All Hail the 2012 Corporate PE Shitfest!

...which is what I've personally re-named the Olympics.  A true celebration of global athletic achievement; partnered and supported by Cadbury, Coca-Cola and McDonalds.  Hosted right here, in London!  OMG!!!!  It's a once-in-a-lifetime event!!!!!  An inclusive event to "inspire a generation", where the best tickets cost over £2,000 and the audiences will be stuffed full of corporate fat-cats who can't tell one end of a discus from the other.  Regeneration of the economy; in reality benefitting only London and cheap at the price of over £11bn (and counting).  Spawner of the strangest logo and accompanying terrifying Cyclops-like, would-give-you-nightmares-if-you-woke-up-at-3am-and-saw-them-at-the-end-of-your-bed mascots I've ever seen; scarier even than the huge posters of Boris Johnson looming over you as you get off the train at Liverpool Street, advising you "not to travel in London between the hours of 7-10am".  Oh...OK, then.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!!!  I know I should love the Olympics.  Most people do.  But I can't, because I haven't seen anything remotely appealing about any of it yet.  Maybe apart from the athletes themselves, but let's face it - we might as well not bother with them.  It's strange, in fact, that they seem like the least important aspect of the whole shebang, going by the advertising and marketing campaigns using the event to promote everything from washing machines to all-inclusive package holidays.  We might as well have just built that pricey velodrome and pumped a load of raw sewage into it through a billion bendy straws, as long as it was all being directed by a hip-'n'-happenin' UK-based movie-type.

I assume the whole "it's a once in a lifetime event" rhetoric is the reason so many people turned out in the customarily soaked English summer to watch the torch relay.  The torch relay which, incidentally, has nowt whatsoever to do with sport but was in fact a propaganda exercise thought up by Adolf Hitler and executed by Josef Goebbels for the 1936 Berlin Olympics; promoting an sort-of affinity with the believed-physically perfect Aryan Greeks, against a cheery backdrop of swastikas.  Now...anyone fancy a Fruitella and a swig of warm Coke?

God, I'm such a bloody killjoy aren't I?!  Maybe it's because, deep down, I just resent athletic achievement because I'm a) lazy and b) rubbish at it.  I hated PE at school; I spent hours in my bedroom perfecting my Dad's complicated handwriting and signature so that I could avoid it (I decided to get creative with my ailments after a while and very nearly handed in a note telling the PE teacher I had a "serious stomach ulcer" once, until my best friend read it and said if it were true I'd be in agony, and in hospital).

But it's not all doom and gloom occupying my head at the very thought of the 2012 Corporate PE Shitfest.  I'm looking forward to the no doubt endless little news stories to come, about cock-ups and bits of varying incompetence we'll be witnessing throughout the next two weeks.  Sod being on the "world stage" and sod "athletic achievement"; it's incompetence and disappointment we excel at.  It's sort-of cute, I suppose, that we're going to pretend we're perfect for the next few weeks.  But the great advantage of incompetence is that it's real.  It's human and relatable; a welcome backdrop of imperfection against the bland and rigid ethic of striving for perfect achievement.  There's nothing synthetic about trains not stopping at Stratford due to melting tracks, or cable cars being suspended for 30 minutes above the Olympic Park, or competitors' buses getting lost, or seating with restricted views, or the McDonalds outlets running out of chips.  And that's why I'm hoping we don't cock up the cock-ups.  We need them as a nation.

Go Team GB!

Things not to say to someone who is separated

A little while ago I read an article by a lady who'd been diagnosed with cancer, detailing all the things she wished her wonderful, well-meaning friends and family hadn't said during her illness; that she knew they loved her and wanted to support her, but that the cliched "whatever I can do to help" and "I feel so sorry for you" actually didn't help her very much.  Even though, as we're constantly reminded when bad things happen and people do their best to rally round, people "mean well", and "just don't know what else to say".  Bless 'em.

Though I would never, ever compare a relationship breakdown with a potentially terminal illness, I've noticed some parallels between the things this article detailed and things people have said, and continue to say, to me throughout the period of my separation.  One of the things I didn't anticipate when my marriage ended was that I would need to manage the needy emotional requirements of some of my friends and family; and that no matter how well-meaning people are, and no matter how lovely it is that people offer to be there for you (and it really is), doing this could sometimes be a bloody pain.  So, in the spirit of the original article and with no other intention than to get a few things off my chest, I'm going to detail below the things I dearly wish people wouldn't say to me.

1. How's your husband?
This is the Number One thing I get asked; ironically more often now than when we were actually together and when I'm not really in any position to actually know.  The question is usually accompanied by what Tom Selleck in 'Friends' referred to as "the sympathetic head tilt".  I usually reply to the question with a short "I don't know", which sounds almost as though I'm being hostile, when in reality there just isn't anything to say.  I could respond with "Rubbish I imagine; why don't you ask him?" but I never do.  Even though I have absolutely no idea why people generally don't just ask the person themselves if they want to know how they are.

2. It's such a shame...are you sure there's nothing you can do to sort things out?
I don't need pointing out that it's a shame, honestly; in fact that's an understatement.  And I'm afraid I'm not going to get a lightbulb moment of realisation that it was all a mistake whilst talking to an acquaintance at a barbecue.  Life doesn't work like that.  This question also has the effect of making me feel sad and guilty that things couldn't just be "sorted out", like a couple of kids arguing in the playground.  Again, life doesn't work like that.


3.  Well, at least...
This is usually followed by ..."you don't have children", or ..."you're not dying".  Neither of these scenarios have any bearing whatsoever on my life; in fact saying things like this, well-meaning or not, to anybody, belittles everything that's happening to them in their own, actual, can-only-experience-the-one, life.


4. I'm so sad about it all; he's such a lovely man...
I wish more than anything that people would have hidden their own sadness about my marriage ending.  Mainly because it makes me feel even sadder, and also that I've let them down in some horrible way.  Ditto their glowing praise for my husband, which while it is utterly warranted because he is a truly lovely person, makes me feel as though I might be a failure for not being able to stay married to such a truly lovely person.  Plus, this might sound selfish, but I would quite like my friends and family to show that they might care about me more.

5. If there's anything I can do to help...
This is such a perennial "nice thing" to say; everybody says it, including me.  But I will promise to make a concerted effort not to say it in future, because it's boring and nondescript and it places the burden on the person you're saying it to, to find something you can "do to help".  If you really want to help, offer to do something specific, or better still just do something lovely without asking or talking about it (warning: this latter approach may bring on tears).

I realise I must sound so very ungrateful with my list of what not to say, but I really do appreciate all the love and support I've been given.  It's just...if even one person reads this and then treats a separated person (or a 'separatee' as we're referred to in 'Seinfeld') accordingly then I guarantee both you and they will be immensely grateful.  And my friends and family know that I'm not averse to saying stupid things in front of people myself; only recently I was out with a gay friend at a family event when I spotted his Mum nearby, playing with his cousin's children.  "Your Mum really loves kids, doesn't she?"  I said to him, earning a look of daggers and a slightly-snippy "Well, she's not going to get any grandkids, is she?" from him in response.

I guess we could all benefit from watching what we say every now and again...and of course by just being human and good friends, and giving support where it might be needed.  That's it.

Mugging Playlists

Some people have a tendency to chart their lives by "firsts".  The first time you had an alcoholic drink (mine was a lot later than I usually care to admit); the first time you danced the Lambada, the first time you used non-biological washing powder - the list goes on.  

And so it goes that I was on the train last week, driven to thinking about one of my "firsts".  Now I know what you're thinking...but the "first" in question wasn't the first time I bought a far-too-hot-coffee from the buffet car and then did that panicky 'shifting hand dance' with it as I realised it was probably going to remove all the skin from my fingers and there was nowhere safe to put it down.  No; it was in fact the the first time I realised the streets weren't as safe as I had childishly assumed they just were.

It was the mid-Eighties, and a young girl had been brutally killed in broad daylight whilst walking home from school.  I remember seeing the news report for the first time and feeling sick; the incident gave me nightmares and my Dad tried to console me by saying "that girl was listening to a personal stereo while she was walking home, so she couldn't hear anyone coming up behind her!  Sensible people don't do silly things like that, so that's why they're safe on the streets".  Bless him.  He was right, though - the fact that the girl had been listening to music through headphones as she walked home became a big part of the story because it was rare, and the people listening to the news or reading about the incident in the papers could tut, then console themselves that they'd be safe, because they would never do a silly thing like that.

Fast-forward twenty-odd years later, and listening to music through headphones as you walk about has become so ubiquitous that most street attackers probably have their own personal playlists set up for the exact moment they decide to drag you off the street.  Adjusted depending on the crime, obviously... you could have your iPod on shuffle, but that stray Boyzone track just doesn't complement a mugging like it should.

And so what's my point about the train?  Well, it's just that, really - just the fact that everybody's plugged in to their own electronic worlds and almost completely tuned out to anything extraneous or mundane.  Every single person with me inside that packed carriage I was sitting in had their phones/iPods/Kindles out and/or earphones in.  I found it strangely depressing, even though as a friend remarked to me later; "people still tuned out when there was no technology...they'd get lost in a book, or in conversation instead"  It's a good point I suppose, except that observing somebody who's lost in an actual book (not a Kindle; this is important) is generally endearing; they haven't - indeed can't - tune out completely from everything that's going on around them, and the world they've tuned in to is somebody else's creation and not an electronic one, synthetically and self-indulgently formed from an amalgamation of their own preferences.   

Just like an abundance of money isolates people from real life experiences; so an abundance of technology isolates people from independent, selfless thinking.  Well, at least that's what it said in the online edition of my newspaper this morning, anyway.