their place in the credits.

And then there's this.

This Summer I met up with two of my oldest friends. We hadn't been together as a threesome since we were teenagers. The intervening years have seen us drift apart to the point where we haven't really talked for at least 15 years. Marriage. Divorce. Careers, children, lost hair and expanding stomachs. Three people met up who were fundamentally different in almost every way to when they had last shared space.

We met up in the pub we used to go to in Bradford - the Malt Kiln. I got there first and sat alone, feeling some trepidation. What if it was like that programme Justin Lee Collins did when he tried to re-unite the actors from the A-Team in a pub? Mr T never showed and George Peppard was too dead to attend, leaving Dirk Benedict and Dwight Shultz to make uncomfortable small talk for half an hour. What if it was like that?

1988

A song came on. Forever Autumn, from Jeff Wayne's musical version of War of the Worlds. Unbelievably, this song had played 26 years ago, the last time I had been in the pub. If there are scriptwriters in my life, they are not ashamed of a bit of contrived coincidence.

Paul and Ian arrived. We ordered three pints of Purple Nasty - the drink that characterised our teenage foolishness. We talked for hours. I was loud and bossy. Paul was gently funny and self deprecating. Ian was in trouble with a woman. It was like no time had passed at all, and it was one of the best days of my year.

2015

Friendships are choices. No-one else is writing the credits of my show. I don't necessarily deserve the brilliant people that come into my life. But I am responsible for making those relationships work.

Thanks for putting up with me, everyone. Now bring me wine.

Happy New Year.

Emotionally... erect.

Great news everyone! I’ve worked out why we’re all so unhappy!

OK, not all of us. Not you there, stuffing your face with a sausage and egg sandwich. Not you, sir, striding purposefully down the street like Amelia Earhart on her way to the toy shop. And not you, madam, driving your BMW like all the other cars are butter and you are a big, expensive knife. Screw those other cars! They’re not as cool as you! You rule!

You lot aren’t even a bit unhappy. You’re made of joy and satisfaction. And, in the case of the BMW driver, a deep seated contempt for all humanity.

No. I mean the rest of us. Those of us who don’t have a lovely sandwich, or time to go to the toy shop, or can’t afford a massive shiny car to career around in, making other road users feel miserable like a giant ignorant penis. Our lives are stupid and made of nonsense.

I’m not talking about real misery, of course. Our lives may be stupid, but they’re far too pleasant for that. The fact that you’re looking at my nonsense words suggests that your days are relatively free of true distress. You have time to read, so you’re not working every hour god sends or walking five miles just to get water. You can afford electricity, so you’re not eating fluff to survive. Best of all, you have the freedom to look at my inconsequential witterings, so you probably don’t spend your days hiding in rubble, on the run from a terrifying militia of child soldiers.

This is a very specific kind of unhappiness and, annoyingly, it comes from being quite happy. It’s what some people would call first world problems, and that’s very hard to deny. This is a kind of unhappiness that can only exist in relation to comfort and joy. Let me try to explain.

One of my favourite films is LA Story. It’s not a great film and many people probably dislike it, but it has a special place in my heart and if it’s ever on TV I have to watch it. Oh, turns out I’m lying. I just looked on Rotten Tomatoes and it has a 94% approval. Turns out it is very popular. Dammit, I thought it was my special film. Turns out everyone likes it. I was going to recommend it, but now I realise you probably own it, and love it too.

See what I mean about my life being miserable?

LA Story. You should watch it.

Anyway. There’s a lovely line in the film spoken by Steve Martin’s character Harris Telemacher. Describing his life, he says,

“I was deeply unhappy, but I didn’t know it, because I was so happy all the time.”

It’s always struck me as a strange line. It’s meant as comedy, of course, and I generally took it as something that was just meant to be absurd. But as I’ve got older, I’ve kept coming back to that line and I think maybe it’s more meaningful. In fact a quick check online tells me that when Steve Martin made the film he was about 45. That’s very nearly my age now. Maybe that’s why it has started to make sense.

I am, for the most part, very happy indeed. I live in a lovely house that is often full of friends and wine. Said friends are an excellent bunch of people who make me laugh and – more importantly – laugh at my jokes. I have a job which pleases me and money to buy toys. In short, I rule.

And yet. Very occasionally, under the surface, there’s this weird sense of dislocation that’s never been there before. Something I don’t have a name for. A weird, unusual flavour of emotion that exists in direct relation to the pleasure and delight of life.

I don’t think it means that the real happiness is false. I just think that there’s a kind of unhappy that exists alongside it, rather than opposed to it. It might need a new name.

I have been unhappy, in the past. Properly, actually unhappy. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre I fell off a ladder and broke my shoulder. That sucked, because it hurt, and I was self-employed and had no money, and everyone seemed much more concerned with world events that with my constant moaning about how I couldn’t play guitar anymore. 

There was school. That sucked. Everyone was bigger than me and everyone was mean and boy did I look like a jerk. And I’m pretty sure it always rained.

And there was that time that my ex fiancée tried to steal several thousand pounds from me and told loads of lies about me and acted like the world’s biggest, greediest, most deceitful bitch. That was miserable too.

But that’s not what I feel now. Now I often stand in my lovely kitchen, drinking a glass of wine while dinner cooks, listening to music as sunlight pours through the window. Miles away from all that horrible rubbish and as happy as can be.

I think of Harris Telemacher’s words. Unhappy, but not realising it because of happiness. I don’t think it’s quite true, but there’s a something. A something that exists alongside the deep, genuine pleasure that life gives me.

Some happiness, yesterday.

Here’s what I think it is. That moment I just described – me in my kitchen with my wine and my music – is beautiful. But part of my brain knows that there is a way in which it could be more beautiful. No, not if Anna Kendrick was there too. Well, maybe a little, although she seems a bit high maintenance and would probably want to turn the music down or have some of my wine or something.

No. The way in which that moment will become more beautiful is when it is gone, and gone forever, and I can’t have it any more.

If it all goes wrong. If I wreck all my relationships. Lose my job. Get hurled out of my house and have to live in a skip, eating bees. If I wake up each morning to a grey damp world of loneliness and misery and my best friend is a sock called “Toothless Jim”. Just imagine the place my previous happiness will hold in my memories: The day I stood happily in that kitchen, enjoying that wine, loving that life – it’ll be more than good. It will seem like heaven itself.

I think about this sort of thing quite often and I’m starting to think it’s part of what being really happy is about. Everything I have gains value when I think about what it would be like to not have it anymore. My hands moving on this keyboard – imagine a time when these fingers are stiff with age and pain, and suddenly their fluid movement seems wonderful and insanely precious. Everything I see looks like art when I think that one day I might go blind. And when I let my mind wander and create a world where the people around me are gone forever, I think how much I’d long to have just five more minutes in their company.

If this sounds like a clichéd ‘be grateful for what you have’ kind of thing, that’s probably not far from the truth. I don’t pretend this is massively insightful. It’s just a way of helping me recognise the true beauty of what’s going on around me, all the time. I can sometimes sit and sulk about the things I don’t have, like a PlayStation 4 or a swimming pool or an Anna Kendrick or a bottle of wine that was just a little closer… But the more I recognise this feeling – this happiness that contains within it unhappiness – the more I’m grateful for the stuff I do have. Take these things away and I’d be very poor… so I must be rich.

So, where does that leave us? Well, I imagine you probably have the strong desire for a sausage and egg sandwich. And some wine. You might also have become involuntarily aroused by the thought of Anna Kendrick. And we have, of course, all learnt a valuable lesson about not taking things for granted.

Most of all, though, I imagine you probably think I’m just inventing a nonsensical new kind of ontological maths to justify my constant state of emotional confusion. And you’d probably be right. But look on the bright side. Eventually we’ll all be dead. And then we’ll really see what’s what.

Now go watch LA Story.

The Naked Now

I’m about to ruin the next five minutes of your day. Here goes.

You are blinking. Constantly. With your eyes. There you are. Blinking. Eyelids battering away at your face. How do you even see properly?

Oh! And swallow. You have to swallow too.

How often do you swallow? Well – you’re going to find out. Because now you’re acutely aware of it. And so, as I type, am I. And now it’s taking an effort to do it. What’s that about? How was I doing that a second ago without realising, and now it’s like heaving a great lug of muscle about inside my head. Help!

It’s OK – it’ll be gone in a little while. Soon you’ll be distracted by a kitten or a sandwich or a terrorist atrocity and the whole blinky-swallowy festival of noise and effort will recede into the background, managed by your body like Norton antivirus doing a check for porn. Which is good, because (gulp) it’s a horrible (blink) effort, isn’t it? Gulp. Blink. Let my body deal with it.

But it’s also kind of more scary, I think, that we do forget about it. It’s a weird reminder that our bodies get on with loads of this stuff all the time and don’t even ask us. My heart beats while I sleep, chugging happily away like a fat little monster. Wounds heal. Food digests. Blood wanders up and down my arms and legs, asking if everything is OK and if anyone needs anything from the shops.

People talk about ‘knowing themselves’, especially as they get older. I’ve done it. “The great thing about being in your forties is that you really start to know yourself.” But, like so much I say, it’s absolute nonsense. Imagine the horrible reality of actually knowing yourself. Becoming suddenly aware of every blink, every swallow and every beat of your heart. Feeling the blood charging up and down your veins. Realising the constant fizz of neurons firing, the constant chatter of your brain micromanaging every tiny operation that keeps your nervous system from collapsing like lazy spaghetti. And no respite. No letting it fade into the background. An eternal hell of being aware of yourself.

You’d go mad. A great deal of what we do relies upon a cheerful ignorance of how any of our actions actually happen. How am I standing up? I mean, I know it’s theoretically about balance and positioning and stuff but that’s just what I’d write if I suddenly had to show my working in an exam. In reality, I just kind of… do it. I tell my body to stand, and somewhere a team of brain cells get it together to carry out what I can only assume is a terrifically complicated set of sums. And even that’s a lie. I don’t tell my body to stand at all. I just assume it will know what I want and let it get on with it.

I guess what I’m saying is, thank goodness for a certain level of ignorance. And I guess I’m saying it because recently I’ve had a number of really weird moments  - moments where I felt like I lost that ignorance. Moments where I became suddenly, horribly aware that I was existing in the present tense. And I’ll tell you what – it freaked the hell out of me.

Most of the time I’m not really in the present. I’m sort of vaguely aware of what’s happening, but it’s all perceived through this weird mist. At any one time I’m remembering some events, looking forward to others and imagining alternatives where things are different and I have a cowboy hat or a flat in Cardiff Bay. The present is buffered by expectations, memories and daydreams and rarely has the chance to impact meaningfully upon my psyche.

Then, occasionally, for whatever reason, the real, actual moment scrapes through. Dreams and memories melt away. I look around and I think, “This is happening now. These people are talking to me in real time. Shit! What do I do?”

I have little information on this aspect of life. It’s not some future event that I’m imagining happening, like my wedding day or what I’ll say if I ever meet Tom Baker – things I’ve considered in great detail. The first involves smashing through a window like Billy Idol, landing on a motorbike and riding up the aisle, playing electric guitar. The second features me crying like a child and saying thank you until he goes away.

And it’s not a thing that happened in the past, like that time I tried to explain widescreen aspect ratios to Andrew Brown and wanted to weep with frustration at his lack of comprehension. “Why are there black bars at the top and bottom of the TV?” he kept saying. “Why don’t they fill those bits in?” Because that’s the shape of a cinema screen you cretin! "But why don't they just make it the same shape?" How would they do that? Where would that extra visual information come from? Aaaaarrrrgg!

Idiot. Where was I?

Oh yes. It’s really weird looking at someone talking to you and becoming aware that the conversation is actually happening in the present. My subconscious is so used to my complete lack of interest in things that it usually takes care of it all for me. I just hear words tumbling out of my mouth and kind of casually observe the process as if I’m watching TV. “Hmm,” I think, “That was surprisingly sexist. Ooh, listen, I’m claiming to like jazz.”

On the rare occasions that I am slammed without warning into the unvarnished present, I have no idea what to do. I panic. For a start, I’m never 100% sure that I’m not just remembering this in super high definition detail. Then I feel utterly terrified at the responsibility of being present, in time. Who’s allowing this? I could do anything. What if I punch the person I’m talking to? What if they tell me something sad and I just laugh and say “I’m glad that happened to you - I hope it happens again.”? What if I stand up in church and shout “You’re all a bunch of bastards”?

I’m not even exaggerating. The power of realisation is blistering. If this is ‘now’, then nothing is set. I can disrupt all of this so easily. Without the comforting numbness of temporal dislocation I have no framework, no reference. There’s a reason why memory and fantasy combine to couch the present in cotton wool. I need to be kept confused and slightly out of synch.

And then there’s eternity.

Once in a while I will lie in bed and remember that I exist in time. And that either I will die and be dead forever or the afterlife exists and I will live forever. And that both are impossible to fit into my tiny mind. A terrifying chasm of existential fear opens up around me and I freak out completely. How can I not-exist forever? How can I not not-exist? How is anything meaningful unless it ends? And what happens after it ends?

And then, salvation. Sleep claims me. My thoughts drift and now I’m in a hotel and Tom Baker is eating cheese at the next table. Andrew Brown’s wife is stroking my face and I feel both guilty and delighted. I try to tell her about his inability to understand aspect ratios but my voice comes out like birdsong. And now I’m due on stage, and have to play saxophone… I can’t play saxophone…

I dream. Or some of me does. Elsewhere, the rest of me keeps it all running. Heart beating, blood moving, swallowing.


Goodnight. If you can.

How to Disappear Completely

It’s not easy having a face.

I know, I know. You think having a face is easy. You think it’s no big deal, and this is just another one of my paranoid rants, like that time I decided Christopher Walken was talking to me through the television. But that’s just another reason why I don’t truly understand you and never invite you to my sex parties.

Having a face is bonkers. My face is massive, and everyone looks at it, all the time, like it’s who I actually am. But your face isn’t who you are. It’s just some flesh arranged in a weird shape with holes in it that go inside you. Inside you!!!  How are you so fine with this? And your brain sends it signals, like “Look pleased that you’ve been given the biscuit,” and your face responds by contorting itself up and down for a bit, hoping that will do the trick. But just as often the person giving you the biscuit will look at you as if you have just signalled hatred, or lust, or total apathy. Although, of course, you’ve no idea if that’s what they’re really thinking. Because their face is probably making it up too.

And people say things like “You look tired,” or “What’s so funny?” or “Why are you so clearly aroused when I start talking about Avengers: Age of Ultron?” Or they say that someone ‘looks kind’ or has ‘cold, evil eyes, like a sex nonce’. All rubbish. You don’t know me. You have just been fooled by this shell, this fleshy ambassador to the world. And let me tell you – he’s an idiot. My face. An idiot. He tries to tell you what I’m thinking and feeling, but most of the time he just grimaces ineffectually, trying to communicate complex emotions and attitudes through a few stretched muscles and the odd raised eyebrow.

Every now and then I catch sight of myself in a reflection, like a shop window or the forehead of a particularly shiny butcher’s assistant. And I’ll tell you what, I look furious. Every time. I can be in the best of moods, my soul singing a little song as I rejoice in the many benefits of being me. And there’s my face, growling at the world as if to say “My mind is full of spiders and hatred! Fuck you all!” No wonder everyone refuses when I invite them to my sex parties.

I have, however, found a way to defeat my face. I have hidden him away from the world, where no-one can see him. Yes, I have grown a fine and mighty beard. This has proved a brilliant idea and I recommend it to everyone.

 

I started growing it last Summer and it has proved a pleasing and delightful experience. For a start, there is the great ease with which it happens. The beard literally grows itself while you are doing other things. You can spend all day filing your Doctor Who magazines into chronological order, breaking only occasionally for a cup of tea and a bit of a dance, and your beard will wander slowly across your face without you paying it the slightest heed.

There’s also the fact that people find beards inordinately fascinating. It’s now the first thing people mention upon meeting me. “Ooh,” they say, “You have a beard.” As if we were on Radio 4 and everything needed pointing out to the listeners. It is, in fact, a thing mentioned by people who I don’t even know. Perfect strangers observe and comment, as if it were a beard composed not of hair, but of miracles and adventure. It’s kind of fun, and does give me a sort of instant identity. This must be what it is like to be tall, or a well-known serial killer.

Then, of course, there are its face-obscuring qualities. People no longer judge you by what you are thinking, because they have, quite frankly, no idea. Where once you had a vulnerable, quivering mass of lips, cheekbones and jawline – open to interpretation by whomsoever gazed upon your naked face – now you have a tangled mess of terrifying hair. Inscrutable, beautiful and rampantly heroic.

 

“What am I thinking?” the beard asks. “That, my friend, is for you to find out. I am a mystery to you. No more assumptions based on the haphazard arrangement of my features. Now you have to talk to me, to get to know me properly.”

All well and good. Crisis averted through the medium of hair.

Except.

Except another, more existential crisis arose in its place.

I couldn’t help noticing that I was not the only person with a beard. In fact, they’re bloody everywhere. Men roam the streets, hirsute and    raggedy of jawline, beaming at me in fuzzy faced solidarity. People I’ve known for ages are suddenly experimenting with beards of their own. Every famous person on TV seems similarly decorated. It’s a world of hair.

 There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s nice, actually. There is a real sense of being part of something. But that’s kind of the problem.

I was having my beard trimmed when it occurred to me. That’s right, trimmed. I go to see a man, in a special shop, who applies all manner of lotions and oils to my follicular majesty. He trims and grooms and teases while I sip a beer and consider how I’d look with a monocle.

On this particular occasion I am gazing around at the tiny bottles of beard oil and tubs of wax that lined the walls of his excellent shop. I enquire as to how long he has been open. Less than a year, it transpires. Oh, I think. That’s handy, because that fits really well with when I decided to grow my beard.

And then I think – that is quite the coincidence. And then I think of all those others I know who also decided to abandon the razor in that same time period.

I’m forced to conclude that the decision to grow a beard might not have been, in any real sense, a choice that I actually made. The more beards I see, and the more I realise that they’ve all sprung forth in the last twelve months or so, the more I realise that I’m part of a trend. A cultural movement, invisible to me in its happening.

Me and all these other men with their fine, luxurious expanses of prickly faced joy. We didn’t just all, coincidentally decide, one day, to be done with shaving. Even though to all of us that’s probably exactly what we thought we were doing. We somehow, subtly, noticed that having a beard was a ‘thing’.  A host of cultural influences crept into our collective consciousness and worked away at our decision making process. Grow a beard. You’d look excellent with a beard.

So I start by worrying that my face doesn’t really communicate who I am, being open to the inference of other people. And I end up realising that even my choices are subject to the whims of others. My decisions creep up on me, preformed by the world. My sense of who I am exists somewhere else, conjured, maybe, in some boardroom where a well groomed dominatrix in horned rimmed glasses unveiled her latest scheme – “Fostering the Illusion of Personal Freedom through the Encouragement of Beards”. A swish presentation, featuring pictures of hipsters laughing in trendy bars and charts articulating a rise in sales of beard oil.

One day, when the zeitgeist demands it, I will be filled with the compulsion to shave away my beard. I won’t know why. I’ll just feel that I have decided. And as I scrape away the shaving foam, a terrible sight will meet me in the mirror. No flesh beneath. No cheekbones, lips or chin. For everything will have gone away. I will remain a blank space, unformed without anyone to tell me who I really am.

But I won’t mind. It will seem cool. And you won’t mind, because you’ll think so too.

This might be a parable.

Or it might be just that my beard itches.

I wonder what it would look like with just a moustache?

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen

My life is unbearably easy. You know that thing you were just doing, before you got distracted and started reading this? Whatever it was, it was harder than my day. Even if you were laying down, stroking your elbows, sipping Lilt through a straw, my day is more relaxed.

You see that paragraph above? I stopped after I typed the word 'my', to put on some music. Because I realised that my day was not quite as pleasurable and decadent as it could be. And then, after the word 'easy', I stopped to have a massive bite out of a sausage sandwich. Thankfully, the person at the shop has correctly put red sauce on it. The other week, someone erroneously put brown sauce on my sandwich. Brown! Ruined my day. And, by consequence, the day of everyone I met.

In the absence of actual, real difficulty in my life, my brain is forced to invent pretend problems. Bored of having no actual issues to unravel, my brain works very hard to come up with reasons why my life is not, as it appears, a constant stream of uninterrupted joy but is, rather, a terrible struggle against incredible opposition.

I'm going to share one of these with you today, that you might empathise with my plight, feel my pain and, maybe, engage in some kind of fundraising effort on my behalf.



Look at this.

You see? you see how intolerable my life is?

Seasons one to four of fun serial-killer show Dexter, all lined up nicely on my shelf. Fitted, as they should be, between 'Deep Space Nine' and 'Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds'. Alphabetical by series, chronological within series, obviously. Nice and neat. A universe of order and calm.

But am I happy? You'd think so, wouldn't you? You'd think I'd be content, sitting in my leather armchair with a glass of port, thinking, "Hurrah! Should I decide to watch the episode of Dexter where Jimmy Smits goes nuts during a game of golf, I know exactly where it is, on my shelf of wonderful things!"

But I'm not. Can you tell why?

That's right. Look at those bloody DVD spines. Look at them! Not one of them is the same as the other. Not one!!! How can I sleep, how can I eat, how can I envisage happiness when these maverick, mismatched, irritating bastards sit on my shelf, mocking me with their crazy, haphazard design?

It looks like they were planning great things with the first one. There's a red band, consistent with the imagery of the show, that is clearly meant to develop over future box sets to create a pleasing, if gruesome, ribbon of blood. But by the time series two comes out, some gibbon has decided, screw that. Let's keep the ribbon but change its size, shape, colour and position. And while we're here, let's change the position of everything else! Let's make sure that it in no way matches the last box set. Screw you, Rob. Screw your attempts to be happy and calm forever.

Series 3 tries a little bit to match 2, but still gets it wrong. And changes the logo. By series four they even change the font saying 'season four', except it's now 'The Fourth Season'. Well, that's not the same at all. Why? What's wrong with you people? Why do you hate me so much?


How difficult can it be to create a uniform, consistent design for the merchandising of a TV show? Here's my Babylon 5 DVDs.

Now, obviously I'm already slightly unhappy that the boxes don't all fit on one bit of shelf. Don't think I haven't tried. While some people spend their days working hard to save lives, put out fires and carry water to their family from a hole in the ground, I stand by an Ikea shelving unit, fretting about the spacing of DVD box sets. Should I just start 'Babylon 5' on a new section? What will I do with the space after 'Angel'? And what if the knock-on re-spacing culminates in there being no space for 'The West Wing' on the bottom shelf? Fuck this! Why was I even born?

And then there's the spines themselves. Full marks for at least using the same logo each time. But why are they all different sizes? And why can't you make up your mind where to stick the BBFC rating? Idiot! Who even gave you a job? Was the only other candidate at the interview a bowl of soup?

Anyway. As you can see, my life is quite the conundrum. There is some small solace, though. Deep down on the shelves, hidden between 'Party Animals' and 'The Prisoner' are some beautifully designed, perfectly matching spines. Their uniformity gives me hope that, despite the apparent meaninglessness of existence, there is - somewhere - someone who gives a toss. Thanks, whoever designed these. They make me happy. For now, at least, I will not kill again.

Hang on. Those BBFC ratings aren't quite the right size...








...the voices...













...the voices are back...