Wake Up, Crack Up, Stuff Up

5.14am on a cold November morning.

Somewhere in a damp, dimly lit flat is the sound of soft, deep breathing. Someone is dreaming, their breath warm amidst the covers, a little, safe cocoon of peace.

5.15am and a soft tinkling precedes the eruption of a white-blue glow. A rectangle is alight in the gloom, and suddenly a simpering, malignant bell pierces the morning. Moments later it is joined in chorus by a hammering analogue stutter, and yet almost before either is ringing, the room is alive with movement, the covers, like dreams, thrust violently aside. There is scrabbling, desperate tapping, and yet the smartphone touch screen still eludes those frantic fingertips. Next, the monster leaps across the room and searches out the missing clock. A hairdryer is kicked and somehow switches on. It's switched off. The alarm is found. It's switched off too.

All this happens in moments and the chaos is followed by a brief stasis - a caffeine tablet fizzing humbly in a glass of stale water.

How did anyone ever get up any other way? This is how I start my day - an undignified, inglorious, almost violent return to the world I departed only a few hours ago.

Still 5.15am...The bathroom light blasts on and there, thrown aside on top of the laundry basket is a magazine. It's one of those women's health magazines, the kind of magazine for women who WIN and for women who GET THINGS DONE and HAVE REGULAR BOWEL MOVEMENTS TOO.

My eyes open just about wide enough to cram in the hard, contact lenses.I scrub the makeup off them with cold water. No wonder my eyesight just gets worse. The lids are never fully open in the week. Then there are the emails. Back to the little blue rectangle in the dark. The light is oddly comforting. I use it as an excuse to sit back on the bed for a moment and knock back my caffeine. It burns my throat. Alas these first world laments.

Then, before I know I'm fully awake, the pavement pounding begins, come rain or shine, but mostly rain, there I am with the grim outward resolve of a wartime mother - all the strength and glory of womanhood unfulfilled and misdirected into the only thing I have to really take care of - myself. God what a burden it is to be so acceptably self-absorbed at this point of life - mortgage free, child-free twenty something female. I search for any other thought as I continue my run…

And perhaps, on some days, as the rain lashes down, I ponder whether I've crossed that line from 'doer' to 'over-doer', because it sure doesn't feel like enough to get up at 5.15 and run before a day at work. It really doesn't feel like enough to be on time for work, or even a mere half an hour early. It doesn't feel enough to work an 8 hour day and still take a lunch break. This is not the world I live in. We must do more than earn our money, we must suffer for it, we must feel guilt, because we must pay for our privileges and the ultimate knowledge that we live a charmed life, when all's said and done.



First World Problems

Yesterday, I went for lunch at the Gherkin, a three course and champagne delight, with my family and my (now-retired) father's generous boss. My boss gave me the afternoon off. On my way there, horrified at my early departure at 11.45am, scuttling along the Charing Cross Road, I was once again beset by the most epic sense of humour fail. I was thinking to myself, how much a resented this lifestyle and the ownership everyone else is the world seems to have over me, and my own paltry exercising of free will. I cannot resist any more than the residual level of guilt that comes with being a modern, middle-class, western woman, and am incessantly saying yes to things I will struggle to carry through.

Like some sort of whirling dervish, my head spins. I've been faint quite a bit lately and passed out on the train a few weeks ago. It feels that time is speeding up, and I'm whirling faster, getting older rapidly and I just…. want… things…. to…. stay….. still.

Just for a moment. Maybe a little more than a weekend. Maybe long enough to do the washing AND put it away?!



On Being a Media Douchebag

Working the media makes for a particularly warped perspective on work-life balance. More specifically, there isn't one, not if you're anyone. You've got to love your job and that's got to be enough, because this is what happens when you take the leap from creatively frustrated child to savvy media douche. The reality is that 5 days a week, I'm going at 100 mph and about as streamlined as a fridge in a bathtub. This means, in physical terms, I don't quite have the knack of opening the company laptop yet. It's a graceful thing, for graceful people, and yet when I get my sticky, cumbersome hands on it, I always end up prizing it open with all the panache of a toddler playing with a smartphone. I galumph through life like a Shetland pony amongst Thoroughbreds. Far above me the puffing, graceful nostrils steam, manes fly and ripple in the wind, whilst I, below, obediently follow, plucky, stocky, with my hair in my eyes. Ever faithful. Ever a Shetland pony.

So who's in charge? The latest Thoroughbred. At least down here I'm less likely to be in the big race, where one most likely risks falling at a steeple and being unceremoniously evacuated from this life, to be replaced by some other, unfortunate quadruped. The Thoroughbreds are fiery, feisty characters, as prone to brilliance as they are prone to great fuckeries of power. I think of the latest Newsnight scandal (which one? It's our fave scandal bed of late) and cannot help but shrug. They put someone new in charge. They fucked it up. It was only going to go one of two ways.

By the way, that's fuck up now or fuck up later.

But, the fact of the matter is, all of this IS accepted if you work in the media. It's not just accepted, it's a badge worn with pride, passion and self-worth. We suffer for doing something we like. We are expendable, we are sociable and we are all, essentially, going to be wrong sooner or later, so just enjoy it and try to keep out of trouble for now. You will fuck up, you're human (don't forget it or you're on your way to the top). At least when you do tumble back down, it's got to be more of a relief, knowing that you've been ejected, because you could NEVER, NEVER stand leaving of your own accord. Could you?

Off to bed now. Alarm's going off at 5.15am.

Learrned Neurotics, Giving a Shit, Having a Change and being a bit bad and a bit good... all at once

The Well-Adjusted Modern Neurotic

Is this a fire in my belly? No, it's a huge burger. A HUGE burger, and I'm just about comfortable enough to sit still and look at this page without sweating. Overeating is a friend of mine (the real reason I run so much) and yet it makes me so anxious. It's like the end of the world every time I reach the point of not wanting any more of something.

Actually, that's what it feels like being hungover. Or depressed. When you're not hungry for life, when you're not seeking stimulation or sensation, nothing has that same old shine. Nothing feels like it will ever have shine.

Only I know that 24 hours after that pack of biscuits / entire cow / pint of vodka has wriggled it's way through my sorrowful twentysomething system, I'll be eyeing up my next great nemesis, most likely in M&S food. Because I deserve a posh treat, yes?

No, actually. I can't afford it.

Nor can I afford to, as your average twentysomething woman, take too seriously the heady 'you can change' promises of my ladyhealth magazines. I'm not a glamour girl, full stop. I struggle to pronounce Estee Lauder, could barely tell you whether a Laboutin goes on your foot or somewhere rude, and think that Touche Elcat sounds far too much like a sex toy for it's own good. However, when it comes to healthy eating, lifestyle advice and bogus, faddy vitamins, I'm prime real estate and just begging for development.

Here I propose, dawns the latest era of learned neuroticism. Eat well, they tell us, sleep lots, fiddle with your hair, work out and have lots of orgasms. You're worth it. You're WORTH something if you do these things.

If you don't, like the majority of people, the implication is that you're probably not. And suddenly, well-to-do, successful meaningful women are consigned to the same domain of self-regard as the naughty schoolboy who was told he was bad and just acted badder.

If the framework of how we see ourselves is so focused around the goals we must aim for in their entirety, it is very easy to think little or nothing of our assets as they already exist. In better terms, we're getting far too ambitious for our own good. People aren't meant to be perfect, after all. Who ever finds their idol is truly as content as we project them to be?

I'm not saying anything new here, but my thought was that in our tacit understanding of this, and the voice of knowing complicity that bonds us to our favourite magazines and influential mediums, is the most dangerous thing. The instant we take for granted what we know, don't we begin to forget it a little? You're smart and successful and you take 'me time', suggests the magazine. You accept this. You disregard this. Being smart and successful and taking time out is a level playing field. It's no longer an achievement. Instead, you've got to try the latest superfood, join a sports club full of other wretched women like yourself, or just make sure you have the most mind-blowing out of body experience sort of holiday that you deserve. If you don't, well you're just letting yourself down aren't you.

Isn't that the worst thing anyone can say to you? That you're worth more than you can achieve? Yet I think this ethos might just have become so acceptable that neuroticism is something that's par for the course now.

I write radio scripts myself. How many times have I said something along the lines of "we all have busy lifestyles, so don't you deserve XYZ?" I've implied your busy lifestyle is unmovable. I've told you you're missing something. I'm telling you this so you will enter the competition. Today, Starbucks put their wretched Christmas red cups on sale. I went out and got a round for everyone. Red cup day is here. Hurray! What the hell is red cup day? What does that mean? What on earth am I doing?

It strikes me that if we're the people making this bunkum up, how on earth is someone who trusts a publication going to react? I'm not saying that readers and radio listeners don't have minds of their own. In fact, they're probably much more aware of marketing spin than the people working in this strange bubble of an industry can imagine. However, I strongly believe that after a while, if something becomes repeated, it becomes a habit, it becomes desensitised and then before you know it, it's a culture.

I must not overeat. I must have a red cup. I must eat this entire box of chocolate.Then  I must diet myself back in control. Joy, penance, joy, penance.

I think the same applies, not only to our bodies, but to our view of all things personnal. Finance is another prime example of this pendulum of control and frivolity.

I wonder if it's because the middle zone, the indecisive, moderate area between plenty and empty is a boring place, a frightening place, a pointless place? We are told that ambition leads to success. We are told we are successful, or we are told we can be successful. Ambitious people want more from life and they take more. When there is nothing left, they reach the point of completion, where one must either seek out a new goal, another truer goal, or else accept their failure to achieve contentment, and accept themselves as unsuccessful.

I wonder how much of this was always present in the psyche of the well-to-do Westerner? It seems not war, nor loss, nor disaster can shake our drive to move fowards, to be more, to have more. It is perhaps just that our means to move forwards, be more and have more are much more powerful.

I envy those of the moderate disposition, who see the world in a measured light, live their days with the calm assurance that there will be another, and that all things will get done if we just trust to time. But I do doubt very much that those people see themselves in the same manner I do. For don't we all find stillness.... just a little.... boring?

Who are you? I'm the End of the World

I went to a Halloween house party on Saturday. The outfits were fabulous. Or rather, most other people's outfits were fabulous. I bought a witches hat for 50p and a bottle of wine for 8.99. I was drinking it by the fridge when a ghouslish mime artist in a cape approached.

He wasn't actually meant to be a mime artist. He may have been just a regular zombie vampire, who just loooked very much like a mime artists, because he spoke, which I'm pretty sure is off the cards for official mime arists. Anyway, it was pretty groundbreaking stuff, for he said "Hi, I'm X" and shook my hand. I answered "I'm the end of the world... witch"

We both paused for a moment, unsure what that meant or how to proceed, before I recovered and told him my actual name.

Why did this happen? Why did that particular combination of words in that particular order come from my (half-heartedly) blood-soaked mouth? Probably because there would have been some sort of joke there, had I actually been in the practise of partygoing in recent weeks (which I haven't. The last party I went to was a funeral)

Now, I'm jaded enough by these situations not to be too fussed if I royally humiliate myself. It's been done before and it will probably happen again, either before or after someone else does something equally pathetic, and yet I did feel a little sting of disapointment at my performance here.

It got me wondering just how far the 'ce la vie' really can go, when you are essentially dependent on other people's good opinions to secure your future, ultimately financially, through employment (never be famously shit) and even more ultimately having money for food to eat and a roof above your head and maybe even an odd visit to Waitrose, just for something special.

In the current context of my job, which appears to be provoking me to daily frustration (i.e. walking calmly into the studio, crying, shouting fuck and throwing small, unfolded scripts about which do not have the desired destructive effect because they are essentially, weightless pieces of paper, then coming out and returning calmly to work) this thought is occuring frequently.

This morning I walked across St. Martin's in the cold, snow-glazed sunlight and could think of nothing but how angry I was over an email i'd just read on the train. I wanted dearly, once again, to throw in my notice and storm away without a backwards glance.

Of course this didn't happen. Instead I stormed into the office, cleared my desk (a network presenter had just had some toast and left me their plate and crumbs) and cracked on with a good day's work. Why?

What do you mean why? I'm not retarded.

I've worked for years to get into this position. I've worked my butt off to race past the men in my position and achieve this mild position of lowly middle-management and minor status. And I have a flat to pay for. And a journalism degree. And I like shopping at M&S food now and then. And frankly, I do really love working for the radio. Even if the brouhaha and egotistical, group wank element leaves me cold. It would be a shame for a few people to put me off, I say.

Plus, it's quite possible I'm grieving and not in my right mind.

So there's a limit to the 'fuck it all' philosophy, and one I find consistently hilarious. Why are there few things funnier than the collapse of high-minded principles? Is it because this is tragic and voyeuristically cruel.... or is it rather that there is nothing more pleasurable than being reminded of your common vulnerabilities as human beings.

When I calm down and put my face back on, there really is nothing funnier than refelcting on my silly behaviour. I am at one with myself again, at one with all these other idiots, and at the end of the day I have food and a roof over my head, not to mention a job I (on the whole) can still enjoy.

So this is how I found myself listening to Andrea Bocelli so loudly that I thought I blew my speakers (I'd just turned the fader down to have a swear, it transpires) and racing home for a bloody nice bath, to a bloody nice bit of Mozart on Classic FM.

A Change is Just As Good As a Rest

There's no underestimating the lease of life afforded by doing something so everyday in a novel way.

It's been a year since i moved to this flat. Nearly a year since I bought the plush new sofa. Nearly a year since I arranged my bookcases (temporarily) in a most chaotic order.

Yet this is how the bookcases have remained. Save for the odd impulse plunge into an old favourite (I pick books up and put them down. Who has time to read when you don't even have time to take a wee?) they have remained in the temporary state of disorder I KNEW would evolve to be permanent. So too, for my attitude to the new sofa. I bought it on interest free credit - a horrifying foray into the world of 'is this really ok' finance, and even long after it is fully paid off, I don't sit on it, except for special occasions.

My default sofa - one of the bright, red old sofas the radio station no longer wanted, is big enough for a comfortable night's sleep. It's beaten, unpretentious and always welcoming. I read on it, doze on it, check emails on it, eat off it... hell, I even had some great sex on it... and yet there, just feet away, the most grand and fancypants purchase I have made awaits, longingly the same level of usage, habitation and love. I can barely sit on it for 5 minutes, lest I crease it's beautifully plumped cushions.

The same applies to new clothes. I can't bear to buy them in case I make them all sort of... me-ish and ruined. My little sister's cast-off clothes are the best. They're unwanted but always lovely. They're always my best things.

So when those occasional, transitory phases capture you, like a new wind, it's great to go with the flow. Last week I watched an entire film on that damn sofa. I saw my living room from a different perspective. A couple of weeks ago I filed away my old bank statements. Small revolutions indeed, but these are the things that give me energy for life. Isn't it just the sense of joy in life that we seek to reignite each day? Novelty stirs exciement and unpredicability. It makes the world electric, surprising and inviting in a way that is harder and harder to find with age and time and experience.

I think of my late brother-in-law and his unchecked fascination with the world and it's workings and I cannot believe he has died. There was a man who knew everythinng, and yet dedicated the smallest hours of the morning to the acquirement of yet more infomration (and a huge amount of bookcase space, mind space and time and space to the mulling of this information). He must have found the world too much. They say the more you know, the less you know, which is perhaps why he took refuge in the numbing alcohol habit that led to his heart attack and death at 36. But at the same time, I don't think knowing less, or being surprised by the world could ever have been a horror to him until the end, when my sister was diagnosed with cancer and their future took a perspective (in his mind) that could not be resolved, not even tempered through learning or wisdom.

To return to my original point, before this lighthearted blog becomes maudlin, I think that surprise and wonder is the main motivator for all the great things in this world. Curiosity killed the cat, but it also made the cat very happy, because the cat was learning things and unlearning things, and sometimes it is the nicest thing to be proven wrong, or to see that there is another way of doing the everyday

I know knowledge - the acquirement of, and particuarly the sharing of through a thousand regailing and unforgettable stories, was my brother-in-law's great joy. The surprise and delight of learning is what puts a glimmer in the child's eye, and in the eye of the grown man who approaches the world with energy, effort and curiosity... and hope.

This is why, in a small way, if I don't have time to read a book, laugh at a podcast, or take a different train, I can at least put a little surprise in today by having a sit on that new sofa today and see the world, in a very small way, through new eyes.

We've got to work at reinvention every day, and reap it's delights, for if there are some things beyond our control, surely we can at least enjoy the brighter side of intentional unpredictability?

This Horrifying World

Having noted the glories of helplessness above, I now must proceed to, as usual, undermine what has just been said.

I woudl genuinely like to smack the world round the head sometimes. In fact, if I was the firey Irish housewife of the world, I would DEFINITELY throw a few plates at it. Maybe run at it with a red hot poker, just to give it a scare....

... because god dammit world you need to sort out your priorities. The order is all fucky and wrong.

I got on the train at London Bridge earlier tonight and was joined by a man, snot-ridden, who blew his nose on a tissue and carefully, purposefully, placed it on the floor at my feet.

Fine, he's just a scummy man, I accepted, glaring at his brazen, returned stare. Only to discover that moments later, he had whipped a ipad out of his laptop bag and started tapping away at it.

No! I told myself. This is all wrong. Steve Jobs, are you seeing this in heaven? This man has an Apple product and he is really not the right demographic. Look what he just did with the tissue. That's not aspirational, Jobbo. That's just disgusting!

Steve Jobs didn't get back to me on that one, so I just pretended to read my book for 14 minutes until the offensive man dragged his overprivileged, night-nurse tanked self off at Forest Hill (and left the tissue behind)

Oh, and if you weren't quite convinced things have gone a bit fucky with the world order, may I also remind you that  my sister is now a 35 year old widow with cancer, where not 9 months ago she was a happily married woman just starting a family.

ALRIGHT... my first reaction to my own damn self is to say that she won't be 35 years old, or have cancer forever. Heck, there will be someone else who loves her. Maybe one day she'll even marry again, although it feels horrid to say that now. Realistically, she will be loved. She is loved. She will be OK.

But it's wrong now. No two ways about it.

ONCE AGAIN, moving my morose self away from the irrevocable, I genuinely wonder whether I have a right to complain about the man with the snotty tissue, havnig not said a word to him about it.

It's easy to stand on a soap box, particularly on an anonymous blog and decry all of South East London, but frankly I'm no better than the next person if I can't make a stand and say it to someone who can make a change.

I think of all the people who have gone out on a limb for me - to stand up for me, back me up, speak up or just generally step in when I'm in a stitch, and risk their own position for my benefit. These are the people who have a right to a soapbox. My older sister is one of them, funnily enough. And yet she is one of the most forgiving people I know.

Perhaps true strength is just the ability to make a stand when you think something isn't right, have a confrontation and stand by what you say, even if it means accepting your own subjectivity against another's. I suppose when you recognise you might be wrong, as much as the other person, it's a level playing field - therein lies your choice - to do something about it or not?

I said nothing to the man on the train, and yet often when I go running, if I pass a helpless worm washed up on the pavement by the rain, I'll stop, run back, pick it up and put it somewhere safe and earthy. Simliarly, this paranoia saw me chase a man down Blackheath last weekend just because I thought he looked a bit heart attacky, and I ought to be there, as that's what I woudl have wanted for my family.

To be fair, chasing people with disabilities around Blackheath is a bit of a 'wake-up' moment for most sane people, hence I was just about appropriately shocked at my behaviour to recall it. The only thing is, when I passed a worm on the pavement this morning, rushing for my train to work, I left it.

I left the worm and it's been bothering me. I guess I won't do that next time.

So I suppose what I'm getting to is that everyone's pattern of behaviour, and balance of right and wrong, is in continuous flux. We are learning, unlearning, relearning and readjusting every day as experience shapes us into better or worse beasts.

Perfect example of the good and bad rolled into one confusing mess. The couple who brought my sister's husband a blanket and called the ambulance came to her a week or so later and asked her, as a widow they'd met once, to be the guarnator on their house, whcih they were in danger of losing.

My brother was there. He stepped in and made sure she wansn't, as an emotionally vulnerable, recently bereaved woman, signing away the little bit of everything she hadn't lost to a near stranger. She would have done it otherwise. My brother always steps in for family. Our family always step in for each other.

At work currently, I have the sneaking suspicion that I am being used as a pawn in some particular politics. I was let into a secret and sworn to silence by my boss the other night. I've seen her do this with people and they always feel flattered and will jump through hoops to play along and not let her down. And although her tactics are well-planned and effective, I fail to see how people really cannot see what is happening before their eyes or how they are being manipulated.

This paints my boss in bad light, which I must now seek to undo, for she on the other hand is one of the most privately kind and compassionate people I have had the fortune to work with. That's why she's so good at working people - she understands their motivations. It's just perhaps that sometimes, in order to make the motivation of one achieve fruition, she needs to take advantage of another's nature.

And so it rotates, that some must get ahead whilst others take the hit, and sooner or later the ones taking the hit will get their chance... (or perhaps this is what I believe and hence why I play along). It also serves as evidence to me that no one is truly all bad or all good. We're just trying to do our best for those that really matter to us.

I wasn't happy this morning because I felt pressurised to make someone else feel bad, when personally I'd rather have let it go and moved on. But I got on with my day and did as I was told, and really, I stopped feeling so bad when the other person apologised. Suddenly I didn't look like such a bad little henchwoman.

And yet, I too could have stopped this morning, put that worm somewhere safe, and said to my boss that I didn't think it was right, the way this person was being treated.

Because I didn't, i will overcompensate tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will be a better person.

Sorry about today.