Friends for Life?

When I was six years old, I had a best friend called Lola.  Lola was black; something that didn't really register with me unless I was using her nickname of 'Chocolate' (she called me 'Strawberry' - well, we were only six!) But Lola's skin colour did register with some of our other classmates, one of whom taunted her on a daily basis over it.  One day he came up to us in the playground, roughly pushed her and called her a "black Paki".  I didn't know what a "Paki" was, and my little brain raced to find something to say back to him on behalf of my friend.  "Well..."  I said, "you're just a horrible white Paki!"

This made him stop and stare at me for a moment, and then he laughed.  Everybody within earshot laughed at my strange little comment, even Lola herself.  I was mortally embarrassed in the way that only six year olds can be, but my outburst had had the magic effect of completely diffusing the situation (in much the same way that Derren Brown recommends you diffuse the threat of attack by simply saying something random and mad to throw the person completely off-course).  And later that day Lola told me I was her best friend in the whole world because I had stood up for her.  I went home with a song in my heart, convinced that we'd be friends forever.

The following week a new girl joined our class.  She was a bit quirky, with wonky stained teeth and the owner of the best handwriting I'd ever seen (I tried and failed to copy it myself) and Lola gradually became her best friend instead, ignoring me completely in the process.  This is the cruel hallmark of schoolgirl friendship; you give yourself wholly to one person, and you completely ignore everybody else in the process because you haven't quite worked out how to share the emotional bond of friendship with more than just the one person at a time.  But it's a painful lesson when that person decides to move on to somebody else, as I was starting to realise.

But I didn't actually lose that heady, optimistic "we're going to be friends forever!" feeling until many years later.  I have a theory that you don't quite buy into it until you've hit thirty and become a lot more cynical.  Aged nineteen I made up a quarter of a fun foursome of friends who went out every Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights...including a memorable, drunken weekend at Butlins where we sat through 'The Full Monty' six times because the cinema was the only place you could go to sleep off a hangover.  The four of us were so close that I was convinced we'd be seeing in our nineties together.  Now I'm still friends with only one of them - on a social networking site on which we never 'speak'.  I saw one of the others' names on Friends Reunited a while back, but declined contacting her.  Mainly because our friendship had been based on us all being young, free and single.  What if she were still single (this had been a bone of contention with her even then, yet she'd hated the idea of being married) and bitter about it?  What if she'd become boring?  What if she thought I was boring?  All those great memories would be trashed in a second by the reality of...well, now.  It's a sad thing to think about, sometimes.  I've had other great people breeze in and out of my life; at some points you just assume they'll be there forever, and then life moves on and suddenly they're not any more.

But...I have a small, exclusive group of friends who I actually do know will be my friends forever; who have been with me right from the start and who I just know will be with me at the end.  These friends are part of the reason why I don't really fear getting older, because they'll be right there getting older with me, laughing at and lamenting our wrinkles and embarrassing mishaps.  So in some senses, I still haven't lost that "we're going to be friends forever!" feeling at all.  And long may that mindless sense of optimism continue.

Rant about religion and patriarchy (you have been warned!)

I really do try to respect other people's beliefs, no matter how strange and unworkable they sound to me.  I really, really do.  My husband is much better at it than I am, but then he was brought up in a non-orthodox religious household and his upbringing was imbued with warmth and endearing tradition.  And it's all that, that I try to keep in mind when I'm thinking bad thoughts about religion; about how, no matter how nice and kind its participants are, pretty much all of the religions I'm aware of treat women as second-class servants.

A religious wedding I went to recently just confirmed this.  I honestly have no real desire to 'slag off' people's beliefs, but at one point the officiator turned to the assembled crowd of friends and family (separated, incidentally, into groups of men and women) and said "Now...I know in modern times it's fashionable to state that our religion treats women as inferior.  But I have to tell you, that couldn't be further from the truth.  In fact, we men place you on a pedestal...because you look after the home and family.  You control the most important part of a man's life, and we revere the contribution you make".

This was said with genuine warmth, but I found it so bloody patronising that I wanted to scream.  He then went on to state that the man's job was to "feed and clothe his wife", with the predictable follow-up about not taking that too literally in shopping centres.  In one just-under-an-hour ceremony, this man had managed to reinforce more lazy stereotypes than Jim Davidson, albeit without the added bile.  But no matter how nice he was, why does anybody take this sort of rubbish seriously?  Have we not evolved sufficiently to leave all this sort of stuff behind us and accept that people can be whoever and whatever they want?  Religion, or rather our interpretation of it, is responsible for the belief that women are nothing but homemakers, that gay people aren't 'natural', that the idea of changing sex is wrong, that we should class faith in a god as being above the use of medical developments.  Why?  Honestly...just why?  I genuinely, honestly don't understand why these old religions are given any credence whatsoever.  Not in this day and age, when we know so much more and are supposed to be enlightened by scientific discovery and depth of knowledge.

My husband, and others, say it's because people are brought up with it; they live it from birth and they see the good sides of it, like how it can comfort you in a crisis, how it can make you a good person and enshrine you with good family values.  But again - why does anybody need religion to make them a good person, or to care about their families?  Why can't people just be good anyway, without the promise of eternal salvation afterwards?  And just what constitutes "good"?  The Ten Commandments, for example, aren't specific enough for these modern times; an awful lot of interpretation has to come into what is essentially a list of half-baked directives from a meeting at which all the participants were half-asleep (and we've all been there, right?)  "Honour thy mother and father" is one I find particularly vague and unhelpful, because some people's parents are monsters.  Surely if there really is a God, he'd have been a bit more specific; helped us out a bit?

Ahem.  Deep breath...and relax!

I don't usually voice rants like this...well, not unless I'm provoked.  Normally I smile, and I nod along, and I try my best to see the good in ceremonies such as the wedding I've just mentioned.  None of the other guests would have known what I thought, unless they asked me directly, which none of them did.  Though sometimes it's embarrassingly obvious, like the video of my sister's wedding where I'm unknowingly captured rolling my eyes and making a silly face during the hymn we were singing at the time (I wanted to sink through the floor when I saw that - how embarrassing!!)  "Why did you make that face?" asked my sister.  "Er...well, I'm just not really a fan of religion and hymns, that's all" I spluttered.

She looked at me for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders.  "Fair enough" she said.  And maybe that's good advice for me too!

Guilty (and not-so-guilty!) telly pleasures

Don't judge me, but one of my most recent "guilty telly pleasures" was 'The Jeremy Kyle Show'.  I really don't know why; I caught the end of a show last week and it annoyed me so much that I just had to turn the TV over immediately.  It's a bit like when I used to read 'Heat' magazine, which was something I did religiously every Tuesday and now whenever I flick through the latest issue at the hairdresser's I have no idea why I loved it so much.  I suppose I didn't take either Jeremy or 'Heat' very seriously and enjoyed them for what they were, but they just became a bit same-y for my liking and so I abandoned them.  I really hope I didn't abandon them just because I became a little bit more of a snob than I already was.

Other "guilty telly pleasures" can be explained away by extreme youth.  When my sisters and I were younger and lived at home with Dad, we didn't have the money to go out very often (cue violins!) so we'd all stay home and watch sitcoms that UK Gold has now revealed to be highly questionable...step forward 'Bread' and 'On the Up'.  The ones we all really liked, though, were those that sort-of reflected things that were going on in real life.  At the time my Dad had joined a dodgy 'single parents' club called 'The Gingerbread Club' (that still makes me smile every time I think of it) which congregated every Thursday in a draughty council hall, so episodes of 'Dear John' could be more than related to.  Ditto 'Me and My Girl' with Richard O'Sullivan; the story of a man bringing up his daughter on his own (my Dad used to refer to it as 'Me and My Girls').  'Dear John' carried such fond memories that I bought the DVD box set for a friend who also expressed his love for it as a kid, thinking it would be a nice nostalgia trip for him.  He was thrilled, but two days later I got a text from him saying he'd never realised it was so "full of derogatory gay references!"  I was mortified, but he just said it was strange how he'd never noticed it at the time, being gay himself.   A "guilty telly pleasure" in more ways than one!

The more obvious "guilty telly pleasures" are the glitzy ones, things like 'Dallas' and 'Dynasty' which everybody seemed to love (they wouldn't now though, would they?  Those shows could only ever be popular in the Eighties; I don't think there's ever been a clearer example of shows that are so utterly of their time).  When I was little we used to have a sixteen year-old babysitter called Sharon who'd let me stay up a bit later than my sisters to watch 'Dynasty' with her.  She'd introduce all the characters to me by saying "that one's the King, and there's the Queen, and those are the princes and princesses" like a mad version of 'Jackanory'.  And I absolutely loved it.

Other shows my sisters and I watched with Dad are probably responsible for our 'blokey' sense of humour...they weren't shows that little girls with mothers were allowed to watch.  My sisters and I were well-acquainted with the semantics of every episode of 'Blackadder', 'The Young Ones' and 'Red Dwarf' before we'd hit ten years old; something that got my little sister into lots of trouble when she innocently quoted something mildly offensive from 'The Young Ones' in front of our Nan, who voiced her concerned opinion that us girls living in a house with no mother was only going to lead us on a path to self-destruction.  But I'd like to think it didn't; in fact my sisters and I all lead very 'normal' lives with nice husbands, kids and dogs (though I only qualify for the first of those three things; I can't stand dogs, but that's another story!)

Insensitive comments (of which I make quite a few!)

...and how they can be unintentional, especially if they're from a friend.  Earlier this week I went out for lunch with a very good friend and the conversation turned to children.  I nearly fell off my chair when she told me she was first pregnant years ago; she was absolutely not the maternal type.  Now she's a proud mum of two and I couldn't imagine her without her children; she's a great mum.

But there's something about mothers, even ones you know well, that can't quite believe you when you say you're not interested in having kids yourself.  During this friendly lunch, conversation turned to my husband and it was commented that "he'd make a great Dad...it's a shame he's not going to get the chance to show it".  The comment was well-meant, but I wanted to scream, because it implies that I've decided completely on my own that I want to be child-free, and sod what my husband wants or thinks.  The fact that we've decided together not to be parents never seems to come into it.   It isn't the first time people have commented about how my husband would make a good Dad, or me a good Mum for that matter, as though that's all there is to the decision.  It's a concern, obviously, but if you want to be a parent you'll make it work.  If you don't then it isn't something you think about.  The idea of my being a Mum is so alien to me that I shudder whenever an idea of it comes to mind.  But...why do people, including good friends, feel as though they can comment on it to their heart's content?

It isn't always good friends of course; sometimes it's strangers.  I was in the gym lounge recently, chatting casually to a group of people I'd just been working out with in a class when the conversation turned to census forms, religion and kids.  Once it had been established that I a) have no religion and b) have no kids, one woman was appalled.  "My goodness, so you're childless and godless?  What an existence - I'd hate to be you".  This was said perfectly seriously, and I did my general, usual thing of letting it go instead of coming back with "My goodness, so you're narrow-minded and ignorant, not to mention bloody rude?  What an existence - I'd hate to be you"  I let things like that go all the time, then feel angry with myself for not saying anything back.  I can understand how older people become cantankerous.  If I'm still listening to comments like that when I'm nearing my sixties I have no doubt that I probably will say something.  And unfortunately, seeing as I do plan to remain child-free, I know there'll be plenty more comments like that to come.  It makes my heart feel a little bit heavy sometimes, that I'll be called upon again and again to justify how I've chosen to live my life, even to people I know well and love.

And yet I'm not immune to making ill thought-out comments myself.  At a horrible business breakfast networking meeting (yeugh) fairly recently I ended up in conversation with the only other woman there. She looked a bit harassed and a bit detached from the proceedings, and without thinking I asked if she had children, assuming she'd rushed to the meeting from the school-run.  As it turned out, I was right - but why did I ask her that?  I wouldn't have asked any of the men the same question, even if they'd had the same demeanour.  I'd probably have assumed work was keeping them up late instead.

I've no doubt that if I had kids, there'd be comments made that I wouldn't like.  My sister, for example, was already being asked if she was going to have another baby around three weeks after she'd just given birth!  It helps to remember things like that; we all get comments we're not happy with at some point.  Hopefully I'll remain quiet and dignified about it as I age.  If not...well, there's always wine.

Why doesn't anybody want to work?

I'd been booked to run a CV Writing training course yesterday, on behalf of a local charity.  The course was free for people to attend, as long as they met the simple criteria of being out of work and looking for employment.  That, according to government statistics, applies to a lot of people, so you'd think the course I was running would be well-attended, right?  Well...wrong, actually.

I arrived at the training venue, to be met by the man from the charity (who incidentally was being made redundant himself the next day).  He told me that he was sorry, but out of the fifty people scheduled to attend, only eight had actually bothered to turn up.  A few had called beforehand to say they were ill, or going to the dentist, but the majority just hadn't come in.  He'd called the Job Centre to ask if any of their candidates wanted to fill the empty spaces, but no.  Nobody there seemed interested in learning about how to get themselves ready for employment with a new CV.

Now I know what you might be thinking, and yes, I did wonder if my reputation had gone before me and these people just didn't think I was a very good trainer!  But that aside, if I was looking for work and somebody offered me a free place on a training course designed to help me out, wouldn't I be mad not to take it?  I really don't want to come over all Daily Mail here (something I'm a bit paranoid about!) but seriously - why don't people want to do anything other than seemingly sitting around, moaning about their lot in life whilst doing absolutely nothing to try to alter it?  I say 'seemingly' because whilst that may not be what's actually happening, that's certainly what it looks like.  This training course wasn't the first that had been organised for unemployed people, with the vast majority not actually bothering to come along after they'd booked a free place (which still has to be paid for by the charities organising them, by the way).

I've lost count of the number of people I've known over the years who have just shrugged and said something like "there's just no jobs" when I've asked how they're getting on looking for work.  No jobs at all?  Really?  Have a look on a website like fish4jobs, or get a copy of the local paper on a Thursday.  Jobs aplenty.  Why not be a bit creative, if you think there really are no jobs, or at least none available to you?  Grab the Yellow Pages (even easier now with yell.com) and make a list of all the companies you think it'd be good to work for, then write a tailored letter to them with a good CV.  That's a tip I give my CV clients when they say something like "there's no jobs out there", but hardly anybody actually does it.  Yet it works.  I've done it myself, and whilst it's time-consuming and you don't hear from the majority of the companies you write to, I managed to get two jobs doing just that.  I've also recruited people for companies I've worked for who have sent in their CV on the off-chance that they might get a job from it.  Sometimes you can just be in the right place at the right time.

I'd have told all this to the missing forty-two people on my training course yesterday, had they wanted to hear it.  But then it's probably far easier and more comfortable to sit at home watching Jeremy Kyle and insisting there aren't any jobs out there instead.

The empowering qualities of lipstick

My life has never been filled with designer trinkets.  I can't afford them, but in all honesty even if I had the money for them I'd be more inclined to buy artisan cheeses than artisan couture.  Not just because I love cheese more than life itself (even though that would be an impractical reality), but because I don't feel right in the sort of shops that sell designer merchandise.  One of the reasons for this is because everything's so bloody serious.   On the rare occasions I've ever been inside a designer boutique, I don't think I've ever heard anybody laugh.  Or talk, for that matter.  I feel as though I might be shushed if I were to do anything as impertinent as to ask the snooty shop assistant (I might be being unfair here, but they always look snooty, and anyway why would you want to work somewhere like that if you weren't in possession of a hint of snootiness) how much something is.  But that might be because, in my husband's words, "if you have to ask, you can't afford it".  I don't look as though I can afford it, and in these places how you look is all that matters.

But designer couture is supposed to be exclusive; that's why the models are so thin that if they turned to the side and stuck their tongues out, they'd be mistaken for zips.  If the models were a normal size they'd just be average, and true fashionistas don't really want to believe that average people are capable of buying and wearing high fashion.  The models saunter down the catwalks with the sort of pained looks that scream "I suffer for this kind of art!"  They're only aspirational to certain kinds of rich people (I'm tempted to say "those people with more money than sense", but I'm worried about sounding too much like my Nan).

Designer make-up, however, is dangerously aspirational on a "normal person" level.  Yes, the models have been airbrushed to within an inch of their lives; their eyelashes have been "filmed with inserts and enhanced in post-production", but there's still something about holding a Chanel lipstick and feeling that, just by putting it on, your life is about to improve immeasurably.

I was nineteen years old when I bought my first designer lipstick; a Christian Dior 'Dior Rouge'.  At the time I was working in a crappy Basildon-based cable telly call centre (this was before they all got moved to India, obviously...people must have decided at some point that they'd prefer their service providers to live half-way round the world rather than have an Essex accent, and who can blame them?).  But just purchasing the lipstick with its heavy gold-embossed casing imbued me with glamour; the kind of glamour that was going to carry me out of the confines of Basildon and into a heady world of champagne and poise (I was young, remember).

The friend I was shopping with at the time (and who had also bought a 'Dior Rouge') had the same idea.  After our splurge in the beauty halls we went for a drink and talked for ages about our ambitions and all the wonderful things we were going to end up doing.  I don't own many pieces of designer make-up, but when I do break with tradition and buy some, when I'm at the till point I'm always transported to that feeling on that afternoon on which I felt like I could do anything.

(The 'Dior Rouge', incidentally, wasn't very good.  It was a bit dry, and after about half an hour of wearing it all the colour faded from the middle leaving an ugly red outline reminiscent of Ronald McDonald.  But that heady empowering feeling was nice while it lasted).

I Dream of Sanity...

I read a piece in the paper a little while ago, all about how some people think their dreams can predict the future and how that's all...well, a load of rubbish really.  It was by Richard Wiseman, a scientist whose books already adorn my shelves, so I bought his latest one, 'Paranormality' (from which the article had been taken) and devoured the whole thing in a day.  And I'd recommend it for an interesting and interactive romp through the history of the paranormal and how none of it's real (there's even an exercise that induces seeing a 'ghost'...don't try that one when you're on your own in the house!)

I've never seen a real 'ghost' - or at least I don't think I have.  Once, when I was very young (I must only have been about six years old) I had a dream about my Nan's mother, who had died in her forties when my Nan was a little girl.  I'd never seen her (obviously!) but it was one of those dreams where you just know who people are supposed to be.  The following day my Mum, sisters and I went to see my Nan, and as I was sitting at her dining table innocently drawing a picture, the kitchen door opened and in walked the lady I'd seen in my dream.  She didn't look real, she looked like a glowing outline of a person...like the image you get when you look at an illuminated lightbulb and then close your eyes.  She came in, smiled at me, then just disappeared.  My sisters were playing in the corner of the room, and my Mum was chatting to my Nan just at my side.  I had been the only one who saw her.  I wasn't afraid, and I said nothing, just carried on with my picture.

Nearly thirty years later, the details of this dream have stayed with me as though it only happened yesterday. I am almost certain that the 'vision' at my Nan's was simply an extension of the dream I'd had...but it's that "almost", isn't it?  "Almost" pretty much defines that whole attitude to spirituality and those who believe in, and practise it.  Psychics never get full details of the 'people' they communicate with, just a few snippets of information that "almost" make sense.  Dreams "almost" predict the future by incorporating a few details, not the whole picture.  People don't know if they've really seen ghosts or not...they're "almost"sure.

I have to say, I like life's "almost"s and "not quite sure"s, and I think other people do, too.  Because it makes our existence seem a bit more interesting; as though there really are mysterious things out there that will never be understood.  I also like and am interested in scientific discovery, though I could never do it myself as it's too black and white.  Richard Wiseman is absolutely, not almost, certain that "the paranormal" doesn't exist except in our minds, and he is probably right about that.  But I like that I'm not completely sure about it.  I don't know whether that makes me stupid, or gullible, or open-minded...or all of those things.

(Regarding that dream, it probably wasn't a ghost I saw.  I had a dream around the same time about Status Quo coming round to babysit, and that absolutely didn't happen.  Or...did it?)

Public Transportian Tales

As I've covered before in this blog, I am a failed driver.  A pedestrian.  'Pedestrian' is also a word which can also be used to describe something dull or boring, to which I actually take a tiny bit of offence.  The assumption that pedestrians are duller than drivers!  As Top Gear amply demonstrates, some people are adept at using bright 'n' shiny fast cars in an uneven kind of exchange for an actual personality.

Being somebody who doesn't own a car, my journeys to places tend to be a bit more interesting than getting stuck in traffic jams with Chris Moyles's jowly splutterings for a soundtrack.  The older I get, the more grateful I am that I'm a non-driver (you could say that, seeing as I've failed five driving tests, one of my strengths is blind optimism in the face of severe adversity).  But still, it's true.  I love walking, and will often refuse lifts to places even in extreme cold...I suppose I'm mad in seeing a good walk in freezing weather as a character-building challenge!  But I also love public transport, even cranky old British public transport with its constant delays, planned engineering works and leaves on the lines.

One of the reasons I love public transport is for the quirkiness of the characters that use it.  I'm not referring to myself here; I'd love to be naturally 'quirky' but I'm afraid I'm far too sensible for that.  Hence I enjoy observing it in others.  An example of this happened during a bus journey on the way to an ill-fated job about a year or so ago.  I had my hair pulled back in a ponytail and an old man sitting behind me grabbed it, then tapped me on the shoulder.  When I turned round he said, perfectly seriously: "You ought to be careful love, having your hair like that - someone'll snip that ponytail off and sell it on for a wig"

I can't remember what I said in reply; probably just smiled politely and turned back again.  But it was completely wonderful regardless.  Likewise, another old man sitting opposite me on the train once told me I had a face "that reminds me of a little doll my sister used to play with".  I thanked him but later realised I hadn't established what kind of doll he'd meant...it may not have been as complimentary as I'd hoped!  I've also had all manner of random conversations with people I've sat near or next to on buses and trains; subjects have included ghosthunting, Karl Pilkington, the shape of bananas and the X Factor.

I used to work with a girl who looked down her nose every time public transport was mentioned.  "Oh...you don't get the bus, do you?" she said to me once, horsey voice neighing with disdain.  "You're missing out" I said, but (probably with good reason!) I don't think she understood.

That said, there can be times when public transport can cause niggly little social problems.  Especially when you get on the bus, or the train, and someone you work with but don't know very well gets on at the next stop.  Or worse...you get on, and someone you work with but don't know very well is already on it, and the seat next to them is free.  The Seinfeld-ian dilemma is clear...I usually answered it in a very British way, namely by pretending they didn't exist until we got to the office.  I think they were grateful for that.

"Do you think you'll ever take your driving test again?" is a question I'm occasionally asked by people once they've learned about my previous five failures.  Nothing I say ever convinces them that having a car isn't the superior choice, but I'm still more than happy in my 'pedestrian' underworld.

My Pet Hates

I love the title of this blog post; it's simple and straightforward, like something a child would write (like 'What I Did in My Holidays' - and on that note, why did we have to keep writing about that in school?  It's embarrassing for some kids whose parents dragged them to Pontins Camber Sands while their counterparts gallivanted off to Disneyworld Florida - the creaky old Crocodile Club can't really compare to the Magic Kingdom, can it?  Not unless you get really creative, anyway, like writing that the Pontins Crocodile Club actually housed real live crocodiles and you came back from holiday minus your baby sister. But the teachers tend to frown on that sort of stuff).

The 'comedy genius' Karl Pilkington famously said that "we love a good moan in this country", and that's what I'm going to do today.  What with it being Monday as well...what better day to have a good old moan about things I don't like?  So here are my top pet hates.  Consider them as the things I'd put into Room 101, if you will.

1.  People who whistle
I feel bad about this one, because it's mainly jolly, harmless old men who whistle jaunty tunes in the High Street, but something about the sound of it just sets my teeth on edge.  A bit like nails going down a blackboard for some people, maybe (though that sound has never bothered me).

2. People who don't like vegetarians just because...they're vegetarians
I know, I've banged on about this one before.  Many, many, many times before.  But it just irks me, I'm afraid.  It was a bit compounded yesterday when I watched an episode of 'Come Dine With Me' (nothing else was on) and the first contestant was a bullish man in a comedy shirt that barely covered his belly, who didn't "see the point of trying with vegetarians".  Which leads me on to...

3. People who feel the need to declare "With me, what you see is what you get!  I say things to people's faces and I don't care if they like it or not, because that's just me!"
This is the main reason I stopped watching 'The Jeremy Kyle Show' (not my finest hour, but it did become a bit of a guilty pleasure for a while.  I even appeared on it once...in the audience, I might add!)  But people spout crap like this all the time, all the while looking pleased with themselves.  Why is it considered a good thing in any way to bleat at people "to their face" every single thought you have?  It's unbelievably arrogant to think that whatever you have to say is worth hearing all the time; not to mention tactless and...well, just a bit thick, to be honest.  But don't mind me.  I'm just saying what I think.


4. People who refer to their pets as their children, by referring to themselves as "Mummy and Daddy"
This should actually be Number One, it annoys me so much.  My best friend knows this and as such continually refers to herself as "Mummy" whenever she mentions her dog.  Even though I know she's only doing it to wind me up, I STILL get irritated.  For God's sake, get a life!!  Or have kids, which is probably what you should actually be doing once you've started identifying yourself as a genuine parent of a canary.

5. People who let their kids run amok and pretend not to notice
A friend and I took her child and a friend to the cinema the other week.  OK, so it was a kids' film, but sitting behind us there was a family who seemed perfectly content to let their three year-old run along the aisle and peer into the gaps between the seats, breathing heavily and putting his sticky sweet-covered fingers all over the arms of the seats we were sitting in.  My friend occasionally looked at him and gave him a little smile.  "Don't encourage him!" I whisper-hissed at her; lovely, maternal person that I am.  And I wasn't even enjoying the film.  Eventually, two-thirds of the way through the film this kid's yelping and running about actually seemed to get to the parents as well, as he was heaved up and carried out of the cinema by his Dad, screaming loudly (the kid, not his Dad).  It does somewhat beg the question: WHY take a three year-old to the cinema in the first place?  But then, I'm not a Mum - to a cat, dog, bird or a genuine child, so I wouldn't know.

(I've just looked back and seen that all of my 'Room 101' things begin with 'People who...'  Oh dear! - perhaps I should just change it to 'People' and save time).

(I'm not THAT much of a misanthrope, honest!  I just have, errr...high standards.  Yes, that's it).

So, what character from a book do you most resemble?

I've been thinking about this question today, though I don't know why.  It's a bit like that age-old question, "who would play you in a film about your life" isn't it?  (for the record, mine would be Kate Bosworth.  Well, it's a given that the person who plays you has to be better looking than you really are, right?  The real Erin Brockovich looks nothing like Julia Roberts, and I've seen pictures of Enid Blyton - she looked nothing like Helena Bonham-Carter, let me tell you).

But back to the "what book character..." question.  I've been mentally scanning the books I've read, and as much as I'd love to resemble a tragic, beautiful heroine in the vein of Natasha Rostova or Catherine Earnshaw, the literary character I feel I most resemble is none other than (drum roll, please) Rob Fleming from 'High Fidelity'.

Not the most glamorous choice, obviously.  But Rob Fleming is a man obsessed with categorisation and whose life has a soundtrack; two things I can utterly relate to (in particular the marrying of these two obsessions by organising his record collection not alphabetically, but autobiographically).  I've been making 'Top Five Lists' in my head for as long as I can remember; the most bizarre one is probably 'Top Five Songs I'd Like to be Played At My Funeral', which changes on an almost weekly basis.  I keep thinking I should write them down, but what if I don't update it and my mourners are treated to a Ryan Adams ballad when I'd really wanted something from 'Scrubs' (they do a good line in morbid but strangely uplifting tunes; many's a time I've watched an episode and thought "that would sound perfect at someone's funeral").  And then I worry that I might be tempting fate by 'planning' my funeral in my head so often that it might happen sooner than I'd actually like, which if it did would probably be the worst-planned funeral in history because I haven't ever written any of the details down and my family wouldn't have a clue what they are, and so I'd probably be buried and have a church service even though I'm an atheist and have a fear of possibly being buried alive.

(Ahem...)

Rob Fleming looks down on people at dinner parties for owning Tina Turner records, and as much as I endorse Duke Ellington's maxim if it sounds good, it is good... so do I - ever so slightly.  Rob Fleming also has a list of his 'Top Five Episodes of 'Cheers'; I have a 'Top Five Episodes of 'Seinfeld', a programme I know inside out and am more than likely a bit overly-obsessed with.  The only thing Rob Fleming and I don't have in common, aside from the obvious facts of him being a) male and b) not actually existing, is that I don't have a 'Top Five List' of ex-boyfriends.  But I do have a 'Top Five First Dates' one, so that probably makes up for it.

Anyway, for posterity and utter self-indulgence, here are a couple of my 'Top Five Lists' *:

Top Five Films of All Time


5. 'Napoleon Dynamite' - just wonderfully geeky and weird.  "I caught you a delicious bass" must be one of the best lines ever spoken in film.
4. 'High Society' - I first watched this as a kid with my grandparents and sisters, and just loved it.  We were too young to spot the slightly (unintentional) 'inappropriate' song lyrics, which took some of the gloss off the film but I still remember it with fondness.
3. 'The Wedding Singer' - I never tire of this film; it's the visual equivalent of a bright, fizzy cocktail.
2. 'I've Loved You So Long' - this film always makes me cry buckets, but I love it anyway.
1. 'Lost in Translation' - for me, probably the most perfect film ever made.

Top Five 'Funeral' Songs


5. 'That's Life' - Frank Sinatra (a belter!)
4. 'Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole' - Martha Wainwright (brilliant in its utter inappropriate-ness)
3. 'My Brilliant Feat' - Colin Hay (because I'd like to think of my life as a 'brilliant feat' at some point.  Maybe people will think that after it's finished instead?)
2. 'To a Woman in Winter' - Freddie Stevenson - actually, just anything by Freddie Stevenson
1. 'Video Killed the Radio Star' - The Buggles - because it's the first song I ever remember hearing and it seems sort of fitting!

*these lists are utterly stupid and pointless, and are subject to change completely with no notice whatsoever.

Making Friends at the Gym

The gym is not a friend emporium.  Or at least it isn't to me.  But then I've never wanted it to be, ever since I joined my local fitness haven aged nineteen.  I actually only joined because the friend I was living with at the time had just joined.  At the time I had a passing interest in fitness (I did Rosemary Conley DVDs at home once or twice a week, though this had to stop when a male neighbour confessed to spying on me through the window...which is another story entirely) and I decided I didn't want her becoming fitter than me!  That amusingly endearing, childish competitive spirit that absolutely ISN'T at all present in me now (cough).

But anyway.  When I signed up to join the gym, I was given a questionnaire on which I was asked my main reason for joining.  Top of the list of options was "a better social life".  Not "fitness" but "a better social life".  I'd already been on a tour of the gym with all its poseurish/sweaty/loud (delete as applicable) inhabitants, and I wondered who in their right mind would go there solely to make friends.

Nearly fifteen years down the line (God it's been AGES!) and I've made a total of two very good friends from my gym membership.  That's about one every seven-and-a-half years.  I've done well, haven't I?  But the thing is, I still don't really 'get' the gym being a place to make friends.  Not unless you're not very serious about actually working out, anyway.  I go the gym to keep fit, but also to zone out; it's my haven against all kinds of nasties in the outside world, like work and stress and lack of sleep.  When I'm there I also tend to look like the scrag end of a joint of lamb, except better dressed.  Just.  That isn't conducive to a deep and meaningful conversation about life, is it?  Once, fairly recently, one of the gym receptionists saw me in the High Street.  "Oh, you look really nice!" she gushed, sounding surprised.  Well...I suppose anybody would look "really nice" if the only other times you ever saw them, they were dressed in ill-advised Lycra and had a face the colour of a salad tomato.

Besides, the things people tend to talk about in the gym seem to revolve around food.  It really does.  Especially when you go to the classes.  Groups of girls will congregate and chatter about the latest fat-loss shakes and how little they'd had to eat that day.  When the class is finished, the changing room is awash with people telling each-other they're "only going to have a salad or a plate of vegetables" for dinner.  Or they talk about spray-tans and the best way to de-fuzz your bikini line.  I never feel less traditionally feminine than when I'm in the gym changing room!  My reluctance to join in with these conversations probably explains my ghost-like presence in the gym generally; because I've been going for so long people know me in there, so they'll nod a hello, but they'll rarely stop to chat.  I keep wondering whether I should mind about that, and make more of an effort.  Get a spray tan and only eat vegetables after a Zumba class.  But I couldn't; it's just not me.

A good kick up the arse!

Last week I watched two 'Big-Society-get-your-arse-into-gear' styled programmes.  The first was Channel Four's 'Jamie's Dream School', which I have to say I'd been looking forward to following the teasing ad campaign featuring cheeky chappy Jamie standing in front of a blackboard, telling us all about luminaries such as Simon Callow, David Starkey and Rolf Harris teaching underprivileged kids.

And then I watched it.  The kids weren't underprivileged; they just hadn't made much of an effort in school and had left without making much of a splash in academic circles, just like Jamie Oliver himself.  Most of them actually seemed bright, witty and likeable enough, if incredibly immature and of the opinion that it's alright: someone'll sort something out for them in the end.  And they duly did - in stepped Jamie and his not-so-merry band of celebrity teachers, telling us that "the education system has failed these kids" and that he wanted to do something to engage them.  Within fifteen minutes or so there's chaos in the classroom as David Starkey collectively refers to them as "failures" and singles out one chubby Plan B lookalike as being "so fat you can't move".  Violins all round at the horrific abuse meted out to these poor unfortunates.

The second programme I watched last week was BBC Three's 'Working Girls', in which Kaycie, a self-styled 'Cheryl Cole of Reading', is taken from her benefits-and-single-Mum-funded lifestyle in which she gets her Chihuahua's nails painted, and is asked to - gasp! - do some work for a week.  As the programme starts, Kaycie is convinced of her "men should work for women" attitude.  Alas, she's not referring to female bosses.

But it's hard to take Kaycie at all seriously, really.  Firstly because although she waxes lyrical about her own devastating beauty throughout the programme, she actually looks exactly like Mark Owen in drag.  She's also quite savvy and self-aware; about ten minutes into the programme we learn that she's been dumped by her boyfriend, by her own admission for "being too needy because I didn't have anything else to do but text him all day".

Her first place of work is a rough old Liverpudlian market, followed by Hotel Missoni in London (guess which one she stuck at for longer?)  Both establishments are run by "some of Britain's toughest businesswomen"; neither of whom actually seemed like much of an advert for hard work.  Kaycie cleans a few tables, washes a few dishes, gets into a few teary arguments (from which we learn that she's been in care and that she used to be a lapdancer) and by the end of the week she's serving Prosecco at a hotel function and we're supposed to be convinced that she's been on "a journey".  Though she spent two days of her week at work off sick with a stomach bug, the hard-faced Missoni hotel manager tells her she's "so proud of all your hard work, Kaycie; I really admire your determination".

As lightly entertaining as they were, one of the things that struck me on watching both of these shows is that television seems to be rewarding laziness and a general inability to try at anything by effectively turning it into a cerebral "rags to riches" story.  The kids on 'Jamie's Dream School' had as much chance as anybody else to try hard and do well in school.  As did the 'Cheryl Cole of Reading'.  They will all have had peers who did work hard and make an effort.  But they're not getting enthralling history lessons from David Starkey and the like, or a free-pass temporary job at one of the most beautiful hotels in London.  Instead they're coming home from work, switching on the telly and feeling as though, in order to really achieve something, they need to throw in their jobs, abuse their families and hope someone from the BBC notices and decides to make a TV programme all about them.

Though I admire his effort, in my opinion Jamie's wrong: the education system hasn't "failed these kids"; that honour belongs to their parents and themselves.  But all this fawning and cosseting isn't going to help any of them do what he did, and really make something of themselves.

(Tsk, I feel a letter to the Daily Mail coming on!)

Musings on Religion

I would describe myself as an atheist.  Not an aggressive atheist in the style of the charming Professor Dawkins and the like. I'm just someone who doesn't believe in God.

Religion-wise I wasn't brought up as anything, really.  When I was a kid I asked my Dad what religion we were (I thought at the time that everybody had to have a religion.  I don't remember atheism being as prominent, or arguably as fashionable, as it is now).  He shrugged and replied "Church of England, I think".  His response didn't exactly start a religious fire in me!

But I do remember my Religious Studies classes as school and thinking how nice it would be to really belong to something.  One of my best friends was Jewish; her family were incredibly close-knit and full of endearing tradition.  I associated this with their religion, and later on when I was messing around in class and flicking through a religious textbook I did a quiz entitled 'What Are You?'  I answered incorrectly so that I would end up with the conclusion 'You are a Christian'.  Christians seemed so sure of who they were and what they believed, and it felt comforting to think I could belong to something like that.

Then I started reading the Bible, and it was at this point that my personal belief in religion as a comforting and uniting force began to falter.  The Bible was, for me, disappointingly prescriptive, harsh and unappealing, seemingly wholly based on people's fear of death.  It didn't appear to celebrate life in any way, just treated it as an inconvenience.  Questioning wasn't allowed, only faith.  But faith in what?  Just God, it seemed, and whatever contradictory command he decided to issue.  I finished the Bible deciding that if Heaven and Hell really did exist in the way they were described, then put me down for Hell.  If I was going to be passed off as an ignorant blasphemer at least that would mean I wasn't going to be preached at for all eternity.  Eternal hellfire I can deal with.

This does happen to be what I personally think, but I don't accompany it with claims that the world would be better off without religion.  I've seen first-hand how faith and belief can pull people through all kinds of hardships, and some of the nicest and most interesting people I know are also religious in some form or another.  Who am I to criticise any of that?  Though it does fascinate me when I discover that certain older, wiser people than me are religious.  I'd love to ask some of them...."so come on, do you REALLY believe any of that mad stuff in the Bible?"  I always think that whenever I see Rowan Williams or the Pope on the television; surely these men have lived too long and seen too much of life for much of it to really correlate with traditional religion?  It has occurred to me that the Bible was only ever really meant as a collection of children's stories, to keep them in line until they got older and realised none of the stories were true, but by that time the core Biblical values would be entrenched.  A meaner, more sophisticated version of Father Christmas, perhaps.

And yet the same sort of criticisms could well be levelled at me, as I suppose I have a 'religion' of my own in some strange way.  I go to see a psychic lady about twice a year, which is something I've been doing ever since I was nineteen.  Is she actually psychic?  I have no idea.  Some of the things she has said over the years have been uncannily accurate; others have not been.  I've read and admired the works of James Randi, Derren Brown and Richard Wiseman, and I'm well aware of the techniques fake psychics use (is there any other kind?  Again, I don't know).  Yet going to her reassures me that everything's going to be alright, in a funny sort of way.  There's something calming about that half-hour I spend with her every six months or so; something indulgent.  It's all about me.  In some ways I suppose it's a form of therapy, or counselling.  Whatever, it works...and it fascinates me enough to want to include the whole idea of 'psychic therapy' as the basis for my next, as unwritten, novel.

So I suppose we all need something in our lives that comforts us; makes us feel whole and as though we belong to something.  For some people it's family, for some it's religion and for others it's...well, other things, all of them full of creaky contradictions; stretched to fit in with our lives and whatever it suits us to think.  And as long as it's relatively harmless...Amen to that.

Bookish designs

I am dying to read some fiction!  Just dying.  I haven't read anything made-up and wonderful since December last year when I read Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom' (which I would heartily recommend to anybody who might be interested).

The reason for the dearth of fiction in my life at present is due to the fact that I've been reading two books in succession since January: one about Britain in the Seventies ('When the Lights Went Out') and 'Thatcher's Britain', in an attempt to understand the reason for the snarling polarisation the Iron Lady seems to inspire in people, even those of around my age and younger.

I am young enough not to have remembered first-hand or understood much about Mrs. T's premiership, other than the vague remembrance of school milk suddenly not being available any more (which was a wonderful thing; our milk used to get left on the radiators all morning and was curdled by the time we got it.  I'm sure this is the reason why I can't look at a glass of the white stuff these days without being ever so slightly sick in my mouth...and don't get me started on the smell of milk in a hot drink).  I also remember 'Margaret Thatcher's Maths', which was a game my friend Candy and I used to play in our first year at junior school, in an attempt to make maths a bit less boring.  All it consisted of was the two of us reading aloud from our textbooks in a 'Margaret Thatcher' voice, but still...it made us laugh.  I also vaguely recall the Poll Tax riots in 1990, but I was thirteen years old then and wouldn't be paying it anyway, so it didn't get much of my attention.  Not as much as Kylie and Jason did, anyway.

Friends much older than me always, without exception, disparage Mrs. T and hold her in huge amounts of contempt for ruining the country.  My Dad, on the other hand, always used to say she was the best prime minister we ever had, which coming from a single dad holding down two jobs and single-handedly trying to raise three little girls, made me think she couldn't have been that bad.  But I've always been fairly ambivalent really, until a conversation with a friend of around my age sparked my interest.  I can't remember what we were initially talking about, but she said that she couldn't wait for Mrs. T to die so she could be one of the first to "dance on her grave".  She is a mild-mannered, balanced and lovely person, but she said this with such venom that it surprised me.  I mentioned that I thought the idea of wanting to dance on somebody's grave was a bit nasty, to which she replied that Mrs. T deserved it.

This made me ask my friend exactly what it was that she was so angry about?  I wasn't asking to be facetious; I genuinely wanted to know what had inspired such fury in her.  But as soon as I asked the question, her anger dissolved into slight anxiety as it became clear that she didn't really know.  "My Dad's always hated her" was her eventual response, and it made me think that I should try to familiarise myself with what she actually did, and why people always seemed to vote for her regardless.

So now I've nearly finished the two books, and now I have some idea of what went on...and I wish I could say I cared, or had a real opinion, but I don't!  The books were very interesting to read, but I still couldn't really provide a full explanation of the intricacies of Mrs. T's premiership, except to say that I can completely understand the polarity now, because it was all so black-and-white.  The full, gory detail, however, pretty much bounced off my brain as I read, embarrassing as that is to admit.

Some books do that.  I've read Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' twice, but I still couldn't really discuss it intelligently with anyone, because it hardly made an impression on me (also something quite embarrassing to admit considering its 'classic' status).  Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris and London' on the other hand, is a book I've also read twice, and found so brilliant that bits of it have burned themselves into my brain.

So anyway.  When I've finished this 'Thatcher' book, which will hopefully be at some point tomorrow, I'm going to gorge myself on fiction, which I've been buying a lot of recently, partly in anticipation of reading something creative again, and also partly due to watching the marvellous 'Faulks on Fiction' which has given me so many new reading ideas that I wish I hadn't watched any of it!