Festive Apathy. The one time of year it's allowed. If not OK

The Beautiful Life....

I've just eaten chocolate for breakfast again...

...and if I hadn't eaten all the chocolate in the house, I'd probably have found room for a little more.

For it's the time of year not only for copious television viewing by women who live alone and own sofas, but equally for those little sponsorship sequences that play before the show starts, or sandwich the ad-breaks. These are the small, softly-shot scenes featuring a beautiful single lady with lovely hair, a roaring fire, a blanket and something nice to eat, be that a Magnum Mini or one exquisitely wrapped Lindor chocolate.


This isn't working effectively in my lone-lady household, as I've already eaten all the chocolate, and thus just feel a bit nauseated by that Magnum Mini Maid creeping in after a hard days work for the one humble treat. God, how empty her life must be, what with all the moderation and hair-brushing that must go on in that cosy cottage of hers - you know, the one on the hillside by the lighthouse. Apart from anything she must be driven wild by the incessant fear of burglary, perhaps even a cliff-collapse, or werewolf attack. I wonder if she does her home insurance on direct debit.

Pies Vs Politics... Currant Buns Vs Current Affairs

I'm utterly overusing the phrase 'at this time of year' (see somewhere above) to excuse the most ridiculous lapses of moral, social engagement.

Isn't it easier to get away with being a dumb, lazy boozer if everyone else is doing the same? I can't honestly say I have a lot of hobbies right now, aside from working, writing study plans for next year, taking baths, shagging, eating and running. And the latter only happens because the former of the former doesn't burn enough calories to balance out the former of the latter.

But, all those delights aside, the most beautiful thing about Christmastime is that everybody seems to be equally indulgent, lazy and disinterested in anything worldly, and nobody expresses guilt about it.

I think I could probably tell you the top news story of the day for the past few weeks, and nothing more. Some of those stories have been pretty rotten too - so much for a slow news month - but perhaps I am not alone in only wanting to hear nice things in December. Perhaps this is cynical, but big stories are often big when they are timely, and so our year seems to have see-sawed between indifference and indignation, in line with the national spirit.

The latter half of this year (post-olympics when everything was great, apparently) has been one of media shift and scandal, when the public engaged in arguments around press independence and moderation, and several big stories put the whole thing in context and made this age-old discourse current. Phone-hacking at the News of the World, it's demise and the launch of the The Sun on Sunday, was followed by the opening of wounds still raw at the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster. The Jimmy Saville sex scandal emerged and alongside it, great mistrust of the great BBC. Newsnight's related tarnishing followed, an old man accused wrongly and publicly of child abuse, which was then propagated on Twitter, finally followed by the appointment and resignation of a beeb director general in just months. Indeed, this side of the Olympics, media stories have taken centre stage in media coverage, whether it has been the departure of Chris Moyles from radio 1, farewell to Ceefax or hello to whichever on demand TV provider you favour... no wonder people have been asking, in effect, is the tail wagging the dog?

As an aside, I don't think the tail IS wagging the dog. Sorry, I hate that phrase, I don't know why I just used it twice. Evidently I'm a twat... but anyway, surely the very fact that scandal in the media is so prominently covered by the media just highlights it's own self-awareness. Print and broadcast are democratic mediums that can recognise their own flaws and individual areas of corruption - prevalent (and thus relevant) inevitably as it shall be in any section of society. Perhaps what we have learned this year, is to not disregard and leave unquestioned what takes place before our very eyes. Again, I'd posit that this is the position not merely of the media but of any organisation which has a duty of responsibility and trust. Surely, alerted to great self-reflection, the exposure of malpractice (which by it's nature, only becomes scandalous when exposed) is the greatest safeguarding against further error.

This is a simplified view, for it does not take into account the fact that there are (and always will be) a few genuinely malignantly motivated people in any organisation, and as a part of their democratic privilege, these people will have access to power and influence that may remain unchecked until mass attention recognises it as harmful. All I'm saying is that sometimes we need to remind ourselves where we're going wrong, and think about what's right and wrong. We'll forget again as we eagerly try to get by and do the day to day, but at least, together as a society, we are able to pull each other up and have a good old argument about it. Moderate that and you have one thread of belief governing a whole rainbow of society and opinion.

But back to December, and here many of us are, struggling through the last few days of work before the big 2 days of feasting and family (hopefully), lost in merry cookery shows, heavy drinking, lovely food and lots of sleep. Even the Mayan Apolocalypse seems to have passed with a relative degree of gung-ho affection. This week I overslept and was late for work. My boss just nodded sagely and agreed, we were all just clawing through. That wasn't like me. I must be tired. I nodded. I cannot get enough sleep right now.

Tired from what though? Work is always busy - that's no change. Is it rather the fact that everything is inevitably on the go-slow now. You can't exist in isolation, getting excited about the news and deadlines and being early for work if nobody else is. Frankly, I'd carry this on all year if everyone else was up for it, and bring on the regressions or ultimate downfall of society through sheer laziness, but we know that as soon as January comes we'll be tightening our belts. Cliches are there for a reason, and by the time that comes, we'll be hungry for the vim and vigour of a great news scandal.

Not so much Lindor chocolate, perhaps.

Merry Christmas.

Regressing... and Obsessing... Delirium

Run Yourself Mad… Run Yourself Delirious



This week I've been mostly been flight-fixated, having taken a rather fancy lunch at the Gherkin on Wednesday afternoon, and preceded to spend the evening observing a similar panorama, elevated above Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland, via zip wire, ferris wheel and pretty much anything that doesn't go upside down or make you feel too unwell.

Yesterday's quiet Saturday consisted - aside from some sexy washing and tackling on the in-flat damp issues - in a run lasting approximately 3 hours. Without much of a plan, I set off and ended up staring at the Greenwich cable car in the fading day - a haunting spectacle, quietly and repetitively jittering it's way over the Thames in the evening light. I haven't been on it yet. I'm secretly hoping the boy will go with me and make it romantic as opposed to just pure melancholic. It was, however, entirely, deliciously desolate yesterday, with a snow-muddled sky and a sun just petulant enough to plaster occasional sprinklings of pink and orange across the fading vista.

There's something fascinating about the flat, blasted landscape of the East docklands that captures me, both visually and spiritually. The wide, blasted meeting of earth and river, conquered by a vast, yet desert industry, possessed by an outer silence, yet underpinned by a deep mechanical rumble, the patter of rougher waters, the wind in the soft, lost reeds along the bank. This had me in a state of epiphanic delight as the paltry sun went down. It was, of course, accompanied by the slow, adrenalin-fuelled build of the journey there - from the humble, boring, terraced streets, across the A-something or other, over a winding overpass, and through the overgrown, rusted debris of prior industry - a gasometer, grand and sad and threatening, a trailer, unhinged and rusting in the bushes. All to the strains of some rather faded old music - Radiohead, Ocean Colour Scene, Jeff Buckley… pure histrionic nostalgia, and all of my own, ON my own. Wonderful.

I started taking pictures and couldn't stop, for the light was changing with every second. I took a short film, to capture the sound of the strange wind in the reeds. It was as if both were unsure of their supremacy in that scene. Nature had been there first, but it is alien now, misplaced. It was great to be sensitive again. When I was younger I was afraid of gasometers, tall buildings, and particularly things that seemed to loom, omnipotent, but essentially heartless. I got over it, obviously, living and working in many a city and became desensitised to the shock of those illogical threats, as you do, but yesterday it was new again. I experienced fear in visceral, logical proportions as I continued my run, away from the sun, through the fading, deserted industrial works.

I ran beyond North Greenwich and the sad, but comical benches, lined up in neat, vacant rows. The culture gave way to ugly, rough industry. A huge ship's engines began to whir somewhere, and I could feel and hear the rumble, the creak of heavy metal, and cold mangling of it's inner mechanics as it pulled away and headed East towards the Thames Barrier, out to sea.

There were mills and vast cylinders, skeletal, metallic frameworks, harsh fences with barbed warnings and long, dusty roads. The air was bitingly cold. I came across a pair of fishermen and ran on. It was so lonely. Looking up, I began to be overcome by this crushing dizziness and fear - the scale of these structures is still somehow incomprehensible to my small, Sussex-bred mind. Panic took over. I had to physically hold myself back from curling into a ball. I clapped my hand over my mouth, the way I'd done on the Ghost Train at Winter Wonderland earlier this week and wanted to call my father, but it was absurd. I thought I might be sick for a moment, but at the same time revelled in that true and real and illogical panic. I was completely safe, and yet I was terrified.

Who needs dodgems now eh?

But Flight?

Oh yes, distracted there. I was running again this morning - a day quite transformed by the bluest skies and tender frost, when I looked up to see a Wood Pigeon beat across the sky above me. I was so struck by it's easiness of motion, and the fragile, purplish-tinted frame of a chest, I was overcome by longing to be with it.

My passion for escape is nothing I've been unaware of lately. Work is busy, social things get busy in the run up to Christmas. There's a lot of things to think about. It's all a bit hectic, and there's only one place I want to be, and that's in bed, or lounging somewhere with the boy. Nowhere else. I said to him this afternoon, that I never understood how people could do that - lie in bed all day with their lovers - until now. I'm in love, like I never have been before, and it's doing strange things to me. I'm regressing, accessing with delight all the tempered and channeled feelings I thought were the territory of idle teenage fancy. Perhaps, they are. Perhaps I'm just very late to the game here? Perhaps it's just a mental, intoxicating combination of hormones? Or here's another theory…

Perhaps I'm so terrified it's not reciprocal, everything has reached the dramatic inner state of apocalyptic insecurity… the kind only experienced by an adolescent emo fan with a passion for 1) sulks and 2) sad music. I revel in his company, but the thought that sooner or later it might be over, renders each day an early, bittersweet twilight. Each soaring morning gives way to day and dusk. Surely this can't be real? Surely he can't feel the same? I don't know. I've never felt this before, and in light of recent events, every day feels precious, and every day I don't see him feels wasted.

Oh god, this is awful isn't it. I'm really screwed here. Eek, eek, eek, and therein lies another revelation that presumably the rest of the world has known for quite some time. Love makes you some sort of willing prisoner, doesn't it?

When I was a teenager I'd get obsessed with things, and melancholy if they were not real. I always felt ashamed of my strange preoccupations - from TV shows to movies to celebrities to… um… the radio. Now I feel horrified that every time I say goodbye for a day or two, I want to run right back and kiss him again. Then, after a few days, I sink into the same malady - afraid that perhaps, like all my other fantasies, it is unreal. Before I know it, I'm applying the same raving obsession to everything else I encounter - the cable car for that matter. I won't shut up about it. Or the damp problem in my flat…. OK, maybe not the same thing there.

Anyway, it's pretty cool. I'm just going to summarise the pathetic following:

1) I'm pretty concerned that, in spite of the recent crap year, I seem to have found something nice, in the form of a boy.
2) Additionally, I can't stop wondering what people did before chap stick was invented.
3) My third mighty issue is how one can have so much tupperware, and yet never in the right shape for whatever you've just baked.
4) And finally, life's great question... why are there only ever train engineering works when you have something heavy to carry?

Which just goes to show, if you don't have a problem, there's always something to worry about.

Thank god for Sundays.