Before writing anything, get yourself in the right frame of mind. George Orwell said: ‘All writers are vain, selfish and lazy,’ and if you’re careful you can use this as the basis for your whole personality. It’s ok for you to be moody and cynical; it’s ok to eat badly, drink heavily and smoke endlessly; it’s ok for you to get up every day to the theme tune to Neighbours because you’re a creative person and you don’t run with the common herd. If someone should point out your deficiencies as a human being you can always justify your behavior by telling yourself that people don’t understand you because you’re ‘different’. Don’t for a moment consider the alternative – that people don’t understand you because you’re a twat.
Revel in your status as an outsider; cultivate an air of aloofness and detachment. Become a master of the wry smile and faraway look. If you are forced to interact with anyone, make sure you’ve got a ready arsenal of witty and intellectual comments pinched from Have I Got News For You or whatever panel show you’ve heard on Radio 4 that week.
Carry a Moleskine notebook wherever you go and only write in it when plenty of people are around to see you do it. If anyone is foolish enough to ask you what you’re doing, say something vague and dismissive like: ‘Oh, I’m a writer’. Be modest and understated, they’ll fill in the gaps themselves and assume that you’re scribbling something more profound than ‘To Do’ lists and bitter little rants about society.
Assume a superior tone and smile knowingly when they tell you about the novel based on 9/11 that they’ve planned out in their heads. Later, you can ridicule them for their naivety as you sit down to write your novel based on 9/11 that you just haven’t got round to starting yet.
Open up a new Word document full of good intentions, then quickly become distracted by working out the American route for your book tour and by developing amusing anecdotes to tell to the Guardian Review when they come to interview you. You might also want to pick yourself out a Brazilian supermodel to date when you’re famous. Browse the internet for a while to find one that’s suitable. Spend the rest of the evening doing this.
With the appropriate mental attitude you can now be a writer. However, it’s important that you should avoid actually writing anything. That way, your potential can remain as vast and beautiful as the Pacific Ocean and you’ll never have to deal with the possibility that it really might only be a small drainage ditch filled with stagnant water.
If, by some quirk of chance, you do happen to write something, make sure that you lock it away in a drawer and do nothing other than mention it wistfully from time to time. On no account show it to anyone else. If you do, you run the risk of people realising that instead of the next James Joyce, you’re really just a pretentious little shit.
21 December 2010
13 October 2010
How to be a Henchman
Obviously, if you look even vaguely Oriental, you’re a black-belt in martial arts. This goes without saying – everyone knows that all oriental people are karate masters. If you and a few of your pajama-clad colleagues manage to corner the hero, don’t attack him all at once, go one at a time so he’s got plenty of opportunity to demonstrate how much better at fighting he is than you. Never use any kind of gun, go hand-to-hand whenever possible. If you do happen to have something exciting looking like nunchucks or a massive sword, wait for your colleagues to clear a path so the hero can give you a worried glance before you swing wildly at the space just above his head. Lose the weapon quickly and fall unconscious as soon as he lands a punch on you.
You should also use any unusual traits you might have to set you apart from the rest of the henchmen. A physical handicap, for example, can be turned to your advantage. If you’ve lost a hand, don’t get a fully-functioning and much more useful prosthetic replacement, get a bloody big hook instead. If you’re missing an eye, consider an eye-patch or a weirdly coloured glass-eye at the very least. Be inventive.
When you’re around your boss, the Big Villain, just keep quiet and look hard. Don’t concern yourself with your boss’s motives or mental health and never ask questions. Stay silent whenever possible. If you must ask a question make sure it’s when you’re standing near the boss’s new Heath Robinson style killing device so that he can test it on you to demonstrate how ruthless and psychotic he is.
If you’re given a gun to use, don’t clean it. This will ensure that it blocks at an opportune moment. Don’t check how much ammunition you’ve used either. If you wear glasses take them off – you need to be as poor a marksman as possible. When firing a machine gun, aim to produce a neat line of bullets at the feet of the hero rather than peppering his torso with holes.
If there’s a lake full of crocodiles or a handy snake pit, always loiter nearby. This will enable the hero to casually punch you into it as he runs past. If you’re still alive when the gunfight eventually starts, try to stand on something that’s high up. That way, you can plunge to your death after getting shot. Always flap your arms and scream when plunging.
Never look upwards in factories or dockyards in case you should notice that there’s something heavy dangling above your head. If you manage to get the hero exactly where you want him, keep your eyes on him at all times so that when his accomplice clubs you in the back of the head with the butt of a rifle, it comes as a complete surprise.
Above all, remember why you’re there. Nobody’s interested in your home life or your relationship with your father – leave all that emotional baggage back at the secret lair. Your role is to make the hero look good so know your place. That place is in a burnt out car or sprawled in the dust or floating in space or inside a crocodile. Wherever it happens to be, you can guarantee that you won’t be alive to watch the hero walk off with the girl at the end of the film.
Unless, of course, there’s a sequel.
You should also use any unusual traits you might have to set you apart from the rest of the henchmen. A physical handicap, for example, can be turned to your advantage. If you’ve lost a hand, don’t get a fully-functioning and much more useful prosthetic replacement, get a bloody big hook instead. If you’re missing an eye, consider an eye-patch or a weirdly coloured glass-eye at the very least. Be inventive.
When you’re around your boss, the Big Villain, just keep quiet and look hard. Don’t concern yourself with your boss’s motives or mental health and never ask questions. Stay silent whenever possible. If you must ask a question make sure it’s when you’re standing near the boss’s new Heath Robinson style killing device so that he can test it on you to demonstrate how ruthless and psychotic he is.
If you’re given a gun to use, don’t clean it. This will ensure that it blocks at an opportune moment. Don’t check how much ammunition you’ve used either. If you wear glasses take them off – you need to be as poor a marksman as possible. When firing a machine gun, aim to produce a neat line of bullets at the feet of the hero rather than peppering his torso with holes.
If there’s a lake full of crocodiles or a handy snake pit, always loiter nearby. This will enable the hero to casually punch you into it as he runs past. If you’re still alive when the gunfight eventually starts, try to stand on something that’s high up. That way, you can plunge to your death after getting shot. Always flap your arms and scream when plunging.
Never look upwards in factories or dockyards in case you should notice that there’s something heavy dangling above your head. If you manage to get the hero exactly where you want him, keep your eyes on him at all times so that when his accomplice clubs you in the back of the head with the butt of a rifle, it comes as a complete surprise.
Above all, remember why you’re there. Nobody’s interested in your home life or your relationship with your father – leave all that emotional baggage back at the secret lair. Your role is to make the hero look good so know your place. That place is in a burnt out car or sprawled in the dust or floating in space or inside a crocodile. Wherever it happens to be, you can guarantee that you won’t be alive to watch the hero walk off with the girl at the end of the film.
Unless, of course, there’s a sequel.
28 September 2010
What's In A Name
My name is Mark Jervis. My parents called me Mark because it couldn’t be shortened – if I’d been a girl, I would have been named Emma. Of course, instead of calling me Mark, everyone just shortened my surname instead. Throughout my life, all my friends, my teachers at school, work colleagues, girlfriends – all of them have called me Jerv. I much prefer it, it’s more unique. I know plenty of other Marks but I’ve never met another Jerv.
But, at the age of 35 when most people are putting Mr in front of their surnames, you’d expect to refer to someone using a term that’s a bit more responsible sounding than a nickname carried through from childhood. If someone outside of my family refers to me as Mark, it generally means that I’m doing something that requires a certain amount of seriousness or professionalism – something that befits my age, whereas Jerv represents a comforting friendliness and lack of formality.
This comes with problems though. When I have to introduce myself to someone as Jerv, I can’t help but feel self-conscious. It sounds a little wanky, a little needlessly zany as though I’m trying to impress my personality too heavily. I’ve met plenty of people who’ll shake your hand and say something like: ‘Hey, call me Groover,’ or ‘Hi, my friends know me as Stallionfist,’ and you instantly know what kind of person they are. The kind of person they are is a tit. Undoubtedly, I’m a tit as well – but I’m not sure I want it to be obvious from the very first words I speak to someone.
This week, I start University. Aside from all the people on my course there’ll be housemates and lots of new people to meet in social situations – all of which I’ll have to introduce myself to. I’ve faced this sort of situation before when travelling and the introductory conversation was always hideously confusing.
‘I’m Jerv,’ I’d say.
‘Sorry, you’re what?’
‘Jerv.’
‘Jev?’
‘No, Jerv. J.E.R.V.’
‘Jeff?’
‘Yes, OK, Jeff. I’m Jeff.’
It was like having a series of aliases. Everywhere I went was different. In Sydney I was Jeff; Melbourne: Jev; Adelaide: Jez; Perth: Jerz; Tasmania: Smurf (they’re strange on the south island). Granted there was often a language/accent barrier but I persisted, in spirit at least I retained my Jervness when it would have been so much easier to say: ‘I’m Mark’.
It didn’t matter so much back then because the people I generally met were only fleeting acquaintances. We’d stay in the same hostel room for a few days or work alongside each other for a while before we both moved on. The people at University however, will hopefully become closer friends that I’ll keep for much longer. If I don’t work out a way to effectively introduce myself, I could quite easily become Mark and lose Jerv completely.
As content as I am to abandon my career, leave friends behind and move to the other end of the country, there are some things that I don’t want to lose. One of those things is a sense of who I am and who I am is most definitely Jerv.
But, at the age of 35 when most people are putting Mr in front of their surnames, you’d expect to refer to someone using a term that’s a bit more responsible sounding than a nickname carried through from childhood. If someone outside of my family refers to me as Mark, it generally means that I’m doing something that requires a certain amount of seriousness or professionalism – something that befits my age, whereas Jerv represents a comforting friendliness and lack of formality.
This comes with problems though. When I have to introduce myself to someone as Jerv, I can’t help but feel self-conscious. It sounds a little wanky, a little needlessly zany as though I’m trying to impress my personality too heavily. I’ve met plenty of people who’ll shake your hand and say something like: ‘Hey, call me Groover,’ or ‘Hi, my friends know me as Stallionfist,’ and you instantly know what kind of person they are. The kind of person they are is a tit. Undoubtedly, I’m a tit as well – but I’m not sure I want it to be obvious from the very first words I speak to someone.
This week, I start University. Aside from all the people on my course there’ll be housemates and lots of new people to meet in social situations – all of which I’ll have to introduce myself to. I’ve faced this sort of situation before when travelling and the introductory conversation was always hideously confusing.
‘I’m Jerv,’ I’d say.
‘Sorry, you’re what?’
‘Jerv.’
‘Jev?’
‘No, Jerv. J.E.R.V.’
‘Jeff?’
‘Yes, OK, Jeff. I’m Jeff.’
It was like having a series of aliases. Everywhere I went was different. In Sydney I was Jeff; Melbourne: Jev; Adelaide: Jez; Perth: Jerz; Tasmania: Smurf (they’re strange on the south island). Granted there was often a language/accent barrier but I persisted, in spirit at least I retained my Jervness when it would have been so much easier to say: ‘I’m Mark’.
It didn’t matter so much back then because the people I generally met were only fleeting acquaintances. We’d stay in the same hostel room for a few days or work alongside each other for a while before we both moved on. The people at University however, will hopefully become closer friends that I’ll keep for much longer. If I don’t work out a way to effectively introduce myself, I could quite easily become Mark and lose Jerv completely.
As content as I am to abandon my career, leave friends behind and move to the other end of the country, there are some things that I don’t want to lose. One of those things is a sense of who I am and who I am is most definitely Jerv.
09 August 2010
4 Ads
Kitchen Roll
It begins with a generic housewife distraught over some kind of spillage. Luckily, she’s suddenly rescued from her despair by a man dressed vaguely like a bullfighter who quickly cleans everything up with just one sheet of kitchen roll. ‘I am Juan Sheet,’ he declares in a crap Spanish accent.
See what they’ve done there? Juan Sheet? In a Spanish accent that sounds like one sheet!
No, it doesn’t.
If you’re playing on a funny foreign accent to get ‘one’ from ‘Juan’ you can’t then completely ignore the same accent for the surname ‘Sheet’ which, if the pronunciation is consistent, becomes ‘shit’. The character’s name is either John Sheet or Juan Shit – you can’t have it both ways.
Ice Cream
The ad where there’s a daring heist that’s almost foiled because the woman who’s supposed to be monitoring the security cameras is distracted by eating a posh choc-ice. I saw this a few times thinking: ‘that bloke looks like Benicio Del Torro’. I never for a second imagined that it would actually turn out to be the real Benicio Del Torro. What on earth is he doing peddling ice-lollies? He can’t need the money, surely?
Bill Hicks said something once about being off the artistic roll-call forever as soon as you make an advert. It’s different for jobbing actors playing an anonymous part of course, but the celebrities who trade on their name or reputation, how can anyone believe a word that comes out of their mouths after they’ve demonstrated that their opinions can be bought?
It’s very easy therefore, to accuse people of ‘selling out’ but the reality is that most people have nothing to sell. That Alexandra woman off Pop Factor for example, it came as no surprise that after the first sniff of any kind of fame, she appeared on an ad for shampoo. You expect that sort of thing from someone like that, nobody has any kind of respect for her anyway, but Benicia Del Torro? I credited him with more integrity. He played Che Guevara for fuck’s sake.
Frozen Fish
One of the most established campaigns on the television, it remained unchanged for decades. Granted, they did briefly try to beef up the main character by turning him into a young, well-built stubbly hero rather than an old man with a white beard but the main thrust of the ads were essentially the same. A sea captain, the only adult on a boat crewed solely by children fed on frozen fish. Admittedly, these days that sounds like a very dodgy concept but it obviously worked and was instantly recognisable as a brand.
It’s quite a radical decision to replace that advertising heritage with a sinister polar bear living in a freezer. Whichever agency came up with that idea and sold it to the client deserves a medal for bravery. I hope they win some kind of award.
Computers
Some updated system thing for an inexplicably popular brand of computer. It’s one of those ads that’s supposed to last just 7 seconds and focuses on one element of this new system that either sounds hellish to work with or that Macs have been doing for years. This particular one boasts about a new secrecy function that enables the user to instantly hide whatever page they’ve been looking at. The example they use is a man who doesn’t want his wife to find out what present he’s planning to get for her.
Yessss. I’m sure that’s exactly what that new feature will be used for – hiding surprise gifts from your loved one.
I wonder how long the creative team were working on this idea before they came up with something that didn’t directly mention porn?
It begins with a generic housewife distraught over some kind of spillage. Luckily, she’s suddenly rescued from her despair by a man dressed vaguely like a bullfighter who quickly cleans everything up with just one sheet of kitchen roll. ‘I am Juan Sheet,’ he declares in a crap Spanish accent.
See what they’ve done there? Juan Sheet? In a Spanish accent that sounds like one sheet!
No, it doesn’t.
If you’re playing on a funny foreign accent to get ‘one’ from ‘Juan’ you can’t then completely ignore the same accent for the surname ‘Sheet’ which, if the pronunciation is consistent, becomes ‘shit’. The character’s name is either John Sheet or Juan Shit – you can’t have it both ways.
Ice Cream
The ad where there’s a daring heist that’s almost foiled because the woman who’s supposed to be monitoring the security cameras is distracted by eating a posh choc-ice. I saw this a few times thinking: ‘that bloke looks like Benicio Del Torro’. I never for a second imagined that it would actually turn out to be the real Benicio Del Torro. What on earth is he doing peddling ice-lollies? He can’t need the money, surely?
Bill Hicks said something once about being off the artistic roll-call forever as soon as you make an advert. It’s different for jobbing actors playing an anonymous part of course, but the celebrities who trade on their name or reputation, how can anyone believe a word that comes out of their mouths after they’ve demonstrated that their opinions can be bought?
It’s very easy therefore, to accuse people of ‘selling out’ but the reality is that most people have nothing to sell. That Alexandra woman off Pop Factor for example, it came as no surprise that after the first sniff of any kind of fame, she appeared on an ad for shampoo. You expect that sort of thing from someone like that, nobody has any kind of respect for her anyway, but Benicia Del Torro? I credited him with more integrity. He played Che Guevara for fuck’s sake.
Frozen Fish
One of the most established campaigns on the television, it remained unchanged for decades. Granted, they did briefly try to beef up the main character by turning him into a young, well-built stubbly hero rather than an old man with a white beard but the main thrust of the ads were essentially the same. A sea captain, the only adult on a boat crewed solely by children fed on frozen fish. Admittedly, these days that sounds like a very dodgy concept but it obviously worked and was instantly recognisable as a brand.
It’s quite a radical decision to replace that advertising heritage with a sinister polar bear living in a freezer. Whichever agency came up with that idea and sold it to the client deserves a medal for bravery. I hope they win some kind of award.
Computers
Some updated system thing for an inexplicably popular brand of computer. It’s one of those ads that’s supposed to last just 7 seconds and focuses on one element of this new system that either sounds hellish to work with or that Macs have been doing for years. This particular one boasts about a new secrecy function that enables the user to instantly hide whatever page they’ve been looking at. The example they use is a man who doesn’t want his wife to find out what present he’s planning to get for her.
Yessss. I’m sure that’s exactly what that new feature will be used for – hiding surprise gifts from your loved one.
I wonder how long the creative team were working on this idea before they came up with something that didn’t directly mention porn?
26 June 2010
Laserquesting with Children
My friend, Rich, was taking his twelve year old nephew to laserquest. There were a few complications, someone pulled out and he ended up with a spare place so asked me if I wanted to come along. OK, I said – I’d never been laserquesting before. Only as the three of us pulled into the car-park did it occur to me that I may be a little old to start now.
The reception area doubled up as a viewing gallery and café. On the walls were film posters – Saving Private Ryan; Enemy At The Gates; Full Metal Jacket - and I noticed that the food they were selling was suspiciously child orientated as it mainly involved crisps and various types of brightly coloured pop. My worries were soon confirmed when what seemed like a hundred kids turned up whooping and yelling, obviously wild with enthusiasm at the thought of being able to shoot each other with realistic looking weapons.
Rich was signing us in and I tugged at his sleeve to tell him that I’d made a horrible mistake but it was too late, he grinned at me and slid the sheet round for me to sign. The other laserquesters were listed by name and age: Darren, 10; Dean, 10, Troy, 11; Kyle, 12 – there were about fifteen of them and at the bottom was my name with the number 36 next to it.
‘You cheeky bastard, I’m 35,’ I said, as if that mattered when I was already twenty-three years older than my nearest contemporary. Of course, Rich was in the same situation as me but he was less conspicuous as he’s really small. By the time we’d got all the gear on he looked like a pudgy child with health problems whereas I towered over everyone by at least a foot. My combat jacket was so small that I couldn’t fasten it; the lead that led to my gun was too short and my head wouldn’t fit into the baseball cap so I had to balance it on top of my head like a girl at a finishing school who’s trying to correct her posture.
We were split into two teams: black and green, and just before we went out into the ‘combat arena’ we were joined by an older kid of perhaps fifteen. At least he was a bit taller and wasn’t part of the mass group of younger children. In fact, he was there alone. He’s probably there alone every Saturday morning as he clearly took the whole thing very seriously indeed. He was wearing wrap-around glasses, camouflage trousers, dog-tags and a black T-shirt that said ‘KILL ‘EM ALL’ written on it above a picture of a skull and two crossed rifles. He’d brought his own baseball cap too and I think he had his own gun – he’d probably even given it a name; Bessie or Old Sally or The Deadener or something. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a photo of his face on a news report in a few years followed by a shocked witness describing him as a ‘dangerous loner’.
Thankfully, he was put on the other team. I could imagine him being a nightmare to be alongside; barking out orders and tactics and generally spoiling the fun for everyone.
After a debriefing we were ushered out into the combat arena. It was an old warehouse that was partitioned off into sections using plasterboard. It was difficult to keep track of where you were as all the roomed places had several different entrances and there were lots of nooks and crannies you could shoot through. The black team – my team – had a base that was in the far corner and the green’s was a two-floored tower covered in camouflage netting with a German flag draped across the front. I guess that made us the goodies.
To shoot someone, you had to aim at the sensor on their baseball cap. After 5 hits you were out of the game and had to get back to your base where a member of staff would set your counter back to zero. They called this ‘re-spawning’ which I presume is a term used in gaming that the children are familiar with - it also enables them to avoid talking too much about death and killing.
There were various games: one where we had to steal their flag; one where they had to steal ours; one where we each had to storm the other’s base; one where both sides had a VIP we had to protect and a couple of others that were pretty much a free-for-all.
It felt awkward at first. I was concerned about what the parents in the viewing gallery must be thinking to see a fat, bearded man lumbering awkwardly around a warehouse taking pot-shots at their children. I also tried to take advantage of my age, falling into what I imagined was a teacherly role by giving my team instructions and tactical advice. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no natural authority whatsoever and the kids didn’t even pretend to listen, they just scattered instantly and carried on darting around all over the place.
I gave up trying to organise them and pretty soon we all bonded. After each game I’d kneel down to give them high-fives and complicated rapper-style handshakes. However, I kept quiet when they told each other how many hits they’d got and compared statistics from the readout on their guns. I kept quiet because it was immediately apparent that I wasn’t anywhere near as good at this as they were. They were a lot smaller and had more energy than me which made them incredibly difficult to aim at. Plus, I had a tendency to shoot them in the face rather than the hat.
It’s not like paintballing where there’s an incentive not to get shot because getting shot really fucking hurts, instead you might as well take a few risks as it doesn’t matter how many times you’re killed. Therefore, I spent the first couple of games going on daring suicide raids which ended up in me dying instantly. I became a bit of a joke among the staff as I appeared every 30 seconds or so for re-spawning.
I had to stop that pretty quickly though. I was absolutely exhausted and sweating so much that I became worried that I might short out the electronics in my baseball cap. From then on, I focused on a sneakier, more defensive role. I’d hang back, find a good position and shoot at anything that came near. Unfortunately, this included members of my own team who I wasn’t quick enough to recognise when they ran across my field of vision. This confirmed what I’d previously suspected – that I wouldn’t be any good at all in a war. I haven’t got the right sort of brain for it and my spatial awareness is appalling. Halfway through I was hidden behind a stack of packing crates happily sniping at anyone who wandered into my eyeline when I suddenly got shot. Then I got shot again, and again, and again. I couldn’t see anyone at all and it was only when there was a shout behind me that I turned to see a line of three kids all casually firing into the back of my head.
I’m pretty sure the fifteen year-old rampage-waiting-to-happen, wasn’t one of them. I was thankful for this because every time he got me he’d run up to me and tell me so. He’d tell me what a great shot it had been and how good he was. ‘Well done’, I’d say through gritted teeth, then I’d call him a little shit as I trudged off to get re-spawned. I shot him a few times too of course – but it was difficult to tell how many as all the kids looked the same in hats and combat jackets. When I saw it was him I just smiled, pleased that I’d resisted the urge to sneak up behind him, club him with the butt of my gun and stamp on his glasses.
The hour was over very quickly – and I’d enjoyed it in a strange kind of way. I handed my sweat-drenched jacket and baseball cap back shame-facedly, wondering how they were going to clean them and went back up to the café area. I briefly talked with some of the black team about the films featured in the posters on the wall - none of which the children should have seen as they weren’t old enough. I realised that all the films were anti-war in tone but the laserquesters were more concerned with the action sequences and how realistic they were. After more high-fives and odd handshakes, Rich, his nephew and me left.
At the bottom of the stairs, rampage-in-waiting was waiting for us. ‘Shot you’ he said to Rich with a smug look on his face. Rich ignored him.
‘Shot you’ he said to Rich’s nephew, pointing his fingers at him like a gun. Rich’s nephew ignored him.
‘Shot you,’ he said to me with a broad grin. I didn’t ignore him.
‘In all fairness, I shot you as well,’
‘Yeah, but I got you brilliantly. You never saw it coming.’
He had me there.
‘Why don’t you get yourself a girlfriend?’ I said and walked off without waiting for a reaction.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have resorted to Alan Partridge quotes, I should have just reminded him that my team won and his team lost. Actually, I shouldn’t have said anything at all – but that’s what war does to you; it strips away your civilised ways and turns you into a savage animal, spoiling for a fight and never backing down.
I just hope that when that kid does eventually flip – and he will flip – that he doesn’t remember me. I’ve heard that psychopaths can hold quite a grudge and I’m not very good at armed combat.
The reception area doubled up as a viewing gallery and café. On the walls were film posters – Saving Private Ryan; Enemy At The Gates; Full Metal Jacket - and I noticed that the food they were selling was suspiciously child orientated as it mainly involved crisps and various types of brightly coloured pop. My worries were soon confirmed when what seemed like a hundred kids turned up whooping and yelling, obviously wild with enthusiasm at the thought of being able to shoot each other with realistic looking weapons.
Rich was signing us in and I tugged at his sleeve to tell him that I’d made a horrible mistake but it was too late, he grinned at me and slid the sheet round for me to sign. The other laserquesters were listed by name and age: Darren, 10; Dean, 10, Troy, 11; Kyle, 12 – there were about fifteen of them and at the bottom was my name with the number 36 next to it.
‘You cheeky bastard, I’m 35,’ I said, as if that mattered when I was already twenty-three years older than my nearest contemporary. Of course, Rich was in the same situation as me but he was less conspicuous as he’s really small. By the time we’d got all the gear on he looked like a pudgy child with health problems whereas I towered over everyone by at least a foot. My combat jacket was so small that I couldn’t fasten it; the lead that led to my gun was too short and my head wouldn’t fit into the baseball cap so I had to balance it on top of my head like a girl at a finishing school who’s trying to correct her posture.
We were split into two teams: black and green, and just before we went out into the ‘combat arena’ we were joined by an older kid of perhaps fifteen. At least he was a bit taller and wasn’t part of the mass group of younger children. In fact, he was there alone. He’s probably there alone every Saturday morning as he clearly took the whole thing very seriously indeed. He was wearing wrap-around glasses, camouflage trousers, dog-tags and a black T-shirt that said ‘KILL ‘EM ALL’ written on it above a picture of a skull and two crossed rifles. He’d brought his own baseball cap too and I think he had his own gun – he’d probably even given it a name; Bessie or Old Sally or The Deadener or something. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a photo of his face on a news report in a few years followed by a shocked witness describing him as a ‘dangerous loner’.
Thankfully, he was put on the other team. I could imagine him being a nightmare to be alongside; barking out orders and tactics and generally spoiling the fun for everyone.
After a debriefing we were ushered out into the combat arena. It was an old warehouse that was partitioned off into sections using plasterboard. It was difficult to keep track of where you were as all the roomed places had several different entrances and there were lots of nooks and crannies you could shoot through. The black team – my team – had a base that was in the far corner and the green’s was a two-floored tower covered in camouflage netting with a German flag draped across the front. I guess that made us the goodies.
To shoot someone, you had to aim at the sensor on their baseball cap. After 5 hits you were out of the game and had to get back to your base where a member of staff would set your counter back to zero. They called this ‘re-spawning’ which I presume is a term used in gaming that the children are familiar with - it also enables them to avoid talking too much about death and killing.
There were various games: one where we had to steal their flag; one where they had to steal ours; one where we each had to storm the other’s base; one where both sides had a VIP we had to protect and a couple of others that were pretty much a free-for-all.
It felt awkward at first. I was concerned about what the parents in the viewing gallery must be thinking to see a fat, bearded man lumbering awkwardly around a warehouse taking pot-shots at their children. I also tried to take advantage of my age, falling into what I imagined was a teacherly role by giving my team instructions and tactical advice. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no natural authority whatsoever and the kids didn’t even pretend to listen, they just scattered instantly and carried on darting around all over the place.
I gave up trying to organise them and pretty soon we all bonded. After each game I’d kneel down to give them high-fives and complicated rapper-style handshakes. However, I kept quiet when they told each other how many hits they’d got and compared statistics from the readout on their guns. I kept quiet because it was immediately apparent that I wasn’t anywhere near as good at this as they were. They were a lot smaller and had more energy than me which made them incredibly difficult to aim at. Plus, I had a tendency to shoot them in the face rather than the hat.
It’s not like paintballing where there’s an incentive not to get shot because getting shot really fucking hurts, instead you might as well take a few risks as it doesn’t matter how many times you’re killed. Therefore, I spent the first couple of games going on daring suicide raids which ended up in me dying instantly. I became a bit of a joke among the staff as I appeared every 30 seconds or so for re-spawning.
I had to stop that pretty quickly though. I was absolutely exhausted and sweating so much that I became worried that I might short out the electronics in my baseball cap. From then on, I focused on a sneakier, more defensive role. I’d hang back, find a good position and shoot at anything that came near. Unfortunately, this included members of my own team who I wasn’t quick enough to recognise when they ran across my field of vision. This confirmed what I’d previously suspected – that I wouldn’t be any good at all in a war. I haven’t got the right sort of brain for it and my spatial awareness is appalling. Halfway through I was hidden behind a stack of packing crates happily sniping at anyone who wandered into my eyeline when I suddenly got shot. Then I got shot again, and again, and again. I couldn’t see anyone at all and it was only when there was a shout behind me that I turned to see a line of three kids all casually firing into the back of my head.
I’m pretty sure the fifteen year-old rampage-waiting-to-happen, wasn’t one of them. I was thankful for this because every time he got me he’d run up to me and tell me so. He’d tell me what a great shot it had been and how good he was. ‘Well done’, I’d say through gritted teeth, then I’d call him a little shit as I trudged off to get re-spawned. I shot him a few times too of course – but it was difficult to tell how many as all the kids looked the same in hats and combat jackets. When I saw it was him I just smiled, pleased that I’d resisted the urge to sneak up behind him, club him with the butt of my gun and stamp on his glasses.
The hour was over very quickly – and I’d enjoyed it in a strange kind of way. I handed my sweat-drenched jacket and baseball cap back shame-facedly, wondering how they were going to clean them and went back up to the café area. I briefly talked with some of the black team about the films featured in the posters on the wall - none of which the children should have seen as they weren’t old enough. I realised that all the films were anti-war in tone but the laserquesters were more concerned with the action sequences and how realistic they were. After more high-fives and odd handshakes, Rich, his nephew and me left.
At the bottom of the stairs, rampage-in-waiting was waiting for us. ‘Shot you’ he said to Rich with a smug look on his face. Rich ignored him.
‘Shot you’ he said to Rich’s nephew, pointing his fingers at him like a gun. Rich’s nephew ignored him.
‘Shot you,’ he said to me with a broad grin. I didn’t ignore him.
‘In all fairness, I shot you as well,’
‘Yeah, but I got you brilliantly. You never saw it coming.’
He had me there.
‘Why don’t you get yourself a girlfriend?’ I said and walked off without waiting for a reaction.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have resorted to Alan Partridge quotes, I should have just reminded him that my team won and his team lost. Actually, I shouldn’t have said anything at all – but that’s what war does to you; it strips away your civilised ways and turns you into a savage animal, spoiling for a fight and never backing down.
I just hope that when that kid does eventually flip – and he will flip – that he doesn’t remember me. I’ve heard that psychopaths can hold quite a grudge and I’m not very good at armed combat.
08 May 2010
Mills and Boon
As part of an experiment in writing Romantic Fiction, I watched the excellent BBC4 documentary: How to Write a Mills and Boon. In it, Stella Duffy met authors, publishers and readers to get advice on what she needed to do to adapt her style to fit the requirements of a Mills and Boon story.
The writers were pretty much exactly how you imagine them - aging women with overly coiffured hair, small fluffy dogs and aggressive make-up being interviewed on chintzy sofas in large country houses. The readers she met also fit the stereotype quite neatly. One woman - middle-aged, bobbly green jumper, greasy hair, Dierdre Rasheed glasses - said she found the books addictive and read 30-40 a month. That works out at over one a day.
Another said that when she attended public school, the books were passed around among the girls like contraband. Having read one myself as research, I can understand why.
The one I tackled was part of the Blaze series, the most sexual orientated of Mills and Boon's various genres. It was very explicit - much more so than I'd expected. It can be bought from a respectable shop without feeling grubby or squalid but it's undoubtedly ladyporn. The sex scenes don't add to the story or represent any sense of realism; there's no squelching or flab or clumsy fumbling to alter the mood. They're written as though the author has never actually had sex themselves as they're exactly what you'd imagine it to be like before you did the real thing. This is obviously why they're so appealing to teenage girls cooped up in boarding schools.
As for the rest of the writing, I knew it'd be bad, but that was much worse than I'd expected too. It started off being quite funny but after a couple of chapters the clichéd plot, the one dimensional characters, the shit puns, cheesiness and fumbling repetition really started to grate. 'Really smokin' sex' was the phrase that irritated me most in the one I read. If the publishers had removed all instances of it, the book would have been about 50 pages shorter.
Everything I desperately try to avoid in my own writing was there. It was vague, sloppy, lazy, obvious - the perfect example of how not to write a novel. I got the impression that the author had just churned it out as quickly as possible without re-reading or redrafting; it was just vomited up onto the pages and sent away to be published.
After reading it for a couple of days, the irritation faded and I was left with a strong sense of melancholy. 'Who writes this mindless pap?' I thought, 'how can they live with themselves? Have they no dignity?'
Granted, that's a very high minded and snooty point of view. It's easy for me to be a bit sniffy because I don't earn my living from writing so I haven't got deadlines to meet or a mortgage to pay. Apparently, these sort of writers make an incredible amount of money and a Mills and Boon book is sold, somewhere in the world, every eight seconds.
I suppose it's the art vs economics dilemma. I know there's a huge difference between writing and getting published and there has to be room for compromise. But how much compromise? Mills and Boon is too much for me. I write primarily because I feel I've got something to say; it's the way I understand and give perspective to the world. If I simply wanted to make money there are lots of other more financially beneficial industries I could work in without knocking out bodice-ripping bonkbusters.
The process is like a production line. Each month a set of books is published and at the end of that month, any unsold copies are pulped. It's impossible to maintain any shred of integrity under those circumstances - especially when the books must be written to a rigid set formula. The two main protagonists, for example, must always meet in the first chapter. The sex scenes must be of a type and be shoehorned in at specific points to punctuate the story. And, most importantly, there should always be a happy ending.
It's inevitable therefore, that every book is broadly the same. It doesn't require a great deal of creativity to change the names and occupations of characters, put them in a different setting and hang them off an established plot structure - you're just adding a thin layer of flesh to a generic skeleton. The process could almost be done automatically like the novel-writing machines in 1984 that churn out cheap, disposable pornography for the masses.
They're obviously popular though, what about the readers? There's the perfectly reasonable explanation that people can read them without thinking about things too much. They can dip in and out without losing the plot, enjoy the familiarity of the characters and treat them as simple entertainment - a harmless distraction like an action film or a computer game or an American sit-com.
That's fine - but 30-40 a month? One sold every eight seconds?
That simple entertainment might start to give you unrealistic expectations of the world; give you dreams that'll never happen. How can a frumpy, middle-aged woman ever hope to be truly happy if she's set her heart on a lantern-jawed and mysterious millionaire who's capable of delivering non-squelchy, non-clumsy, really smokin' sex?
Too much distraction also causes problems. It's not a good idea to stop yourself from thinking too much, there are lots of big important things happening that we all need to consider. The tat that 1984's novel-writing machines produced served to keep the masses in their place, kept their thoughts and aspirations so low that they couldn't see or question the bigger issues in their lives. I suspect consuming too much Mills and Boon works in the same way.
I heard Stephen Fry make a comment once about human nature. He said that every person will always find something to be passionate about - whether it's a political ideology, a job, an artist, a football team or a type of book. It's perfectly natural for people to be obsessed with something. I just think, with the world as it is, that it's a terrible shame if that thing happens to be Mills and Boon novels. It seems like such a waste.
The writers were pretty much exactly how you imagine them - aging women with overly coiffured hair, small fluffy dogs and aggressive make-up being interviewed on chintzy sofas in large country houses. The readers she met also fit the stereotype quite neatly. One woman - middle-aged, bobbly green jumper, greasy hair, Dierdre Rasheed glasses - said she found the books addictive and read 30-40 a month. That works out at over one a day.
Another said that when she attended public school, the books were passed around among the girls like contraband. Having read one myself as research, I can understand why.
The one I tackled was part of the Blaze series, the most sexual orientated of Mills and Boon's various genres. It was very explicit - much more so than I'd expected. It can be bought from a respectable shop without feeling grubby or squalid but it's undoubtedly ladyporn. The sex scenes don't add to the story or represent any sense of realism; there's no squelching or flab or clumsy fumbling to alter the mood. They're written as though the author has never actually had sex themselves as they're exactly what you'd imagine it to be like before you did the real thing. This is obviously why they're so appealing to teenage girls cooped up in boarding schools.
As for the rest of the writing, I knew it'd be bad, but that was much worse than I'd expected too. It started off being quite funny but after a couple of chapters the clichéd plot, the one dimensional characters, the shit puns, cheesiness and fumbling repetition really started to grate. 'Really smokin' sex' was the phrase that irritated me most in the one I read. If the publishers had removed all instances of it, the book would have been about 50 pages shorter.
Everything I desperately try to avoid in my own writing was there. It was vague, sloppy, lazy, obvious - the perfect example of how not to write a novel. I got the impression that the author had just churned it out as quickly as possible without re-reading or redrafting; it was just vomited up onto the pages and sent away to be published.
After reading it for a couple of days, the irritation faded and I was left with a strong sense of melancholy. 'Who writes this mindless pap?' I thought, 'how can they live with themselves? Have they no dignity?'
Granted, that's a very high minded and snooty point of view. It's easy for me to be a bit sniffy because I don't earn my living from writing so I haven't got deadlines to meet or a mortgage to pay. Apparently, these sort of writers make an incredible amount of money and a Mills and Boon book is sold, somewhere in the world, every eight seconds.
I suppose it's the art vs economics dilemma. I know there's a huge difference between writing and getting published and there has to be room for compromise. But how much compromise? Mills and Boon is too much for me. I write primarily because I feel I've got something to say; it's the way I understand and give perspective to the world. If I simply wanted to make money there are lots of other more financially beneficial industries I could work in without knocking out bodice-ripping bonkbusters.
The process is like a production line. Each month a set of books is published and at the end of that month, any unsold copies are pulped. It's impossible to maintain any shred of integrity under those circumstances - especially when the books must be written to a rigid set formula. The two main protagonists, for example, must always meet in the first chapter. The sex scenes must be of a type and be shoehorned in at specific points to punctuate the story. And, most importantly, there should always be a happy ending.
It's inevitable therefore, that every book is broadly the same. It doesn't require a great deal of creativity to change the names and occupations of characters, put them in a different setting and hang them off an established plot structure - you're just adding a thin layer of flesh to a generic skeleton. The process could almost be done automatically like the novel-writing machines in 1984 that churn out cheap, disposable pornography for the masses.
They're obviously popular though, what about the readers? There's the perfectly reasonable explanation that people can read them without thinking about things too much. They can dip in and out without losing the plot, enjoy the familiarity of the characters and treat them as simple entertainment - a harmless distraction like an action film or a computer game or an American sit-com.
That's fine - but 30-40 a month? One sold every eight seconds?
That simple entertainment might start to give you unrealistic expectations of the world; give you dreams that'll never happen. How can a frumpy, middle-aged woman ever hope to be truly happy if she's set her heart on a lantern-jawed and mysterious millionaire who's capable of delivering non-squelchy, non-clumsy, really smokin' sex?
Too much distraction also causes problems. It's not a good idea to stop yourself from thinking too much, there are lots of big important things happening that we all need to consider. The tat that 1984's novel-writing machines produced served to keep the masses in their place, kept their thoughts and aspirations so low that they couldn't see or question the bigger issues in their lives. I suspect consuming too much Mills and Boon works in the same way.
I heard Stephen Fry make a comment once about human nature. He said that every person will always find something to be passionate about - whether it's a political ideology, a job, an artist, a football team or a type of book. It's perfectly natural for people to be obsessed with something. I just think, with the world as it is, that it's a terrible shame if that thing happens to be Mills and Boon novels. It seems like such a waste.
29 April 2010
Scary Man
When travelling on public transport, everyone knows about the obligatory weirdo. It could be the woman wearing slippers who tumbles along the train carriage arguing with herself and anyone who looks up at the wrong moment, or it might be the wild-eyed loner silently oozing such an air of menace that nobody nearby can relax. Whoever it is, on whatever journey you take, there’s always one. A few months ago, that one was me. I became the weirdo on the train.
I’d been in London for the weekend and was travelling back home. This was in January and, to mark the new year, I’d decided to try something new with my hair. I’d kept it short for a number of years and was utterly bored with it. However, my hair is very thick and becomes curly whenever it gets long - it seems to grow outwards instead of downwards and previous attempts to tame it have always proved a disaster. I’d spend ages gelling and combing it straight before leaving the house only to find out later that rather than looking like a coolly tousled Jeff Buckley, I’d instead spent the whole evening resembling a 70’s era Scouse footballer. I’d usually struggle on with the self delusion for several months before good sense and constant piss-taking would make me shave it all off again.
Not this time however - this time it would be different. Instead of fighting against my hair’s natural waves I was going to go with them; I was going to embrace the curls.
I wasn’t overly optimistic but I decided that this could be my last chance for long hair before encroaching baldness stopped me forever. By January my hair wasn’t yet long enough for me to present myself to a barber and say: ‘Here you go, do something with this,’ but it was easily long enough to make me look stupid. That day it was particularly bad as I’d forgotten to bring any shampoo on the trip. In the morning, I’d washed it with the hotel shower gel then spent the whole day traipsing round the capital getting snowed on. By the time I reached St Pancras it was corkscrewing everywhere at crazy angles like a misguided, greying clown wig.
I’d been on my feet all day in heavy walking boots and was now exhausted. Being outside in the London air for two days also had the usual effect on my body; making my eyes sore and my throat dry.
I arrived early and went to the station’s Marks & Spencers to get something to eat and drink as I waited for the train. I bought a bottle of pop and a boxed salad – edamame bean with chilli and coriander sauce. I expected a flimsy little fork to be encased in the packaging of the salad, it’s the usual procedure for food that’s sold to be eaten on-the-go. However, Marks & Spencers don’t do this. Instead they have their eating utensils stored separately in a basket by the door. This is presumably so people forget to pick up a fork and napkin when leaving which saves the store money. By ‘people’ I mean me, obviously - but I didn’t realise this until I’d opened the top of the salad and poured the sauce over my edamame beans.
It did occur to me to go back but the shop was downstairs on the other side of the terminal and there was a burly security guard on the door. He might take umbridge at people wandering in and taking their cutlery, they were obviously very protective of it. Unusually, the top of the box wasn’t re-sealable either – it was cellophane and once it was off there was no going back, you were totally committed.
I opted to eat the salad with my fingers, struggling to maintain an air of dignity. It was difficult; edamame beans are hard to snare under normal circumstances but near impossible when slippery with chilli and coriander sauce.
Then, something unexpected happened – something nobody could have foreseen which proved disastrous for my salad and me. The train arrived on time.
The whole station seemed to flock towards the single turnstile and I had an unreserved seat. I needed to find my ticket, hoist up my bag, keep hold of my bottle of pop and do something with my food while my hands were slick with watery sauce. This completely shattered the normal image I generally try to convey when travelling – the air of a world weary and well travelled cynic, like the hero in a Graham Greene novel. It doesn’t quite work when you’re frantically shovelling edamame beans into your mouth as fast as you can with two hooked fingers.
But so what? I didn’t know these people around me, who cares what they thought of me – screw them!
I finished my salad with just enough time to wipe my hands on my jeans and show the guard my ticket. Panic over. On board I found a seat next to a window and, as the train filled up with people, spent several minutes digging my book out of my bag and trying to surreptitiously clean my hands on the upholstery of the empty seat next to me.
In front, at one of the tables, was a magazine editor interviewing a photographer for a surf themed fashion shoot. The editor was someone who clearly loved the sound of his own voice and talked at length about his magazine and how great it was. The photographer had his laptop open to show his portfolio and was trying hard to sound enthusiastic and professional. In the seat across the aisle was a middle aged Yorkshire couple who looked as though they’d had a happy day shopping and were glad to be going home. When we pulled away, the carriage was busy but not full and the seat next to me remained vacant.
I was by a very hot radiator. Before long I had to shed some of my winter gear - the boots came off along with my coat and thick Lopi jumper. I was particularly proud of my Lopi jumper, it had been hand-knitted in Iceland using local wool famous for being lightweight, waterproof and incredibly warm. It’s probably the most expensive item of clothing I’ve ever bought but that doesn’t alter the fact that it does look a bit like something an aunt would give you for Christmas. Icelandic wool is very wiry so tends to stick up scruffily and I can’t put the hood up because, for some reason, it’s pointy and makes me look like an elf.
With my jumper and coat next to me, I settled in for the journey. Reading my book, it wasn’t long before I fell asleep. Almost immediately, I woke myself up with a snore that was so loud that I heard it myself over the noise of Jimi Hendrix on my ipod. ‘Christ, that was a bit embarrassing’ I thought, and sat bolt upright to make sure that I wouldn’t fall asleep again.
I fell asleep again almost instantly. This time with my head lolling backwards so my mouth drooped open in a gape. I stayed like this for two hours, waking briefly every ten minutes or so at the sound of my own snoring which was almost deafening because of the dryness of my throat. I just couldn’t stay awake, the day had been too tiring, my eyes were too sore and the seat was too warm.
When I eventually came round properly, we were in Chesterfield and just fifteen minutes from home. The train was now packed - people were standing in the doorways and at the ends of the aisle but the seat next to me was still empty. Looking round for someone to give an apologetic smile to, I saw that the middle aged couple were looking out of the window into pitch black nothingness, conspicuously avoiding any glance in my direction. The editor and photographer still had the laptop open in front of them but neither one was looking at it. One stared down the carriage, the other looked down at the table, both of their bodies were tense and the backs of their necks were reddening.
I had one of those moments of ruthless clarity that often comes when you’ve just woken up from a deep sleep – a horrible, sudden realisation of how I must look to these people. A figure with wild hair and red-rimmed eyes grunting amid a mass of tatty looking wool with no shoes on. I also noticed that in my haste to eat my salad, I’d slopped a fair bit of chilli and coriander sauce down my shirt. If it was on my shirt, it was fair to assume that there’d be some in my beard too. Marks & Spencers' chilli and coriander sauce looks quite a lot like dried vomit.
The ‘screw them!’ attitude, always my default position, wouldn’t quite cut it this time. I was beyond ‘screw them’ – it had gone too far, I’d embarrassed myself too much.
I was the weirdo on the train.
Those last fifteen minutes as we approached Sheffield were the longest of my life as I sat squirming with shame in my seat. Nobody looked at me when I got up to leave and as the doors closed behind me, I felt the carriage give a collective sigh of relief.
It made me wonder if this is how it happens - If every weirdo has simply been the hapless victim of an unfortunate chain of events and they’re otherwise quite normal. I think it much more likely that their ‘screw you’ threshold is a lot higher than most people’s and they no longer care a jot what others think of them.
Has this experience made me more sympathetic towards other weirdos on the train? Will I now look up the next time one of them reels down the centre aisle looking for people to talk at? Will I maybe even chat to them, ask them to tell me more about their reincarnated cat or the cloud that follows them everywhere they go?
Probably not, no.
I’d been in London for the weekend and was travelling back home. This was in January and, to mark the new year, I’d decided to try something new with my hair. I’d kept it short for a number of years and was utterly bored with it. However, my hair is very thick and becomes curly whenever it gets long - it seems to grow outwards instead of downwards and previous attempts to tame it have always proved a disaster. I’d spend ages gelling and combing it straight before leaving the house only to find out later that rather than looking like a coolly tousled Jeff Buckley, I’d instead spent the whole evening resembling a 70’s era Scouse footballer. I’d usually struggle on with the self delusion for several months before good sense and constant piss-taking would make me shave it all off again.
Not this time however - this time it would be different. Instead of fighting against my hair’s natural waves I was going to go with them; I was going to embrace the curls.
I wasn’t overly optimistic but I decided that this could be my last chance for long hair before encroaching baldness stopped me forever. By January my hair wasn’t yet long enough for me to present myself to a barber and say: ‘Here you go, do something with this,’ but it was easily long enough to make me look stupid. That day it was particularly bad as I’d forgotten to bring any shampoo on the trip. In the morning, I’d washed it with the hotel shower gel then spent the whole day traipsing round the capital getting snowed on. By the time I reached St Pancras it was corkscrewing everywhere at crazy angles like a misguided, greying clown wig.
I’d been on my feet all day in heavy walking boots and was now exhausted. Being outside in the London air for two days also had the usual effect on my body; making my eyes sore and my throat dry.
I arrived early and went to the station’s Marks & Spencers to get something to eat and drink as I waited for the train. I bought a bottle of pop and a boxed salad – edamame bean with chilli and coriander sauce. I expected a flimsy little fork to be encased in the packaging of the salad, it’s the usual procedure for food that’s sold to be eaten on-the-go. However, Marks & Spencers don’t do this. Instead they have their eating utensils stored separately in a basket by the door. This is presumably so people forget to pick up a fork and napkin when leaving which saves the store money. By ‘people’ I mean me, obviously - but I didn’t realise this until I’d opened the top of the salad and poured the sauce over my edamame beans.
It did occur to me to go back but the shop was downstairs on the other side of the terminal and there was a burly security guard on the door. He might take umbridge at people wandering in and taking their cutlery, they were obviously very protective of it. Unusually, the top of the box wasn’t re-sealable either – it was cellophane and once it was off there was no going back, you were totally committed.
I opted to eat the salad with my fingers, struggling to maintain an air of dignity. It was difficult; edamame beans are hard to snare under normal circumstances but near impossible when slippery with chilli and coriander sauce.
Then, something unexpected happened – something nobody could have foreseen which proved disastrous for my salad and me. The train arrived on time.
The whole station seemed to flock towards the single turnstile and I had an unreserved seat. I needed to find my ticket, hoist up my bag, keep hold of my bottle of pop and do something with my food while my hands were slick with watery sauce. This completely shattered the normal image I generally try to convey when travelling – the air of a world weary and well travelled cynic, like the hero in a Graham Greene novel. It doesn’t quite work when you’re frantically shovelling edamame beans into your mouth as fast as you can with two hooked fingers.
But so what? I didn’t know these people around me, who cares what they thought of me – screw them!
I finished my salad with just enough time to wipe my hands on my jeans and show the guard my ticket. Panic over. On board I found a seat next to a window and, as the train filled up with people, spent several minutes digging my book out of my bag and trying to surreptitiously clean my hands on the upholstery of the empty seat next to me.
In front, at one of the tables, was a magazine editor interviewing a photographer for a surf themed fashion shoot. The editor was someone who clearly loved the sound of his own voice and talked at length about his magazine and how great it was. The photographer had his laptop open to show his portfolio and was trying hard to sound enthusiastic and professional. In the seat across the aisle was a middle aged Yorkshire couple who looked as though they’d had a happy day shopping and were glad to be going home. When we pulled away, the carriage was busy but not full and the seat next to me remained vacant.
I was by a very hot radiator. Before long I had to shed some of my winter gear - the boots came off along with my coat and thick Lopi jumper. I was particularly proud of my Lopi jumper, it had been hand-knitted in Iceland using local wool famous for being lightweight, waterproof and incredibly warm. It’s probably the most expensive item of clothing I’ve ever bought but that doesn’t alter the fact that it does look a bit like something an aunt would give you for Christmas. Icelandic wool is very wiry so tends to stick up scruffily and I can’t put the hood up because, for some reason, it’s pointy and makes me look like an elf.
With my jumper and coat next to me, I settled in for the journey. Reading my book, it wasn’t long before I fell asleep. Almost immediately, I woke myself up with a snore that was so loud that I heard it myself over the noise of Jimi Hendrix on my ipod. ‘Christ, that was a bit embarrassing’ I thought, and sat bolt upright to make sure that I wouldn’t fall asleep again.
I fell asleep again almost instantly. This time with my head lolling backwards so my mouth drooped open in a gape. I stayed like this for two hours, waking briefly every ten minutes or so at the sound of my own snoring which was almost deafening because of the dryness of my throat. I just couldn’t stay awake, the day had been too tiring, my eyes were too sore and the seat was too warm.
When I eventually came round properly, we were in Chesterfield and just fifteen minutes from home. The train was now packed - people were standing in the doorways and at the ends of the aisle but the seat next to me was still empty. Looking round for someone to give an apologetic smile to, I saw that the middle aged couple were looking out of the window into pitch black nothingness, conspicuously avoiding any glance in my direction. The editor and photographer still had the laptop open in front of them but neither one was looking at it. One stared down the carriage, the other looked down at the table, both of their bodies were tense and the backs of their necks were reddening.
I had one of those moments of ruthless clarity that often comes when you’ve just woken up from a deep sleep – a horrible, sudden realisation of how I must look to these people. A figure with wild hair and red-rimmed eyes grunting amid a mass of tatty looking wool with no shoes on. I also noticed that in my haste to eat my salad, I’d slopped a fair bit of chilli and coriander sauce down my shirt. If it was on my shirt, it was fair to assume that there’d be some in my beard too. Marks & Spencers' chilli and coriander sauce looks quite a lot like dried vomit.
The ‘screw them!’ attitude, always my default position, wouldn’t quite cut it this time. I was beyond ‘screw them’ – it had gone too far, I’d embarrassed myself too much.
I was the weirdo on the train.
Those last fifteen minutes as we approached Sheffield were the longest of my life as I sat squirming with shame in my seat. Nobody looked at me when I got up to leave and as the doors closed behind me, I felt the carriage give a collective sigh of relief.
It made me wonder if this is how it happens - If every weirdo has simply been the hapless victim of an unfortunate chain of events and they’re otherwise quite normal. I think it much more likely that their ‘screw you’ threshold is a lot higher than most people’s and they no longer care a jot what others think of them.
Has this experience made me more sympathetic towards other weirdos on the train? Will I now look up the next time one of them reels down the centre aisle looking for people to talk at? Will I maybe even chat to them, ask them to tell me more about their reincarnated cat or the cloud that follows them everywhere they go?
Probably not, no.
20 April 2010
The Obligatory Spooky Article
The Stocksbridge Bypass is a key link between Sheffield and Manchester and every day 18,000 motorists use it to travel to and from work. During the day, the only remarkable thing about it would seem to be the Orwellian technology used by its ultra-modern speed cameras. However, I’m here at night when the bordering fields appear black and brooding and trees cast shapes that menace my peripheral vision. In darkness it comes as no surprise that this road is famous as one of the most haunted places in Britain.
I’m parked in a layby between the Orwellian speed cameras on the outskirts of Sheffield. The road hasn’t yet reached the imposing beauty of the Pennines, here it skirts along the side of a valley that holds the village of Stocksbridge. Even before the Bypass was opened on Friday the 13th 1988, it was clear that something strange was happening in this area. Local historians uncovered tales of a monk buried on unhallowed ground and speculate that the route of the Bypass disturbed his final resting place. This Monk is often spotted walking in the centre of the road or in the rear view mirrors of passing motorists – sometimes even sitting silently next to them in the passenger seat. Maintenance workers on the night shift also reported hearing children singing in the woods. Several more dressed in Medieval clothing were seen dancing around an electricity pylon.
I can see that pylon from my car. Directly in front of me is Pearoyd Bridge where two security guards encountered a cloaked, faceless man who disappeared when they shone their torches on him. The time is 11.42pm and it’s been five minutes since a vehicle passed. I’m beginning to regret coming here alone.
The incident that’s causing me the most concern regards the two Police officers sent to investigate the story told by the shaken security guards. They parked in this exact spot and at around midnight, one of them was surprised to see the torso of a man in Dickensian clothing pressed against his car window. Turning to tell his colleague, he saw that the same man was now standing next to the passenger window. The car was then rocked by a series of loud thumps which was enough to make them turn around and head for safety.
That’s exactly what I feel like doing. My car doesn’t feel comfortable anymore so I get out and climb the embankment. I’m trying not to think of the greyish figure with flying arms and legs who leapt over such an embankment and ran into the path of oncoming traffic in July 1990.
On the Bypass, ghost stories stain every landmark - each black field is a backdrop against which I expect to see something white and shimmery. When I reach the top of the embankment, I’m too scared to look back at the road. What I see in front of me then, is enough to take my breath away completely.
On the other side of the valley, one of Sheffield’s seven hills is a lump of blackness against the deep blue of the sky. The lights of Stocksbridge spread up its side, twinkling in an irregular pattern. The effect is like gently flowing lava or, more appropriately, molten steel with patches of bright light showing through the hardening surface. The city’s jewellery box is laid out before me and all thoughts of ghosts disappear in an instant.
It’s a reminder that no matter how unremarkable a place may seem - whether it’s the town you live in or the road you drive to work on, everywhere is steeped in rich history and folklore. If you take a little interest in this history and make time to explore your surroundings, your view of the place will be transformed. More often than not, you’ll also stumble across something unexpectedly beautiful.
I’m parked in a layby between the Orwellian speed cameras on the outskirts of Sheffield. The road hasn’t yet reached the imposing beauty of the Pennines, here it skirts along the side of a valley that holds the village of Stocksbridge. Even before the Bypass was opened on Friday the 13th 1988, it was clear that something strange was happening in this area. Local historians uncovered tales of a monk buried on unhallowed ground and speculate that the route of the Bypass disturbed his final resting place. This Monk is often spotted walking in the centre of the road or in the rear view mirrors of passing motorists – sometimes even sitting silently next to them in the passenger seat. Maintenance workers on the night shift also reported hearing children singing in the woods. Several more dressed in Medieval clothing were seen dancing around an electricity pylon.
I can see that pylon from my car. Directly in front of me is Pearoyd Bridge where two security guards encountered a cloaked, faceless man who disappeared when they shone their torches on him. The time is 11.42pm and it’s been five minutes since a vehicle passed. I’m beginning to regret coming here alone.
The incident that’s causing me the most concern regards the two Police officers sent to investigate the story told by the shaken security guards. They parked in this exact spot and at around midnight, one of them was surprised to see the torso of a man in Dickensian clothing pressed against his car window. Turning to tell his colleague, he saw that the same man was now standing next to the passenger window. The car was then rocked by a series of loud thumps which was enough to make them turn around and head for safety.
That’s exactly what I feel like doing. My car doesn’t feel comfortable anymore so I get out and climb the embankment. I’m trying not to think of the greyish figure with flying arms and legs who leapt over such an embankment and ran into the path of oncoming traffic in July 1990.
On the Bypass, ghost stories stain every landmark - each black field is a backdrop against which I expect to see something white and shimmery. When I reach the top of the embankment, I’m too scared to look back at the road. What I see in front of me then, is enough to take my breath away completely.
On the other side of the valley, one of Sheffield’s seven hills is a lump of blackness against the deep blue of the sky. The lights of Stocksbridge spread up its side, twinkling in an irregular pattern. The effect is like gently flowing lava or, more appropriately, molten steel with patches of bright light showing through the hardening surface. The city’s jewellery box is laid out before me and all thoughts of ghosts disappear in an instant.
It’s a reminder that no matter how unremarkable a place may seem - whether it’s the town you live in or the road you drive to work on, everywhere is steeped in rich history and folklore. If you take a little interest in this history and make time to explore your surroundings, your view of the place will be transformed. More often than not, you’ll also stumble across something unexpectedly beautiful.
09 April 2010
Hometime
I leave work at 5.30pm and drive through the murky industrial side streets lined with derelict Victorian factories. I’d usually be smoking by now but I’m trying to cut down with a view to eventually stopping. In the last fortnight, I’ve halved my daily intake but my craving means that I’m obsessing about how many I’ve got left in my packet and how best to ration them so that they punctuate my day with the least amount of unpleasantness. On my journey home, I allow myself one – the Parkway Cigarette -– and each day I try to delay as long as possible before I smoke it to try and wean myself off gradually. I have the cigarette out and it’s in my mouth but unlit by the time I emerge from a side street and turn left onto the city’s ring road.
At the first set of traffic lights I notice that someone’s carved ‘CITY OF RACIST JERKS’ with a stone onto the concrete of the bridge opposite the Tesco Express. As graffiti, it seems a little half-hearted - there’s no swearing and it’s easy to rub off. It’s as if something has annoyed the writer enough for them to protest but they’re too nice and well-behaved to commit to anything that’s overly offensive or permanent. I wouldn’t be surprised if they sneak back in the dead of night to remove the words themselves.
I follow the ring-road towards the main route out of town. Billboards and commercial signs are everywhere on this section of the journey. At no point am I out of sight of some form of advertisement.
The second set of lights controls the traffic flow at a large crossroads. There are two lanes heading towards the Parkway and I’m in the first one. From the left, the road from Attercliffe cuts across at right angles and a red car has gone through on amber and got stuck at the end of a queue on the other side. When our lights turn green, the red car is still sideways on to the oncoming traffic, completely blocking off the second lane of the ring road. The driver has no option but to sit there until his queue moves.
I can imagine the look on the faces of the people he’s delaying, can imagine how awkward and stupid he must feel. I look at him as I get close; he’s a friendly looking Asian man with a huge moustache who’s smiling broadly as though he’s about to laugh. As I pass he gives the person in the car he’s blocking a little wave. I like his attitude, it cheers me up immensely - but I’m not in the lane he’s blocking.
At the third set of lights I’m about six cars from the front. A woman in smart business clothes waits at the side of the road, wondering if she’s got time to totter across four lanes in her high heels before the lights change. Someone in the near lane waves her on and she breaks into a sturry – a sort of half-jog that gives the impression of hurrying without any actual increase in speed. Of course, as soon as she left the pavement the lights do change and by the time she’s reached the third lane, the movement of the front cars has filtered back to where she is. Her handbag’s on her left shoulder and she’s holding onto the strap with her right arm which has forced the pocket of her jacket open. Something falls out into the road, it looks like an iPhone. She’s holding up the fourth lane now and, panicking, she gives the phone two sharp kicks sending it skidding across the tarmac. Only when she’s safely on the other pavement does she stoop to pick it up. With everyone watching, she puts the phone back into her pocket without checking the damage and walks away as if nothing embarrassing has happened.
More lights at the end of the slip-road to the Parkway – I always get stopped by these. My willpower crumbles and I light my cigarette. Fuck it.
The road here is elevated and by looking down the slope of the embankment I can see right into the ground floor of the office next to me. It’s brand new, there are no blinds or curtains yet. I’ve watched it’s construction over the last year - seen it climb floor by floor; speculated about whether or not it’s a helipad jutting awkwardly from the roof; seen the heavy machinery and men in luminous tabards steadily dwindle away; watched as desks, computers and finally people moved in.
Their working hours are different to mine and the people in the office have usually gone home by the time I get to the junction. There’s always one woman left behind though, isolated on the open plan floor. Does she work different hours to the rest of them? Maybe she has to drop her kids off at school in the morning or she’s in charge of an account based in a country with a different time zone. Or maybe she’s struggling in her job and needs to stay late to catch up with work. Then again, maybe she’s a workaholic and lives for the job. Maybe she’s just avoiding going home. Why?
The Parkway is a fast road, a dual carriageway with a national speed limit. There’s plenty of traffic but it’s generally moving at quite a pace – apart from Tuesdays; it always gets clogged up on Tuesdays and I have to take an alternative route.
I’m barrelling along in the outside lane to avoid the cars joining from a busy sliproad halfway along. Up ahead I can see that there’s a man standing in the central reservation. God knows how he’s got there, there’s no sign of a car with flashing hazards and to cross in the rush-hour would be suicidal.
There’s something at his feet, a brownish clump, a smear of red – some animal that’s been hit by a car and killed. I pass him as he bends to pick it up. From my rear view mirror I see that he’s stretched a red collar from the mass of fur and is looking at the tag.
I make it home in time for The Simpsons. The journey is nine miles long. I drive it every day.
At the first set of traffic lights I notice that someone’s carved ‘CITY OF RACIST JERKS’ with a stone onto the concrete of the bridge opposite the Tesco Express. As graffiti, it seems a little half-hearted - there’s no swearing and it’s easy to rub off. It’s as if something has annoyed the writer enough for them to protest but they’re too nice and well-behaved to commit to anything that’s overly offensive or permanent. I wouldn’t be surprised if they sneak back in the dead of night to remove the words themselves.
I follow the ring-road towards the main route out of town. Billboards and commercial signs are everywhere on this section of the journey. At no point am I out of sight of some form of advertisement.
The second set of lights controls the traffic flow at a large crossroads. There are two lanes heading towards the Parkway and I’m in the first one. From the left, the road from Attercliffe cuts across at right angles and a red car has gone through on amber and got stuck at the end of a queue on the other side. When our lights turn green, the red car is still sideways on to the oncoming traffic, completely blocking off the second lane of the ring road. The driver has no option but to sit there until his queue moves.
I can imagine the look on the faces of the people he’s delaying, can imagine how awkward and stupid he must feel. I look at him as I get close; he’s a friendly looking Asian man with a huge moustache who’s smiling broadly as though he’s about to laugh. As I pass he gives the person in the car he’s blocking a little wave. I like his attitude, it cheers me up immensely - but I’m not in the lane he’s blocking.
At the third set of lights I’m about six cars from the front. A woman in smart business clothes waits at the side of the road, wondering if she’s got time to totter across four lanes in her high heels before the lights change. Someone in the near lane waves her on and she breaks into a sturry – a sort of half-jog that gives the impression of hurrying without any actual increase in speed. Of course, as soon as she left the pavement the lights do change and by the time she’s reached the third lane, the movement of the front cars has filtered back to where she is. Her handbag’s on her left shoulder and she’s holding onto the strap with her right arm which has forced the pocket of her jacket open. Something falls out into the road, it looks like an iPhone. She’s holding up the fourth lane now and, panicking, she gives the phone two sharp kicks sending it skidding across the tarmac. Only when she’s safely on the other pavement does she stoop to pick it up. With everyone watching, she puts the phone back into her pocket without checking the damage and walks away as if nothing embarrassing has happened.
More lights at the end of the slip-road to the Parkway – I always get stopped by these. My willpower crumbles and I light my cigarette. Fuck it.
The road here is elevated and by looking down the slope of the embankment I can see right into the ground floor of the office next to me. It’s brand new, there are no blinds or curtains yet. I’ve watched it’s construction over the last year - seen it climb floor by floor; speculated about whether or not it’s a helipad jutting awkwardly from the roof; seen the heavy machinery and men in luminous tabards steadily dwindle away; watched as desks, computers and finally people moved in.
Their working hours are different to mine and the people in the office have usually gone home by the time I get to the junction. There’s always one woman left behind though, isolated on the open plan floor. Does she work different hours to the rest of them? Maybe she has to drop her kids off at school in the morning or she’s in charge of an account based in a country with a different time zone. Or maybe she’s struggling in her job and needs to stay late to catch up with work. Then again, maybe she’s a workaholic and lives for the job. Maybe she’s just avoiding going home. Why?
The Parkway is a fast road, a dual carriageway with a national speed limit. There’s plenty of traffic but it’s generally moving at quite a pace – apart from Tuesdays; it always gets clogged up on Tuesdays and I have to take an alternative route.
I’m barrelling along in the outside lane to avoid the cars joining from a busy sliproad halfway along. Up ahead I can see that there’s a man standing in the central reservation. God knows how he’s got there, there’s no sign of a car with flashing hazards and to cross in the rush-hour would be suicidal.
There’s something at his feet, a brownish clump, a smear of red – some animal that’s been hit by a car and killed. I pass him as he bends to pick it up. From my rear view mirror I see that he’s stretched a red collar from the mass of fur and is looking at the tag.
I make it home in time for The Simpsons. The journey is nine miles long. I drive it every day.
23 March 2010
It's In The Jeans
I suspect that we’re living through an important period of evolutionary history. The human arse is becoming obsolete.
In years to come scientists will stand – not sit – in conference halls and lecture theatres discussing what happened to the gene pool in the 1990s to cause a generation to be born without buttocks. Maybe its mother nature’s way of evening things out - her response to the advent of home entertainment systems and office work. Maybe by forcing people to prop themselves up on hard points of bone instead of a handy, fleshy cushion, she’s encouraging us to be more active and spend less time lounging around. Then again, maybe she just has a profound sympathy for the manufacturers of padded upholstery products and is simply putting more business their way. Unless, of course, there’s a special piece of fashion equipment for sale in the kind of shops I never go in - some sort of ‘bum girdle’ that compresses and binds buttocks into contorted shapes using a method similar to that employed by Chinese women on their feet in the 19th Century.
Whatever the reason, I can’t see any other way to explain how teenagers manage to keep their jeans hanging off their hips in the current way. They don’t seem to be reliant on belts or anything. Is the inner lining stitched to the material of their underwear and then the waistband reinforced? I don’t understand how they don’t fall down – even when they go skateboarding.
It seems a particularly dumb style, a rather desperate and hopeful punt by the fashion industry to overcome a product wall. They’ve already tried dark jeans; stonewashed jeans; ripped jeans; jeans flecked with bleach. There have been skinny jeans; baggy jeans; flared jeans; turn-up jeans – there was even a period in the early 90s when they tried to get people to wear them backwards. All of these ideas have been through several cycles already, they obviously needed something fresh to make people spend money, otherwise they could just leave their old pair in the wardrobe for a couple of years until they come back into style again.
Although probably cooked up by marketeers - perhaps even in cahoots with the underwear industry eager to gain more exposure for their branded products – the history of the style supposedly comes from American gangsta rappers who, because of all the drive bys and pimping and everything, often found themselves getting arrested. When placed in the cells, the police would take away their belts to stop them hanging themselves - hence, their jeans would slip down.
This sartorial development was then copied by the kids on da streets who were all obviously very eager to be mistaken for criminals placed on suicide watch and the trend subsequently grew. It moved from the ghettos of Harlem to the fashion spreads of Vogue, eventually filtering down to nice, safe middle-class suburbanites the world over. It’s even ended up in South Yorkshire where it seems to have been modified further to fit the different environment.
The woman standing in front of me in the queue at the supermarket yesterday certainly managed to add her own unique flare to the style anyway. She hadn’t bothered with those shop bought jeans that are made to be loose fitting around the waist and shorter in the leg. Instead she’s wearing ones that are at least three sizes too small for her. She’s also of an older generation so is blessed with a full bottom, the jeans reach about halfway up it. The most startling thing however, is her decision to go without underwear. Those two wads of wobbly white flesh flopping over her waistband certainly grab your attention – on first glance she looks like she’s got four arses. It’s a ‘dagenham smile’ a builder would be proud of and I’m positive that if she were to bend over, the whole shop would actually be able to see her anus.
It’s a vision that’s difficult to push from your mind once it’s in there. I hope to god that no marketeers spotted her or we could be seeing a lot more horrors like that by next summer. The thought worries me so much that, for the good of society, I think she should be taken to an American prison to be shown how to wear her jeans properly.
In years to come scientists will stand – not sit – in conference halls and lecture theatres discussing what happened to the gene pool in the 1990s to cause a generation to be born without buttocks. Maybe its mother nature’s way of evening things out - her response to the advent of home entertainment systems and office work. Maybe by forcing people to prop themselves up on hard points of bone instead of a handy, fleshy cushion, she’s encouraging us to be more active and spend less time lounging around. Then again, maybe she just has a profound sympathy for the manufacturers of padded upholstery products and is simply putting more business their way. Unless, of course, there’s a special piece of fashion equipment for sale in the kind of shops I never go in - some sort of ‘bum girdle’ that compresses and binds buttocks into contorted shapes using a method similar to that employed by Chinese women on their feet in the 19th Century.
Whatever the reason, I can’t see any other way to explain how teenagers manage to keep their jeans hanging off their hips in the current way. They don’t seem to be reliant on belts or anything. Is the inner lining stitched to the material of their underwear and then the waistband reinforced? I don’t understand how they don’t fall down – even when they go skateboarding.
It seems a particularly dumb style, a rather desperate and hopeful punt by the fashion industry to overcome a product wall. They’ve already tried dark jeans; stonewashed jeans; ripped jeans; jeans flecked with bleach. There have been skinny jeans; baggy jeans; flared jeans; turn-up jeans – there was even a period in the early 90s when they tried to get people to wear them backwards. All of these ideas have been through several cycles already, they obviously needed something fresh to make people spend money, otherwise they could just leave their old pair in the wardrobe for a couple of years until they come back into style again.
Although probably cooked up by marketeers - perhaps even in cahoots with the underwear industry eager to gain more exposure for their branded products – the history of the style supposedly comes from American gangsta rappers who, because of all the drive bys and pimping and everything, often found themselves getting arrested. When placed in the cells, the police would take away their belts to stop them hanging themselves - hence, their jeans would slip down.
This sartorial development was then copied by the kids on da streets who were all obviously very eager to be mistaken for criminals placed on suicide watch and the trend subsequently grew. It moved from the ghettos of Harlem to the fashion spreads of Vogue, eventually filtering down to nice, safe middle-class suburbanites the world over. It’s even ended up in South Yorkshire where it seems to have been modified further to fit the different environment.
The woman standing in front of me in the queue at the supermarket yesterday certainly managed to add her own unique flare to the style anyway. She hadn’t bothered with those shop bought jeans that are made to be loose fitting around the waist and shorter in the leg. Instead she’s wearing ones that are at least three sizes too small for her. She’s also of an older generation so is blessed with a full bottom, the jeans reach about halfway up it. The most startling thing however, is her decision to go without underwear. Those two wads of wobbly white flesh flopping over her waistband certainly grab your attention – on first glance she looks like she’s got four arses. It’s a ‘dagenham smile’ a builder would be proud of and I’m positive that if she were to bend over, the whole shop would actually be able to see her anus.
It’s a vision that’s difficult to push from your mind once it’s in there. I hope to god that no marketeers spotted her or we could be seeing a lot more horrors like that by next summer. The thought worries me so much that, for the good of society, I think she should be taken to an American prison to be shown how to wear her jeans properly.
17 March 2010
Acting Your Age
It’s a good indication that you’re getting old when you start looking forward to baths. Fancying the housewives on TV ads for household products is probably a good sign as well. There are other little giveaways too. For example, I’ve recently discovered that I really like peas. Also, nowadays, when one of my friends announces that they’re going to have a baby, my automatic response is more likely to be: ‘Congratulations!’ rather than: ‘Shit, I’m sorry to hear that, what are you going to do?’
There are physical signs too. I’m beginning to feel the effects of smoking – a severe shortness of breath and a throaty, phlegm filled laugh. I eat the same amount as I always have but now I have a waistline that’s rapidly getting out of control and I’m starting to realise that there are some foods that I just shouldn’t touch.
Alcohol is another thing – I can’t drink like I once could. My hangovers used to be powerful and frightening. I’d wake up feeling like absolute death, the only way to cope being to throw up repeatedly and stand with my face in a bowl of cold water. At least I knew where I stood with them though, at least it got all the horror out of the way in one concentrated burst so that by mid-afternoon I’d be back to normal. I prefer those to the ones I get now. You couldn’t even call them proper hangovers, I just get incredibly tired and incredibly stupid. My head seems to be filled with thick treacle and I’m no use to anyone for about two days. Sometimes, I have to get hammered on red wine just to make sure that at least I’ve got a decent headache in the morning to remind me of what I’ve done.
These things all lead to the dawning realisation that I’m not going to live forever – a creeping sense of my own mortality. The future’s no longer off in the distance somewhere, vague and undefined like it was when I was younger. Instead it’s real and frightening, looming oppressively over everything I do.
The natural instinct of course is to panic. Generally this means grabbing everything you can and using it all as a barricade, safely cushioning yourself with a career, house, partner and all the rest of it. At that point you give up on the idea of changing the world and settle for simply changing the world around you.
The trouble is, those responsibilities tend to anchor you to the spot. As the wider world moves on and changes, your stable little one stagnates and narrows. Life becomes more about protecting what you’ve got rather than finding out what you want. Piddling little obsessions like guttering and bin collections and wind farms spoiling the scenery will start to assume levels of importance that you never dreamed of when you were twenty-five. Your opinions and beliefs will set rigid and you’ll use them as a stick to beat away any different viewpoint that might threaten the safety of your routine. Maybe you’ll write letters to your local newspaper moaning about how society is going to the dogs. Maybe you’ll even vote Conservative and start reading the Daily Mail – they say that you get more right-wing as you get older.
The prospect of that still scares me to death.
Ok, so I know that when I wear a cardigan, I now look less like a guitarist in an indie band and more like Val Doonican. I also know that when I see a 23 year old in a short skirt in January, I no longer think: ‘Christ, look at that,’ and instead: ‘Christ, I bet she’s cold’. But I’ll be buggered if I’m going to start acting my age. I still admire recklessness and adventure and freedom - I still want those things for myself. I’m not ready to give up on them regardless of expectations or peer pressure or my biological clock. It may be immaturity on my part, but if it is, so what? The day I settle for things is the day I do become old.
There are physical signs too. I’m beginning to feel the effects of smoking – a severe shortness of breath and a throaty, phlegm filled laugh. I eat the same amount as I always have but now I have a waistline that’s rapidly getting out of control and I’m starting to realise that there are some foods that I just shouldn’t touch.
Alcohol is another thing – I can’t drink like I once could. My hangovers used to be powerful and frightening. I’d wake up feeling like absolute death, the only way to cope being to throw up repeatedly and stand with my face in a bowl of cold water. At least I knew where I stood with them though, at least it got all the horror out of the way in one concentrated burst so that by mid-afternoon I’d be back to normal. I prefer those to the ones I get now. You couldn’t even call them proper hangovers, I just get incredibly tired and incredibly stupid. My head seems to be filled with thick treacle and I’m no use to anyone for about two days. Sometimes, I have to get hammered on red wine just to make sure that at least I’ve got a decent headache in the morning to remind me of what I’ve done.
These things all lead to the dawning realisation that I’m not going to live forever – a creeping sense of my own mortality. The future’s no longer off in the distance somewhere, vague and undefined like it was when I was younger. Instead it’s real and frightening, looming oppressively over everything I do.
The natural instinct of course is to panic. Generally this means grabbing everything you can and using it all as a barricade, safely cushioning yourself with a career, house, partner and all the rest of it. At that point you give up on the idea of changing the world and settle for simply changing the world around you.
The trouble is, those responsibilities tend to anchor you to the spot. As the wider world moves on and changes, your stable little one stagnates and narrows. Life becomes more about protecting what you’ve got rather than finding out what you want. Piddling little obsessions like guttering and bin collections and wind farms spoiling the scenery will start to assume levels of importance that you never dreamed of when you were twenty-five. Your opinions and beliefs will set rigid and you’ll use them as a stick to beat away any different viewpoint that might threaten the safety of your routine. Maybe you’ll write letters to your local newspaper moaning about how society is going to the dogs. Maybe you’ll even vote Conservative and start reading the Daily Mail – they say that you get more right-wing as you get older.
The prospect of that still scares me to death.
Ok, so I know that when I wear a cardigan, I now look less like a guitarist in an indie band and more like Val Doonican. I also know that when I see a 23 year old in a short skirt in January, I no longer think: ‘Christ, look at that,’ and instead: ‘Christ, I bet she’s cold’. But I’ll be buggered if I’m going to start acting my age. I still admire recklessness and adventure and freedom - I still want those things for myself. I’m not ready to give up on them regardless of expectations or peer pressure or my biological clock. It may be immaturity on my part, but if it is, so what? The day I settle for things is the day I do become old.
17 February 2010
Versions of an Event
The company accountant is everything you’d imagine an accountant to be: mid 50s, stern, abrupt and very, very serious. It was the Christmas work’s do and the rest of us sat around feeling the customary awkwardness of having to socialise with people we wouldn’t normally choose to. Not the accountant though. He’d already drunk way too much Barnsley Bitter in the restaurant before we somehow ended up in the student area of the city in a bar that was far too trendy for the likes of us.
It was Salsa night. Everyone else in the bar knew how to dance Salsa properly and were obviously regulars. We couldn’t have been more out of place if the bar had been on the moon.
I was just about coping. The volume of the music fortunately meant I didn’t have to talk too much and I began examining potential excuses for leaving. However, half an hour later, the accountant disappeared. We searched everywhere for him until, just as we’d almost given up on ever seeing him alive again, I weaved my way to the toilet and spotted a grey head of hair bouncing around on the middle of the dance floor. Arms flailing, glasses skew-whiff, he was head-banging in the middle of a pack of serious and dedicated Salsa dancers.
FOCUSING ON SOUNDS & SMELLS
The company accountant – always ready with a savage quip, a headmaster’s voice with a home-counties accent. The accompanying smell of old churches and Golden Virginia.
The trendy side of Sheffield, moneyed students in a bar blasting out South American music loud enough to prohibit conversation. The fruity alcoholic smell of extravagant cocktails mixing with the Lynx deodorant that seemed to seep from the walls.
A fug of beer fumes lingered over our table and, amid the tumult of trumpets and bongos, we took our attention off our accountant for a second and he was gone – vanished like the smoke from his roll-up on a windy day.
We braved the girating bodies and flapping silk in search of him. We followed our noses through the swathes of perfume at the bar, crossed the underlying stench of sweat on the dance-floor and made it all the way over to the nostril shrinking tang of disinfectant by the toilets.
Nothing.
Then, a wisp of grey hair amid the cloud of elegant, sweeping youngsters. Right in the centre of the dance-floor, the aura of drunkenness coming off him like musk - there was our accountant pogoing mercilessly to chilled latino beats, as inappropriate and unavoidable as a klaxon in a library.
AS FICTION
Split personality. Jekyll and Hyde. However, instead of a chemistry set and beaker, the accountant’s magic potion came from the casks of the Kelham Island Brewery.
The rest of us were sober enough to be ill at ease and uncomfortable in the student bar. I tried to stay quiet, waiting patiently for the first couple to peel away from the group and go home so that I could more easily justify my own escape. But then, panic. Our accountant was missing.
We murmured concern over the deafening thump of the Salsa music. He was in a wild enough state to create trouble with the gym-attending, easily offended clientele 30 years his junior.
Having patrolled the perimeter, scanned dark corners, checked the toilets – both male and female – and sent out a rescue party to search the streets outside, there was still no trace of him. Then, reconnoitring the dance-floor one last time, I spotted him. A mass of grey hair bouncing anything but rhythmically amid the irritated looking Salsa-ists. With horror, I watched as the trademark brown cardie came off. Next, it was twirling around his head in what appeared to be some kind of pagan fertility ritual.
I wasn’t the only one watching. A pack of bouncers was gathering like storm clouds close by. The extraction of our accountant from that dance-floor would need to be planned like a military operation.
A HAIKU
Wild hair, flailing arms
Blind drunk feral accountant
In the Salsa throng.
FROM A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW
Boring bastards. Boring, miserable bastards. What’s the matter with you? This is fantastic! Listen to that music – can’t you feel it? Drink up, come on, let’s go and dance!
Wait, what are you doing? Don’t start talking about politics – are you mad, we’re on a night out! You, take your head out of your hands. Don’t you dare look at your watch and yawn. Keep drinking, all of you, it’s only half one – we don’t have to be at work for another eight…er...seven…no, seven and a half hours. The night is young and it’s Christmas!
What are you… get to the bar, come on! I’ll have a cocktail this time, get me a Sex on the Beach. I don’t care what it costs, I’m the bloody accountant, it’ll go under expenses.
I need to dance now, who’s with me?
What?
Miserable bastards.
Right, screw this, I’m off. Not sitting around here all night when there’s music like this playing.
Wow, they all look very good at dancing. It’s a bit controlled though, a bit too regimented, like a routine or something. You’ve got to really feel these rhythms, let it flow through you, be free with it. I’ll show you all how it’s done, I’ll get right in the middle, right in the mixer.
Excuse me, coming through, oops, sorry about that – it’ll wash out. This is more like it! Everyone – hey, everyone – watch me! This is how you do it!
I may be an old man but as you can see, I can still cut it with these youngsters. Impressive eh? Hello there my dear, what a lovely blouse you’re wearing.
CHANGING THE SETTING
I was at the gig, the gig I’d been waiting months for. The Deathpigs haven’t played here in seven years and the crowd were well up for it. The sense of anticipation had been building all the way through the support act and we must have necked at least eight ciders before the ‘Pigs even started. By the time I made my way down to the mosh pit at the front, I was already pretty wrecked – I think everyone was.
When they finally came on stage, the crowd went ballistic. Bronco had his devil mask on, Cagney was wearing all his leathers, Brody threw a bucket of fake blood into the crowd – it was amazing! When Fester picked up his bass and cranked up the amps, I was shouting so loudly that I lost my voice for three days afterwards. It was the best gig I’ve ever been to in my life.
There was one weird moment though, so strange that I can’t be totally sure that it wasn’t just a cider hallucination. Right at the start of the guitar solo in Head Full of Hate, I noticed this old guy. He was really smartly dressed with immaculate hair and well pressed clothes. There was a quiet dignity about him, he seemed to give off an aura of charm and sophistication. Baring in mind, this was when the crowd were at fever pitch - beer and spit and hair everywhere, psychos headbanging and crashing into each other and throwing bottles at the stage – the mosh pit was utter bedlam, a seething mass of black shirts and sweat. But none of it seemed to touch this old gent. He just breezed through the lot of us doing this smooth, slinky kind of dance. Never in my life have I seen anyone dance to The Deathpigs like that. In a really strange way though, it seemed to fit perfectly with the tempo and beat of Head Full of Hate, as if the old guy had natural rhythm and was totally at one with the music.
Like I said, weird.
It was Salsa night. Everyone else in the bar knew how to dance Salsa properly and were obviously regulars. We couldn’t have been more out of place if the bar had been on the moon.
I was just about coping. The volume of the music fortunately meant I didn’t have to talk too much and I began examining potential excuses for leaving. However, half an hour later, the accountant disappeared. We searched everywhere for him until, just as we’d almost given up on ever seeing him alive again, I weaved my way to the toilet and spotted a grey head of hair bouncing around on the middle of the dance floor. Arms flailing, glasses skew-whiff, he was head-banging in the middle of a pack of serious and dedicated Salsa dancers.
FOCUSING ON SOUNDS & SMELLS
The company accountant – always ready with a savage quip, a headmaster’s voice with a home-counties accent. The accompanying smell of old churches and Golden Virginia.
The trendy side of Sheffield, moneyed students in a bar blasting out South American music loud enough to prohibit conversation. The fruity alcoholic smell of extravagant cocktails mixing with the Lynx deodorant that seemed to seep from the walls.
A fug of beer fumes lingered over our table and, amid the tumult of trumpets and bongos, we took our attention off our accountant for a second and he was gone – vanished like the smoke from his roll-up on a windy day.
We braved the girating bodies and flapping silk in search of him. We followed our noses through the swathes of perfume at the bar, crossed the underlying stench of sweat on the dance-floor and made it all the way over to the nostril shrinking tang of disinfectant by the toilets.
Nothing.
Then, a wisp of grey hair amid the cloud of elegant, sweeping youngsters. Right in the centre of the dance-floor, the aura of drunkenness coming off him like musk - there was our accountant pogoing mercilessly to chilled latino beats, as inappropriate and unavoidable as a klaxon in a library.
AS FICTION
Split personality. Jekyll and Hyde. However, instead of a chemistry set and beaker, the accountant’s magic potion came from the casks of the Kelham Island Brewery.
The rest of us were sober enough to be ill at ease and uncomfortable in the student bar. I tried to stay quiet, waiting patiently for the first couple to peel away from the group and go home so that I could more easily justify my own escape. But then, panic. Our accountant was missing.
We murmured concern over the deafening thump of the Salsa music. He was in a wild enough state to create trouble with the gym-attending, easily offended clientele 30 years his junior.
Having patrolled the perimeter, scanned dark corners, checked the toilets – both male and female – and sent out a rescue party to search the streets outside, there was still no trace of him. Then, reconnoitring the dance-floor one last time, I spotted him. A mass of grey hair bouncing anything but rhythmically amid the irritated looking Salsa-ists. With horror, I watched as the trademark brown cardie came off. Next, it was twirling around his head in what appeared to be some kind of pagan fertility ritual.
I wasn’t the only one watching. A pack of bouncers was gathering like storm clouds close by. The extraction of our accountant from that dance-floor would need to be planned like a military operation.
A HAIKU
Wild hair, flailing arms
Blind drunk feral accountant
In the Salsa throng.
FROM A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW
Boring bastards. Boring, miserable bastards. What’s the matter with you? This is fantastic! Listen to that music – can’t you feel it? Drink up, come on, let’s go and dance!
Wait, what are you doing? Don’t start talking about politics – are you mad, we’re on a night out! You, take your head out of your hands. Don’t you dare look at your watch and yawn. Keep drinking, all of you, it’s only half one – we don’t have to be at work for another eight…er...seven…no, seven and a half hours. The night is young and it’s Christmas!
What are you… get to the bar, come on! I’ll have a cocktail this time, get me a Sex on the Beach. I don’t care what it costs, I’m the bloody accountant, it’ll go under expenses.
I need to dance now, who’s with me?
What?
Miserable bastards.
Right, screw this, I’m off. Not sitting around here all night when there’s music like this playing.
Wow, they all look very good at dancing. It’s a bit controlled though, a bit too regimented, like a routine or something. You’ve got to really feel these rhythms, let it flow through you, be free with it. I’ll show you all how it’s done, I’ll get right in the middle, right in the mixer.
Excuse me, coming through, oops, sorry about that – it’ll wash out. This is more like it! Everyone – hey, everyone – watch me! This is how you do it!
I may be an old man but as you can see, I can still cut it with these youngsters. Impressive eh? Hello there my dear, what a lovely blouse you’re wearing.
CHANGING THE SETTING
I was at the gig, the gig I’d been waiting months for. The Deathpigs haven’t played here in seven years and the crowd were well up for it. The sense of anticipation had been building all the way through the support act and we must have necked at least eight ciders before the ‘Pigs even started. By the time I made my way down to the mosh pit at the front, I was already pretty wrecked – I think everyone was.
When they finally came on stage, the crowd went ballistic. Bronco had his devil mask on, Cagney was wearing all his leathers, Brody threw a bucket of fake blood into the crowd – it was amazing! When Fester picked up his bass and cranked up the amps, I was shouting so loudly that I lost my voice for three days afterwards. It was the best gig I’ve ever been to in my life.
There was one weird moment though, so strange that I can’t be totally sure that it wasn’t just a cider hallucination. Right at the start of the guitar solo in Head Full of Hate, I noticed this old guy. He was really smartly dressed with immaculate hair and well pressed clothes. There was a quiet dignity about him, he seemed to give off an aura of charm and sophistication. Baring in mind, this was when the crowd were at fever pitch - beer and spit and hair everywhere, psychos headbanging and crashing into each other and throwing bottles at the stage – the mosh pit was utter bedlam, a seething mass of black shirts and sweat. But none of it seemed to touch this old gent. He just breezed through the lot of us doing this smooth, slinky kind of dance. Never in my life have I seen anyone dance to The Deathpigs like that. In a really strange way though, it seemed to fit perfectly with the tempo and beat of Head Full of Hate, as if the old guy had natural rhythm and was totally at one with the music.
Like I said, weird.
31 January 2010
Lest We Forget
Imagine my horror when I turned on breakfast television the other morning to find Danielle Lloyd grinning soppily back at me. It’s not a very pleasant way to start the day.
In case you need reminding about who Danielle Lloyd is, she was one of the contestants on Celebrity Big Brother three years ago. Following the usual formula for these types of shows, when she first entered the house, nobody had the first idea who she was. Apparently her career up to that point had included some modelling work and going out with a footballer. As this hardly constitutes celebrity, I presume she was included to provide some eye-candy for the boys and so that we could all laugh at how thick she was.
Obviously, that didn’t go according to plan. 2007 was the year that the almighty shitstorm kicked off around Shilpa Shetty and the racist bullying directed at her from a coven of housemates led by Jade Goody. Effigies were burnt, diplomatic relations with India became strained and it was even debated in Parliament. The whole thing was a national disgrace and right at the middle of it all was Danielle Lloyd.
I remember watching the show at the time and despising Lloyd more than Jade Goody herself – which is saying quite a lot. At least Goody was brutish and straightforward with her bigoted stupidity, you knew where you stood with her. Lloyd however, was exactly like the worst kind of vindictive schoolyard bully, fawning around the bigger, more powerful figurehead, egging them on to go further, telling them how great they are. She was sly, vindictive and loathsome – sniping hatefully behind Shetty’s back at every opportunity then panicking when she finally became aware of the trouble she was in and rushing to toady and apologise in the most desperate and fake way imaginable in order to save her own skin.
Thankfully, since then, she’s been very quiet. Until now.
Her strategy for a comeback is horribly transparent - devised, no doubt, by a shady Machiavellian PR agency of the worst kind. Lie low for a couple of years to give people time to forget how you behaved, then appear on something light and popular where you don’t have to talk too much just to get your name in the public eye again. After that you can relaunch your career properly on the back of some charity – make sure you’re associated heavily with it, bring in some personal trauma, portray yourself as sincere and caring.
That’s precisely what she’s done. Apparently, she was on Celebrity Wipeout over Christmas and donated her prize money to a domestic abuse charity – a charity that she’s now clamped onto firmly in order to repair her image. This is why she was leering at me from the television screen at breakfast, cosying up to Bill Turnbull on the sofa as if she were just a normal, civilised human being. Undoubtedly, there’ll be a BBC3 documentary soon followed by presenting slots and god alone knows what else.
But, hang on. How exactly is she relaunching herself? What career is she coming back to? Modelling? Going out with footballers? No, she’s coming back to a career in the media.
What career in the media is this? As I stated before, when she entered the Big Brother house, nobody knew who she was – the only reason we do now is because of the furore over the racism row. If she hadn’t verbally abused an Indian actress on national television, nobody would know the name Danielle Lloyd. There’d certainly be no way that she’d be there to goad and taunt me through the television because she wouldn’t be well known enough to appear on anything.
This is what I find so offensive. I wouldn’t mind her so much if she’d just had the dignity to slink back into the shadows and allow people to forget about her after Big Brother. Anyone with the slightest shred of shame would have. Instead however, she’s using the fact that her face and name is known in order to establish herself on television. She’s using the fame generated by her racist bullying as a foothold to get into the media and, by doing so, assuming that the public are so dumb and fickle that we’ll have forgotten about what a horrible person she is.
It scares me that she may be proved right. It scares me that we’ll let Danielle Lloyd become famous.
If she’s going to appear on television, there should be a constant reminder of the reason she’s there. For example, when someone appears on a talk show, the host will generally introduce them by telling the audience their name and the nature of their profession: ‘Please welcome, the actor, Bill Roach’, they might say, or: ‘Today on the show, we’ve got Uri Geller, the Spoon-bender’. Therefore, whenever Lloyd appears on anything she should be announced as: ‘The Bully, Danielle Lloyd’. Or, when she appears on one of those ‘I love the 90s’ type programmes where they show old clips followed by a close up of someone vaguely famous talking you through what you’ve just seen, the caption for hers should read: ‘Danielle Lloyd’, then underneath: ‘Nasty Piece of Work’.
That way, whenever we see that vacant, self-satisfied smile of hers on our screens, we might feel a little bit disgusted at ourselves that we’ve allowed it to get there.
In case you need reminding about who Danielle Lloyd is, she was one of the contestants on Celebrity Big Brother three years ago. Following the usual formula for these types of shows, when she first entered the house, nobody had the first idea who she was. Apparently her career up to that point had included some modelling work and going out with a footballer. As this hardly constitutes celebrity, I presume she was included to provide some eye-candy for the boys and so that we could all laugh at how thick she was.
Obviously, that didn’t go according to plan. 2007 was the year that the almighty shitstorm kicked off around Shilpa Shetty and the racist bullying directed at her from a coven of housemates led by Jade Goody. Effigies were burnt, diplomatic relations with India became strained and it was even debated in Parliament. The whole thing was a national disgrace and right at the middle of it all was Danielle Lloyd.
I remember watching the show at the time and despising Lloyd more than Jade Goody herself – which is saying quite a lot. At least Goody was brutish and straightforward with her bigoted stupidity, you knew where you stood with her. Lloyd however, was exactly like the worst kind of vindictive schoolyard bully, fawning around the bigger, more powerful figurehead, egging them on to go further, telling them how great they are. She was sly, vindictive and loathsome – sniping hatefully behind Shetty’s back at every opportunity then panicking when she finally became aware of the trouble she was in and rushing to toady and apologise in the most desperate and fake way imaginable in order to save her own skin.
Thankfully, since then, she’s been very quiet. Until now.
Her strategy for a comeback is horribly transparent - devised, no doubt, by a shady Machiavellian PR agency of the worst kind. Lie low for a couple of years to give people time to forget how you behaved, then appear on something light and popular where you don’t have to talk too much just to get your name in the public eye again. After that you can relaunch your career properly on the back of some charity – make sure you’re associated heavily with it, bring in some personal trauma, portray yourself as sincere and caring.
That’s precisely what she’s done. Apparently, she was on Celebrity Wipeout over Christmas and donated her prize money to a domestic abuse charity – a charity that she’s now clamped onto firmly in order to repair her image. This is why she was leering at me from the television screen at breakfast, cosying up to Bill Turnbull on the sofa as if she were just a normal, civilised human being. Undoubtedly, there’ll be a BBC3 documentary soon followed by presenting slots and god alone knows what else.
But, hang on. How exactly is she relaunching herself? What career is she coming back to? Modelling? Going out with footballers? No, she’s coming back to a career in the media.
What career in the media is this? As I stated before, when she entered the Big Brother house, nobody knew who she was – the only reason we do now is because of the furore over the racism row. If she hadn’t verbally abused an Indian actress on national television, nobody would know the name Danielle Lloyd. There’d certainly be no way that she’d be there to goad and taunt me through the television because she wouldn’t be well known enough to appear on anything.
This is what I find so offensive. I wouldn’t mind her so much if she’d just had the dignity to slink back into the shadows and allow people to forget about her after Big Brother. Anyone with the slightest shred of shame would have. Instead however, she’s using the fact that her face and name is known in order to establish herself on television. She’s using the fame generated by her racist bullying as a foothold to get into the media and, by doing so, assuming that the public are so dumb and fickle that we’ll have forgotten about what a horrible person she is.
It scares me that she may be proved right. It scares me that we’ll let Danielle Lloyd become famous.
If she’s going to appear on television, there should be a constant reminder of the reason she’s there. For example, when someone appears on a talk show, the host will generally introduce them by telling the audience their name and the nature of their profession: ‘Please welcome, the actor, Bill Roach’, they might say, or: ‘Today on the show, we’ve got Uri Geller, the Spoon-bender’. Therefore, whenever Lloyd appears on anything she should be announced as: ‘The Bully, Danielle Lloyd’. Or, when she appears on one of those ‘I love the 90s’ type programmes where they show old clips followed by a close up of someone vaguely famous talking you through what you’ve just seen, the caption for hers should read: ‘Danielle Lloyd’, then underneath: ‘Nasty Piece of Work’.
That way, whenever we see that vacant, self-satisfied smile of hers on our screens, we might feel a little bit disgusted at ourselves that we’ve allowed it to get there.
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