Cocktails and Records

Has it really been that long since I last wrote?

My, how time flies when you’re not having fun. Since I last logged into these pages, I’ve been shocked to the core by two serious family illnesses, descended to hell and back at work, enjoyed a lovely holiday in Scotland, completely missed my third blogging birthday and accumulated 152 spam emails.

But really, I just haven’t felt like writing. Or even communicating with anyone for that matter. I’ve got an inbox of unanswered emails (sorry, if it includes yours), a list of people I really should contact and stuff to sort out for an upcoming trip to Australia. But have I felt like dealing with any of this? No, of course not – I’ve had other things to worry about.

Not the least that in the aftermath of my life’s recent woes, I’ve felt my own personality slightly slipping away from me. I haven’t been listening to much music, I haven’t been out much, but perhaps even more distressingly I haven’t been able to formulate even vague opinions about anything, I’ve just been ‘going with the flow’.

It all came to a head last week when I found myself at English National Opera watching the jarringly modernist opera The Makropulos Case and reading The Spectator. I’d come across both randomly and in the spirit of the month had just shrugged my shoulders and thought ‘why not?’.  But now, with the light of sudden self-awareness dawning on me all I could ask myself was ‘what has happened? I’ve just paid to see something by a composer I don’t like and now I’m sitting here reading  a conservative weekly.’

Still, I shrugged. It’s good to try new things sometimes.

Then it happened. Filling time in the foyer, I was reading an article by Melanie Phillips about how true liberal values are being eroded by anti-Western, secular ideologies such as feminism, multiculturalism and environmentalism and how the country is now run by the thought police, when I ran into a particular music obsessed acquaintance and professional snob who I usually actively try to avoid. ‘Isn’t this opera fantastic?’ she gushed ‘I love Janacek. It really is proper music, so much better than that… populist stuff they keep putting on by Puccini and Mozart.’

I stared blankly at her and made some noncommittal sounds before explaining that I needed to visit the Ladies quite urgently. Because inside, a familiar feeling was emerging. I was incensed, absolutely incensed. Fucking Melanie Phillips, the whinging cow, so oppressed by the thought police that she manages to get on Question Time all the sodding time. And I wish the bloody thought police would get you too, you patronising music snob, because liking music with an actual tune is just so lame and low-brow isn’t it… 

So I slung my copy of the The Spectator in the bin and went home and listened to ABBA. And yes, I feel better now thank you.

I couldn’t get to sleep the other night. Even Mondo’s trusty old method of counting down an A-Z of some boring topic like ‘indie bands from 1991′ wasn’t working. I just remained frustratingly wide awake. So I went to the book shelves to see what I could find to soothe my sleepless misery and my hand seemed to be drawn to a book I haven’t read since 1986: Mary Norton’s The Borrowers.

And boy, it was good.

It’s odd re-reading a dimly remembered book from your childhood. Of course I remembered the vague outline of the plot, but the details were long lost so the story was relatively fresh. I probably enjoyed reading it as much as I did when I was 11.

However, it didn’t feel the same. I seem to remember that once upon a time I became absolutely immersed in a book, I couldn’t put it down, I lived in there with the characters and wanted it to go on and on and on.

I spent hours reading. I read before school, I read in the car and I read under the bed clothes at night. I read my way through the shelves of both my school library and the local library. I read everything from the classics like What Katy Did and Anne of Green Gables, to every fad series going, from the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew to Sweet Valley High and Choose Your Own Adventure. I read my Grandma’s girls’ boarding school books from the 40s and the 70s/80s teen equivalents by Judy Blume and Cynthia Voigt. I read trash fantasy series by David Eddings and distressing sci-fi by Kurt Vonnegut. I just read. All the time.

But not any more. I rarely read any fiction these days. I’m not sure why. It’s not that I couldn’t make the time if I wanted to. I think it might be that a precarious combination of cynicism, a long neglected imagination, the stress of everyday life and a seriously limited attention span means that I just can’t sit there and be properly lost in anything any more. It’s not the same as when I was 13 and pathetic as it may seem, I’m kind of sad about that.

As much as I don’t delight in work, sometimes the office is a welcome refuge from the outside world, or at least the outside world of the pavements surrounding it.

I have worked in some of the busiest parts of central London and Glasgow over the past decade and have become used to the constant flow of heavy traffic, madcap cyclists, dawdling pedestrians shouting into mobile phones, noise pollution from lousy buskers and the inevitable lost tourists. This doesn’t bother me (much). What has been grinding me down over the years though is the ongoing assault on my ability to walk unharassed down the street.

I know that ‘the street’ is public space, but over the past few weeks for example, I have been interrupted by:

1. gung-ho types trying to sign me up for a chain of gyms I particularly dislike
2. even more gung-ho types trying to get me to play Paintball
3. street teams pushing free samples of vile Orangina in a manner that wouldn’t shame Mrs Doyle from Father Ted
4. a miserable lone student on a bike trying to promote a Farmer’s Market
5. noisy and whistling Climate Camp protesters
6. TV crews filming the Climate Camp protesters
7. desperately enthusiastic chuggers trying to sign me up to Oxfam, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Red Cross, Barnados and the NSPCC
8. sulky teenagers collecting for a local project for young people
9. bored sods aggressively thrusting copies of London Lite, The London Paper, City AM, Epoch Times, Sport magazine and the Hotcourses newspaper at me
10. enthusiastic sods handing out leaflets for dating agencies
11. shiny young men flogging miracle hair products
12. the usual assortment of panhandlers and Big Issue sellers

All this within the five minutes it takes to walk between the station platform and my office. Sometimes, particularly around the station, it’s like that scene in Repulsion where all the hands are coming out of the walls grabbing at Catherine Deneuve as she collapses down the corridor – only on this occasion its worse because they’re also waving copies of London Lite and photocopied flyers for the local pawnbrokers.

Usually I just smile, say a polite but firm ‘no thanks’ and scurry onwards with my head down, but I fear that overload is killing my politeness. I have been feeling increasingly tetchy about this constant assault on my privacy over the past year and in last month I’ve snapped – I’ve already had two arguments with chuggers and yesterday I gave the paintballing man what must have been a much darker look than intended, as he looked instantly guilty and backed away apologising. And today I’m fantasising about getting a t-shirt printed up saying  ’Don’t waste your time’ that I can just scowlingly point at when people approach.

What’s happening to me? London is turning me into the kind of person I hate.

My mother called on the weekend. After the usual ‘what have you been doing?’ type updates she informed me that my father had been cleaning out the garage. I knew immediately what this meant.

‘No’ I shouted ‘You can’t throw them out!’

She sighed. ‘Well, we can’t keep them forever. You did move out of home [pause, counts] 17 years ago.’

‘But it’s history, social history! I can’t get rid of them, they’ve been around this long so it would be absolutely criminal to throw them out! And I will come and collect them at some point.’

‘Yes, I know… [sigh]… I’ll go and talk to your Dad.’

We are referring to my magazine collection. I’m not usually a hoarder, but when it comes to magazines it’s a whole other area. Scarred from an early brush with ‘decluttering’ where I stupidly, foolishly, terribly chucked out some old Smash Hits magazines, I’ve practically clung onto everything ever since.

This means that tucked away in a tiny, tiny corner of my parents absolutely massive garage is a rather fine collection of magazines I acquired when I lived in Australia: Girl, Jackie, Dolly, Just 17,  Countdown, Number One, Smash Hits, Jukebox, NME, Melody Maker, Select, Vox, Q, Rolling Stone, Mojo, Uncut, Cinema Papers, Sight and Sound… And as if this journalistic account of 80s and 90s pop culture wasn’t enough (which it wasn’t), I had also saturated myself in the past, scouring garage sales and antique shops for ’women’s interest’, music and movie magazines going back several decades.

So if you looking for 1930s knitting patterns, live reviews of The Senseless Things, photo stories about the tragedies of falling out with your best friend over a boy,  articles about how smoking can help with weight loss, scandals about Morrissey, blow-by-blow accounts of the Queen’s 1954 tour of Australia, pin-ups of Herman’s Hermits, quizzes testing whether you really are a Brosette, tips on how to make the most out of powdered egg, exclusives on the new Stackridge album and advice on how to get Doris Day’s new look then you know where to go. My parents’ garage.

I tell my partner that my parents are hassling me about the magazines again. He is unsympathetic: ‘Are you ever really going to read those boring interviews with Neds Atomic Dustbin and Chapterhouse again? And how long are you planning on keeping all those Q and Word magazines that are in our loft anyway? And what about those 3-year old copies of The Economist over there in the magazine rack?’

I start to sigh now. What am I going to do with my magazines? Spread over two countries, neglected and lying unloved in garages and lofts,  I just can’t part with them. They are social history, the social history that people so often throw away (or used to anyway). And more than that, so many of them are my history as well. Call me mad, call me selfish but my parents are going to have to hang on to them for a bit longer and well, our ceiling is not about to collapse just yet.

If you’ve ever come home from a busy day at work, collapsed gratefully into an arm chair then wondered exactly what you’ve achieved with your day then spare a thought for the honey bee.

I’ve been reading a fascinating book about bees. And today, whilst crammed on a typically crowded train after a particularly frustrating day of work, I discovered that although a single bee gathers up to a teaspoon of nectar every day in the course of a thousand flower visits, her life’s work amounts to just a quarter of a teaspoon of finished honey.

So a typical worker bees life is only one or two months long and they’re considerably smaller than me, but hey, it still resonated. It’s been one of those days.

Me and the medical profession don’t generally get along. I blame this entirely on all the arrogant, boozy, snorting and downright weird student doctors, opticians, dentists and psychologists that I was unfortunate enough to know at university. Ever since then, I’ve been suspicious of any medical practitioner who for example, leaves the room or even looks in a desk drawer during my consultation – I just know that they’re anxiously looking through crib notes because they can’t remember the proper name or symptoms of the particular problem I’m describing.*

My least favourite routine medical examination is having my eyes tested. Now I’ve worn glasses since I was 10, I have had a lot of eye tests in my time and I should be used to the procedure. It is not embarrassing, intrusive or even boring. People have phobias of dentists, no one has issues with opticians.

No, the problem is that it is an exam, a series of questions which you need to get right or else you are stuck with the wrong prescription –  which will ruin your eyes, give you terrible, terrible headaches and destroy your life for ever more. Well, that’s what’s going through my head anyway.

So for me, the eye test is pure nerves driven adversarial combat.

Before the test even begins, I am on the defensive. In that semi-dark room with my glasses off, I am in a state of pitiful weakness - I can’t even see the eye chart, let alone the letters on it. Secondly, I am wearing the weirdo test goggles which make you look a mad Victorian spectacle inventor.

Then the grilling starts:

‘Can you read the fifth line of letters on the chart in front of you?’

Of course I bloody well can’t, you’ve got my glasses and you’re making me look through this stupid thing which clearly doesn’t have any proper lenses in it.

‘Aha, didn’t think you could! But don’t worry, let’s put some lenses in. Now which one of these two images looks clearer? Number one or two?’

Ok, starting off easy. Number one is definitely clearer.

‘How about this one?’

Two. I think…

‘And this?’

One, or…. maybe two, actually. Yes, two.

‘And this. One or two?’

Errr… they seem similar. Maybe number two…

‘Are you sure?’

So it’s not two then? Mild panic.

‘How about this? Which is better? One or two?’

Two? No, what did I say last time? Is it one? Can you show me them again?

‘Yes, of course. One, two, one.’

They look the same. How can that be right?!

‘Ok, let’s go back to the first chart I showed you. Can you read the fifth line of letters now?’

Yes, but what’s that second row of tiny, tiny letters I can now see underneath? Should I be able to read that? Who can read that? Superman?

Thank God it’s over for another two years.

* This is based on an anecdote from a final year med student I knew in 1994 who, when complaining to his lecturer that it was all very well cramming for exams but how would he remember it in the surgery, was informed me that he should keep a set of medical encyclopaedias in the anteroom to his office that he could sneak out and read under the pretext of washing his hands. The lecturer probably thought that this was a particularly hilarious joke.

I’ve been keeping a lower profile than usual this week. This is because I have been having ‘one of those weeks’ (already!) and I have been attempting to follow the maxim ‘if you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.’

But as you know I have no self-discipline. So here are some things to avoid if you can:

1. The Rose cocktail (French version). This mix of dry vermouth, kirschwasser, gin and grenadine looks pretty, but in reality tastes rubbish.
2. Being even remotely suprised by the government’s confidence that a new third runway at Heathrow is compatible with their commitment to lowering carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. 
3. Tangerine Dream.
4. Slimey sales managers. Today’s greeting was ‘The weather’s not gorgeous, but I know you are.’ Does my office look like a dodgy nightclub?
5. Arguments about atheist ads on the side of buses.
6. Deadlines.

‘Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head, found my way downstairs and drank a cup, and looking up I noticed I was late, found my coat and grabbed my hat, made the bus in seconds flat…’

Or rather: woke up, got out of bed, instantly froze, struggled into unironed clothes, staggered down the stairs into the snow, waited on the draughty platform for a delayed train, watched a police investigation into a break-in at the station cafe (on a freezing Sunday night? what they steal? warming mugs of hot chocolate?), fought with newly emerged hoards of new years resolutioners at the gym and wrote lengthy to-do lists at work whilst wearing a hat and scarf in my arctic themed office.

I now read that one in ten of British young people, aged 16 – 25, claim that life is meaningless and always or often feel ‘depressed’. 

Is today (‘the most stressful day of the year’ according to the Telegraph) really the best day to release this news? Do the Prince’s Trust who commissioned the report really think that they’re going to get much sympathy from the general public today? Not from me they’re not. They should try again tomorrow.