The Pros of Being a Modern-Day Flâneuse

Am I really that mad, enjoying a good long walk?  I ask because people have taken to looking askance at me recently, when they ask how I'm "coping with the commute" to my job in Marble Arch, which involves an hour on the train and a walk to my office.  "How long's the walk?" people ask, and when I say it's just over an hour they tend to look shocked.  General reactions have ranged from a) "you must be MAD", b) "but what if it rains?" and c) "I don't know where you get the energy to do that".  Sometimes it's all three.  To which I give relatively simple responses; a) no, b) then I take an umbrella, and c) when you bother actually using energy, generally you end up with more.

But it's more than that.  One of the things I am the most grateful for in my life is the ability to move; to be able to get myself to places I need to go without having to use machines.  I think I've said before that I'm happy I never managed to pass my driving test, or I might have become one of those people who won't walk to the corner shop because it's raining.  Energy is a gift you give to yourself; besides which being able to move and keeping myself generally active is important to me in the fight against that perennial background fear of ageing.  Fear of ageing for me is really fear of restriction; I tend to think that aside from all those fluffy considerations about vanity nobody would worry about being a hundred years old if they could still move and think like they could when they were twenty.  Sod pension plans; the best insurance policies you can give yourself as you get older is to walk everywhere and read everything.  That's it.

When I walk I always feel a wonderful sense of my mind being free to wander wherever it likes; a sensation that just isn't the same when I'm sat at home, or at a desk.  Problems balance themselves out as if by magic and I can plan and write novels in my head.  Plus I can play stupid games with myself, like my current favourite - 'One Second Celebrity', whereby I take a quick glance at the person walking towards me and I have, in that split-second, to come up with a celebrity they resemble (or would resemble if they lost/gained weight, or grew some facial hair, or were wearing a sequinned shrug).  Part of my 'walking commute' takes me along Oxford Circus, which can be frustrating when it's crowded but on the other hand it's a real treasure-trove for a game of that kind.  It's all swings and roundabouts, just like everything else in life.

Of course, I don't actually say any of this to people.  I suspect that if I did they'd get that glazed look I'm used to seeing on people's faces when I'm at work and I'm talking about regulations nobody's interested in, including myself.  I just think it all, and then I carry on walking.

Why aren't there any funny women?

The media loves this topic; "why aren't women as funny as men" often crops up as a headline on minor newspaper articles or on lame discussion shows.  Each time a few names are bandied about, usually French and Saunders, or Victoria Wood, or Jo Brand, or more recently Sarah Millican, along with near-laboratorial dissections of their performances, as though in doing so a great secret will be discovered (that they were all born male?) and then we can relax and get on with all that fun laughing stuff!

Usually these discussions will garner mention of Christopher Hitchens' old 'Vanity Fair' article on why women aren't funny...or rather, why he thinks they aren't.  The crux is that it's all about basic evolution, you see...men have developed humour as a way of attracting women whereas women don't have to develop humour to attract men, because they look nice.  It's an age-old idea (and Hitchens does mention that he thinks plenty of men aren't funny, either, but you don't tend to hear about that bit whenever the article is mentioned).  

Personally I think that if you're a good-looking person of either sex, people will automatically think you're not very funny.  It's a form of self-preservation in that if you believe there are people who can successfully combine pulchritude with humour, then that puts you at a disadvantage (plus it's bloody depressing!).  There's also the psychological theory that nothing funny even happens to the truly good-looking; no pratfalls or self-deprecation or humorous incidents in the supermarket.  They are exempt from all that (in that they're also exempt from general failure; hence the reason some people like to pick with extreme fascination over the failed marriages of beautiful celebrities, because pain and suffering and horrible life events aren't supposed to happen to them!)

So if you're not very good-looking and you're a man, then people are well-disposed to think you're funny before you've even opened your mouth.  But I actually do think the same theory applies to not-very-good-looking women.  My personal theory on why people think women aren't funny is actually that it's all in the material.  Because if you listen to stand-up comics you'll hear men and women telling mostly the same stories; they generally all joke about the same things.  Jokes about weight and kids are the mainstay of most mainstream comedians' routines (both are subjects I don't personally find very funny regardless of who's delivering the lines).  But when a woman tells a joke about her kids, or her weight, it's because she's obsessed with these things; it's decreed that that's all she can talk about, whereas men are just making witty, slightly detached, observations.  Men can slag off other men, too, without being called bitchy.  

Of course, all this mainly applies to the bear-pit that is stand-up comedy, which is naturally more of a male environment to start with.  In day-to-day life I would say that most of the wit I've encountered has come from women, though being female myself that might mean I'm ever-so-slightly biased.  But I suppose the crux of it all is; some people are funny and some aren't, and that's...well, just about it, really.  Apologies if you were expecting an amusing punchline.

That was the (six) week(s) that was...

So it's been a grand total of six weeks since I moved into my new place.  And a lot has happened since then.  For one thing, I grew up.  I spent a lot of last year worrying about how childlike I still felt, considering that 2012 is the year in which I turn thirty-five; wondering what was ever going to happen in my life that would make me feel like a real adult.  It turns out I needn't have worried!

I grew up because I've had to take charge of things and act on the fact that I am now properly looking after myself.  And so I managed to get myself two jobs after two interviews, and this week I also managed to successfully negotiate a better deal for myself in my main job.  That I can hardly believe.  Me, who up until now has coasted through life and just let things happen, coming to the stark realisation that I'd better start watching out for myself now, because nobody else is going to and I'm supposed to be a sentient adult and so if I think I deserve something then I should ask for it, so I do, and then I actually get it!  Sorry - I know that could sound a bit arrogant, and it isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but for me that really is something quite amazing.

That's one thing.  Hopefully another amazing thing to occur soon is that I will start trusting my emotions again.  Because it's really quite unnerving, not to be able to trust in how you're feeling at a given moment.  I can wake up and feel incredibly positive, then just ten minutes later I'm in the grips of despair, convinced that nothing good is ever going to happen in my life ever again.  These spells of emotional despair feel like the mental equivalent of those retching physical purges of sickness you get when you have food poisoning; they hollow you right out from the inside as though someone's ripped your head off and gone for your heart and guts with a great big leaden spoon, and when it's finally finished and there's nothing left you can only sit in a calm, mechanical sort of haze for a bit, wondering whether you can eat something or if that will just trigger the whole thing off again, which you really don't want because you don't feel like you have the energy for it, not just now.  You're just spent, and then you have to start building yourself back up again, not at all certain that the bad stuff is over with.  In fact, knowing it most definitely isn't over with, not quite yet anyway.  But you know it will be, at some point.  Just not today.

This is a silly analogy, but I have a fitness DVD presented by Bob Harper from 'The Biggest Loser' which I love, as I love most American fitness DVDs, due to its hilarious over-the-top-ness.  An example of this is illustrated in Bob screaming at me throughout this DVD as I'm ordered to do my round-the-world pushups for the fiftieth time, something along the lines of "this has gotta HURT...this is what ya gotta DO if you wanna CHANGE your BODY!"  Maybe that mantra applies to life changes too...you've got to work at it and it's gotta HURT for a while, but the changes it brings might end up being worth it.

(Deep breath!) So anyway, yeah - that's been the last six weeks of my life.  Here's to the next six - and beyond.

"The only cure is work and exercise"

That's a direct quote from me, there.  It's from one of my old diaries, and I meant it in relation to boredom.  But it also works quite well in relation to "not letting yourself wallow".

Sundays are prime days for wallowing, I find.  Or at least recently they could be, since I've been living on my own.  I'm busy every day of the week, then it gets to Sunday and I'm kicking around at home, anticipating the week ahead ever-so-slightly fearfully and reflecting on the one that's just gone and all its imperfections...how I just didn't get as much done as I'd have liked.  I've found that recently, I never sit still.  I can't even sit in front of the telly for half an hour without getting up absentmindedly to straighten the curtains or just wash up that cup quickly, and then I don't sit back down again; I just wander round the room with half my mind on the telly and the other half frantically looking for the next thing I'm going to occupy my mind with so that I Do. Not. Wallow.

I was right about the "work and exercise" cure, though.  They really do help.  They are what doctors should prescribe when people come to them because life is stressing them out or they're feeling depressed; order them to a gym or lock them in a room with a decade's worth of filing and tell them they're not coming out until it's done.

This week I'm getting ready to re-introduce proper writing into my routine.  Because I've left it and I've missed it.  I know you should "write through" everything, but I am more critical of myself than anybody else ever could be and - stupidly I suppose - everything has felt so fragile that I just didn't feel as though I could take my own criticism on top of it.

But the work and the exercise will help me to power on through, and the writing will stop me from feeling as though my brain is nothing more than a semi-functioning machine...and it doesn't matter if it's rubbish and nobody reads it.  I just need to do it.

How to cope with separation and divorce - only parents need apply

"How to cope with separation and divorce" read the headline in The Times' online 'Life' section this morning.  I would have read the article anyway; personal life stories always being the most interesting for me to read and ponder over a morning coffee.  But today it had extra resonance, and the title seemed to promise some advice, so I clicked on the headline hopefully.  In the article, a man and a woman gave accounts of their divorces; the feelings they described mirrored some of my own, and I read them with a heavy heart.

Though both experiences were very different, the man and the woman agreed on one thing; it was the kids that had got them through.  The kids were what kept them going "...at a time when I might actually have stopped".  Accounts were made of how excruciatingly painful it is, to go through a divorce with children involved, trying desperately not to hurt them and having to keep some sort of relationship going with a person you no longer want to be with for their sake.

There were no accounts of "how to cope with separation and divorce" when kids are not part of the equation.  Maybe because that isn't as interesting, or maybe it's because people think it's easier and therefore not worthy of a story.  I've lost count of the amount of times people have said to me "at least there aren't any kids involved" when we've been talking about my failed marriage.  They say it as though it's a good thing to cheer me up with; as though things could have been much worse; they think I should count my blessings.  Which I do.  But I don't think about phantom children and how everything that's happened could have been so much worse had they existed.  I can only think about my life as it is; those excruciating, unbalanced feelings mentioned in that article still apply to me too, except that I don't have children to keep me going "at at time when I might actually have stopped".  I have to keep myself going so that I don't stop.  Is that not hard enough?  

I wandered into the lounge with my coffee for some light TV relief.  'Gok's Clothes Roadshow' had just started, featuring a group of single mums desperate for some sartorial intervention.  "It's so hard, being on your own and being a Mum" one of them said, tear-filled eyes pleading to camera.  And so again it seemed, to me watching, that being on your own isn't enough for life to be tough...if you want people to understand; if you want them to sympathise, you also need to be a parent. 

It's not that I want sympathy.  And I can completely understand that going through a relationship break-up is immensely difficult when you have that extra dimension of children.  I've been through that experience as a child myself, and it aint no picnic.  It's just that sometimes I'd quite like to see and hear from people in the media who have had experiences similar to mine and they don't have children.  They must exist, surely?  I can't be the only one.  Articles and TV programmes about peoples' real lives and experiences are important; they help to show you that you're not alone with your feelings.  Other people have fought the battles before you, and they got through it.  But when I read articles or I watch people on telly who have been through separation and divorce,  I'm always left with the slightly empty feeling that my experiences aren't worth quite as much; that my life isn't worth quite as much as it would be if I'd had children.  And that can't be right, can it?

Overly-long musings on day-to-day religion

I don't tend to think much about religion; it generally has no effect on me personally, except when I'm at someone's wedding or christening or funeral in church and I wonder about the absurdities of it all, and whether or not I'm being a hypocrite by attending said weddings and funerals in the first place.  To which I have concluded that I'm not really; even when I went to my niece's christening and the vicar, who seemed a really lovely and kind man, took my arm and said he hoped I would be visiting the church more often and I replied, spluttering awkwardly, that I would try to make it.

No - religion can be harmless, and it can also help people.  Bizarrely, my first realisation of this came when I was about thirteen years old and watching an episode of 'Brookside' in which Tony Dixon got killed by a car.  His Mum, paralysed by grief, could only get through her days by going to church.  I spent quite a lot of time as a teenager wishing that I could be religious, so I could feel a sense of belonging to something like that; something that might get me through life's occasional awfulness.  But I'm afraid it just never "took"; my mind has always been one of those that questions everything in a supremely annoying manner, and religion doesn't really stand up to annoying questions.  So I stumbled, and continue to stumble, through life as an atheist.

Anyway, this week I went to a Zumba class.  Zumba definitely has no religious connotations, unless you're doing it in a church hall, which this week I was (religious or not, you have to admit that church halls, even in this day and age, are wonderful for bringing communities together in all kinds of activities!) The instructor was late for class, so while we waited for him I went around the room reading all the posters on the walls.  One in particular struck me; it was a collage made by a Sunday school group of children, each of whom had written a little note of something they particularly wanted "to thank God for".  Some of these expressions of gratitude were endearingly small, like "my Mum's dinners that she works hard to make for me" and "my favourite chocolate" and others were impressively grand, like "the beautiful blue sea". 

Cute as these little notes were, they also made my heart feel a bit heavy in that kids are being trained from such an early age into believing that a) there is a God, no question, and b) that they should have to thank an unknown deity, rather than Mum herself, for the dinners she "works hard to make".  Same goes for the "favourite" chocolate manufacturers, I suppose.  They've got me on the "beautiful blue sea" thing - I suppose God can have that one if thanks are really necessary for things like that.

Another slightly religious thing I noticed this week was on 'Masterchef', which doesn't normally relate much to religion - you certainly couldn't re-enact the feeding of the five thousand with a minuscule plate of seared duck beak on a bed of wilted spinach - but one of the contestants, on being told he'd made it into the next round, kept on crossing himself, as though he were thanking a higher power for his good fortune.  Which is nice, I suppose, except I felt there was something arrogant about it as well; thinking that if there in fact is a God, then he is using all his power and influence...to ensure you make the final four on a TV cookery programme.  Surely he'd have more important things to do than listen to Gregg Wallace shouting his way through a bowl of mango sorbet?  You'd certainly hope so; but then again...

So is there an actual point to these observations?  You'd think so, but unfortunately there isn't.  You can thank God for that, if you so wish.