Actually Not Mea Culpa

... a New Year's Reflection on the Difficulty of Throwing Things Away ...



Nearly 2009, and the Christmas Holidays make me reflect anew on the difficulty I have with property management. Don't get me wrong, I like property. As somebody who slept a lot on the floors of others more provident than myself, who lived without heating and who was down to my minimum weight when financially unequal to eating enough food to keep anywhere above it, I am partial to the security of a roof over my head, to heating and to eating (particularly, I have realised, to pink and yellow food, of which more anon). Until recently, I owned a car, and I was pretty partial to that, as well. Sadly, some of the unpropertied who live nearby were partial to pissing on my wealth and status and now I don't have one any more.


I don't do very well, you will notice, at maintaining my property. I have a constant struggle to keep up with the washing up. I have a losing struggle to keep up with the gardening. And I have a Fucking Rout going on on my ass concerning the paper. There's this hole in my front door which rains paper. Catalogues, free papers, free magazines, things that fall out of free papers, updates from charitable concerns that I give to, updates from charitable concerns that feel I should give to them, demands from charitable concerns that I give to that I should give them more, demands from weird sects that have got my name from the charitable concerns who reward my donations with attempts to piss me off more than you would imagine humanly possible, and - most off-pissingly of all - suggestions that I might like 42 new credit cards (though happily there have been significantly fewer of these of late). Picture me unable to reach my front door for the drifts of rubbishy paper that swirls and eddies round the porch under the Hole In The Door, obscuring the lovingly tiled floor and needing to be disposed of.


At this point, enter the government - never good news. Because they say that getting rid of it is not somebody else's responsibility, but mine. And it cannot go off to landfill in a plastic binbag, oh no; it must be lovingly packed into mighty stack- parcels tied with string and put out for the recycling men.


Well, why? When did the possible end of the world become down to me? I didn't ask for it, I didn't want it, and I don't want to deal with it. I have enough shit to deal with what with earning enough to pay my council tax and getting up at 5am to help the police push my stolen car back up the hill so forensics can fail to find out who took it. I have lessons to prepare and a garden to neglect. I don't need the guilt and I can't find the fucking string; why does it have to make me feel so bad?

You know the answers to these questions, Mrs Crosspatch, you are thinking, and indeed I do. I have to, because nobody else will. But what I wonder about is, why does nobody try to make the litter-generators deal with their own mess, while the government - local and national - is perfectly happy to hound ME about dealing with it? Goodness - couldn't be one rule for the corporations and one for the Little People, could it?

AND AS FOR SAINSBURY'S ... well, if their values make them different, why don't they JUST STOP making and giving plastic bags. They could just switch to charging 1p a bag and USE PAPER ONES - like the US and like Sainsbury's themselves used to. Long ago, in the days when the world and I were still young. Goodness me, it's the hard life being the Only One Who Knows Best. Happy New Year.

'Tis the season ...

... to complain bitterly and without rest about the quality of TV and particularly the wickedness of phone-in shows. And so to Strictly Come Dancing. A Big Row is in train (so say) because Tom Chambers won, in spite of the fact that he wasn't the best dancer. And we say, SO WHAT?

This series of Strictly was particularly galling. In the early days, it was pleasingly naff, and the dial-up dosh used to go to Sport Aid. Now it's all got glitteringly commercial, the dancing is taken with deadly - and for a tv show, fatal - seriousness, and it has lost its Blue Peter charm.

This year there was SO MUCH NONSENSE about the dancing pig, as John Sergeant was called. He could not dance. The list of contestants who couldn't dance has been mighty, and frequently distinguished; Julian Clary couldn't, all of Holby City couldn't, all of ITV Breakfast TV couldn't. And we chortled and hooted and voted. That's how it works. This year the Fear Of The Public got so bad that the press and judges hounded somebody out, and I think this was very sad. The crapness of some of the dancers is as much part of the show as the goodness of others. Do you suppose Shakespeare spent his writing days bemoaning how he had to write slapstick dialogue for base, crude woodworkers, when all he wanted to pen was the poetry of the sublime? How one hopes not. Getting your knickers knotted over the dancing in Strictly is ignoring its pull as drama. Give us the low comedy and give it to us in sequins.

More to the point, Strictly is a fine opportunity for the public to award its favours to those it, well, favours. Did Tom Chambers win because he was more popular than the other finalists? No, he won because in the event, he had the best show dance, which actually has been the desideratum in every series so far. He got into the last two because of his popularity. And why? Because the judges had systematically kept in Lisa Snowdon week after week while the public tried desperately to kick her out. Why? Because Lisa lacks the same degree of mass appeal. She is plainly popular enough to be a model and a radio presenter - or in other words, to have successfully dodged a real hard day's work for a crap day's pay at any point in her life - but is she as popular as him? No, she's not, and why should she be? When did it get so wrong for the public to like somebody better than somebody else? Lisa Snowdon lacks Chambers' warmth, and in competition, personality is as important as dancing.

To boot, Lisa Snowdon's preservation put out two other people I enjoyed watching; Austin Healy and Cherie Lunghi. And Rachel looks lovely and dances divinely - but that's all. And who cares how well somebody does the waltz? I watch for the tangos and the American Smooths. And the Really Crap Dancing, and the sweet, patient, and funny. Stick this in your dancing preciousness pipe and smoke it.

A Thing That Isn't What It Used To Be

It's been a shocker of a summer for my mid-life crisis. In many ways, having a mid-life crisis at nearly 42 is pretty good going - suggests I'm not pegging out until 84, for a start. However, I have made no plans for it, so it's a bit of a shock.

The first sign was when a short rotund man made a sweeping reference to "middle aged women" and excepted present company, and since the other women present were in their twenties, I realised with surprise he must be speaking to me. Middle aged woman, me? It was more the objectification of it than the term, I think, which shocked me. I have become Something - a Thing which can be judged and generalised about, not myself. Well well.

And then a character in Grey's Anatomy referred to women who can no longer have children as "dried up", suggesting that they should do needlepoint. How guilty I instantly felt about my knitting and sewing. Obviously my happy relationship with manufacture of weird clothing for myself, others and dolls is a sign of my (unforgivable) infertility. The fact that I was brought up to knit and sew, as well as cook, as part of my mother's lifeskills course and have cheerfully made myself increasingly eccentric clothing throughout my adult life was suddenly indicative of - something socially unacceptable. Something socially inferior and unworthy. Some thing.

Things went downhill with Frankie Boyle describing people with pets as those who have "tried to have a relationship with a member of [their] own species". Good Godfrey Cambridge, me again. I even find the relationship with the cats - who poop before the washing machine, vom everywhere and shed like bastards while demanding to sit on my lap if I am still for more than 30 seconds - frequently trying.

And then Kevin Bishop described Madonna dressed in dance clothes as "Mutton". But she dances, what is she supposed to wear? And thus my whole crisis comes to focus on my clothes (which I must not make for myself).

What is somebody 42 supposed to wear? I have never gone in for being well dressed; I much prefer dressed up. I like to yomp about in personae - tart, horsy hellkite, landgirl, hobnail booted Victoriana - and just finding myself having to wear sensible clothes to teach has made me pretty miserable. Looking at fashion magazines just confuses me. Although impractical enough to warm my heart, the models are so toothpick skeletal that I cannot see the clothes. All I can see is malnutrition and aliens. Funnily enough, they are apparently not things.

Well well again. I have no solutions. I am a Thing, and when I decide what Thing to be I shall carry on and be that. Perhaps this is a time for supreme eccentricity. Then people will see eccentricity before they see a middle aged woman. If I am to be a Thing, think I should like that Thing rather better than the other.

Because You're Worth It

Phil Beadle is very cross. Last week on Can't Read, Can't Write, he was cross because he attended a lesson for English as an Additional Language, and found it boring. He felt the learners weren't learning anything. The woman who ran the course pointed out that they had results which suggested they did. Mr Beadle went off and smouldered.

Then he attempted to teach his adults and I became very cross. I became cross with his insistence that the school system has exclusively failed these people. Maybe it has failed some of them. But not Linda. Linda is old (46) and she is by turns truculent and weepy. Linda is the kind of person who, when she finally learns to read, complains that the world is full of words and she can't shut them out. Linda is a pain in the arse.

Phil spends the first episode dancing around Linda like a lovesick schoolboy. He gives her special learning tools - albeit pipecleaners - and tells her that her "barriers to learning" are not in her, but in the way she's taught. There are only nine people in the class, and yet Linda is getting taught on her own. In the second episode, Phil attempts to explain commas in a traditional "chalk and talk" sesh, and, rude as usual, Linda first interrupts and barracks the lesson, and then storms out to the accompaniment of Phil saying he's pissed off with "this" (which I took to be her behaviour). This viewer very much concurred.

When he visits her and eats humble pie she tells him that she lost all respect for him when he did that, as he should be the adult. It seems to have escaped Linda's notice that, at 46, (older than her teacher), she has long left behind the privileges of childhood. Being a learner does not mean you are supposed to be a social or emotional child, or a rude shithead. Still, what does it matter, as a calligrapher was despatched to help Linda at home, and a lesson of spacehoppers planned for her greater engagement.

Meanwhile, James, 28, whose mother won't help him and who has taken sick days off with stress about his failure to do his homework, is still sitting in his corner feeling confused. Because he is not a shit.

This is one of the things that pisses me off about the education system in this land; pains in the arse get more attention. Poor behaviour and vile manners are consistently rewarded. And this begs the question, well, are they worth it? I think not. Some people are just difficult and selfish, and as children they crap all over the learning of their classmates, and as adults they turn into self-righteous souls whose fault it never is. Treating them like little nuggets of gold does nobody any favours except them. Others, like James, make no trouble, and are marginalised and ignored as a result. Look who isn't learning.

I know that this is perilously close to talking about the "undeserving poor", but some people choose to be horrid, and why anybody owes them anything is beyond me. Teach the nice. The selfish should be sent off to think on their sins. Because if we have 5 million functionally illiterate people, and some are slow and some are just a pain in the arse, the odds are the slow ones are being held back, and the teacher driven to nervous breakdown, by the mouthy selfish ones (who are ALWAYS in a numerical minority, in my experience.)

And who's worth it? The utilitarian answer is surely to teach those who are willing to try and not those who aren't. Looking at Linda, it seems all they want is a wider consumer choice of grievance, and surely that they will find with or without education.


For further information - the link below deals with Euro-wide illiteracy. Quake with fear, Eurolings.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/feb/19/furthereducation.uk1

Love on a Knife Edge

This week I am besotted with Sweeney Todd - the film rather than the man, so you may relax; I shall not be going to get my legs shaved and returning legless below the knee, pursued by a short lady selling foot-burgers. ("Eat your own legs, Mrs?") Good thing too, for doubtless I would be quite unable to evade her, in my new semi-pinless state.


Anyway, it's been a long week of repeated viewings, because it's an admirable hairpiece. Of course it's pretty - it's Tim Burton - but it's also mordantly funny, with wit and a perfectly plotted tragic structure.

I myself think Mr Todd is much misunderstood; after all, he has had to put up with his own kidnapping as well as that of his nearest and dearest, false charges and imprisonment, deportation, the rape of his wife by the judge who framed him, and the fifteen year imprisonment of his daughter by said judge to boot. Obviously the whole family are quite mad, but encountering the moustache-twirling Judge Turpin would drive anybody to the edge. Much to my regret Mr Rickman did not sing in Latin about how bad he feels for letching after his ward while oggling her through a peephole in the wall, wanking and beating himself with a frayed and knotted rope - which I would have paid good money to see. (It's apparently in the original; I did not come up with that fine orchestration myself. Maybe I shall just pay good money to the New York Metropolitan Opera to see somebody else do it sometime. It's in the repertory.)


Unfairly, he metes out the same punishment to all; the innocent, the guilty of some small untruths, or the guilty as Judge Turpin, and this makes me feel a bit sad - although also shriek with demonic larffter as he does a lot of it while singing wistfully about how he misses his daughter.


And here is the true greatness of the piece; it is unreal. Some very serious things have been written about Sweeney and capitalism, social mobility and his failure to address his problems in a mature and 21st century way ("He has choices"). These rather miss the point. All very well to gloat on about how capitalism encourages people to poo on the heads of others, but it misses the point of what it does - which is tragedy. With a lot of dark comedy and sung counterpoint on the way. Really, you should see it.

This week has also been notable for its lack of Getting Out Of Bed and Getting On With It, so I am posting this just to prove to myself I'm still here. Apologies if it's rather pedestrian.

The Wrong Pants

Okay, anybody who Really Cares about sport is a bit nuts and probably a prey to their hormones (ie testosterone) because none of it actually matters one iota. Still, for the last week of June and the first of July in England, a lot of the population is nuts, and for once, including me. So I have something to say about the tennis.

I have watched Wimbledon with various levels of fervour ever since I was ten years old, when I went to tea with a girl so cool her television-making mum let her have people over with nobody else in, and we ate cucumber spread on white bread and watched tennis with the wonder of children still enraptured by the glory that was colour television, and the heady sense of adulthood that lone tea and tv inspired. I treasured the wins of Boris Becker, yawned and switched over from Pete Sampras, and fell asleep during Edberg; and for the last few years I have squeaked "Too good!" in chorus with commentators during many a Federer rally.

Federer is a funny faced little thing, with his squashy nose and hiding teeth, but I have warmed to him over the years - in spite of his tedious consistency - for two reasons. Firstly, he is invariably one of the gracious and the generous. It's hard to watch a Federer match without disquisitions on his charitable work (presumably to reclaim his reputation as he straight-set -squashes opponents on-court like so many flies). In interview he is polite and rather dull. He sets a good example for sportspeople, many of whom behave extremely badly - in some cases to the extent of sexual and physical assault. Not so Mr Roger. His recreations are mainly buying lovely new suits. Who doesn't love a man with nothing to prove?

Secondly because he is not only a brilliant placer of the ball - someone who can create beautifully unreturnable shots, exquisitely placed in the corner or on the line, who can move about and return shots that lesser players wave to as they go by, who can surprise the viewer with his ability to out-think somebody sitting on a sofa and find the time to do it - but because he moves with such elegance. He is a big teddy bear type bloke with a lot of body fur, but when he plays a backhand, he adopts a pose famous mainly in ballet (an attitude) and sculptures of Eros or Cupid. Ridiculously but truly, he is graceful.

For these reasons, I can forgive him an awful lot. And on finals day, he graciously wore white underwear, which was a relief. Nadal always does, but he is troubled by his mighty muscular beefcake bottom. He is a bull of a boy, with an arse too powerful to be comfortable in its trowsis, and the amount of time he spends picking his Nike plus fours out of his bumcrack beggars belief and sometimes holds up play. If I were Nike, I would be busy redesigning his shorts, but to be fair, his pants are serious and appear to be about the same size as your average Spanx Magic Knickers. Maybe they were magic, too, while plainly Mr F was not wearing his lucky pants. We saw them in earlier rounds, and they aren't white. Nuff said.

Which brings us to the deep disappointment of his loss yesterday. I accept that he would have to lose sometime, and there would be no other giant killer than Rafael Nadal - likewise a poster boy for good manners and charming behaviour, clearly the perfect escort for Miss Robson to the Champions' Dinner UNLIKE SAFIN WHO IS 28 DAMMIT - who could bring him down. I also accept that Rafael Nadal, who has been writing a delightful blog for the Times Online this year, in which his Home-Loving Charm has been on daily view, is probably a relatively nice person to be beaten by, and that the crowd just adore him. He is young, devoted to his family, works as hard as nails, and he deserves his victory; but I was not impressed by his fans' behaviour yesterday.

Federer actually blew the match by not challenging a couple of bad calls at psychologically key moments, and by dumping many many balls in the net, which he does not usually do. To some extent this was as much a match lost by Federer as won by Nadal. But he cannot have been assisted by the untimely shrieks of "Come on!" to Nadal in mid-stroke, or the calling of "Out!" during rallies. If the spectators can't behave, they can watch on telly.

I also didn't like the chanting of "Rafa! Rafa!" between points. For the first time, I felt the crowd at Wimbledon was ungentlemanly. I felt it a bit during Murray's matches, but frankly the Brits need all the help they can get, and since there is no prospect of them blundering into a final, it seems less important. (One hopes the will French shriek for M Gasquet at least as loudly should a re-match occur at Roland Garros.) Still - there is no need for it to turn into football. One should watch the tennis, as much as enjoying supporting the players. Especially when I (alone) am in a proper English manner supporting the underdog, without the aid of lucky pants.

Who Knows?

I am not enjoying the Three Part Finale bit of Dr Who as much as I have some of the heretofore. I wasn't even before I started fretting about the possible loss of David Tennant. I recognised its general slide in the his'n'hers episodes. The Doctor Alone episode was pretty good, but Donna's was quite a load of old poo poo. It was riddled with inconsistencies and liberal pseudo-political nonsense. It felt like Torchwooden.

And now all those Extra Characters invented for spin-offs have resurrected themselves and are running about Saturday PrimeTime like they have a right. We're all Extra Glad Owen and Tosh bought it at the end of Torchwood now. But still - have to put up with Wooden Faced Gwen and Scared Face Martha and monkey muzzled sex dwarfette Rose, whom I continue to loathe, even now she has been improved by the addition of a very big gun. She blew the head off a dalek, mind, and one feels a sneaking admiration for anybody who does that - allied to an indignant wish to know why she hasn't brought more of this fine arsenal to Arm The Whole Human Race. When she isn't atomising daleks or worrying about the end of the universe, she takes time out to scare off looters - it's all about priorities and compromise. I can't warm to her.

Fortunately, I have been happily engaged with Criminal Justice this week. I am pleased to note that some idiot high up in the legal profession is Very Upset by it, which proves that he does not have enough to do, and that the writer is doing something right. How ridiculous, to be upset by a bit of grainily lit telly. Thought Judges were clever - my mistake. Of course it's not an accurate depiction of everyday life in the legal system; it's drama. Entertainment. BBC1 at 9 o'clock for heaven's sake. Does the man think that Holby City is a transcript of a day in a hospital, or Hotel Babylon a true reflection of the hospitality industry? Ridiculous Gudgeon.

The most amusing thing about it all is Ben's runaway success with the Laydeez - more impressive with his current tootsie defending him against accusations of the last one's murder. Ben Whishaw is a very good pick for a lead, because where most of the leads one sees are so breathtakingly beautiful that it's like looking at an Armani suit - you know you'll never bring yourself to pay a four figure sum for it, and half the wonder is that you can never have it - Whishaw is more Miss Selfridge than Miss Dior, and you are pretty sure you could find one of those on the high street - or the pub - for three pints and a packet of jelly babies.

Don't know you'd want to take him home, mind.