Behind Blue Eyes

…I never had a top like that! I did have quite Indy hair at one point, though.

The truth sometimes comes from the least-expected quarters. Occasionally a truth can be summed up in a few words. Within the template for a “welcome pack” that I have been given to send new people was contained this gem. It relates specifically to the job that the new people are going to be doing, but I think it applies a bit more generally:

You must be proactive with your own development, take personal responsibility and use your initiative. There will always be people around to help you but it is nobody’s job to hold your hand.

I am on this site because I am bored: bored of not having anyone to complain to when I’ve had a shit day; bored of not having anyone to share a piece of good news with; bored of not being anyone’s first port of call when they have had a good day or a bad day; bored of sitting in front of the telly or the computer on my own; bored of not having anyone to talk to on those evenings when I am not doing anything in particular; bored of not having anyone to poke me when I’m down; bored of having no-one to poke back when it’s their turn.

I am on this site because I am rubbish: rubbish at meeting new people; rubbish at making a good first impression; rubbish at selling myself; rubbish at making people like me; rubbish at turning on the charm; rubbish at schmoozing; rubbish at flirting; rubbish at breaking the ice.

I am on this site because I lack charisma and originality. I have no special skills to impress you with. I can’t recite poetry or play a tune on the guitar. I can’t dance, I can’t sing, I can’t act. I am on this site because I have a job which you won’t have heard of. I have no witty anecdotes nor tales of derring-do. I have no unique selling point.

I am on this site because I can’t pretend that I’m interested when I’m not, because I won’t pretend to like someone just so I don’t have to leave alone. I am on this site because I take things far too seriously and have difficulty making small talk and letting my hair down. I am on this site because I can’t make myself go to classes or join clubs which don’t excite me. I am on this site because not many people are interested in the things I like.

I am on this site because I want to try that new place on the corner; because I want someone to go to the park with on a sunny lazy Sunday; because there are lots of things I want to do but not on my own. I am on this site because I don’t know anyone who lives in my area. I am on this site because London is a rude and hostile place.

I am on this site because I am a loser who can’t meet anyone the usual way. I am on this site because I have let too many women I liked slip away because I was scared of rejection. I am on this site because I am too shy to show an interest. I am on this site because I have spent my whole life worrying about what I want out of it. I am on this site because I have spent too many years caring about what other people might think about me. I am on this site because I am socially inadequate and would rather hide at the bar than interact with people I don’t already know. I am on this site because my insecurities have become self-reinforcing.

I like cooking, travel, running and photography.

(Screenshot from Google Earth)

If you told me that I could keep only one of my smartphone, Twitter, Facebook or this blog I think it should be obvious which I would choose.  Blogging has brought me untold satisfaction, made me think about things which I would have have thought about before and – most importantly – has connected me with people I would never otherwise have spoken to.  Hell, I’ve even made new proper friends by writing this nonsense.  However, blogging has a darker side.

A month or two ago I shelled out for a new bike.  It came with a pair of rather pointless pedals with canvas straps.  I didn’t fancy using the straps because they looked quite difficult to escape from but with the straps facing downwards the canvas scraped the road on every turn which make for annoyance and pedalling inefficiency.

My cycling guru told me to get some SPDs. These are the very small pedals which latch in to a matching cleated shoe. Apparently they are pretty standard fare in the cycling world. I duly went out and got some and a pair of scandalously expensive shoes to wear when using them. Cycling is not a cheap sport.

It was not until this evening that I finally plucked up the courage to try these blasted things out. They seemed pretty tough to get in and out of when experimenting in my living room. The demonstrator on YouTube made it look so simple, but I knew perfectly well that I would get in trouble quite quickly.

To cut a long story short: I was feeling quite pleased with myself for having got quite a long way without any difficulties. I had begun to develop the knack of snapping in on the first revolution from the lights. I had learned that – contrary to the YouTube instructions – I found it easier to unclip at the top of the cycle.

Without really realising it, I had been cycling fairly constantly for quite a distance. I had fallen in to a rhythm and a pace. Allowing my mind to wander away from the dangers of the road, I began writing myself a self-congratulatory tongue-in-cheek mock-snobbish blog post about the sights and sounds of the idyllic part of South-East London I had done a circuit of.

I was sufficiently aware of my surroundings to slow down for the roundabout. I could see that I would have to stop to give way to the car approaching from the right. But I realised too late that I had to do more than simply move my left foot off the pedal.

Time is a funny concept in these situations. As the world turned sideways I didn’t have time to twist my foot out to stop my fall, but there was enough for me to shout something along the lines of “ohhhhhhhhhh shit!”. And then fourteen stone of BE-plus-bike landed on the tarmac of the Sun In The Sands.

Only one driver stopped to laugh at me, which was better than I expected.

“Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.”

Douglas Bader

Once you have been in the zone, you can spot others who are in the zone a mile off. I seem to have reached escape velocity and am now cruising away from the gravity trap but I must have been easy to spot for a while there. I have mentioned this before, but knowing that others have dragged themselves out is almost enough in itself. Good friends helped me out overtly and covertly: one sat me down and read me the riot act, others remained calmly in the background letting the bad behaviour wash over them. It’s a cliche, but if I can help just one person realise where they are and how to get out of there…

Anyway now I am further away from the action, safe in the calmer suburbs, I can look over my shoulder and see the plumes of smoke rising from what used to be downtown. And then in front of me I can see people who are doing exactly what I was doing. Let me introduce you to proxies. One of my proxies was political ideological purity. I was virulently against anything that was not absolutely perfect. There was no “centre ground” in my mind. The EU is a good proxy: it’s imperfect, difficult to hold to account, constitutionally messy, often makes decisions which disproportionately damage one set of interests or another. It’s really easy to get worked up into a frenzy about the EU, but there is no point whatsoever in doing so. Discuss its shortcomings by all means. Talk about ways in which it could be improved, hell yeah. Ask whether Britain really fits into the continental political culture and whether we should go it alone. But don’t get angry about it. Lots of people are getting very very angry about the upcoming rise in VAT; about election promises dashed by the coalition agreement; about public sector “cuts”. All proxies.

I don’t like to name names, but there are several mainstream blogs whose subjects are quite obviously proxies for their authors. I was reading one this morning which was ranting so hard you could almost smell the bile coming through the screen. The author was thoroughly hacked off with something that hasn’t yet happened and most likely won’t ever happen. He turned it into a world-hating tirade of epic proportions. It was a total loss of perspective right there in black and white and circulated by the planet’s wires for all to see. I could see myself in those words. I have written rant after rant after rant. I have written self-indulgent introspectives. I have hated people I have never met. At one point I was writing regular emails to my MP to complain about how one particular aspect or another of the nation wasn’t perfect. It still isn’t, but there’s no point in allowing ourselves to get wound up by it. We should all as individuals do what we can to tackle the imperfections that we see and take an interest in, but we should do so calmly and with a sense of humour. I can see all around me people who are letting minor things ruin their lives. In this country we are incredibly lucky mostly to be well fed, secure, warm and able to say and do what we want. Most of the stuff which fills the newspapers and blogs is relative trivia, the issues mere niggles. Beyond basic necessities, our problems tend to be self-imposed rather than by some evil outside force. We can’t easily blame anyone else for the hurdles and pitfalls: we put them there ourselves.

Basically I suppose what I am saying is stop letting this crap annoy you, it’s not worth it.

A step towards fiscal reality, progession to the knock-out phase, summer is back. Things are beginning to point in the right direction! Happy Thursday.

On the way into Manchester city centre there was a battered faded scruffy old sign which read “Manchester City Centre, right at the heart of things”. It made me smile every time I saw it from the top deck of the belching rattling threadbare forty-pence-a-journey bus. How apt, I thought, that the sign proclaiming the observer’s arrival into the unloved run down derelict centre of the city was itself pretty shit. The sign was obviously a remnant of a bygone attempt to inject some enthusiasm into the city. A failed attempt, I suspect, given the awful state of the place when I first visited.

Fast forward a few years and I now live close to the centre of our esteemed capital city. I refer to my unfashionable but fairly central part of that South as the soft underbelly of London. Whereas the inner West is terribly smart; the inner North and East trendy or at least shabby chic, where I live is just run down and unloved. Central enough to be able to attack the centre on foot, soft enough to be affordable to deferred millionaires like me.

One of my colleagues on the estate committee puts me to shame with her proactiveness. Whereas I just turn up once a month and crack a few crap jokes, she has drafted a newsletter in an attempt to inject a bit much-needed of communal enthusiasm into the citizenry. She has done a good job of mixing the parish notices up with the better news stories. She even managed to spin a “put your rubbish bags into the hoppers” beg into a tirade against the foxes which might come and eat your children. Nice touch, I thought, especially after the rather drier poster that I put up in the bin room a while back was torn down within about forty seconds. Cvnts.

To liven the piece up she had put a front-page splash about the recent police raid on the estate. A police raid on the estate – I had not heard about this! When was this, I asked. Oh, last Thursday (or something), I was told. Apparently three flats were raided by a crack squad of coppers “dressed as Ninjas”. I can’t believe I missed this! Unfair, I complained, that I must have been at work at the time. One door was *even* put in in my building, apparently. Supposedly one of the kids had been running a little “factory” to convert replica guns into The Real Thing. Someone had alerted the authorities when the culprit had gone all the way to the other side of the road to test his wares. He could have at least gone down the road to Brixton where he might have blended into the crowd a bit.

Now some might think to themselves, gosh that sounds like a terrible place to live. Incorrect. For the most part it’s quiet and uneventful. I love my flat and I can stumble back from the centre of town after a skinful, should the fancy take me. And every now and again we get to laugh uproariously about the stupidity of a teenager who is fooled by his mates into thinking that the done thing is to hide in his bedroom and make pellets for converted replicas. This story certainly beats the mini-riot which broke out when the new parking enforcement regime came in. You don’t get that in the stockbroker belt.