This Time it's Personal ~ part 3

I am aware, trust me, of how ridiculous all this looks. Other people's impotent rage is a comedy staple. Think of Basil Fawlty thrashing his Mini, Oliver Hardy doing his nut... And now here's me fuming at, of all things, my shorts! Then there's the hose at the nursery, somehow independently wrapping itself around things that were no where near it, and my bike, neatly propped up, then somehow, as I walk away from it, falling over. Almost none of the technology I use works properly. As I mentioned before my VAIO laptop has self-destructed, my portable Roberts DAB radio won't work on its batteries (this is the second one. I sent the original back but it's happened again. On both occasions the fault followed a fall off the shelf onto he floor. 'Ah well...' you say, but a portable radio should be able to suffer the odd knock without packing up). My car's electronics, as I think I mentioned before, are behaving randomly. It's over ten years old now but the main problem is the stereo which is designed to revert to a preset volume when you switch it off. The ventilation likewise goes to a preset when you start the car - not the level you had it at last time you used the car. The result is that when you start the car the vents drown out the music. Brilliant. Now this seems just one of those things until you think that somebody somewhere was paid to set the car up this way. It's not an inescapable consequence of the physics. Somebody has actively thought 'Wow! What a cool new feature!' As a result I have to conform to someone else's idiotic idea of what is 'cool' when I start my car, each time resetting it to what I, the customer, wants. Whatever happened to customer choice? Because of this no doubt totally cool bit of tech - with the volume being able to turn itself down without the knob turning - now when it becomes faulty (because of its age) adjusting the volume becomes a precision procedure. If you turn it up too quickly it goes down to inaudible so you have to really concentrate, turning it up tiny notch by tiny notch, which means you either have to stop the car or not concentrate on the road.
Of course you can argue that it was my choice to buy this car, and further that if I'd worked harder, longer hours and done more research I could have afforded a better car. Of course it's my fault. It's always my fault. And yet it's not. A simple old-fashioned dial volume control would do the job perfectly, and when the car starts to deteriorate (as it inevitably will) it will still work, because it's nice simple bit of tech. But the tekkies don't want that - it has to be new and sophisticated, and the possibility that it might not work doesn't occur to them. Modern designers seem to work on the assumption that their creations will be operating under optimum conditions all the time and not need repairing. Either that or, shock horror, they like to make them so they fail quite quickly so the consumer goes out and buys more of them and they make more money. The number of kettles, toasters and DVD players we've got through in this house... the waste...

I'm aware that most people don't get so outraged about such things, or if they do they don't make their outrage so public and most of them don't seek to justify their anger rationally. Why do I feel I have to explain? Most people seem to feel quite entitled to complain, or else they just let it go, put it down to experience. Shit happens. Life's not fair. I on the other hand don't feel entitled to complain but I can't just let it go. I'm not allowed to complain because after all, it is at some level my fault (I bought it. Better products exist. If I'd read up, worked harder etc etc) I only have myself to blame. At the same time I also know there are people producing crap goods. This is not a paranoid fiction. Modern capitalism, as I have argued at some length elsewhere encourages manufacturers to cut corners and generally make goods as shoddy as they can get away with. The world is set up for novelty and waste because that's how profits are maximised. Conscientious responsible manufacturers will sooner or later be bought out or forced out of business by larger corporations because they are less profitable. We've been though all this. Stupid design is everywhere. Products are clearly not properly tested. My dad hated bad design too. I remember him one day with me in Woolworths, pulling the bristles out of some kids' paint brushes. I was mortified at the time but like me he simply couldn't see why anybody should get away with selling things that were going to fall apart almost immediately. It infuriated him, and it infuriates me. He didn't want kids to get them home and be disappointed so he did it to show people how crap the products were. He didn't want Woolworths to get away with it, and I feel the same way. I can't bring myself to say 'Oh well - it was only cheap. Shit happens. Life's not fair' because why should I? Why should they get away with it? The car stereo and the paint brushes are trivial examples but part of a larger economy that is filling the world with crap and making a few people incredibly rich. I can't think of a less trivial thing to get riled about.

And yet. There's the bike and the hose. They're not badly designed (some sort of hand brake on the front wheel of a bike would be a good thing though - to stop the wheel swivelling around, making it easier to prop up and also as a security measure - patent anyone?) but I still am furious with them, and at my body which overheats easily and the amount I sweat when I am trying to get things done and how it makes me itch, and at the flies that come and hover in front of my eyes, and at the rain that means I end up as wet in a waterproof as I would be without one. And at the branch that whips back and smartly smacks me in the face. And at the slugs and the caterpillars - I hate their moronic single mindedness - destroying my things. All these things are beyond anyone's control and yet a bad day will see me raving at them as if they were malicious beings intent on making me look stupid and making my life as hard as possible. I can feel them enjoying my useless fury, cackling as they wind me up or else looking at me in moronic disbelief ('What's he so upset about?') as I tread piles of the little snot-beings into the gravel or, like the other day, flush as many as I can find into the septic tank accompanied by a generous dose of toilet cleaner. (Nya-ha-har!) I can see exactly where the old animistic beliefs came from - I can see exactly. I don't believe it of course, not really, and yet... I sort of do.

I guess everybody has a few of these things that really piss them off but I feel like I have too many. Somehow it seems personal. My life is easy by most people's standards, certainly by the standards of many other parts of the world. (I saw the recent film Captain Phillips over the weekend. Watching the Somali pirates in their little motor boat trying to get their ladder hooked onto a seven storey, speeding, swerving container ship it occurred to me how incredibly desperate, how completely and utterly without choice, a person would have to be to try to do that. But anyway... I digress.) And yet when these moments come when things don't go according to plan, and especially if I am tired and/or hungry, it feels like everything is against me. Sometimes it is partly true - like in the case of the technology and the politics above but sometimes, as in the case of the bike and the humidity and the slugs it is not. It really is just how things are. Nothing's perfect. Things go wrong, and some tekkies are no doubt doing their best despite the overwhelming pressures of business. In some ways it doesn't matter though - whether there is a grain of truth in my complaint or not. The feeling is there anyway. They're trying to make me look stupid - trying to prevent me doing things - arbitrarily stopping me, because... why? because it's fun, because they're stupid and narrow minded, because they want to put me in my place, and because they can. Because I'm on my own and they are together and they can do what they like. They do things the normal way and I'm the one with all the weird ideas. There is no excuse. I can't justify my complaints, because I didn't get up as early as I could have, I didn't prepare for every eventuality, I didn't work every single hour God sends. It is therefore always, somehow, my fault. I should just stop whinging and get on with it. That's life.

No doubt my family were trying to teach me that you can't just blame other people when things don't go your way. You have to take some responsibility. I'm sure that's what they'd say, and quite right too. And yet somehow I seem to have taken from this lesson that it's always somehow my fault and I can't blame anyone or anything else at all, ever. 'A bad workman always blames his tools' said dad, ergo, there is no such thing as a bad tool. You just follow the instructions, do as you're told, and there is no excuse for getting it wrong. 'Everyone else can do it - what's wrong with you?' I have a very clear memory of going with my dad to buy a 90cc Honda off one of his workmates. I wasn't keen but I needed a vehicle to get to work. It was outside some lock-ups somewhere. They showed me how to start it then he and his work mate chatted while I got the hang of it. I'd put it in first and turn the handle but each time it roared off and fell over leaving me standing. I remember so well those looks of disdain and exasperation as they tried to ignore me, and me with my frustration and shame. We bought the thing anyway and I discovered that in fact you really only use first for hill starts because it's far too fierce. Normally you start in second.

I'm not saying that sort of thing happened all the time but it seems sort of typical - a good illustration. No doubt that lesson - 'you can't just blame other people when things don't go your way' would have been a good one for some other kids I knew to learn but I wasn't really like that. My parents made very sure I wasn't 'spoilt'. Somehow though, it felt like things were against me and that somehow it was because of something I'd done, and that they were all looking on, infuriated, contemptuous or amused as I struggled. There was furthermore no point trying to work it out. It was too complicated. That's why I kept my own company, because at least then, with only my imagination and a few simple materials, I knew I could do stuff. Somehow though I'm still carrying them around, even when I'm alone. It's as if they're still there, watching, judging, not helping. I know what they'd say as I'm late again, struggling with the hose, trying to get the nursery watered, and I am furious with myself and with them equally, and I take it out on the hose, which is no doubt very funny to watch. I can't think properly and I bang my head or my elbows and trip over things and I want to cry and I want to destroy everything. Bastard shits. I hate them all so much. It's not funny.

Where did all this crap come from? What's the reason for it?
Because one thing I do believe is that these things always come from somewhere. People like to talk about souls and spirits or they say 'I don't know where he gets it. He's just like that' but that's a cop-out. Essentialism I think it's called. These things come from somewhere. I'm not interested in just blaming someone but I do want to know how I came to be like this, and then maybe somehow, try to change it.

to be continued...

This Time it's Personal ~ part 2

So take this morning...

By the way, I know this is almost certainly of no interest to anyone else. It's more for my benefit really, having come to this point, after, what is it? (51-18 = 33 years) of thinking I think it's time to get it all down, as much as possible, in one place.
Why put it somewhere where anyone can read it? Because I don't want to just ramble on self-indulgently. I want it to be readable. I am however under no illusions about how many people read this blog... If you do come across these entries - seriously - I can't recommend them.

So this morning - Easter Monday. I have two things I could do. I could go down the nursery - yesterday was mostly rained off and I got very little done. Lots of things need repotting. Alternatively, since I seem to be on a bit of a roll , I could do some writing, which I really want to do.
Guess which one I've gone for.

Nevertheless I'm giving myself a hard time, even as I write this. How can I describe it? Tearful is one thing. I have that feeling you get just before you burst into tears, although I doubt I'll cry. If anything goes at all wrong I'll feel the fury welling up. Silly things - the flap covering fly of my shorts caught on the knob of a drawer in the kitchen while I was trying to make breakfast. These shorts are the sort of canvas military style shorts and seem to be made of nothing but pleats and flaps and loops and they to catch on everything, especially when I'm in a hurry, and especially at the nursery. They really piss me off. What would happen, I think, if soldiers were forever hooking their shorts on obstacles while in the middle of a battle? They'd be outlawed immediately. But presumably they don't, so what is wrong with these shorts? Obviously there's something wrong with the design. Someone, no doubt better paid than I am, has gone to the trouble of designing these shorts without thinking about how they might work in real life, or, worse, he's considered only that they might be worn whilst posing about in the street. The idea that someone might actually try to do some actual manual work in them won't have occurred to him because all he does all day is sit at his desk and sip skinni lattes. I hate him.

But of course I don't really, because I know really that it is all my fault. It's me I hate. I bought the bloody shorts. If I'd worked harder, longer, I could have afforded better shorts. If I'd thought about it more I'd have got a more practical design. And if I'd got up earlier I wouldn't be rushing around and I wouldn't be so clumsy. If I was better organised none of this would happen. I blame him - this hypothetical 'designer' because the alternative is to blame myself - for everything. It's him or me and I can't bear for everything to be all my fault.

I keep hitting the wrong keys here. Why do they make keyboards with such tiny keys so close together? Do the designers imagine that all people have tiny mincing fingers? Again - it hasn't occurred to them that some people - men for example, who do manual labour have broad finger tips. I especially hate the caps lock key which I often hit when I go for the A and becaUSE i CAN'T TOUCH TYPE THERE'S OFTEN A WHOLE LINE IN CAPITALS BEFORE i NOTICE. Wouldn't it be good if you could highlight the offending line, and click 'de-capitalise' instead of having to delete and rewrite. It would be one small concession to us broad (not 'fat'!) fingered folk.
But I'm rushing this - trying to get it over with because I really haven't made a decision. I still think, if I get this done quickly enough I can still go down the nursery and do some potting-on. I'm rushing it and making mistakes. Can't other people get things done quickly and efficiently? More speed, less haste? It's my fault again. It always is - somehow.

A sensible person would look at this and say, well why not do both? Set aside some time this morning for writing and go down the nursery this afternoon (it's 12:08 as i write this) for a few hours. I could stop now and finish it later. Why can't I think like that?
I was thinking about this yesterday. The first thing is that it just feels like a muddle. I can see the tasks - nursery, writing, plus a little job I have promised Emma I'll do sticking a bathroom tile back, washing up and breakfast. Washing up I always do. I don't mind it. I find it very 'grounding' as the hippies say, in the morning. Breakfast - I need a proper cooked breakfast or I get hungry mid morning - not fried (usually) but boiled or scrambled eggs do the job. Porridge goes nowhere. I had chilli beans and scambled eggs on toast this morning. I'd recommend it but it's not exactly instant. I fired up the old PC (my new laptop has let me down - you can imagine my response to that!) to check my emails and decided (is that the word? I did it anyway) to update my free AVG. That was reasonably straightforward, thankfully. But I still haven't decided which to do - the nursery or the writing. I woke up at about eight as usual. I began thinking it would be good to go to the nursery as the weather is fine today, and how much I enjoyed the writing yesterday. I could do either. I could do both. I can't decide.

I don't know how normal this is but thinking back to being a kid I don't really think I actively, consciously decided anything. I just don't remember having the mental wherewithal to do that. It wouldn't have occurred to me to try. Mum said 'I wish you'd be more responsible but I honestly had no idea what that meant in practice. I knew, broadly, what 'responsible' meant, but in terms of how my day-to-day life worked - I wouldn't have known where to start. Talking to children now - I have two step kids - both now teenagers and much better company, but thinking back, trying to talk to little children, I honestly have no idea how much they really understand of what we tell them - especially the more abstract notions like 'careful', 'tidy', 'sensible', 'considerate', 'organised' or 'responsible'. I was actually a very well behaved child - never rowdy or aggressive or rude (or not deliberately) but I really had no idea how to modify my behaviour if someone told me I should, and they did. Some kids are said to be very conscientious from an early age - very clear about how their life will go and about how to get things done. They seem to have a very adult way of working things out but I wonder... Maybe they're just well-trained, or maybe their training just isn't at odds with what they want to do. I think that's the big problem. My training - what my parents thought I should do and tried over and over to get me to do was completely at odds with how I wanted to be.
And today, I want to write and I should go down the nursery (and fix the bathroom tile) and I honestly don't know what to do. I try to think it through rationally and it's a blank. I can't think how long they will take, or anything else about organising it. It's just a pale grey blur in my line of vision, so I do what's in front of me and feel guilty about not doing the other thing, still thinking I might do it if I get this finished in time, but then time moves on and it's getting to be too late. Not yet it's not, but I want to finish this now so it might be too late quite soon, and my adrenaline levels will climb and I'll be more and more tearful/furious and God help us if something goes wrong.

Two voices then - what I said yesterday about my child, wanting to just do what it wants to do (this) and my parents, trying to get me to do what has to be done. Just that phrase - 'doing what has to be done' is enough to bring up all the drudgery, the bustling about, the tutting and the rolled eyes, the no-nonsense business-like male and the frantic control-freak female, the dreary money-worried, over-worked, self-sacrificing parent that I never wanted to be and which I still will have nothing to do with. I hear Emma enter the kitchen and sigh and it all comes back to me. I've not done what I should, or not soon enough. My chest tightens and I feel the tears between my eyes. My child is not prepared to even take one step toward that way of being for fear of getting sucked in, because once you start thinking that way, there is always more to think about, and never enough time or money and you can never get out. You might think (for instance) that getting a car will solve a problem about finding work but then the car will become a problem and you'll have to work longer hours to afford it. Better to keep life small and uncomplicated - spontaneous, serendipitous, self-contained, free.

I've still not really worked out how to mediate between them - the parents and the child. I'm aware that there is this 'adult' here - looking on, as they battle it out. In my good times, as I described before, I am more able to think ahead, but also more confident to let things happen. I love those times but they are always passing.

to be continued...

This Time it's Personal ~ part 1

I've been wanting to write this for a very long time. I always seem to get bogged down somehow - in disclaimers and excuses. 

I've really struggled with my life. I know it's not been the sort of terrible ordeal many go through, but it's been, I think, unnecessarily hard. (I can already here people muttering 'stop whingeing. Just get on with it' but I shall ignore them, for now.) As I heard someone say recently on the telly when asked if he was ok - 'I have no good reason to feel bad.' The asker was reassured, taking this to mean that he didn't feel bad, but of course he did. He just didn't feel he had any good reason to feel that way and therefore shouldn't complain. It's what I've come to call 'giving myself a hard time for having a hard time.' I guess it's what other people call 'depression'.

This morning I planned to deliver a plant to someone in Brighton. It's not something I normally do but a customer rang up wanting to send someone a present for Easter and I thought why not? I told them I'd be there for 11am on the Sunday, before going to the nursery. 

Anyway, I did what I usually do and got side-tracked looking through a seed catalogue, which is, yes, for the nursery, but could have been done some other time. It's a huge list and I started at about 8.30 I guess and time was getting on and I knew I should be getting ready to go but somehow I just didn't seem to be able to stop. Then I discovered that I'd left my bag (with my card in it) at the nursery so I couldn't pay for my seed order. I was completely furious with myself - called myself all sorts of stupid - crashing about, looking for this sodding bag. Anyway I found I could order without giving my card details (I'm not sure yet how that's going to work) and I actually closed the PC down at about ten to eleven and got dressed (I was still in my PJs) I had to wash up (there wasn't that much) and needed something to eat. I didn't get to Brighton until 11.30 or so and the recipient was overjoyed and hadn't been expecting it. I made a fuss of her little dog (a really sweet wire-haired terrier) and went home and made myself some 'breakfast'. 

The point here is the way I beat myself up (almost literally) for being late. Today was a middling sort of example. Other times, most mornings, things go reasonably smoothly and I get out the door just feeling stressed. Some times though something goes really wrong and I can end up hurting myself or breaking something. At such times I simply hate myself and/or the world so much that I just want to destroy something. I should say that to date I've not damaged anything important, or anyone, and that it usually happens when no one else is around, but my wife has seen enough of it for it to have upset our marriage. As a result I've done a lot of work on it this last 18 months or so - getting some CBT and taking anti-depressants and it now happens a lot less often and generally less violently than it used to. 

At one point I was having a bad day about one morning a week - usually a Friday - my day off. Oddly, if I have an important appointment I can generally get there on time as much as anyone else. It's when I know the arrangement is somewhat flexible that I have trouble, or even when it is just me that has set the date and nobody else gives a toss whether I turn up or not - such as with getting down the nursery at weekends (which is when I do most of my work there) Even when I have nobody to please but myself I have this nagging in my head that I should be getting on. I should get down there earlier. That nagging is laced with so much irritation, such impatience, such contempt - it's why I come to hate myself so much at these times, and why I feel like hurting myself - as a punishment. 

So - why can't I just get organised and get up earlier and get moving and be down there at a reasonable hour? Surely I'd be happier. This is the problem. I don't want to give in to it. When I was very young I remember very clearly not wanting to be like my parents, always bustling about, tutting, worrying about the time, the money, what the boss would say. My mum trying to think through everything in advance - everything that might go wrong, so she could be prepared, trying to get me to get myself ready for school in the morning, and my dad, after a long week at work down the power station, trying to fill every unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run, forever telling me 'jaldi-jaldi', 'tout suite', and 'whistle and ride, whistle and ride' because I was a preoccupied and dreamy boy always with something more interesting going on in my head. Later on they and other relatives tried to get me to take life more seriously - to be more disciplined, to think of the money, to do as I was told and to put up with it. I was nagged over my homework and my revision and then over my job-hunting and always at every opportunity I would escape into my thoughts and imagination. I just couldn't face the alternative. 

If they'd been happy and fulfilled with the life they advocated perhaps they might have got through to me but they weren't. They just weren't a very encouraging example. I remember thinking from a very early age that if that was what life was about then I couldn't see how it was worth living. I knew that I had to do something different. I had no idea what - there were no other role models available - no mentors of any kind. I couldn't imagine what it would take to be different. I only knew what not to do.

So I've got this split in my thinking. When something needs doing I have my parents going on and on at me, and my child somehow just blocking it out, carrying on with what he's doing, even though he's feeling more and more nagged and getting more and more stressed. He's not consciously refusing. I was never actually naughty - in my family there would have been no point. My 'resistance' was passive, distracted, absent. I'm sure I drove them nuts. The more they went on at me the more I just sort of zoned out. I was upset, certainly, but it did not occur to me to change it. It didn't occur to me that it could be changed. I just wanted to go back to being on my own and getting on with what I was doing. And this is how I still am. Every morning, to a lesser or greater degree. I do it to myself now.

Psychology gets short shrift, I know, from many right-minded people. The two great ideologies (arguably) of the 20th Century - Marxism and Freudianism tell us on the one hand that we can blame society for our woes, and on the other that we can blame our parents. Modern science tells us we can blame our genes. Christianity, Existentialism and Capitalism tell us we have no one to blame but ourselves. We have free will. There is no excuse. 

But it's not about blame. It's about explaining. Whatever problems I've had, for some reason (and I've no idea where I get this) I have always tried to think it out - 'Why am I like this?' 'Where do I get that?' 'How does it work?' But the point of course is not just to describe the world, but to change it. Many seem to presume that it is futile but that doesn't seem likely to me. To use the kind of metaphor my dad would have liked - if there are smoke and grinding noises coming from under the bonnet it makes sense to stop and have a look - not just drive on and hope it goes away. But it's a devious contraption - the mind. 

I've tried asking other people - because they seem to get on with life better somehow - maybe they know something I don't, but most people seem very wary of the idea of talking about these things - as if that might make it worse - as if it's the thinking about it that causes the trouble in the first place, but trust me - it's the feeling that comes first. The thoughts are an attempt to deal with the feeling, and the feeling is there whether I think about it or not. 

Some might accuse me of 'dwelling' - thinking that perhaps deep down I like being this way but I can tell you here and now that when I do have good spells - and I do - I love them so much. I get so much done. My mind is clear and creative. I am confident and positive and when it passes and I can feel myself going back, it's the most miserable thing. No - I really don't 'dwell' on my misery for pleasure. 

I think the people who say these things (that I should just stop complaining and pull myself together, that thinking about it will only make matters worse, and that, in fact I actually really like being unhappy) really don't know what it's like. Of course it's subjective but it seems to me that if you can solve your problems simply by pulling yourself together then you really haven't had much of a problem. Real physical problems, that you can do something practical about are a different sort of problem anyway, and I'm actually quite good in a crisis because there's usually only so many things you can do. A genuine and well defined trauma is different too. I don't wish bereavement, crime, sickness or war on anyone, but I suspect the resulting trauma is a different thing to this depression/anxiety I'm talking about, not least because people can relate and they take it seriously. In this part of the world at least, the kinds of oppression and shame suffered by homosexuals and other minorities at least have support from other members of their group although that is a relatively new thing. 

But no. This is different. It's this 'no good reason to feel bad' that is the thing and so perplexing. And no, it's not just a First World problem - not just a matter of us having too much time on our hands - the 'worried well'. Certainly if I was starving I'd not have much time to think about my mind but it's also true that if I'd just had my legs blown off my allergies might seem like a low priority. That doesn't mean we shouldn't treat people for allergies.

Blame is an issue of course. I don't think we should necessarily not blame parents or society (or even the genes) if they are genuinely at fault. There's a weird paradox. I hear pundits say we live in a society that blames the parents for everything, taking no responsibility for ourselves, but then I hear mothers in particular say 'well of course you can't just blame the parents'. 

Parenting is hard - I'm well aware. It's why I chose not to be one. Among the many things my parents and their friends worried about were their kids. They all had them but none of them seemed to be getting anything much out of it. The kids screamed and sulked and the parents were exasperated and impatient and seemed to want to get away from them as early in the evening as possible. Again I asked myself 'what's the point?' On top of everything it was to support them that all these adults had to hold down the dreary jobs and do those long hours - that and the mortgage and the marriage that went with it. I didn't want any of it and I can remember arguing this - to everybody's irritation, when I was 12. It just seemed obvious. Of course now I know this was the late 60s and early 70s and dropping-out of the rat-race was in the air. I suppose I picked up on it, but it seems to have stuck with me in a way it didn't with most of my peers who kowtowed pretty well when it came down to it and they got a wife and a mortgage and some sproggs of their own. I just couldn't bear to go along with it. I couldn't bear to be so weak, so submissive, so mediocre. I guess I must have held my dad in some regard because I was so disgusted by the way he scurried about and did as he was told. I just sort of wouldn't. Without making a deliberate, overt, or even conscious stand, I just wouldn't, or couldn't. I'm not sure which. Probably both. They seem inextricable. 

Somehow all that bustling about - worrying about time and money and sticking to a routine and doing things in a set way, seemed degrading, like I was being colonised by a foreign power. I know now also that that was the end of an era, as well as the beginning of one, and my parents were of the previous generation. I can't blame them for that, obviously. It's hard to put ourselves back there now but I was right on the cusp and I wonder if any generation since has felt the power of Parental Disappointment the way we did. The rift is quite unimaginable now. Adults I meet now are much more like their kids than like their parents. They just don't have that deference - that sense of their place in the world. Perhaps that's a shame. I wish some people were better at putting up with things now - instead of this waste and impatience we see today. In the face of environmental cataclysm, it would be good if we learned some humility and self-control. But I wouldn't want to go back to the 50s. 

So much judgement and disapproval, and not just imposed from on high - we did it to ourselves, we working class - sneering and tutting at anything that indicated that a person might not be pulling their weight or be getting above themselves. Simply doing something differently was taken to mean they thought they knew better than everyone else and needed to be taken down a peg or two. The fact that I spent my childhood, for preference, in my room, drawing and reading and writing and collecting things was a cause for suspicion where now I suspect a parent would tell everyone I was 'gifted' and going to be an artist or a writer, or an ecologist. Back then the options were far fewer and our place was to fit into the opportunities available - factory or shop, office if you were lucky, manual labour if you were not. Policeman, fireman or nurse. The forces. That was about it. I didn't want to do any of those things but I had no idea what else a person might do. Artists and writers and ecologists might as well have been mythical beings for all I knew. 

But they were scared - of course they were, my parents and their generation. I've written about this before. (Sorry if I repeat myself.) They'd lived through the war and the aftermath and life was all about security and safety and you couldn't afford to take chances. I know that and I don't blame them - of course I don't.

to be continued...

Sisters are doing it to themselves

Is it just me or is there an enormous amount of stuff about 'body image' in the media at the moment? Maybe I listen to too much Woman's Hour on Radio 4 but it does seem to be the issue du jour.
I really don't want to trivialise it. I like to think I'm as much a feminist as any man can be. (I use the word as a short hand, but I think it's a valid as it ever was. The modern woman's apparent rejection of the word, I suspect, is more about individualism and the rejection of any labels rather than the rejection of the principals it stands for - which are basically Equal Rights for Women. I don't know any women and very few men who reject that.) I've tended to feel that women are somehow better than men and are treated unfairly almost as long as I can remember. I think it was a common view among women when I was a child that men are inconsiderate, coarse and self-centred and I seem to have absorbed that pretty much whole. Their bodies are smelly, hairy and vaguely repulsive, and their genitalia are ridiculous (chicken giblets spring readily to mind). They are prone to contempt, cynicism and derision, when faced with the unexpected and like to be in charge, even when they have no idea what is going on.
I am aware now that all this is a gross generalisation but it is, if you like, my base line - the idea that I first had about men when I was little. I can't say for sure where it came from but you will understand that when women's rights came to the fore in the 70s I was primed to be on the women's side. Years of experience of actual men and women have made my views more nuanced and rational but I am still on my guard around men in a way I never am around women. On the down side this has meant that I was completely unprepared for what complete and utter shit-heads some women can be. On the plus side, the fact that I genuinely enjoy the company of women means I've got a lot more sex than I might have.

Women today are in any case quite different to how they were then. Young women seem hugely more confident than they were and I'm glad to see that they seem far less bothered about keeping up appearances - in their behaviour at any rate. Women seem just generally more robust - a bit more coarse and self-centred than they were, which is not a bad thing at all. I never saw the appeal of the tearful martyred lady nor the fragile timid virgin. Sometimes maybe it seems to have gone too far but I would defend to the nth a woman's right to go too far, make a twat of herself and generally get it wrong. Some po-faced feminists criticise dramas that portray women as being ignorant or shallow or weak, as if every female character should be a role model, but I believe that, among the many rights that women should enjoy equally with men is the right to fuck up big time.

So for the sake of this essay I'm not going to talk about rape and genital mutilation, domestic abuse or discrimination in the work place. For me the arguments have been had and won and at least in the West it's basically a mopping-up operation - tracking down those who are still getting away with it, but who, like all criminals, will always to some extent be with us.
No, I want to talk about the relations between ordinary men and women in ordinary day to day situations - in the home, at work, out for the evening. There's abuse and harassment in all these places of course and I'd lump those in with the obviously wrong things above. My worry is with the strain of feminism that sees the everyday petty transgressions (the amount of house-work a man does for example, or a man eyeing-up a young woman in the street) as symptomatic and indicative of the greater wrongs listed above. I heard a woman the other day (on R4) say that the lewd comments from some builders as she walked by had to be the overt expression of a wider attitude. My assumption tends to be the opposite - that people who act out in antisocial or criminal ways tend to be the minority.
But in any case, even if all or most of us men are secretly having lascivious thoughts as we walk along the street, is that a bad thing? There is this word - 'objectification' that still springs up in discussion which seem to be practically synonymous with 'admiration' in this situation. That a woman is not (in this case) being admired for her brains, her ambition, her ideas or her talents, but instead for her appearance is seen as a bad thing. I would agree if that was all she was ever admired for, but I'm not at all convinced it is. In any case it shouldn't be assumed and it certainly shouldn't be condemned out of hand, especially when she's clearly gone to so much trouble to look like that.
But isn't that the issue, they say - that she's had to go to all that trouble? She's caught up in this cycle of objectification and insecurity, so in effect, she has no choice - she goes out of her way to look like that but resents the fact that it gets attention.

I'm not even slightly convinced by this. In the first place, my instinctive respect for women refuses to accept the idea that women are so easily manipulated. At some point there has to be the invocation of choice. At some level, women these days in The West choose to look like that. Their motives may be mixed and obscure but whose aren't? Unless they have a very oppressive partner, nobody has to look like that (and if they do they fall into the 'definitely wrong' categories above).
My second point would be that appearances are not superficial. The way we look - how we dress, how we walk, what we smell like, how we smile, the simple fact that we choose to take care of our appearance, or not, are all subtle signals and they tell others a heck of a lot about us. Some we can change for effect (clothes) and some are intrinsic to who we are (our basic body shape) but none of them are mere disposable decorations. They are as much who we are as the contents of our minds. That's not to say they always give a good impression.
My third point is that I think this might be just as true of men as with women. I don't mean this just in the obvious way - that men are now spending massively more than they used to on 'product', although that is interesting. I also don't mean that women also like to ogle a good looking young man, although they definitely do. I mean men have always been judged on appearances above all else and the pressure to look good is just as harsh, if not more so. This is a harder one to argue but bear with me.

I spent a large part of my teens and twenties feeling inadequate and undesirable, and I know I was far from alone in this. There was always that group of cool lads who just seemed to have 'it' somehow. It was not just that they knew how to dress (cleverly subverting the school uniform) but they knew how to grin and to slouch and to wise-crack. Some were into the right bands and others were popular because they were very sporty. Yet others had a menace that everyone could respect. Since school I've become aware that the most desirable men are the ones that are concerned about their 'image'. They take up dangerous or glamorous sports or are in a rock band or drink too much or take too many drugs and get into trouble on a Saturday night. Confidence is the thing - risk-taking, the ability to look assured or even cocky in the face of danger. Above all women like men to appear self-confident, a characteristic I totally lacked when I was a young man. When I look back at those blokes they had absolutely no reason to be so sure of themselves. They were no brighter than the rest of us, and in many cases far less good-looking. In some cases they were downright stupid, but they had attitude, and the girls fell for it every time. Those girls weren't interested in finding out what sort of person we really were. It was all a front. I was awkward and needy and tended to spend my time on 'hobbies' (ie things I was genuinely interested in and which really gave me something to think about) which, then as now, are fatal to attracting the opposite sex, but I was also kind, articulate, sensitive, and not at all bad looking, but they weren't interested in that. My 'image' was all wrong. I had no game. Almost always, the most desirable men (leaving aside for now the very rich) are not physicists or writers, statesmen or campaigners but actors, footballers and pop stars and there's nothing very profound about any of that. When I signed up for an internet dating website in my early 40s, looking for a woman closer to my own age, I found to my dismay that the deal breakers were very often height and income. It could be argued that both are a proxy for self-confidence but in any case neither is exactly deep and meaningful.

I suspect a lot of feminist-minded women will look at that list and argue that those qualities that men are judged on are nevertheless somehow more genuinely admirable than mere looks. I would agree that they are more challenging. If I could have made myself more desirable as a young man simply by going to Churchill Square and buying a new outfit I'd have been more than happy to do so. What it takes to look right as a young man though is far more demanding, and to some extent dangerous but it's not in any way more 'real'. It's still just a look. That women find these attributes somehow more genuinely desirable in fact, I think, says more about some unreconstructed sexism on their part - that what men do is somehow intrinsically better than what women do. This connects to the modern woman's desire to be able to compete with men at every level in business and government. Again I would defend a woman's right to aspire to do anything men do, even when what we do is frankly stupid and sometimes plain wrong.

But then another problem with this is to assume that we 'men' are all like that - that women should challenge us 'men' in the boardroom and the House of Commons as well as in the pub and the bedroom, as if we are all somehow unified in this brotherhood outside of which the women can only scheme and crane their necks. But as with those blokes on the builders' site, we are not all like that. I was not alone as a gormless teenager - we were all gangly and uncouth, spotty and somewhat malodorous. Most of us now observe the antics of the alpha males and either aspire hopelessly to be like them or dismiss them as arrogant bastards. Probably many women meet a disproportionate number of these men because they are the only ones with the nerve to approach them at the bar (which, girls, does take an amazing amount of nerve) and many women would openly admit a preference for the Bad Boy.
Most of us though, whether we like it or not, have more in common with you women than we would like to admit. It's not men against women - it's the rest of us against those self-important avaricious cock-sure tossers who want to take over everything and leave the rest of us feeling somehow inadequate, when in fact we are just getting on with life.

So welcome to our world girls. We all feel inadequate on some fairly spurious basis much of the time and especially when we're young. The fact is though that I know I am far from alone in finding skinny women a bit off-putting. We don't care how much you spent on cosmetics or how fashionable your frock is anything like as much as you do. This oppression, for once, is not our fault. This, I'm afraid is all yours, and at some point you will have to take some responsibility for your willingness to give in to the fashion designers and the PR men, whose only motivation, lets face it, is to sell stuff. You compare yourself with your so-called sisters, as we do with our so-called brothers, and we all find ourselves wanting.

If you want real emancipation - stop comparing yourselves with some ideal and start being who you are.
Or am I being very old-fashioned?

Possessions

The first thing was that Ellie went missing. Her mother was frantic. It was their first morning in the house – early. The sun was only just coming in the windows low down on the seaward side of the house, casting a honey glow on the white walls. It was going to be another beautiful day and Ellie’s cot was empty and the wooden stairs were steep and the back door did not lock properly and there were miles and miles of marshes all around. She could be anywhere. She could be lost. Poor little round-faced Ellie - adventurous, trusting, self-contained. She might have been taken.

Down through storeys, four in all, airy and white, calling ‘Ellie! Ellie!’ No answer. She must have wandered off again, her sister says, to play with the birds. It wouldn’t be the first time. She must be here somewhere. ‘Ellie!’

Chalk white and pinewood boards, watercolours and prints on every wall - originals. Huge windows. Canvas and tapestry, oak and cedar, silks and batiks, paper shades and rainbow kites, raku pots and masks from Bali, aloes and palms, driftwood and sea-glass. Such lovely things, thinks her mother. They loved this place so very much. So very sad. ‘Ellie!’ she calls, ‘Where are you?’

Father carefully moves a ceramic puffin and a carved wooden dragon aside and crouches in a window niche. He undoes the catch, leans out three floors up and looks down at the ground – lyme grass and shingle, timber and mud, a rotting boat and a rusting bicycle. The single-track road and the shacks further on, the gift shop and the beach cafe. He calls ‘Ellie!’ and a gull comes and holds on the buffeting wind not five yards out, disinterested. He looks up. The October sky all but blue - just a wisp of ice in it. He holds his palm to the white clapboard side. It’s warm to the touch already. Nobody about. ‘Sunday’ he thinks.

The pudgy blue elephant fits in her palm. Ellie holds it up to look as her mother rushes in and gathers her up.

‘Be careful’ Ellie scolds. ‘You’ll hurt Sally.’

Sat across her mother’s lap, one sock on, held tight, her Mother’s tears dot her brushed cotton shoulder. Ellie holds the little round elephant up for her father to see and her sister goes back to her room, muttering.

The girls’ play room. Of course. They hadn’t thought. Four floors down and Ellie so small and yet here she is. Last night’s arrival, too late to explore. Just a quick story and brush your teeth and then all week to play. But no, Ellie couldn’t wait.

Her father slumps in a big orange cushion and looks out the window. It’s still very quiet. A heave of nostalgia – the muslin tent ceiling, the apricot glow. Bears and rabbits, books and crayons, posters and stencils, a tinkling mobile. Warm and alive. And now they’re all gone. Unbelievable.

‘Let me have a look darling’ he says.

The lapis blue elephant is hand-hot soft and sports a saddle and a skull cap in red and white beads, and tiny black beady eyes. ‘What did you say her name was?’ he asks. ‘Sally’ says Ellie and he looks at his wife. Had Ellie ever met her cousin? He doesn't think so.

‘It’s ok’ says the mother. ‘She must have heard us talk about her.’

*

Out all day. Back at five. Tide marks on their feet and salt in their skin. A bucket of cockle shells, a feather and a piece of drift wood with a hole in it big enough to put your finger through. A burger at the café and a paperback from the post office. A sunglasses and fleeces sort of a day. The girls are tired but it’s still light out. Father looks at a shelf of books. Walnut, he thinks. Beautiful. It had only been a few years and the place had been a wreck. His sister Jennie and her husband Mike worked for months non-stop. He had thought them insane but at least it was better than that mouldy flat in the city. What had this place been before? Some sort of warehouse before the river silted up and the curlews moved in, or maybe one of those high wooden structures for drying nets? He’d meant to ask before – before the accident. Jennie and Mike and their two children, Sally and Millie, in a car. So pointless. So stupid. He picks out a book and flicks a page and Mike is there with him, alive, he could swear. He lived for his books did Mike – trains, boats and planes. Jennie was the artist. She is everywhere. He looks about the walls and an orange light floods the room from the west and the shadows move in. ‘Jennie?’ he says, and puts the book away.

‘They’re all still here’ says his wife, in bed. He settles down beside her and looks. The low angled ceiling up under the roof, the girls next door. ‘I can feel them’ she says, ‘everywhere.’

‘They loved this place’ he says.

‘I hope they don’t mind us being here.’

‘Of course not. They’d understand.’

*

In the morning the father goes down to the car and fetches some of the cardboard boxes, a big bundle, flat pack, he can hardly handle them. His wife makes coffee. The girls play in the decomposing rowing boat at the back with toys from the play room. Ellie builds a house for the plastic farm animals from bits of wood to keep them safe while her sister sets up a spa for Millie’s Barbies. Her spa specialises mostly in mud baths. She thinks Millie would like a mud bath. She saw it in a programme once. The ladies came out all clean and relaxed.

The father stands in the middle of the living-room-come-dining-room-come-kitchen that fills the entire third floor and looks at all the things his sister and her husband collected. His wife hands him his coffee and looks too. Two hours later they are still looking. It’s not that nothing has happened. They have tried to take down the pictures, to wrap the china in tissue, to bag up the books and records - Uncle Mike’s jazz and Auntie Jennie’s classical. They just can’t seem to be able to do it. They have tried to prioritise. They have tried to think just one thing at a time, but as soon as they start the room looks so forlorn, so lost without them, as if it just doesn’t understand why its things are being taken away. So they go back where they belong and the father and his wife stand, fresh coffees in hand, and can’t decide what to do. Even the kitchen utensils object.

‘If only we could take the whole house, just as it is’ he says.

‘We’ve talked about this’ she says softly, stroking his arm.

So the things go back to where they live.

As it begins to get dark the girls come in and take the Barbies and the farm animals in the bath with them and wash them scrupulously and dry them and put them back where they live. They’re never so careful with their own toys at home.

Tuesday is the same. The girls play in the mud and the adults try to make a start packing up. The autumn sun illuminates Uncle Mike’s carefully worked and polished banisters and furniture, and Auntie Jennie’s intricate needle-work and neither of them can bear to take any of it away. It’s as if it doesn’t understand why anybody would want to come in and change things. It doesn’t seem to understand what’s happened.

*

It was early on the Wednesday when the break-in happened. Nobody had ever heard Ellie scream so loud. She’d sneaked back into the play room in the small hours and was there when the men got in through the window. Her father appeared in the doorway armed with a golf club and managed to crack one of the intruders hard across the back of the head as he fled. In the quiet aftermath Ellie was understandably shaken in her mother’s arms but more than anything she was worried for her cousins. The intruders had left a terrible mess. Ellie had hidden among the bedding when she first heard the breaking glass and she’d witnessed the kicking about and trampling that went on. She only screamed when they talked about heading up into the rest of the house and her mother told her she was a very brave girl indeed, for raising the alarm but it didn’t console her. Her cousins’ things were torn and smashed – the dressing-up box, and Sally’s paintings. One of the men had stood laughing and weed on them.

The father phoned the police and in the morning the window was boarded up. Ellie, her parents and her sister sat in the lounge with their breakfast drinks. The room in the dim morning light seemed to cower down around them. Ellie said something about Sally being hurt and wanting to go down to help her. Her father said that where Sally was she couldn’t be hurt any more but they all knew it wasn’t true. Jennie was down there in the playroom holding her crying children as Mike stormed about the place - his normally placid face wrung with anger and disbelief, and the entire house and everything in it groaned in pain and humiliation with them - every blanket, every spoon, every paperback book. In every speck and button they lived, and now it had been defiled, their refuge, their nest, their lives’ work, and there was nothing they could do about it.

And they knew it would continue to be defiled. They knew, even if not by criminals there would be estate agents and developers, letting agents and art dealers, house clearers and refuse collectors, come to break it up, break it down, over the coming months, gradually tearing it apart, this thing they had made, that had become them, with their love and optimism, and turning it into just a pile of random stuff to be bought and sold or thrown away. It was impossible.

*

Just before dawn of the following day Ellie, her sister and her mother were standing a safe distance along the road beside their car as their father walked briskly toward them from the house. He was putting something in his pocket. Already black smoke was beginning to waft from the garage door and pretty soon an orange flame emerged too. They stood and watched as, for a while nothing more happened, and then there was a rush of fire from a first floor window and after that the fire spread rapidly up into the rest of the building. By the time the fire engine arrived there was nothing to see but a tower of flames. They all stood and watched together. The girls cried a little but there was no need to explain that this was the only thing to do. They understood completely. The police tried to move them along but the father insisted on staying a little longer just to see that his sister and her family got away safely.

Autumn 2012

..except for all the others...

I know I'm not alone in being deeply exasperated with the state of government in the UK at the moment. The recent Brand/Paxman tête a tête is just the latest and most obvious manifestation of this exasperation, but unlike Brand I'm not a great believer in revolution. Any reading of history has got to come to the conclusion that revolutions tend to result in brutality and despotism. In the idealist's mind (and I count myself as still having one of those) there are the brave idealistic young people and noble working people of all races and genders marching, chanting and if necessary manning the barricades and chucking a few bricks until the present administration scurry, tails 'twixt legs, for their safe seats. It's a nice image but unfortunately history tells us that time and time again a 'charismatic' leader emerges and invariably announces that they alone embody the true revolutionary spirit and that anyone who disagrees can, literally, go hang, and there always seem to be plenty of ordinary folk ready and willing to do the hanging. I'm sure there must be exceptions - the Orange and Velvet revolutions perhaps and maybe that's the sort of thing Russell Brand has in mind. I don't think he told us.
But I share his infuriation with the way things are. The Today show has a lot going for it but I mentally switch off for the political interviews with misc interchangeable Govt Wonks (love that word - wonks), when you know that no matter how hard Jimmie MacNaughty probes, the politician is never going to actually say anything meaningful in case it is used as evidence against him at some later date. We know that when politicians promise us things at elections that it means absolutely nothing, and yet we vote anyway, or at least, some of us still do.

My dad - God rest his soul  - used to tell me that there was no point in going on about the state of the world unless you were prepared to get up there and get yourself elected to do something about it. I think he was being a bit naive about this. To stand a chance of getting elected in any capacity you have to have not only some good ideas and a coherent plan but also be confident and articulate, likeable and energetic, and I, like most people, am only, at best, average in those characteristics. Nevertheless I think he was right in his basic faith in democracy (the worst of all possible systems - apart from all the others, according, I think, to Churchill) and that there is little point in going on about politics if you are not prepared to take part in the process. The simple fact is that these politicians which we revile were put there by us - not, I don't mean, because we voted for them so much as because we didn't put someone better up there to be voted for.
The flaw in Brand's argument is that it's all about what they are doing to us, as if we have no way of influencing the system. (For the record I am not actually condemning Brand on this count because he actually is getting up and doing something, and so, I hope, in my own small way, am I, here with this blog.) But this is not post revolutionary France/Russia/Cambodia/China. You won't be arrested if you support a different candidate or start a new party. Obviously it's not easy, but it is possible.

The reason we don't is not because we are apathetic but because we have become pessimistic. I think there's a terrible weariness holding us back. It looks insuperable - to go up against the established public school, Oxbridge, Super-rich establishment. It's all far too complex and very few of us are naive enough to think that any of the simple totalitarian ideologies of the 20th Century are worth resurrecting. If you lived in a place like Zimbabwe or Somalia, the purpose of democracy would be obvious - to end tyranny or chaos. Here in The West it's not so clear. Government has become merely a branch of accountancy, writ large - amoral and inhuman. Milliband et al are terrified of making any pronouncement that might sound like Redistribution or Nationalisation and yet I suspect that there are many of us who would love to hear that stuff. They're terrified not of what the electorate might do but of what Murdoch will make of it, and of how The Market will react. Conversely I suspect that there might be some real support for the UKIP/BNP take on life. Fair enough. Let's have a proper contest - see who wins. Probably the outcome would still be somewhere in the middle but at least it could be a contest fought on real issues - not just maths.
And probably the place will be less stable for a while. There would probably be less economic growth, but if we're going to grow up and take responsibility for ourselves we need to be allowed to make mistakes.

And incidentally, I don't have much problem with a low turn-out. I don't want voting to be mandatory. If you're not interested, by all means, stay at home. I don't want a government elected by people who don't give a toss. A low turn-out should tell the government that something is seriously wrong with what they are offering but I don't want a high turn-out just for the sake of it.

Naive Melody

I get rained off work - I write something on the blog. Hence its intermittent nature.

I've been thinking a bit about Housing. It was on the You and Yours phone-in today. I'm not a property owner myself. I briefly had a mortgage with my first wife about twenty years ago - on a tiny ancient place in Lewes, East Sussex, up against the old town walls (2 Castle Rise in case you know the place). It was literally two up two down with a tiny sunless back yard which I filled with plants. There was me and her and her teenage daughter. Her teenage daughter had the only proper bedroom and my wife and I slept in the lounge. I know - it sounds like a perfect disaster waiting to happen doesn't it, especially with such a tumultuous relationship. It was one of those things where everyone, but everyone, could see what was going to happen but didn't like to interfere. Would I have listened? I don't know. I loved Lewes and wanted to live in an old place. Anyway, suffice it to say it got nasty and I moved out. In retrospect it would have made sense to keep tabs on that mortgage instead of just leaving her to it but I felt guilty and she was terrifying and we had her daughter to think of so I just left. Then she moved in with a mate of mine (who also owned an old place in Lewes) and they bought a small holding in France, last I heard. Anyway, the interesting point is that she was a nurse working in an old folk's home, and I was working in a garden centre - and they gave us a 90% mortgage on an old cottage in Lewes!
Just take a moment to process that. This was about twenty years ago. A couple with probably well below average incomes, getting a mortgage for a cottage in central Lewes of all places. And we were shown larger places, and just off the High Street too, but we didn't want the hassle of doing them up!
How things have changed.

I used to go walking in the country a lot when I was a young man - up on the Coombes Road and around Fulking (We lived in Southwick on the coast about half way between Brighton and Worthing) and I always sort of assumed I'd one day be able to live out there or somewhere like it - not necessarily in a very picturesque cottage - just a bungalow perhaps, or even just a hut, with a bit of ground to have a garden, some trees, a few ducks. Now I know that, short of winning the lottery, that's just never going to happen. It simply isn't possible any more. Nowadays, most of southern England is simply out of reach to most ordinary people. My wife and her ex own this place where I am now in a new estate in the Sussex town of Henfield but it's an interest-only mortgage and once the kids leave home (they're 14 and 16, so quite soon) that'll be us - back at the bottom of the property ladder. And neither of us is getting any younger (I was 50 last December, and she's... erm... a bit younger). No wonder she wants to emigrate to Canada, but that's a whole other pot of eels.

I'm not looking for sympathy. There's a lot worse going on in the world.
Does it matter? Or am I just upset at my own silly plight?
I think it does.
In the Radio 4 discussion someone said, as they inevitably do, sooner or later, "Well it's supply and demand innit?" There aren't enough houses so everyone's a bit desperate and the prices go up.
And nobody challenged that logic. They all just accepted it. It's the way of the world. Building more houses would be the only option.
I understand Supply and Demand. In a capitalist economy prices have only a tenuous relationship to how much things actually cost to make or how much real life-and-death value they have, but they have a very direct relationship with how much people are prepared to pay. So something like gold, which has little practical value is expensive because it's rare. Bread though, which is very useful, is cheap because it's easy to make. So far so egg-suckingly obvious. The question arises when something is both rare and useful, nay, essential. What then? And what if something is artificially rare? What if it's only rare because someone has bought it all up? If someone buys up all the posh shoes it doesn't mean everyone else has to go without shoes. They just make more ordinary shoes and those with the money can indulge their whim for overpriced footwear without affecting the rest of us, but that's not how it is with housing. Somewhere (decent) to live is an essential, not a luxury, but it's in short supply. What there is, is disproportionately bought up by those who already have more than they need and... what? The rest of us go without? Or we just impose on the hospitality of those who bought their property before the market went nuts (for which read The Parents) or we claim benefits whereby the government (by which I mean Us) pays the landlords the inflated price their 'supply and demand' has created.

Part of the problem has to be that at some point, I think, in the 80s (the dreaded T word again) housing became more 'an investment' than a home. People bought their properties with a view to selling them for a profit, rather than just, you know, living in them. This view of houses as just a place to stop for a while has been helped along by some very modern lively young things who like to feel they can live anywhere, in a sort of quasi-Buddhist New Age way, not getting attached to mere 'things'. Some of them, understandably, have moved around all their lives and have no real sense of home anyway, but not all of us. Since Tebbitt's 'On Your Bike' speech it has been assumed by the movers and shakers that one shouldn't care where one lives. You just go wherever the work is and if the work moves abroad, well that's just supply and demand again. Start your own business. Be an entrepreneur! What's wrong with you? The Soviets also thought the workforce should be prepared to move wherever the work needed doing. Refugees and asylum seekers have to move wherever they can.

The trouble is I suspect most of us just aren't like that, or would rather not be. I'd be interested to know the figures, but I've come to believe (in flagrant disregard for my parents' thinking) that what I think probably isn't that unusual. I suspect that many of us do care where we live very much, and that for many of us this has a strong connection to the place we were born, where we grew up, and where most of our family and friends are. It's unfashionable to say so, but there you are.
The media don't help. They're used to relocating whenever necessary to pursue their careers so I feel that I'm in a kind of despised minority for being rather attached to where I come from, which is this area around Brighton and the Downs and the countryside beyond. It almost sounds like I might be some sort of Conservative in this respect. Maybe I am. Critics call it Sentimental, which I take to mean 'caring deeply about something I happen not to give a toss about'.

There are all sorts of problems with this view. Generally I have a woolly liberal attitude to immigration but I do understand how people must feel seeing their high street changed completely in just a few years - full of foreign voices and unreadable shop fronts. We don't have a lot of immigrants around here but I'd probably feel something similar if I saw my high street taken over by retail giants or simply cleared away to make a mall but UKIP and the BNP don't seem so bothered about that. I'd feel the same way hanging out with ex pats who can't be bothered to talk to the natives or try the local food, let alone learn the language. But obviously things change, and people are free to move about the world in a way they never were before and all in all I think that's a good thing, but I also think there's something missing - something about history and belonging. Something about home. I don't believe it's a right-wing thing to say that heritage is important, and not just as something to sell to tourists, but as a lived reality. Knowing where you come from - for good or ill gives you context. It doesn't stop you appreciating other people's heritages, in fact, I'd say, without one of your own it's all pretty much channel hopping. Maybe most of you don't agree. Ok, but can I plead then for those of us who do, to be allowed to be this way? Not just have our spiritual homes bought up by Russian oligarchs and media moguls? Please? At the very least it should be possible to rent a place without being forbidden to paint the walls and put up some pictures, and without feeling that you might be kicked out in a years time if the landlord thinks he might make a quick buck by doing so. And there should be some sort of regulations about people buying up property in such a way as to exclude ordinary people from getting a place of their own at a reasonable price. Actually (heretic that I am) I think the countryside could stand a little more building. I wonder how many derelict farm yards and other disused lots there are about the country that the farmers would love to sell but can't because the locals don't like the idea of a lot of working class oiks moving in? I can think of quite a few just in this area. I'd want to put some restrictions on the quality and design of the houses built - make them in keeping with local styles, and environmentally sound, and have some sort of restrictions on resale so that they can't immediately be sold off to someone who wants to turn them into a holiday resort. But that would be interfering with the Freedom of the Market wouldn't it? And we can't have that.

I feel like I was on reasonably solid ground arguing that the Free Market cannot be trusted with housing (unlike many other consumer goods) because everyone needs somewhere decent to live but there isn't enough to go round. On the other hand, arguing that a person should have the option of living where they feel they belong (however you define that) is a shakier line to take I know, but I think there's something in it.
Either way it does seem to me that any developer or local authority simply throwing their hands up and saying "Sorry guv. Supply and demand. End of" is massively negligent. There are quite a few reasons why I think The Free Market Economy can't be trusted to run simply everything but this does seem like a particularly obvious one.