Behind Blue Eyes

I never bought into the whole Cool Britannia thing when it exploded in about 1999. I couldn’t tell the difference in coolness between the preceding and following few years. For me, Britain had always been cool. London has never had a shortage of amazing stuff to do and see. It turned out for example, after my crew from school had been there many times, that a particular club in Hoxton Square* was one of the officially cool places. The followers of fashion soon swamped it and destroyed what had been a good scene.

What I like most about London is the places which aren’t trendy, the places which people go to because they like them rather than because they have been told they should like them. I have rarely decided on a night out from a newspaper article. Cool places aren’t what the journalists says are cool but the places we find that we like. Britain does individuals rather than fashionistas. The only times I have run into serious trouble have been when I have tried to fit in with a particular crowd. These days I realise that people should take each other as they come.

On a hot day in September 1998 my parents had helped me unload my stuff from the car into my dingy, poky room in the ugly 1960s hall of residence and had driven off. All I could think was “what now?”. I started unpacking and setting up the room but what I really needed to do was interact with the other newbies. I wanted to prop my door open so as to be able say hello to people passing by but I could not find anything strong enough to overpower the door closer. I was beginning to worry that the world would be carrying on outside without me when there was a knock at the door. “I’m Richard, would you like a cup of tea?”. We have been firm friends ever since. He doesn’t even like tea.

Richard has now emigrated to Oz, but having read some of my sillier posts recently decided that he better come back to London to buy me lunch and cheer me up. We went to Rules which is, like Richard, effortlessly cool by sticking to its core principles. We ate rabbit, black pudding, half a barely cooked cow and drank some wine. And it was good. Very good. I will leave the expert to write a proper review.

But it’s not the venue, it’s the company. That is true Cool Britannia.

* which was definitely not fashionable when we started going there. Also the only place in the world where anyone has ever asked me “where have you been all my life?”.

On Friday I was having lunch with a few colleagues and one of them was having a seriously bad day. He was in a pickle about several things, all coming under the umbrella of “it’s all f^d” – management and the general state of the country bearing the brunt of his anger. The more he went on, the more he wound himself up. I actually thought he was going to blow a gasket at one point. The thing was that while I completely agreed with what he was saying, I wasn’t at all angry about it. It was a brilliant full-blown rant and I actually had to restrain myself from laughing out loud, not helped by another colleague who kept shooting knowing glances in my direction.

There are plenty of things to be angry about. I have similarly ranted offline and on here about the same things that my colleague was getting worked up about. I could totally understand where he was coming from. I could write a list of things that irritate me about the way “things” are going right now (already have in fact, see archive for details), but I realise that there is very little I can do about them.

At work the most I can do is quietly point out that there might be a better way of doing things. My arguments will probably fall on deaf ears, but I can’t do any more than make suggestions and hope that at some point I might be in a position to organise things more sensibly. On political issues the best I can do is write things down here. I am not a member of any party and even if I was I have no desire to try and pull myself up the greasy pole to a position of influence. It’s not my bag. That means that what I think is of very little consequence to anyone at all. So although I understand there is virtually nothing I can do about the state of “things” I have come to terms with it and am supremely relaxed about it.

What’s the point, after all, about getting worked up about something which you cannot change? Why ruin your day? I prefer to laugh at the absurdity of a situation than get myself into a frenzy about it. I am often found at my desk laughing hysterically at some ridiculous nonsense that has been placed in front of me. When anyone asks what on Earth I am chuckling about I say “you have to either laugh or cry”.

Nothing illustrates pointless anger about the world than the aggression of Tube users during rush hour. Yesterday morning I treated myself to the Underground because it was bucketing down at commute o’clock. It’s amazing to watch how nasty and vindictive commuters can be. They vie for the best spot to launch their incursion into the carriage, they try to outwit their competitors in their desire for a seat or the perfect standing place. They barge, they jostle, they snarl. And I just stand there, serenely, letting people glance off my slow-moving body and laughing to myself at the pointlessness of it all.

In GCSE year (I think) we were compelled once a week to attend a lesson called Personal and Social Education. It was run by the self-styled cool, laid-back, take-no-notice-of-authority female geography teacher. She was so cool that her classroom was tucked away from the rest of the school. She had film noir posters on the walls and everything. Actually she did have this rather good poster which I have not seen since. It had four brains, three of equal size and one significantly smaller. Under the three were written, respectively, European, Asian, African. Under the fourth was written Racist.

In these lessons, which didn’t count towards any grades and therefore were not taken terribly seriously by teacher or pupils, we discussed “issues” relating to our new-found maturity and things we were likely to encounter as adults. We were reminded not to get girls pregnant at seedy house parties (chance would have been a very fine thing given my social circle at that age – there was a very unoriginal joke about the girls at our sister school…), not to do drugs and all the kind of stuff which teenagers are wont to do irrespective of what their cool teacher recommends. I was more interested in my electronics project to be perfectly honest.

One day she drew a “window” on the board and divided it into four shuttered panes. She was telling us about a way of thinking about ourselves which is probably well-known to my highly educated readers but the name escapes me and I’m not in the mood to Google. One pane represents what we tell people about ourselves, another what people perceive about us, the third how we see ourselves and the fourth things which we keep private.

Obviously, all four shutters interact with each other and are not completely under our control. For example how other people see us isn’t necessarily influenced by what we tell people about ourselves. Sometimes our outward appearance or actions give better clues than what we say or don’t say or what we say is construed differently than intended.

The opening and closing of each shutter is not always controllable. Every now and again the panes can get a bit confused. For example the “private” shutter might be open a little bit for artistic effect when a sudden gust grabs it hard and throws it wide open allowing the casual observer a brief glimpse into the heart of our soul before it bangs shut again. One shutter is usually closed so that we are the only person who can’t see through it. We can’t often know what other people genuinely think about us.

When the private shutter gets involuntarily thrown open what lies beneath might well be rancid and unpleasant. Those private thoughts which aren’t supposed to see the light of day can be smelly and ugly. They have probably been festering and multiplying like poisonous mushrooms. Those who are in the right line-of-sight to see into the pit when the shutter opens might have a shock. But equally the gust might also scoop out some of the sludge and release it, allowing the wind to take it away and leave the pit that bit cleaner and tidier. And the reaction of those who do see inside gives us a pretty good view of the usually invisible pane. If we are judged by the company we keep then I can be incredibly proud of myself, because I am kept company by some bloody amazing people.

I need a break. Back soon.

Old joke: giving up smoking is easy, I’ve done it hundreds of times

The observant of you will have noticed that I have gone for several posts without mentioning any politics. There is a good reason for this: I am not interested. The debate is now so ridiculous that I can’t get my teeth into it. It turns out that the phrase “jumping the shark” was coined in a more innocent era. These days nobody seems to even care how utterly obviously unreal their narrative is. Watching the discussion on Her Majesty’s pre-election re-launch last night confirmed my total lack of engagement. Politics must seem terribly interesting to those inside the echo chamber but to those of us on the outside it just looks bloody ridiculous. Why did not the Queen announce a bill to require motherhood and apple pie while she was at it? I would vote for a party that promised 24/7 ecstatic happiness for all by 2020. I would go out and campaign for the eight-hours-of-sunshine-a-day party. Where’s the party promising two pubs on every corner and three decent sleeps a week?

No, for the time being I am outta it. I reckon I could keep my readership more satisfied with Tales of the Unexpected Bowel Movement than by commenting on the daily load of old politics. But never fear, dear hard-pressed readers, for I am not about to delete myself. Now while I would not normally blog about blogging* I feel compelled to announce the publication 63rd Edition of the Revised Behind Blue Eyes Subject-Matter Policy. But not just yet. Scroll down if you can’t wait until I’ve finished this bit.

* well that’s a lie

You really all come here because you want to peer into my head, frown, point, laugh a bit and then feel better about yourself. I know this because when I write about my personality defects the ratings go off the chart. In the month since I went over to this shiny new setup, the site has been whacked six thousand times. Loser-blogging supplies this site with readers and that keeps me from sitting in the corner at home crying about being a loser. I am no Beck.

So in you look, and what do you see? I do not go out of my way to get to know people. I do not do ice-breaking. I do not network or work the room. I do not sell myself. Why? Because there are not very many people who I like. I find polite conversation for its own sake interminable. Life’s too short. If I had to write a top list of people I want to interact with there would be on it my immediate family at the top. Then there would be a small number of people who I have latched onto over the years who I try to keep close, the people who I pester to meet me in the pub or come around for dinner. Then there would be a lorra lorra blank space.

One of the people on my hypothetical top list (I don’t actually have one scrawled in green ink, covered in scribbled amendments which nudge up against my theory of everything, stuffed in a drawer at home, honest) sent me this message the other day and I hope he won’t mind me reproducing it:

…your more personal posts are head and shoulders above the others… such as politics

The message also included some faff which leads me to think that the author was probably rolling around drunk on a sticky pub floor when he wrote it but hey you take your compliments where you find them. So with enormously over-egged fanfare, I am pleased to announce the 63rd Edition of the Revised Behind Blue Eyes Subject-Matter Policy:

I will write about whatever I damned-well fancy