Times Have Changed

In 1969, my last pre-teen year, I sat at my new high school desk breathing in unfamiliar smells, knowing only a handful of my new class mates. This was a turning of the tide for me with strict school rules, double periods, rugby, bus passes, the all-governing timetable. That life now seems impossibly long ago, an age when all four of my grandparents were living, my parents were in their thirties and with ambitions still, England were reigning football World Champions and glam rock was yet to be born. Research still meant cycling to the library with its hand-written index cards. Our television was black and white, our car was rusty and burned oil. A soot-blackened man hefted twenty sacks of coal to our bunker for winter fuel. Ice would form inside my bedroom windows. We chatted with our neighbours. I believed what I read and was told. Boys were boys and girls were girls.

Fast forward fifty years and life is markedly different, mostly due to mass communication and the ease of access to information. Technology has advanced ridiculously fast. Imagine a world without smart phones. It seems unthinkable in these days when people are glued to their screens, even throughout meal times. The first iPhone went on sale just twelve years ago and now most of the globe, even the dark, less developed corners, has a smart phone.

As well as bringing people together, mass communication has spawned unanticipated features. The rise of the keyboard warriors is evident in any comment thread you care to read. Hiding behind virtual anonymity they sling cruel and vicious words to the point of death threats. Trial by media on the stage of public opinion has become commonplace. Yet, perversely, a generation of so-called snowflakes now takes offence at even the gentlest criticism and appears unable to cope with the mildest setback. Celebrity status arrives cheaply. Warhol’s observation is truer than ever with fifteen minutes of fame now requiring zero talent, merely a trout pout, scant clothing and a large mouth, for either sex.

We ought to be revelling in online information, 24 hour news, databases and catalogues endowing armchair detectives with endless opportunities for research but still there is confusion. The distribution of disinformation, misinformation, lies and propaganda means, except for undisputable facts, that you have to pick and choose carefully in deciding what is the real truth. For example, respected geological research, through deep ice core samples, shows that the Earth has warmed and cooled in predictable cycles over thousands of years. Charts are easy to find showing we are now likely at the height of the current warming cycle yet are warned the end is nigh if we don’t all swap our gas-guzzlers for electric cars and must pay hefty taxes if we are not persuaded.

There are those, the elite, the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, who seek to propagate false agendas and further their own acquisition of wealth and power. Population control and mind control are hiding in plain sight if you look. We often mock conspiracy theorists but valid questions remain about JFK, 9/11, and other suspected cover-ups. We are now aware of endemic child abuse in the Church and the entertainment industry, and there are grave concerns and a degree of knowledge that it is rife in the ranks of governments past and present. We can find details with a few laptop clicks.

Last night I sought out interviews by and with the late great Clive James, Australian broadcaster, writer and raconteur, and before long I was deep down a YouTube rabbit hole watching clips of comedians and entertainers from the seventies, Household names in the UK such as Victor Borge, Les Dawson, Dave Allen... I ventured still further back and watched clips of Arthur Askey, George Formby, “two ton” Tessie O’Shea. Judging by the faces of the theatre crowds a great deal of mirth could be had watching people pulling funny faces playing a ukulele. Yes, times have changed.

The Retiring Assistant Manager – 30 March 1990

The retiring assistant manager scribbled his last initial and put down his weary ballpoint with an air of finality. His “in tray” was empty, his “out tray” full and yet there were loose ends; things remained undone and must now forever remain so. The sand lay flat in the lower chamber of life’s hourglass. Intentions, objectives, ambitions; these were the loose ends which could not be neatly knotted.

He drew comfort from the tangible and pondered the forest of paper that had traversed his desk these four decades, hungrily sucking the ink of a thousand pens; gorging the graphite of a towering pencil. His mark lay on reams of records stowed safely in the banking bowels below; tasks completed, returns returned, ledgers ruled and checked. There lay the rich seams of evidence indelibly stamped in banking history.

He had safely shouldered a mountain of responsibilities with his unique monogram. A million signatures had authorised, confirmed, advised, certified, applied, declared, reported and claimed. Now our man reached for a cigarette and wreathed himself in its haze. His mood of reflection continued and he seemed almost to disappear within the rafts of blue and grey, his mind adrift on a sea of nostalgia. An endless tide of faces, names, places, conversations ebbed and flowed, removed from time and context. When reality returned he would try to remember these details in ordered fashion, but not yet. Enough for now to indulge at random.

A column of white ash dropped unnoticed. Imagination slipped its leash and began to pad softly down the corridors of wistful thought where there were unopened rooms containing untested talents, unexpressed emotions, abandoned projects, forgotten thoughts and lapsed aspirations. There was so much to do, yet so little time. With frightening suddenness, conscious thought returned to him. His empty desk stared gravely back at him, an old and trusted friend. He must remember to bid his faithful wooden companion farewell. But how to say, “Goodbye?” How to say, “I won’t be back?” Soon its drawers would fill with unfamiliar clutter and this it would accept with brave resignation or bland indifference, he did not like to contemplate which. 

Sadness came over him; ‘end of an era’, a woefully inadequate phrase. He glanced at the relentless clock, willing it to stop and encapsulate the moment. On it marched, into the future. Why couldn't it just mark time or pass the time of day? He laughed aloud at the irony and with that the spell was broken and the fleeting moment of regret passed. The future held the key to those unopened rooms of opportunity, potential, and above all, time. With spirits rising he left the Bank.

A broad grin spread across his face as he detected a spring in his step, which had not been there yesterday. Was that last step more of a skip? The years rolled back and he summoned a memory from one glorious July afternoon half a century earlier: a small boy riding home from school, standing on the pedals, eyes ablaze with anticipation at the summer holiday stretching endlessly ahead.

He hadn’t felt like this in years. Cares, worries and responsibilities lay strewn in his wake as he hurried towards his tired, old car. His mind whirled with anticipation on the drive home. He concentrated on nothing in particular, allowing himself to bask in expectation: summer, cricket, gardening, Vivaldi, travel, sun, solitude, deck-chairs, reading, ...  he was drowning in euphoria. Full of unabashed excitement he hurried home to the future and with a sigh of relief closed the door on a most eventful day.

The beginning…

Hyperbole

English has an adjectival structure for comparisons: positive, comparative, superlative. As in good, better, best. We qualify these with: very good, slightly better etc. But many people find those expressions inadequate to the point where even best, the superlative, has lost its meaning in some circles and hyperbole has insinuated itself into everyday language diluting the strength of vocabulary.

 

It seems good, lovely or even great are no longer sufficient to indicate something's value. Instead we hear awesome, amazing, incredible. Such words were once reserved for the truly remarkable, the arresting. Did we say Alexander the Awesome? No, he was Great because great means great. Extremes have been hijacked, and thus devalued, so that we are in a position where we have nowhere to go when we want to express the highest of sentiments. Excellent has become lame whereas it should be the pinnacle of description.

 

No one gets upset any more, they declare themselves freaked out. And if that isn't deemed suitably exceptional then the adverb totally is employed. If something is one-of-a-kind we may hear it described as very unique. Unique has a complete meaning by itself. It does not require qualification any more then the word pregnant. Is insecurity at the root of this? Is there a fear of being accused of understatement, of not being sufficiently moved?

 

Popular news reporting has probably played a hand. Stock markets no longer rise and fall, they plunge and soar. As does our daily temperature. So when a true plunge occurs we have no way of distinguishing it from an ordinary plunge! Even mundane articles are peppered with adjectives such as horrendous, shocking, hilarious, stunning. Now when a truly terrible world event occurs the appropriate words have already been used up.

 

Nothing stands still, not least language, but our ability to communicate in rational terms is dwindling. Wild exaggeration abounds. In these days of thumbs on touch screens, even the simple smiley has been trumped by extravagant emojis. Language is starting its steady return to the age of the pictogram.

 

Long live the simple word!

Journals of an Artist

Keith Vaughan penned the final lines into his personal diary during the moments while he was dying from the overdose by which he took his own life.

I am transcribing the journals of this lesser known British artist and although I haven't yet reached the date of his suicide, I know it is coming.

Some years ago I joined the web site Zooniverse. The idea of browsing through photos triggered by motion sensitive cameras in the African savannah sounded appealing. Soon I was identifying a gnu from just a fleeting glimpse of fetlock! But I tired of that and moved on to images from deep space, helping with a project to differentiate between various types of distant galaxy. (No scientific experience necessary - just careful observation.)

Email reminders of my membership prompted me to look again at the site and I was surprised to see there are now dozens of research projects to choose from. For a while I dabbled in New York City property deeds, then the log books of Victorian whalers. Then I spied a listing for the personal letters and journals of artists held at The Tate Gallery in London.

There are thousands of scanned images of handwritten pages covering the early and mid twentieth century. In simple terms you read the writing and type what you read. The reality is more complicated. While a few lay down neat rows of copperplate script, many send their nib flying wildly over the page, scratching and looping as fast as their own thoughts. Deciphering handwriting is like a puzzle, and I like puzzles.

During my thirty years working in a bank I was exposed to a huge range of handwriting styles, both of customers and colleagues. I am also an avid family historian and I have researched thousands of handwritten census pages. All of this helps. When you see many pages in the same hand, trends start to show in the style and seemingly impenetrable scribbles unravel themselves. If not I return to it after transcribing the rest of the page and suddenly, with the benefit of context, the word leaps out at me.

 

After tackling the diaries of half a dozen artists I hit upon those of Keith Vaughan. He painted the male nude in numerous settings, progressing to an abstract style and always carrying a degree of shock. It didn't surprise me to learn that he lived a tortured life trying to make sense of his sexuality. His diaries are full of his deepest darkest thoughts yet at times they are humorous and poignant.

 

I freely admit I am reaching outside my comfort zone with his subject matter but have been drawn in by his candour. Not much is known about the man except through his diaries and, reading them, I feel something of a voyeur. In the 1940s he was an enthusiastic young painter but according to his private writing, grew jaded and clearly frustrated, living a difficult life in a less tolerant age. Artists are often gifted in more than one field so it is unsurprising that he writes very well and with a wide vocabulary.

In 1975 he was diagnosed with bowel cancer and his emotional reaction, and subsequent forced changes of lifestyle, make grim yet fascinating reading. I continue to transcribe several pages a day, voluntarily, and I am not sure whether I am doing it because I like the challenge of deciphering, or because I want to reach the end.

losing the power to shock

Over the past few days I have read a range of news articles which, as recently as fifteen years ago, would have shocked me; seen images which ought to have sickened me, yet in 2015 they have become commonplace to the extent that I barely alter my facial expression as I click and browse.

 

Reporting of events such as 9/11 set a new standard in what was considered decent. Slow motion video of planes disappearing into tall buildings was played in endless loops. Jumping victims were seen and discussed and the expressions of ground-level witnesses examined. Since then, what 'goes' is frankly, anything.

 

I don't think perpetration is entirely worse nowadays but with Internet news media beamed into even the darkest recesses of the Earth's wilderness, everyone sees it and often within minutes of its occurrence.

 

To send a message with the correct degree of cruelty it seems shooting with a bullet is no longer sufficient. More monstrous actions are necessary. Beheading for example. The Daily Mail and others (tastefully?) pixelate the bleeding neck stumps and the detached heads but frankly the unedited images are only a click or two away, for the vaguely curious.

 

I know atrocities have been happening since the beginning of recorded time but never in my lifetime has the media's assessment of the public's appetite for the horrific been higher. Many aspects of life are becoming extreme: language and brutality for two. It might be argued that giving column space and cyberspace is fanning the flames.

 

I read about a woman who blew her own head off with a suicide vest; a taxi driver who pulled his own head off by attaching a rope from his neck to a lamp post and driving off fast; and about a teenage girl who was murdered and dismembered by her stepbrother, the head found in a grocery bag. The removal of a head is the ultimate insult and outrage to put it at its very mildest. It is the pinnacle of horrific acts which can be done to a human, yet I am no longer shocked.

 

***

 

There is an ugliness rampant in modern news and its reporting so perhaps it's no coincidence that we eventually suffer compassion fatigue. However there remains an odd phenomenon. Certain acts are so hideous, strike so directly at the heart of humanity that the world rises up with a single voice. I first saw this with the death of Lady Diana Spencer; an outpouring of grief such as had never before been seen. Days of wailing and sobbing in the streets and a funeral with the grandeur and solemnity normally reserved for Kings and Queens. Yet almost all the mourners never knew her personally. It was the death of an ideal which struck home and which triggered this gut level compassion. And it happened again recently in Paris.

 

So there is still a point at which that raw nerve is touched, it just seems deeper and harder to locate.

 

The Catholic generation before me would have had a combined heart attack at the mere utterance of the words priest and boys in the same sentence. Now, despite the ugly betrayal of innocence by organised religion, we tend to roll our eyes in a 'what can you do' way.

 

Since revealing and examining the sexual proclivities of religious types, the media and seemingly with a curious degree of reluctance, the police, have moved their attention to celebrities. Mostly has-been comedians and entertainers from the seventies and eighties. I was staggered when the first names were dropped several years ago. But now the list of household names who were once omnipresent on British TV screens is long, and I am no longer surprised by new announcements.

 

Mankind is capable of great leaps forward in thinking and endeavour but it appears that shock and reaction are the two behaviours that have evolved most rapidly in the 21st century.

Epigenetic Inheritance

Epigenetics, the newest science of all, lifts the lid on the old conundrum "nature or nurture". It turns out to be partly both. But we've always known that instinctively haven't we?

 

Several years ago scientists mapped the entire human genome, the rules for human physical and mental development. From that we learned that we inherit equal amounts of genes from each of our parents. No surprise then that we look and act a bit like mum and dad.

 

Epigenetics reveals that our destiny is not cast in stone. If we have the will we have the power to influence the extent to which inherited genes are triggered in our lifetime. Every thought, every mouthful, every step, changes gene expression and therefore our future. Genetics loads the gun but Epigenetics pulls the trigger.

 

1880 famine records in Sweden combined with birth and death records, showed that children and even grandchildren had longer life expectancy. The gene responsible for switching metabolism to 'survival mode' was activated, then bequeathed in genetic code to future generations.

 

Psychotherapists found that not only did Holocaust survivors come to them for counselling but almost all their children did too, even though those children were born long after the Holocaust. The gene for trauma had been activated and passed on.

 

Some organ transplant recipients report sudden changes in food preference, habits even hobbies. This adds weight to the notion that DNA molecules carry not only the building blocks of life itself... but how to live it too.

winter running

Each breath pulls a knife into my chest and my lungs shrivel. The sidewalk is mostly clear but here and there ice lurks in treacherous patches like polished, grey steel. I hold my breath and run across, flat-footed and slowly. This is no weather for outdoor exercise but after a week of confinement I was going stir crazy.

 

I reach Ellens Creek after four minutes and already my toes are losing feeling and my eyesight is slightly blurred. I glance right taking in the view towards the harbour where the waters have solidified into broad, white slabs which rear at odd angles, buckled by the tidal pressure. Ducks stand resolutely at their posts to wait out the freeze, shoulders hunched under puffed feathers.

 

Over the past six years I have grudgingly come to accept the severity of winter in my adopted country. At first I shunned hats and gloves and dressed more for a balmy British autumn than a harsh Canadian winter. I know I drew suspicious glances when I ran hatless in shorts and vest. A crazy foreigner. Today at least I am properly attired for my run, that’s if you consider running at minus fifteen proper at all, and if you do you might be in a minority of one.

 

Are these leggings verging on the effeminate? Not so long ago I would have guffawed at the notion of venturing out in daylight like this but if you want to be a runner in mid winter you have to dress like one. It’s what people expect. Beneath all this skin protection is a base layer, my hat and gloves are thermally insulated and the soles of my socks have copper thread. But I am cold.

 

I leap over a frozen snow heap and cross North River Road. As I try to hold my pace up the steep incline, cars crackle by on studded tyres their drivers wearing puffy jackets and sensible hats. I reach the lights at Belvedere and turn around, circling on the spot with dainty little steps befitting of my debatable leggings. I realise my thick coating of lip balm has reconstituted into a layer of dense wax.

 

Downhill I reach a slow gallop like a tall, black giraffe. I check my watch and I’m on schedule because no run is purely for fun, least of all today. I need to monitor my time and pace. The Island marathon is far away but a winter of lethargy would make for a hard summer of reconditioning.

 

This is a short outing, just twenty minutes. Not long enough to get into ‘the zone’ but a chance to get the heart pumping and to blow out the cobwebs. As I re-cross the bridge over the bleak Arctic tundra of the creek, the late afternoon sky is darkening and street lights are struggling to penetrate the gloom. Home and a steaming bath beckon.

Everest: an unhealthy obsession

The route to the summit is glaringly obvious from this angle: follow the path of steep ice which flows relentlessly from the interior of the three giant peaks, Everest, Lhotse and Nuptse; shin up a steep ice wall and take a left turn where it's a mere hop and a skip to the top of the world. By all accounts Everest is not a technically difficult mountain to climb. An ambitious novice with excellent fitness, a steely nerve for heights and a huge bank balance can have a fair stab at it.

Armchair enthusiasts are developing high expectations, fostered by the latest high definition TV documentaries in which a cosmopolitan range of middle-aged adventurers reach for the sky and send video messages home to loved ones. True, today's synthetic materials have previously unimagined thermal qualities and mountaineering equipment is now stronger yet lighter than ever but it is money that is at the heart of the problem with Everest. Elite Guiding Companies all but promise to get you safely to the summit (and back) for a barely credible fee of $70,000, per client.

Bottled oxygen has become standard issue above 23,000 feet, an altitude above which the natural atmosphere does not sustain human life for more than a couple of days. A seemingly inexhaustible supply of altitude-adjusted Sherpas are keen to enlist as expeditionary guides and porters, at $2,000 earning ten times more than their farming income. The Nepalese Government long ago spotted the financial advantage of charging ludicrous sums for permits to climb the country's greatest asset.

Put simply, commercial pressures are putting too many people on the mountain, many of whom would never make it there on merit. These figures tell a story of rapid acceleration:



One might deduce that the mountain is becoming safer to climb but these statistics by decade are masking years when fatalities ran at higher percentages. A combination of weather and over-crowding in 1996 resulted in fifteen deaths in a year when ninety-eight people reached the summit and considerably fewer returned.

Despite the increasingly friendly statistics, this is no hike. Some people suffer the ravages of altitude sickness even before the real climb has begun. Base Camp is at 17,000 feet above sea level (already comfortably twenty per cent higher than the highest Alpine peak, Mont Blanc. As you climb toward the Troposphere, pulmonary and cerebral edemas occur frequently even among apparently fit people as bodies stop working in this hostile realm. Helicopters can barely stay aloft in the thin air of Base Camp so evacuations high on the mountain are simply not possible. If you get sick then your companions are unlikely to be strong enough to carry you down to safety. You will be abandoned to your fate and join the corpses of those who lie where they fell, frozen hard as ice. That is the code which has developed although it is one over which bitter debate rages.

Base camp, a collection of tents not visible from the high altitude photo above, lies at the bottom right corner of this view, just below the Khumbu Ice Fall. The classically climbed route involves negotiating more than a mile of Khumbu's five-storey high-ice-boulders and sickeningly deep crevasses before ascending the Western Cwm to the Lhotse Face - a thirty degree sheet of hard blue ice. After spending a night under canvas on a ledge halfway up this nightmarish slope you continue to a barren, windswept saddle slung between Lhotse and Everest, known as the South Col. A few hours sleep there and you have to choose whether to try for the summit or return to base.

Those who feel well enough to attempt the summit will strap on oxygen masks and draw several breaths for each step as they climb ever higher, then traverse nauseating knife-edge ridges with a choice of sheer drops into Tibet or Nepal, until they reach that crest where there is nowhere higher to climb. I salute those brave souls and I fear for them.

Websites now regularly report dangerous overcrowding in horrendous places like the Lhotse Face, the Balcony and the Hilary Step. Pedestrian bottlenecks at the same altitude as cruising airliners, are jeopardising the lives of ambitious but ordinary people. It is just possible to climb from final camp (The South Col) to the summit and back in the hours of daylight if all goes well. But the sudden onset of hurricane force winds with thick snow and bone-chilling temperatures and the ever-present threat of avalanches can thwart even the best-lead expeditions. Now imagine queues forming as dozens of light-headed, oxygen-starved climbers wait their turn to clip onto fixed lines, to slowly plod their way through knee-deep snow in the "death zone," to climb their personal Everest.

Now remember among these are often men and women with little or no experience, suffering hallucinations and at the very limits of their endurance. Yes... Everest is dangerously over-crowded.

time's winged chariot

I Googled "time" quotations and found there are dozens. We are obsessed with it and rightly so. This morning I found, and was reminded of, so many sharp and witty statements about the passage of time that I can't pick a favourite.

We frivolously waste our time until one day it dawns on us that our time is finite. It depends on our character but we either develop "ostrich syndrome" or face mortality by drawing a will, draft final letters of request and instruction and purge our lives of all unnecessary possessions and distractions.

By middle-age I had accepted I was never going to be an astronaut or an activist, a politician or a pole-vaulter, gregarious or dynamic, a leader or regulator. Then it became a race against time to achieve realistic short-term goals. I wrote my memoirs at age forty and recently added another decade's worth. Putting a life in order is a continuing task though not an endless one, as the Grim Reaper will doubtless call time before I am entirely ready.

I narrowed my interests to music, motorcycling, photography, writing and reading. There is no time for any more... but maybe there is. I rekindled my boyhood interest in astronomy and began researching serious telescopes. I love to catalogue but I don't have time to map the known universe. I would nonetheless like to see with my own eyes the light which left distant galaxies hundreds of millions of years ago. A telescope is poised delicately on the back-burner for now while I pursue an avid interest in Science-Fiction novels, a new offshoot interest which thieves more of my time.

It takes time to write a novel. Sooner or later I will make space in my schedule to expand one of my short stories because, well... because don't we all (the aspiring immortals among us anyway) want to leave a permanent mark behind? First I need to think of all the right words, then sift them into the right order and finally push myself boldly into the arena of rejection - the hard part.

Oh, and I nearly forgot genealogy, another time-consuming interest which has filled many a gigabyte on my hard drive. I have unearthed the names and brief details of over a thousand lives which took many centuries to live. Wouldn't it be amazing to talk to those long-dead souls and discover how they filled their time?

Never before has there been so much to worry about yet so much astonishing complacency. As we rush towards the Age of Aquarius, the Internet bombards us with conspiracy theories: 9/11, Roswell, the Jesus myth, GM crops, global warming, world domination, 2012, Kennedy, Bilderberg and on and on and on... They are probably all true and all inter-related.

It seems likely that later this century a New World Order will see a much depleted global population micro-chipped under the rule of a single planetary government. I can't do anything about that but despite trimming down, you see, I have too many diversions and not enough hours in the day.

Oh well...

After three months of running my times continue to fall. My favourite outing of 3.21 miles is down to 28 mins 55 secs. I ran a total distance of eighty-nine miles in July. The temperature stayed level at 28C (82F) but I forged ahead and ran every day. I think it is time I started writing every day too, while there is still time.

"But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near."

To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell
1621-1678

Dive-bombed by herring gulls

(What shall I listen to? Old, new, borrowed or blue..?)

... must be a herring gull chick, he thought, taking in the dull brown plumage with the huge size. Wonder why its sitting in the middle of the road.

Doctor: “What seems to be the matter with you?”
PV: “Everything doc and I’ve got it bad.”
Doctor: “Want to talk about it?”
PV: “Nope. I prefer to shut my mouth and keep my thoughts to myself all day… like I always do.”
Doctor: “Well, keep taking the pills and I’ll see you when I see you.”
PV: "Rot in hell arsehole."

Is that a pterodactyl? An ominous 4 foot six wingspan silhouetted against the scudding rain clouds made him fantasize Jurassically for a moment. With Kamikaze yells the shape plummeted toward him, veering aside at the last moment. Fuck, it’s the parent bird protecting its strayed young. Repeatedly it screamed in low and fast with raptor-like talons outstretched. Hey even the wildlife has it in for me…

It’s all downhill from here pal. You’re 49 and your best years are long over. The doc doesn’t give a damn, the world isn’t waiting for you, the gulls are suspicious of you…

He held similar conversations in his head all day. His favourites were about guilt, shame and self-recrimination. He did a good job of chastising himself. That seemed a more effective use of time than waiting for someone else to do it.

I won’t bother talking to you unless I love you, he said to no one in particular. I want to live on a desert island. He had a big heart and a head full of compassion but people barged into him in the street like he was invisible. How could he ever talk to people who were so oblivious to his sweet nature? He needed to be alone, that was the stark truth of it.

Some idiot shrink had told him, try to think of all the good things you have achieved. You have so much to be grateful for and proud of. He had never bought that. He was way off course for his usual lunchtime walk, even the gulls sensed that. The time on his wrist was well past lunch but he kept walking. Today he would make a decision.

He had a sharp plot for a novel in his head but he kept chipping away at it til all that was left was a series of fragments. Perhaps he would try piecing them together again soon.

SHUT UP! he screamed at the voices in his head. If the fools at work had only known how my depression and anxiety was crippling my physical health. Why had he never shrieked this to the banking fools, There is nothing wrong with my mental fortitude but you are hammering a square peg into a round hole and I won’t fit. I will last as long as I can but the strain you are placing on my emotional health is directly reducing my physical health. My immune system is failing – I am getting sick. It is not possible to be this miserable in my head for decades and for it to have no effect on my body.

With this admission at least now he would have a few things to say to the doc next time he went. Now, where the hell did I park my car?

Love

“If something is beyond your sphere of influence you should stop trying to control it.” This maxim makes logical sense but is a nearly impossible code to live by when it is very human to try to change something in order to improve it. When some factor stubbornly resists my efforts I feel anxious and fretful, even hurt. Everyone knows which things are indisputably beyond our power to alter (like gravity and the weather) but some things appear tantalisingly close enough to change. People, perceptions, places…

I hear you say, “There are only two certainties in life, taxes and death.” Everything else is a lottery, I know that, yet frustration sets in when I fail to improve factors which shape my daily existence. I am still learning to accept the beauty of things as they are and to stop striving for perfection. But if I regard much of my life as highly important am I doomed by the following formula? ANXIETY = UNCERTAINTY x IMPORTANCE

I suffer anxiety because I get wrapped up in a web of perceptions and misperceptions. What do people think, what do I think of people? Even those who say perceptions don’t matter are fibbing. Fundamentally the common man wants to be liked or at the very least to meet with approval. Fear of rejection makes us try to mould ourselves. Only the most selfish could truly care less.

Perhaps a new way to look at this is to say only the trivial falls short of perfection. The important things are already perfect. Like Nature, we can’t improve upon nature in all its majesty and glory. Art in all its forms only mimics nature so is close to perfection. Love is unconditional and forever – the very definition of perfection. One day soon I will learn to live in these true terms, in a state where anxiety melts away.

“But it all boils down to one quotable phrase,
if you love something give it away.”
Bright Eyes – One Foot in Front of the Other

The Remedy

Nature is notoriously parsimonious with pleasure so many try to engineer their own. Throughout recorded time humans have sought a higher level of happiness to soften the hard edges of life. Lush leaves in Amazonian jungles have long competed with fiery liquids distilled from grain. The trouble is, chemical stimulants have a woefully short-lived effect on mood. Mind-altering they may be, but not for long.

I wanted a happiness molecule, a slice of hormone pie. "Anyone know how this hypothalamus works?" I might have shouted. "How do I dial up more Adrenaline, Testosterone or Serotonin?" Many years ago I swallowed a big daily ration of liquid brewed from hops to numb my pain and distort reality into something more sufferable. I chose to swamp my brain’s natural chemical balance rather than try to understand it. "Hey bartender, gimme a pint of Endorphin!"

I read but failed to grasp the wise words of philosophers who spoke of the courage to change what I can, the strength to accept what I can’t and the wisdom to distinguish between the two. I was miserable at work, at home and at play but instead of addressing those issues and developing solutions I drank the day away and pretended tomorrow was light years away.

What I really wanted was steady and reliable happiness but my immature mind and undeveloped aspirations had not figured out the most effective solution. Oh, and I was also waiting for a certain someone to be born and grow up, although I didn’t know that then…

***
In 2006 these events have happened to me concurrently.

Divorce
Early retirement
Major change in life habits
Sons leaving home
Sale of house
Emigration

I show signs of anxiety but they pass. Matters beyond my control still frustrate me but I take a deep breath. In my thirties I would have collapsed under the weight but approaching fifty I have somehow acquired the strength to cope with these experiences.

I wonder if you can ever proclaim you are cured of the thought processes associated with addiction but certainly the evil seed can be rendered dormant or even impotent. Skills acquired during sobriety form a foundation and it is up to us what we build on it. For many years I regarded building that foundation as my sole objective.

My long march through time took me through bland countryside, along narrow, mundane roads. I saw the horizon but distant panoramic vistas remained just that. I existed in a world of waiting, strengthening my foundation. Eventually I had put sufficient time and distance between me and my youthful demons for enthusiasm and interest to raise their sleeping heads. I began looking more closely at my surroundings.

True, I had achieved some stability and reached a plateau of comfort. But there must be more than this, oh so much more…

***

I had tricked myself into believing I was waiting only for some catalyst to explode me from my rut but in truth I had been prepared for longer than I thought. When love came she arrived hard and fast without warning but I was ready. No respecter of age or geography she wrenched me into a new life of excitement and potential, a beautiful life in which two souls can live like one.

Every day a natural chemical rush tells me this is life and how it should be lived.

"All I want is 20/20 vision
A total portrait with no omissions
All I want is a vision of you"
Blondie – Picture This

Train Life

I am early and see the scarlet bullet arrive. It slows and disgorges its load of people who were somewhere else and now are here. I take a seat by the window and rest my head back gently to watch as the carriage fills. Humanity boards, hurrying to meet deadlines and lovers.

The whistle shrieks and we roll. Bright steel rails bear the crushing weight of flesh and blood, a precious cargo of sinners and thieves. Our pasts recede with the flashing fields and a future rushes near through county and shire.

Now the train reaches cruising speed. We scorch through tiny stations that timetables forgot. 90mph yet still my retina burns with the brief image of a platform and a scallop-edged canopy, painted magenta and cream. A solitary man with a small brown case stands patiently awaiting his Brief Encounter.

My eye wanders the carriage, absorbing the faces, the hands and the shoes. A loud woman laughs and I gaze at her fat plain features. No one would look twice, I glance at her empty ring finger. A middle-aged businesswoman taps the keys of her notebook then stops and considers the ceiling. Satisfied with her ruminations she resumes tapping. No ring.

I don’t need to be here, I have no reason. Nothing is drawing me, nothing pushing or forcing but I chose to ride the train. Am I going out or coming home? I forget which.

A white-haired man in front is doing Sudoku, I can see through the gap in the seats he has two number sevens on one line and a plantation of nasal hair. His crumbling wife sees neither.

A pretty girl in jeans has stood alongside me, “May I?” she asks pointing to the seat beside me. “Sure.” I reply, shuffling closer to the window. She smiles back and opens her magazine to read about a lifestyle she would like. Over breakfast the same sweet smile had screamed at her boyfriend and told him to rot in hell. I turn away to look at the meadows and trees and happy cows.

We charge through an embankment that is littered with vintage Coca Cola cans, bleached under thirty summer suns. I see fluorescent jackets carrying black sacks, they pick litter with long sticks. Treasures tossed from rolling thunder.

Ahead I see him reach his lumpy rucksack from the rack, a man of slender stature carrying his depression in his father’s old luggage. His face is dry but his tears flow inside, I can tell. As he shuffles by under his crippling load our eyes meet and I nod. He grimaces back. He wears a ring.

We slow through marshalling yards and sidings. My phone vibrates and I withdraw it from my jeans, glance at the message and return it to my pocket. “Yes, I’m nearly there,” I think.

I have not spoken more than a single word to a single soul yet all about me there is chatter and life. Absently I pull the phone back out and switch it off. Now the green pastures are grey walls and white glass and I realise we have stopped. People are queuing in the aisle. Lives in motion, impatient.

“…if you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.” That familiar chiding voice whispers deep inside my head. The whistle shrieks again but I have stayed on the train. I missed my stop, so what!

A new view seeps in my window, new names and signs. New rails steer my present towards a precious future. I haven’t been this way before.

Fresh Air

For years now I have breathed mostly conditioned air. Occasionally I have tried stale air, hot air and even rarefied air but mostly conditioned. Perhaps I was conditioned into thinking this is the only kind of air there is, the only worthwhile air. Two weeks ago I turned off that dubious life-support system and I have since inhaled nothing but free air. Any change of diet takes some getting used to, right?

When the Corporation chooses humidity level, temperature range and fan assistance you just accept your air how it is served up. But what if they've been providing you with the wrong kind of air all along, what if they've been slowly poisoning you is it possible to recover? Yes, but slowly. I'm not expecting to feel ten years younger overnight.

In some countries I think there would be a law against passive air-conditioning. Not in the UK though, the Nanny State tells us what is best for us and our Corporations duly obey. Windows are screwed shut lest we should breathe the intoxicating air of freedom.

…

In my house we have a new air freshener in the form of a shiny white plastic box complete with discreet, green blinking light. At pre-set intervals it delivers a charge of scent with a wheezy cough. The cat's head swivels towards it in surprise every time and I stare wide-eyed at the cat wondering if it has flu! Within seconds the air is tinged with lavender. This is all well and good but I find the alarming delivery method vastly more entertaining than the fragrance.

Anyway does a delicate smell count as fresh air? On balance I think I prefer to open windows and admit the regulation mixture of oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen!

These are the Days of Our Lives

So I fell unceremoniously back to earth...

Ten days on and I'm still feeling somewhat detached from reality. I watch a TV banking commercial and think - I don't work for that household name any more. I can please myself today; what shall I do, where shall I go? Well I'm varying my routine and doing what takes my fancy. Domestic chores are fine by me, I like cleaning, washing, polishing and tidying. No one organises my day, not even me.

Blue skies and a thin watery sun entice me into taking the bike out. Although dry it is only deceptively fine and the bitter cold soaks into my bones. A ten mile round trip to the DIY Superstore was sufficient today. Swirling leaves caught my eye this afternoon so I unexpectedly spent two hours with a noisy toy blowing them into a giant drift and filling sack after sack after sack. I ate no lunch because I wasn't hungry.

Where have all the bloggers gone? I trimmed my blogroll a couple of months ago but I need to do it again. Don't be offended if I drop a link - so many have ceased posting and commenting and moved on that I need to have a clearout. I'm not very good at doing peripheral so I am sticking to hardcore from now.

You'd have to be deaf and blind to miss Arctic Monkeys, the hype machine is in overdrive. The debut album is smart and very self-assured and their lyrics will stand up to close scrutiny. British influences abound but the result is individual. Hard rock meets Indie, intelligent, articulate and acerbic and I'm going to sidestep any thoughts of comparisons.

The other new CD on my hi-fi is the debut from The Kooks. This is instantly accessible and inevitably will be seen as the album The Libertines should have made. Gritty tales of urban life over scorching melodies and slabs of guitar. My kind of twenty-year-olds, enough said.

Good heavens look at the time! I need to crack on with planning a lazy itinerary for tomorrow.

Library on a pin head

I'm feeling somewhat disjointed. Picture, title, text and lyric have only tenuous links. Things are getting smaller and thinner and have fewer obvious controls. Soon we will operate stuff by merely thinking about it. Anyway this year's batteries have worn out and the new gadgets are broken so I watch the swirling dry leaves and gaze at the ice blue sky and think about winter. Somehow I need to restart the generator and drive some effort into the New Year. Will this be the year that brings contentment? Let's get through to spring first, nothing much happens before then.

I don't go to the cinema because it is full of people and the films are too long. I like to watch in the comfort of my own home with a pause button. I loved "X-Files" when it first screened on Sky TV in the UK in 1993. But by Season Three it was given a primetime slot on BBC1 and cult status had definitely worn off. "Quit while you're ahead" doesn't seem to apply when there are commercial pressures being brought to bear. I sweated out a couple more Seasons with diminishing interest as the golden goose dropped base metal eggs until director Chris Carter let loose his creative attention on "Millennium." It was deliciously dark, shadowy, moody and unfathomable, in fact everything "X-Files" no longer was.

Carter had the opportunity to start a new cult and he took it. He continued to churn out Nine Seasons of "X-Files" to appease the masses but sneaked "Millennium" onto our screens with almost no fanfare. I like this form of gritty, realistic drama with a trace of the paranormal. Episodes are delivered in manageable one hour packages, each with a beginning a middle and an end, yet sufficient continuity for me to develop an affinity with the characters and situations. The postman just delivered me a nice chunky boxed set of the complete "Millennium" Seasons One to Three. Something to look forward to.

Each of us has opportunity, we just need to nurture our ability and develop a motive. I started reading blogs over a year ago but barely a handful of my original discoveries survive. So for many there was opportunity and ability but the motive failed. Isn't that the hardest thing, to keep going? Then to keep going and keep going...

We talked about music lately. There are very few artists where I can stick the proverbial pin in their discography, not many cut gem after gem. I chose to review the Bowie album simply because it had a big early influence on me but there are others I could have chosen by different artists. Top of the shortlist might be Pink Floyd, Radiohead or REM there are very few duds in those archives.

For most their star burns brightly and briefly. Sales figures never lie, take a look at any catalogue of hit albums. Run your finger down the "number of weeks on the charts" column and the zenith of an artist's career becomes very apparent. The buying public only parts with cash for months on end when the product is worth it. I won't name names but consider various dinosaurs still lumbering around today and now look at their performance in the 1970s. I think you’ll find a string of two or three number one albums each spending over a year on the charts followed by umpteen releases barely making the lower reaches of the top forty for a month.

The creative peak is very high and very pointed. Very few can sit at the top continually breathing the thin air of success. For the rest I am thankful because they bring variety streaking in low, hard and fast into our mundane lives. They light up our existence and bring inspiration, all credit to them for "burning up on re-entry."

A long, dark January evening stretches out ahead so I’ll settle back into my armchair, laptop close by and perhaps watch an Episode of "Millennium." Later I could surf the music channels to try and catch the next skyrocket, who knows I may enjoy the ride.

"Can you take me back to that
Place where stars glow
Comets swarm like fireflies
Outside your window"The Stills – Lola Stars and Stripes

Writing about words about writing

This is my favourite dictionary. My infuriating eye for detail compels me to tell you it weighs in at sixteen pounds and has 450,000 definitions. If it isn’t in here, it hasn’t been coined. Sometimes the words tumble over each other in their excitement to get out, at others they must be coaxed gently...

Writing scares me. I fear the blank page and the blinking cursor so I am forever noting interesting potential titles and preparing subject matter. A tall glass of ice-cold Diet Coke, beaded with condensation sits at my side as I trawl my list. Music off to permit total concentration. If the family is in I wear tight elbow/forearm support against my dreaded RSI and type, if they’re out I plug in the mic and speak aloud and freely to the PC.

Ready, steady go...

Once I thought more words made better sense. Now I understand they only confuse. The clever trick is to make your point using the fewest words possible. I can’t banish adjectives and adverbs entirely from my page, so I try to choose them carefully. A noun improves with qualification but becomes muddy with an adjectival clause. A verb is perhaps not the right verb if it requires an adverb.

An image forms in my mind, part of a story I want to tell. I want to describe the view so the reader sees it too. I Imagine videotape rolling, describe exactly what I see, especially the trivial and keep to the plot. Painting a picture with words that approach the subject from an unusual angle can make it spring off the page in colour.

I select a recent photograph (from the five or six I take every day) relevant to my thoughts. Next I define the limits of my subject. Now I plot a beginning, a middle and an end. Finally I am ready to write. The shorter the better, a reader will grow bored after a thousand words. I dream up enough phrases to attract attention but hold some back. Over-egg the cake, and that rich diet makes everyone bilious. The best results come quickly and without effort. No good hurrying the words, the harder you chase them around your head the deeper they hide.

Kill the PC, slip on my trainers and take a walk. I pick up my MP3 player on the way out, press in the ear-buds and scroll through four hundred albums. ‘Kaiser Chiefs’ will do today. Listen hard to the lyrics (don’t forget I need a lyric quote for my blog too.) Today’s words will emerge later, when I have stopped thinking so hard and the coast is clear.

Middle-aged forgetfulness often robs me of my best, most startling thoughts. Now I know I must snatch them from the space between eyes and screen and commit them to Word© before they are lost forever. Spell-check, proof read etc... I want beautiful prose, deep thinking and iron-clad, copper-bottomed accuracy. Mostly I fall short of my aspirations. I pour another impossibly tall glass of ice-cold Diet Coke.

I am a true Virgo, demanding perfection in myself as well as others. I keep writing and refuse to admit I am human...

"I know, I feel it in my bones,
I'm sick, I'm tired of staying in control."
Kaiser Chiefs - Everyday I Love You Less and Less

Forever touched and changed

Enough of frivolity let's get back to bleak issues... I took these bottles out of a cupboard especially to photograph them. I keep them as a reminder. Someone who drinks twice a week for pleasure may never see the full horror which alcohol can visit upon a human being. Please continue drinking twice a week and enjoy the chemical high and the stimulus to your conversation. You have no problem and never will have. In fact there is no need to read this warning. You are so lucky.

 

Anyone who used to drink to control shaking and who could not manage a single day without eventually passing into a stupor might read on. Despite eleven long years of sobriety I am astonished how near temptation always is. The inner voice still murmers “Just one won’t hurt.” Oh dear my friend no, that way lies madness. Let me tell you without prettying it up: That’s fucking crap it’ll kill you. You see once you have been touched by this curse you have it forever.

Last week I had my recurring dream. I am swallowing two or three cans of beer an evening and waking early with no hangover. I’ve cracked it, social drinking is a reality again! But all that euphoria evaporates as soon as I’m on the hook, I quickly move on to total loss of control and drink everything in the house. I am at square one again. It cheated me. I awake in a sweat, scared but sober.

My work colleagues know I never attend Christmas parties, leaving parties, birthday lunches, retirement get-togethers or social evenings. They know my reason and I think they respect it. I hate the sight of people losing self-restraint, I would rather drink bleach than sit in a bar with a Perrier while my colleagues drink. I hold strong views but hell I joined the fucking club, I think that entitles me.

Please don’t tell me I’m negative, there’s very little I’ve discovered about prolonged drinking that’s at all positive. Remember I am not talking about the lucky few who drink yet never suffer the craving of addiction. This is about the luckless souls for whom discipline is lost. Drinking has had such a profound effect on me and those around me that I’m hardly going to be ambivalent am I? Hear this message clearly: “If you pick up again you don’t start off at the beginning. The slate is not wiped clean, you pick up precisely where you left off, in the fast lane at full speed.”

 

Since quitting booze in 1993 and cigarettes in 1997 I have saved a small large fortune. I am not bragging just stating facts. The financial incentive was huge for me. I take holidays, I've paid off the mortgage early and bought things I would not otherwise have afforded. More importantly I have probably saved or potentially lengthened my life.

I have been changed irreparably by drink, I am less confident now and I feel like a huge part of my life has been hacked off and discarded. I am more emotional, alive and alert than ever before. I wish I could be a normal drinker, but I can't. I can never say 'never again.' You can’t can you, but I know I benefit enormously from the words of wisdom and encouragement that I read on the blogs of my readers, former drinkers and non-drinkers alike. Thank you all, my friends.

“I once called you my friend, now I'm stumblin' once again
I'm slurrin' words & bustin' bottles over the heads of saints.
I know it's been so long, but I still see you when your gone
I still feel the weight of that look upon your face almost every day.”

Slobberbone – Stumblin’

Mapping the known universe

Rand McNally folding laminated maps are beautifully developed creations. Fold them any way you like to get that all-important city squared up on the front, yet they faithfully spring back to shop-fresh configuration on demand. I have several but none can help me with my fear of the unknown. Recently I claimed a desire to try something new. There was a faint whiff of burning as I applied more thought to this. Is anything truly new and am I choosing it?

Rand McNallys are good but the ultimate journey planner would be some fabled life-map. But already the thought is flawed, if a map exists why plan for or against the inevitable? If all destiny is pre-ordained would it be possible even to alter the number of breaths we take? Inhaling just one extra lungful of diesel particulates may trigger the respiratory condition which carries us off. Or holding our breath as the truck passes could save us. The life-map is spread out before us in beautifully horrific detail. Do we genuinely choose our path or are the requisite number of breaths already programmed?

Proponents of either theory have compelling arguments. I favour free choice and influence with just a dash of pre-disposition. A drinker’s path is mapped with his first deep drink; a mountaineer’s course is charted with his first climb. Still their ultimate fates are not yet sealed. Opportunities will arise for them to reconsider their direction but if they are blinkered to choice heaven help them. What if they pick up a voicemail too late, “Knocked, you were out.” - Opportunity.

Frightening indeed if all that shocking knowledge of the future were available. What would be the point of aspirations? Why bother to nurture friendships? No need to save or insure. No gambles, no leap of faith, no risk, no time for grandchildren. Strike another day off the calendar, install a line of countdown code on your PC and check the remaining days with each boot. We are born and we will die. We should not dwell on it. No, better for all our sakes that we interact as if we were immortal. Living our lives in the subjunctive tense is the only way.

A little planning is fine though. To know where you are going, first you must know where you have been. Then you just might know when you arrive. Attach a strong rope to the known then journey towards the unknown. Steadily or headlong depending on your preference. I’m a cautious guy so I’ll make slow progress and take frequent backward glances. You may be impulsive, cut the rope and jump but I recommend you have a Rand McNally in your pocket.

I have road atlases of UK, France, Western Europe and USA (just in case.)

"She said 'I’ll show you a picture, a picture of tomorrow, there’s
Nothing changes its all sorrow.' Oh no please don’t show me!"
The Libertines – Horror Show

Shopping

Americans would be so disappointed at the UK shopping experience. There is shrivelled choice, crippling prices, shoddy merchandise and outrageous parking charges. Couple that with bad-mouthed shoppers, aggressive shop lifters and gum snapping sales assistants and it all makes for a day you don't want to repeat often.

The UK Mall is a shadow of its American cousin; all style and no substance. Water features and murals trying manfully to compensate for uninspiring goods. Before buying audio/video goods of any quality it is essential to have pre-arranged a second mortgage. PCs are beyond the reach of many, clothes are only for the very wealthy and lunchtime snacks are affordable only by the gentry.

I am of course referring to the shopping arenas that the big corporate players want you to patronise. Stray off the high street though, widen your search to the outskirts and you may just find a little gem of an arcade. A row of shoppes with bowed Victorian fronts and musty interiors, sole traders who know and value the returning customer. Who offer free courteous advice and after-sales service. These are a dying breed and they have no descendents.

My American friends, I know you do not all embrace the Mall or the Plaza but we British can shop like there is no tomorrow and believe me we know both bargains and quality when we see them. Do not take Factory Outlets for granted. Don't scamper straight through Dillard's. Laugh at Wal-Mart if you must but recognise that the "pile it high, sell it cheap" motto can be made to work.

Enjoy what is available to you but don't expect the same here. If you do bring dollars to the UK try town shops not out of town Shopping Centres. Calculate the number of dollars you think you may need then double it and bring more. We call this country 'Rip-Off Britain' and we know, we live here.

British travellers take extra suitcases to America. We are used to CDs at $25, Levis at $90, Nike trainers at $120, laptops starting at $1500. I rest my case...

"I'm gonna give you the slip
I'll walk down the mall, stand over by the wall."
Blondie - One Way or Another