Save the Panda!

I don't get this Strictly thing

Strictly is an amazing thing. It pulls the biggest audience in the country into an activity that it will never occur to nearly all of them to try.

And even more bizarrely it attracts 13 million people in America, to a country known perhaps for bootscootin'. But ballroom? What's going on?

Why can you interest somebody in something they will never do? It doesn't even exploit the human back story in the same way other reality shows do. It just sits alone and oozes joy.

Can it just simply be the triumph of human endeavour, mixed with colour, tunes and a little sparkle. What simpler ingredients could there be? Because the entertainment certainly doesn't depend on whether the thumbs are up or the heel turns are actually heel turns, because the camera doesn't catch that. It's not even transmitted. Nobody really cares.

It sells us a big, wet, slug of humanity. 

We get told the band is the best there is but we listen to mediocre backing singers chime out-of-tune cover versions of songs we would otherwise love, and still they can't kill the experience.

That you can feel such joy in the joy of near strangers, when you personally have nothing at stake. And feel personal pain or at least a sense of (in)justice on their elimination is an extraordinary thing. It dismisses the German (who else?) invention of schadenfreude. It makes it nonsensical.

Sometimes maybe you just need a reminder of how you can learn to.....feeel...

The Value of Things

I don't have many… things.

Not things of traditional value. Not things I could Bargain Hunt. Not things I could Flog It.

I don't miss them, I don't want them, I don't need them. They take up space. In my flat and in my head.

I have one thing I like. You might call  it a memorabilium. (OK, I might call it that). But it would be a memorabilium from an event I didn't technically attend. In fairness, pretty much nobody did.

It places a small and, to many, insignificant piece of magical history, in its moment. 

But what I like about it most is this. 

Intrinsically, it's worthless. 

It's tomorrow's chip paper, it's pulp, utterly without value.

OK, what's printed on it means something, at least in my eyes, but it's not diamond, it's not jade, it's not the world's largest cubic zirconia. It represents a connection, an impersonal connection perhaps, but to a very specific moment in time. 

And I don't want to sit here bleating that I'm not "material" because frankly, I probably am. I hadn't really thought about it and I don't intend to start now. 

And it's not just the vague idea of worthlessness I like. It's the pure, absolute poverty of  traditional market value. In other words, the more worthless it is, the happier I am. Charm seems to increase exponentially, based on the basic basis of of raw ingredients. 

Don't take my word for it. Ask any child who has his latest masterpiece magnetically secured to the front of an American fridge.

I have a lot of… things.

Ask me to do a minor task that I have never done before and there's a pretty good chance I may be able to find a thing, that will allow me to improvise. 

It won't be the right thing. But you know what? It just might be good enough.

Things. 

They are too close to clutter.

That's the good thing about Christmas. 

You can give things.

Away.

And worthless things, like the things I like, cost nowt.

So put away those giros. 

Give a worthless thing this Christmas. 

Or failing that...some thing of thingless worth.

12-12-12

Did the Earth move for you.... or am I on shaky ground?

The Moral Jungle

Is it wrong to buy a small remote control from eBay so that you can turn over the channel of the TV in the local gym without anybody realising it was you? 

Is it more wrong if you are switching from Nicky Minaj's latest booty shaking video to discussion of the Leveson enquiry?

If you hover for more than a few seconds over Dickinson's Real Deal, should you shrug your shoulders and look up to the heavens as though there's been some solar interference?

I know, I know. 

There are no right answers.

The First and the Last

First, do no harm. 

That is the mantra that, as doctors, we live by. 

If you are hearing that for the first time, it may look twee.

But for what it's worth, I've said it to myself every day of my working life.

Contrary to popular belief, we don't have to take oaths. There is no Hippocratic oath in the UK. There is no need for it. I suppose we must rely on principles that shouldn't require a signature. Rely on an idea of integrity that has become as ludicrously comic as it is anciently historical. And when it's present, it's never more pitiful. If it's a quality, for God's sake, never claim it. If it's challenged, for God's sake, never defend it. 

Accept it has no modern worth. 

Move on. 

Grow up.

We are not making medical schools for priggish, prickish over-rich American daddy-would-be-so-proud Harvard graduates here in the UK. We're doing the real thing. We are the real deal.

First, do no harm.

But in fact when you talk about life, death and legacy, there is a more important issue.

We are the thoughts that we leave in people's minds.

In the final analysis, we are nothing more.

So in your final reckoning, in your final legacy, in the way that you'd like to be remembered, give it some thought and take my advice.

Last, do no harm.

Tune In

I'm working on a new TV concept for Channel 4.

It's called 'Bring Back....Justin Lee Collins'

In Praise of the One-Liner

Words are great ways of communicating but they are imperfect. 

Some have peculiar origins, some are a little bit cross-wired. In English, in particular, there is a rich tapestry of history and misrepresentation has resulted in the constellation that is our lexicon.

If you place them together in a slightly odd order, you might become funny. Or erudite. Add a raised eyebrow and you are naughty, knowing or cheeky. Add a raised eyebrow and a wink and you're in danger of becoming unprofessional. Add  more than one wink, and you are an end-of-the-pier entertainer.

There are fine lines everywhere, and we are living in a time when  they are getting crossed and uncrossed faster than ever before.

On this 11–11–12, change and collision and bloodshed is everywhere and everywhence. See, that's an interesting way of putting it, isn't? I don't even know if it makes sense but it causes you to hover a little over that line and give it a little bit more thought. So the words have done their job. Focusing and misdirecting your thoughts so that the message I haven't even articulated in my own head yet creeps, poorly formed, into yours. Nothing wrong with that, I'm not telling you what to think.

It's an odd businesses isn't it?

And the one-liner distills it down to the smallest possible example of that. And it makes us laugh. 

Why? Because it's a verbal left turn, a neural short-circuit. We might laugh in admiration or confusion, or just enjoy being wrongfooted. The fact is we laugh at many other things as well: pain, tragedy, and the inner guilt we feel at enjoying off-colour gags. 

Human beings can and should laugh at everything. One-liners are a quick reminder that a joke is just a verbal tickle.

Writing a One Liner - No. 1

My doctor thinks I'm losing my peripheral vision.

I can't see it myself.

Newsflash

Reportage

"David Mitchell, one of the stars of the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show, references the tarnished BBC star [Jimmy Savile] in his memoir Back Story, just published but printed before the ITV documentary that accused Savile of sexual abuse was broadcast.

Writing about his own reputation as a "snooty swot" on TV panel game shows, Mitchell writes that you can't always judge people by appearances. "It's like Jimmy Savile and child molestation," he writes, "it rings true without being true. He in no way subverted people's stereotypical image of a child molester, any more than I do their vision of a snooty swot."

He goes on to "humorously" speculate that someone like the late actress and cosy Alan Bennett favourite Thora Hird would be more likely to get away with molesting children".

Sorry David, but the whole run of your book should have been pulped.

Wrong decision!

Says It All, Really

BBC1 Saturday 5:40 pm, Pointless Celebrities.

Featuring Cannon and Ball, Hale and Pace, Keith Harris and Orville, Bobby Davro and Kenny Lynch, with a special appearance by Paul Daniels.


Not sure if it's a schedule or a roll-call!

Strictly

Dirty cash

I'm thinking of trying to make a few extra quid.

The quickest way that I've come up with is to scribble a quick diary about me cleaning my flat, possibly add a couple of photos, and flesh it out with maybe a few clips from Wikipedia about the local area before publishing it.

Does that sound good?

Of course, it is all in the branding.

I thought I'd title the work "The Real Downton". That might shift a few copies.

And in the unlikely event of sales not peaking for Christmas, I thought I'd quickly produce a second version.

Called "Rolf's Real Downton".

That should pick up any undecideds.

On being knacky

Life is knacky.

Knacks (skills or talent, if you prefer) can take years to develop but any of us can attain a few of them. It doesn't have to be brain surgery, it can be for a card trick or getting your key in your front door at the first time of asking.

You develop these knacks, then perhaps you hope to sell them. You are skilled are what you do, it gives you confidence, it becomes a part small or large or, if you overshoot, perhaps even all, of your identity. That is your identity in the eyes of yourself, those around you and those whose respect you may crave.

But your knack may go out of date.

All that time, lost.

All that skill, redundant.

You, irrelevant.

And it's even worse than that. You may have adopted your knack to the exclusion of other things. Exercise you sure should have embarked on, that guitar you never picked up, those classics you never read.

Are you are okay with that?

Because if not, now is the time to say.

And your wondrous knacks give you such estate, such clarity, the confirmation that reality you are a cut above. A cut above the rank-and-file, the plebs, (as our current Conservative Chief Whip might volunteer). Their wonderful symmetry is a sign that all is well with the world.

But all is not well with the world.

Or haven't you noticed?

If you're the expert in a certain type of brain surgery that becomes redundant, what are you going to do? Throw yourself off the nearest bridge after your latest divorce because of your loss of identity, employability, hard cash?

Another conclusion I've made on my travels is whatever habits, tendencies, regular practices you do adopt, you might choose to examine them regularly. Clean out your cupboards! Cull, kill, be as ruthless as you like. 

Look at what the green-fingered folk do to roses in winter. Has a single one of them ever been arrested? Well they should be!

Trim, prune, recast your rod.

Even if you have a metaphor that you're happy with, mix it up with something nonsensical. You might discover a new idea.

Human beings are pattern machines.

We make them, but not as many as we'd like.

And we break them, but not as often as we should.

New tricks are good, our generation can no longer sit on our laurels.

Knacks take years to develop.

Best start now. 

Quotable - Not Me 4

Quotable - Not Me 2

Quotable - Not Me

Existentialism?

Don't even get me Sartred!

Spelling Bee

You know Enrique. the singer.
The son of that singer, Julio?
You know the one..

Well, I bet you spell his surname incorrectly.

In fact, I'll bet you even say it incorrectly..

Look it up..
You're welcome.

With a year of Spanish lessons you might have spotted it yourself.

Four Point Plan

Get inspired.
Get informed.
Get skilled.

And get started.

Private Letters

"Dear Bill Shatner

Well, this was the weekend I had been planning all year with fingers crossed and breath bated, hoping to fly down to Madrid, having “won” an auction for one of the golden tickets to dine with you last Saturday night.

Sadly, it seems like the organisers were pretty clueless so I have found myself with a few days off so I thought I'd write you a letter. Oh God, a bloody fan letter! (Sorry, you don't have to read it!)

I had the opportunity to be in the same room as you once before – in the Royal Albert Hall in 1996. I remember you being asked a question that went something like this.... ‘In Star Trek 5 what did you mean when you said “I need my pain”?’

Sitting in the audience, I felt as though I knew the answer to this question, but still my skin cringed and my nerves jangled for you (or was it the other way around?). What an unfairly complex question to be asked to articulate an answer to ... cold, as it were! But what flowed from your mouth in the next ten minutes has stayed with me. I can't remember a word of it! But it was the perfect mix of poetic philosophy and life lessons. It seemed to touch on every sweeping human concept from Sartre to well, I don't know, some more recent seer that neither of us has ever heard of.

I am older now. I suppose within your craft this would be called improvisational skill. And in truth, I think you knew the answer so well because you had spent time thinking about it, probably in preparation for the line to be delivered on film. But although, I don't talk often of gifts, expressing the poetic grace of life in a way that touches an auditorium of strangers is the finest of skills.

So I am really writing to thank you for your contribution to my life with your many varied performances and to say how much I admire your work rate, your risk-taking and your sense of humour. To me these are the things that define you the most, and I find each of them inspirational.

A few weeks ago, I download an episode of Rookie Blue. I had never heard of this TV series but the listings magazine pointed it out because... well, you were guest-starring.  Your performance blew me away. I wasn't surprised but you elevated what looked like a fairly mediocre TV programme by transmitting a depth of feeling in such a short window of time. In watching this, your performance so quickly connected and affected. Except it is not watching any more is it? In elevating the artform, you make us partake.

I think I feel the emotion more as I get older. I think you do. Our life experiences dig big holes in us. Is it not the challenge is to fill these holes with ever deeper quantities of happiness? Or if happiness is too ethereal a concept, then at least to fill them with challenge and newness. That'll do nicely.

As a boy I bought an early autobiography of yours called Shatner: Where No Man. I still haven't read it (I am a shamefully poor reader) but I still have it. On the back was a quote, purportedly from you, which said “Anything done supremely well is an act of sex”. A little cheeky, I thought at the time (and frankly I'm still not sure about it). But what I can say, if you'll forgive the overfamiliar term of address, is thank you very much for having sex with us all, Bill.

Admittedly it is sex without dinner! But I hope you will continue to silver service us for many years to come."

Judgement Day

Does it matter what anybody thinks of you after you're dead?

They call it legacy, don't they?

If you get away with it and live the life you lead until you the day you die, then, unless you have supernatural beliefs, that's it isn't it? Your race is run. History records you in first place.

Do you think any billionaire businessman cares about the people he stepped on along the way  as long as he keeps the mansions and the yachts through the hard times? I don't think so.

Do you think he cares about the people who hate him?
No. There's too much free-flowing champagne to worry about such things.

And integrity is such a tedious, painfully honest, horribly worthy pursuit. Surely we've assigned that to the dustbin of history, where boys went up chimneys, girls showed an ankle and Queensbury ruled.
Has integrity counted for anything since Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney in the 80s?
Or even since Jane Eyre.
There are entire nations totally unfamiliar with the concept. (Why not try and name a few?)
If it sells at all it does so in bargain basement snippets on reality television shows, before the contestants are thrown into the arena tour and eaten.
No, integrity is an entertainment that rich people sell for the masses. It's a quirk. A nonsense.

I chatted with Jimmy Savile on the QE2, but today he's a sex abuser. He is a Jonathan King. He's a Gary Glitter.
But he had the ear of royalty, and he lived life he wanted. At least that's what it appears.
We can't live life without trying to work out some measures of success. Some benchmark.
If death isn't that, what on earth is it?

Jimmy doesn't appear to have suffered too much for what seems to be his decision-making, and now, so late, the jury of ravens circle.

But if you don't get caught before death, surely you've won.
Even if you gassed millions in the Holocaust, you've still won the war.

Haven't you?

Quotable me - 6

It's a fine line between acting with aplomb...and acting like a plum.

In Praise of the Dreamers

I used to listen to a few soundtracks, not a lot I guess, but maybe I thought it was something that made me…different.
No, it wasn't that. But that doesn't make it less true. (I can highly recommend the excellent orchestrals of the first RoboCop movie).

And yesterday, I couldn't help but watch Groundhog Day.
Again.

I could even dial up a few clips on Youtube of television that know how to push my buttons.

And I don't mind horror, in fact I like it at times. Quite a bit.

So what is it about entertainment?

It's this.
It's emotion with personally defined boundaries.

You allow it access to your code. You can select the aspects of it that you desire whether it be manga, opera, gaming, torture porn, Corrie.
You can select the flavours  that push your buttons. And  that do it in the most efficient way.  It may only be the most efficient way for you but then that is the only thing that is relevant.

If someone gets moved by La Boheme, in the same way that I am affected by Saw IV, then that's fine. (At least to me, if not to them, the racist bastards).

If someone needs a Rembrandt to give them an erection, I'm okay with that.
I don't think is normal. I've never got off on watercolours myself. But I have no objection to these artistic perverts pleasuring themselves in whatever medium they desire. We live in a free country.  At least some of us do (sentence inserted for the global market).

So what is it?
Exactly?
What's going on?

Well with entertainment, you can experience the highs and lows of the emotion, as well as the side to sides.
Happy, sad, anxious, concerned, energised, optimised.
But you do it.....
In safety.

And it's an interesting trip.

Our extremities are inside us, asking us to push them, ease them out.
They are not at the end of a bungee rope. That's the sort of experience you brace yourself for, put up your walls to allow nothing in. The light and the love, when they get in to change you,  get in much, much more sneakily than that.

Our extremities temporarily finish at our toes and fingers, because here there is a secret relay which reflects and reprocesses the internal journey so that it is organised into a learning point. And normalised into part of our individual identities.

They don't finish at our toes and fingers because they need to be expelled and walked to the top of a dead mountain, or thrown off a rock. Because many of those people have already missed the first stile, with the notice that said "go back".
"Go back inside".

Star Trek said it best, when it relayed that "the human adventure is just beginning".
Even at the end of the galaxy.
And yet you can still spot a moron if ever you hear the words "I don't like sci-fi".
Because either they don't "get it" or they don't like the human adventure. They don't like life. They're not interested in the learning process. They are empty.
Dead.

And why should they like it? It's hard. Predictable and unpredictable. I meet people every day who don't engage with it.
I don't blame them. I try to rectify them, but I don't blame them. That's my arrogance. (And I don't avoid blaming them because blame's a bad thing. I don't think it is. A few more government ministers need to eat a bit of that).

But if the only emotional tilt you get is from harsh reality, you have no real chance to practice, to rehearse your best response, no chance to present yourself as professional, or decent, or accomplished, or increasingly, if you're male, as a man.
If you react well in the next circumstance, it may be more through luck than anything else.

Entertainment gives us a chance just to work out our responses, and more than that, to learn what they should be.

This has been a public service announcement for supporting the arts.

History of the Good People

We're good people. Aren't we?
Good people....

Good people get MS.
Good people get brain tumours.
Good people get cancer.
Good people die.

Good people.

Should we live our lives to be good? Or even the best?  Why is being the best so admirable? It's so painfully one-dimensional, rudely greedy. Selfish even. You sentence someone else to be second best. At best.

Some people have tough lives but live their teariest moments to the experience of posh boy Olympic champions, their gold plated opportunities and their cash hungry sponsors.
Is that who you admire when you watch the television?
Honestly? What's the matter with you?
Why? Because it only takes a nice convenient 2 minutes to see the results of their efforts.
You can take it in easily, can you?
Well done you.

Good people.

Goodness doesn't sustain. Not in itself. It's too much of an intellectual exercise. It's not pure. Not really.
It's a balance. Today you might be good but tomorrow you might be in a crash on the Andes and eat your cousin.

And isn't goodness horribly puritanical?
Five a day.
Runner beans.
Every pulse you've ever hated.
The painful, pained wan vegetarian who spends their delicate time choking down the artificial protein produced by a chemical factory. Food made by people with engineering degrees.
Giving them just enough energy to lecture us within an inch of our interest.
I can't bear it.

Goodness doesn't sustain. Not in itself.
We love stories of redemption because goodness is a special guest star. It appears in the final reel. It's contrast brings us to tears. But that is drama, entertainment, not life. Please don't confuse it for that.
The contrast is on the surface and the subtexts are too many things that we don't understand. A people we don't know. Or a culture we have no experience of. No connection with.
Yes, the common thread is the human spirit, that's fine but goodness isn't enough.

If you live your life for goodness, you're not living for you because we are human beings.
We are bad.
If television drama argues that we do good well then badness is a close silver. And we have a generation of people who find easy street a hell of a lot more appealing than the Olympic Highway.

Good people.

Someone tell me please, what is the natural  history of good people?
What happens to them, where do they end up, where are they now? Was there any crossover in their life where they were in the Venn intersection with exciting, excited people?
Perhaps the very happy people whose demeanour they questioned. Even at times tried to damage. For the greater good of course.

And if they were the same people, how long was it for? A moment or two that sustains them through the dark decades?
Because it's not enough.

Or perhaps goodness really is its own reward?
Really?
Sounds dull.

Good people. Are they smart, fit, funny?
Or just boring old good? Good, good, fuddy duddy good.

Do they ever wonder if they are living life or if life is living them?

If you work night shift on the 24th of July, are you working 24/7?

I'm going to tell you a secret.

I'm going to tell you a secret about me.

But before I do, I will tell you about my last few shifts, each of which featured a new and spectacular level of abuse from the recently arrested.

Dazzlingly fluent, complaining, attacking, verbal assaults. Expertly chosen selections of the most traditionally effective insults that would be personal weren't they so generic.
At this level of skill, it really becomes an art form.

The first of this superbatch was around 5am Sunday morning - a spectacular award-winning torrent of abuse by any standard, at which it was all I could do not to giggle.
Or applaud.
Detention officers who see this day-in day-out were left in 15 minutes of hysterics.

Now, admittedly, every time he took a breath for air, I would recharge his motor with a query such as...
"well, that's not very nice", or
"well, I'm sure you don't mean that...."
Or "actually I should let you know, that's coming over as a bit rude..."

This sort of gentle feedback, if anything, strangely, seems to heighten the speed, volume and general endlessness of the river of abuse.

And the same thing happened on Monday, and indeed today.
The imprisoned complaining about their walls.
Challenging any who approached.
Who goes there? Foe or foe?

They push, they poke, they try to push you off your plinth, testing your foundations, your resolve, questioning your identity, your ability, your physique, your sexuality and anything else that suits them.
Face this repeatedly, you really have to be sure of who you are, or perhaps who this could turn you into.
You have to ask the question.


Maybe you're a roughhewn rock and these cuts will shape you into David.
Or maybe you're David already, and these cuts will shape you into a roughhewn rock.

They usually harp on about their human rights and their access to solicitors.
They quote psychiatrists and counsellors who know that they are "like this".
Their bad behaviour pass.

And these people, of which I speak, weren't drunk.
They chose this behaviour.
Or did they? Because the person screaming at me at 8am this morning told me he actually had a note from a counsellor saying that he had to shout at such a volume because he was incapable of not shouting when agitated.
A note...
I hadn't heard that one before...a note permitting the highest volume of verbal abuse.

And I didn't fully realise, that their rights to do this don't seem to result in them being rearrested for this abuse.
Outside a police station, a simple reference to a policeman's comical hat would be enough to have you nicked.
But inside you can question his parental legitimacy and spit in his face and suffer no redress.
And they can do the same to any of the rest of us who have an obligation to turn up.

Apparently we surrendered our human rights when we walked into the station.

We don't have the right to be offended.
We don't have the right not to be insulted. To be treated with respect.
We cannot prosecute.
We can't complain.
The police tell me they gave up those rights when they did the job.

I'm not even sure if I can laugh it off without bolstering their complaint.
Another complaint for the solicitor ...."he didn't take me seriously".

But I'm not a policeman and I don't remember giving up those rights.

They bang the cells, they bang their heads, they question the temperature at which their hot chocolate is served, the timing of their methadone delivery and they exercise their right to kick, punch and destroy. A man this morning took the wheel off his own wheelchair, and told everybody how his rights were being infringed.

"His rights"..... as he launched into another torrent of abuse and ignored everybody else's.

But then I realised what the police are doing there.

What the walls are doing there.
Why the locks are on.
Why the cameras are there.
Demon's run when a good man goes to war.



All the videotape, the surveillance.
All the rules.
The code of practice that lay in pieces on the floor of the cell.

That system he hated and complained about so much.
The system that had taken his freedom.
The same system that taken my right to reply, to counter, to respond.

I realised what it was all for.
All those rules.

They were there to protect him.

From me.


I'll tell you my secret.....






I'm a doctor.

Satdy Neet

Conversation at Tesco, the woman on the till to the customer in front:

Customer: "Are you out tonight?"
Till: "No, I'm staying in and reading 50 Shades of Grey"

"Oh, are you?"
"Yes. I'm going to pour myself a gin and tonic and go straight to the bits with the rope and the masking tape. My daughter has circled all the best bits for me".

"You know, apparently, the writing is poor. All the way through, it's been written really badly".
"Oh, I'm not worried about that. It's typed!"

"And now, finally, son of Jor El....

Kneel before Zod...."

One of the most famous quotes in movie history of course. I've always loved that line.
It's utter helplessness. Utter humiliation. The ultimate challenge when the chips are not just down but out, and you just find out if you can locate the reserve to turn total failure over and over and over until it catches a chink of light.

But this is not the first time in the movie that this line appears. (General Zod is a bit of a broken record on the whole kneeling thing).
Perhaps even more touching is the line's first appearance in Superman 2.
This time it is the act of the helpless President of the United States who goes on to say....

"I'll kneel before you, if it will save lives"

(And for completeness sake... there follows from General Zod: "It will, starting with your own").

Perhaps you see an analogy with our Queen shaking hands today with the IRA terrorist who authorised the murder of her cousin, his only outstanding regret being that the IRA didn't kill more Royals.

I doff my hat to the wise media men who recorded the event only in pictures allowing Martin McGuinness's revolting comment of "thank you, and goodbye" to our Queen, to be blown away by the strength of her grace and power of forgiveness.
An example to us in her Jubilee year? I think so.

"I'll kneel before you, if it will save lives"
Or life, perhaps. One would be enough.
After all, it might be somebody you know. And those lives are much more important than those other ones, aren't they?

Some days you kneel. Some days you shake hands with the Devil.
Some days you lie, perhaps just to save a feeling.
Some days you'd kill, just to live.

Perhaps you think that forgiveness is power.
I am tempted to agree.


Zod save the Queen.

Brits Oot

Is a British tourist in a Hawaiian shirt such as sin?
Well, yes in the sense that the instant reaction is correctly "what an abortion".
But do we have so much that we can afford to turn some down?
Isn't it a little colour every now again slightly wonderful?

OK, it is sinister to see a 60-year-old guy in cutoff three-quarter length trousers.
It's like a clown's smile. Not right. Uneasy.
But what are they supposed to do, they're comfy, you racist!

Maybe a little loudness means you can still remember how to enjoy yourself.

But there is an icon of common in these supposedly trashy resorts.
The resorts are beautiful even if they might have one too many tribute bands. You can always switch over.
And how can you do a tribute to Chubby Brown without ripping it off his material? In exactly the same way he did. Oh, I get it now!

These places are knowing, populist and built to survive recession.
They're fun and it's an admirable model.

The critique that feeds the critics perhaps shouldn't be the people. Or the resort.
But there is one internationally recognized symbol of bargain-basement crud.
One cardinal signature of border-neutralising tat.
The purest diagnostic sign that seeps across the continents:

Red Coca-Cola chairs.
Let's melt them all down and make party balloons for the Foam Disco.

Laws of Attraction

What attracts you to somebody?
I reckon that there are three basic criteria.

1.Body.
2.Beauty (by which I think I mean simply facial appearance (we are obsessed with it, I suppose) and
3.Brain. (I'm using brain to cover personality, fire, originality and intelligence... but how many intelligent half wits are there? (I'll tell you, it is 1.476 billion to the third decimal place). Emotional intelligence is much more important and doesn't come with a degree. There is no shortage of stupid stunted people with degrees.

So, honestly now, supposing you agree with my supposition, how would you stack these virtues. What REALLY NOW is your priority?

You may think you're perfect partner must have all three but which of these would you do without?
At a squeeze ?
Which would you sacrifice?

Which would you prefer?
A plain brain with a knockout body?
A pretty plus-sized porker with a degree?
A candy floss model who won't go to the pub quiz unless there is a round on shoes?

Would you sacrifice two of the three criteria?
Would you not even sacrifice one?

Would you suffer your ongoing voyage like Odysseus forever looking for all three, perhaps even as your own three fail.

Perhaps you will stick too early, you'll settle and undersell yourself? Uuurgh, is there anything worse?
Perhaps you'll overreach. Can you hang on to him? Can you hang on to her?

Perhaps you're not all that yourself.
You gotta know when to hold them and know when to fold them.

These are the criteria.
This is the truth.
Have you worked it out?

Have you worked it out yet is this level of reduction is meaningless. The rules in isolation are reductionist.

Work out which of the three you would sacrifice. You really should know this by now.

Then you can start working out why the entire supposition is as wrong as it is right.

Top Trip Tips #3

When packing a wheeled case, to stop it careering around like a pissed up Sumo wrestler, put your heavy items (liquid toiletries, electricals) in the bottom next to the wheels.
If you have no heavy items, pack a brick.

Quotable Me - 4

We're living in sick times.
Forget about the financial meltdown for a second. I am talking about an age of sickening celebrity.

And it's not just Cheryl Cole, it might be any too-big business. This is a time of headline-grabbing managers who hide behind meetings and skulk behind rules that don't work.
Impatiently awaiting their merit awards and MBEs.

Their barricades of fake protocol (faux-tocol?...perhaps not...) are challenged, in their eyes, only by subversive troublemakers.
So, ahem... Hello readers!!

They're missing the point of course. Just as I am coming to it.

The challenge isn't to stand out.

It's to stand up.

Thought Dessert

At m-school, there was a day.

It was a day when we discussed the concepts of sympathy and empathy.
It was controversial.
Everybody argued for the rest of the day. They discussed it over lunch and they paraded their credentials.
They mentioned it over dinner.
And I reckon that that particular day, it was their pillow moment. It's been mine on hundreds of occasions.

Of course, like any good plot you have to know the good guys and the bad guys.
The guys that thought they were the good guys, including me, claimed empathy (although  many of them never struck me as the men in the white hats).
The bads guy merely had sympathy to offer.

Sympathy became slightly evil for me that day. They were the guys in the black hats.
Now, perhaps I think there were more human than they knew. And perhaps more honest, even underselling themselves.

Sympathy seemed to be a meagre offering to humanity. To the human in front of you.  So much worse than our best. Substandard.
It took me a while to realise that it also has its place.
In my case, that was quite a while. I still don't express it well. But I feel it and I try to act on that feeling. Isn't that the point?

I was focused on the good guy's role.

Empathy was the claim of every do-gooder. That cheapened it for me. Every doctor who wanted to go into paediatrics and psychiatry, everyone with counselling tendencies, and later on every other healthworker. Every bitch who didn't really care. Parading their home-made badges of empathy, and barely recognising the power of the concept.

I thought about this regularly for 20 years. I tossed it around, and  to be honest the thought didn't really develop or grow. There seemed to be nowhere for it to go.

But in the last two days it's occurred to me, these are just two stages of a three stage process.
Sympathy. Empathy........ Transference.

It's a broader canvas even than previously claimed.
It's increasingly poetic but increasingly dangerous.
It can eat minds.

I'm not going to offer you any answers. This is about understanding the rules.
If you haven't got it by now, this whole thing, everything, is about understanding the rules.
Understanding what's in place. Making, breaking, designing new constructs.
The rules.
Not somebody else's.
Yours.

I think as I thought 20 years ago, but for me in a slightly new way. I have the full picture now and the extremes are still invisible. Infrared, all the way to ultraviolet.

Sympathy. Empathy. Transference.

All I'm saying is, it might be nice to know in each given moment exactly where you are on the spectrum.

The Emperor's New Ankles

I don't believe in lymph.

I know most of the other more famous body fluids because I've met them, largely because I've had my hand at one point or another in most human places that you can put a hand.
And I ain't never seen no lymph.
For that matter I don't know anyone who has.

I've heard alternative prattitioners (no, that isn't a typo) wax lyrical about it, pretend to push it around, see it grow at times of increased sunspot activity and generally blame it on the lack of karma in the Universe.

But it's a construct. It's a fib.
And as humours go, it ain't no laughing matter.

There was a time when everybody believed in ectoplasm. Now it only turns up at Derek Acorah shows when he turns the lights out. And I can tell you for a fact, he just uses luminous Silly Putty.

Lymph is a concept, not a thing.
It can't be pushed, filed, stamped, briefed, debriefed or catalogued.
If it does exist at all, it is probably the closest thing to pure evil we will ever experience.

So I say, end the lymph conspiracy.
Be a lymph naysayer.

Say No to Lymph.

Alright, I'll have it anyway.

Top 3 things you don't want to hear from your Mum when you really want another beefburger:

3. "Your brother used the last of the sauce".

2. "You've had the last of the onions".

And for the second year in a row, straight in at number one,  it's....

1. "We've run out of buns. You'll have to have it in bread".

"Awww, Muuum".

Being Perfect

Technical excellence often strips emotional connection  - ask any surgeon, or rather anyone who has to work with them.
Opera is often guiltier of this than, well, say, pop for example. It's the impurites that make a diamond one than has been naturally mined rather than created artificially under huge external pressures.


Why else do a diminishing number of people tune into The Voice and yet millions tolerate Paul McCartney screeching and shouting pastiches of his own songs in a Jubilee special.


Because ........it's not the voice.
It's the connection. 
It's the history - the back catalogue of shared experience.


Ballet is another.
Those poor toes.

On Being Judgemental

When did you last hear somebody use the term 'judgemental'?
I bet it wasn't used about themselves but about somebody else. This is a pity because I think that inherently it's a virtue. It just needs rebranding.

Everybody thinks of themselves as being good at two things: driving, and being a good judge of character.
And yet they claim not to like "judgemental" people.
It's rubbish. If you hear the term come out of somebody's mouth, they are never referring to themselves. But that's the only person that they're giving you any new information about.
Otherwise, they'd hate every single comedian on the planet who makes a living out of that skill.

So it can't be the 'judging' they are objecting to. It must be the 'mental'.
We don't need the term.
Tolerance and intolerance will do.
And endless tolerance is a recipe for disaster as well.
Ask any domestically beaten househusband, or wife for that matter.
Sorry, partner. I'm so out of touch.

Life may have been easier when we were fed with a plastic debris-catching bib as a backdrop, got pushed around in a pram, and had unchallenged access to the Dorothy Perkins changing rooms.
But there comes a point in life where it's best to do that only at weekends or when you think nobody will catch you. (Particular if you don't happen to be female)

Life should be fully played out with a little honest performance.
After all, people wear make-up, buy shoes (that's women mainly), smile when they wouldn't choose to, develop table manners (sometimes), it's all part of the show.

Even some actors are sincere.
And eventually, we all become what we rehearse.
Let the audience judge.
But please, be gentle.

Pure carbs

Just wondering.... how many calories are there in an orlistat tablet?

Me and My Penguin

It's always nice to get a few jobs done that have been hanging around for a while.

So I cleaned my penguin today.
He needed it believe me. He's had a bit of hard time of things recently.

We all have jobs like this.
I know you have a penguin long overdue for a shine.
Mine's been spending a lot of time outdoors and inevitably he's taken a bit of a beating.

So I gave my dirty penguin a good old clean yesterday afternoon.
And today I finished the little fella off with a much needed polish.

Then I sat back and rewarded myself with an unbranded chocolate sandwich biscuit.

The 12th Noctor

Times change.

Government ministers have to pay for their own duck ponds.
Cherie Blair invests in PFI hospital initiatives started by her husband's government with an eye to making another killing.
The CQC fritter money away endorsing poor quality, thinking they know the difference. Until Panorama catches them.
People who think they are managers from all sorts of dubious backgrounds send memos to cover their own back.

Standards nowadays have to be standard.
No better.
Even the poor old BBC has to relocate to Birmingham or Cardiff. And now it transpires there's some shocking news on the casting of the next Doctor Who.
They've decided to go with a nurse practitioner instead.

Headlines, karaoke and snowstorms

Never mind about change.
To even maintain your status quo there are going to be times when you have to yank every chain, pull every cord, mix up the sandstorm and let it settle one more time. Let it have another go.
It will never settle the same way twice.
Somewhere there will be an irregular pattern, a crook of light, somewhere there will be ...new.

The world outside is a globe, but the world inside is a snowglobe. We all have one. It shakes with every step, but it is steadiest at home on a mantelpiece, waiting a good old dust.
Pay no attention to it. Who needs a running commentary?
When you wear your heart on your sleeve, you put your snowglobe in your pocket.
When you settle, you gently place it down.
After all it wasn't meant to last. Nothing does. It was only a toy from a trip abroad. Best put it in the attic and leave it there.

Or....

Don't.

Pan for riches instead.
Rake and sift through the debris and look for a new opportunity, maybe a glimpse or glitter of gold. But as every miner 49er knows it's often turns out to be fool's gold. And the only thing you end up rich in is metaphor.

So you wash your pan and scoop again like a gigantic mechanical arm mining up the atoms of the atmosphere and letting the clouds slip through your fingers trying to catch one perfect drop of rain.
Avoiding the thought that you affect the world you interfere with. Your presence changes it. Your attention alters it. Your  touch can destroy it. You have to be gentle.

Sometimes life is a pocket snowstorm.
Sometimes it's a pocket orchestra, waiting with baton aloft to shuffle up another tune.
Why not join in when you know the words or like the licks? Karaoke's fun, (a survey said).

When you're out of energy and the devil of destiny knocks, you'll still need to draw on something.
It's something that will define your security, your anxiety and neediness and ultimately the most important quality of you.
But do you know what it is?
Do you know how you'll react when the chips are down?
I'm guessing you do.
Somewhere.
Because you've done it before a million times. That's why you're still here fighting with the rest of us.
You'll fall back on old patterns, old songs, old books, new books, new songs, tried and tested comforts, nicotine, the lottery, a DVD set, a radio channel, the book, a bottle, a walk.
And if you're British probably a drink and a chat.
That's fairly functional.

But you might go rogue this time.
You might go dysfunctional.
You might steal that DVD set, smash that radio, tear up that book, drink a crate of bottles, smoke something more interesting, bet the farm and walk into trouble, into a fight, into a police cell or into a newspaper.
Good luck with that.
It might well work for you.

You have to know your own headlines.

And know where to stand to catch your own snowstorms.

Pause for Thought

I just went for a little walk round the block.
You know, stretch the legs.

The church green looked so lovely in the evening sun, the lanky oaks leaning protectively over the spring daffodils. And I thought to myself, wouldn't it be nice to pause awhile, rest and enjoy a sip or two of sauvignon blanc in the company of the cool air and the lengthening shadows of the evening sun.

Then I thought to myself.
Man drinking booze on his own on a park bench.
Perhaps not.

It's a thin line.
Isn't it?

A Hundred Years Today

It's ticker tape and wave-you-off
And steer on straight ahead
A throng of hope and appetite.
In wait, the ocean bed.

Oblivious oblivion
Titanically leering
From a wall of glass,
And a deathly mirror
Titanically sneering.

The band played on
And a thousand tears
Turned to millions more
A legacy of error
Asleep on ocean floor.

Evitable endings
Titanically leer
As walls of glass,
And deathly mirrors
Titanically sneer.

The Cost of Living

With all this talk of hosepipe bans, what am I supposed to use to syphon the unleaded from next door's Vauxhall now?

Cover Me

You e-mail me every day
You sound like you care
My well-being's at the top
Of your agenda

You're just in reach
But you're never near
Am I anything to you
But legal tender?

You're my Queen of the Jungle
My east and west
I couldn't stand
If there was another

But I'm fully signed up
And I've made my choice.
I love you, Sheena
At Flexicover

Colour Code

I had a game of chess today.
We set up the pieces but apparently, according to the so-called rules, I wasn't allowed to have the first move.
I had to ask...
"Is it because I'm black?"

You Know You're Getting Old When...

...you sign off on your letters and e-mails with the words "Many Thanks".

Many Thanks? Really?

Honestly, who speaks like that?
George VI?
It's not so much Wallace and Mrs Simpson as Wallace and Gromit.
What happened to me?

I'm off to Boots. They have a new range of age-defying eye toner I need to try.
Maybe I'll start gargling with it.

Bad Poetry

Why do radio voices need to read poetry as though they are haunted, leering
over the words, oilily
creeping over their fake relish. With smug pride
they grease their lecture with subjective
power, diluted
by the arrogance of a personal offering of insight. Adding
a soft American accent
the thin veil of "known" is securely parcelled.
But not revealed
except to followers.
Never upgrading their chosen selection.
Peddling a product
with no user connection.

Fold 1

A rogue patient today offered to "tear me a new one".
Looking forward to it.

I love origami.

In praise of the part timer.

I've always admired the part timer, not the cheeky wastrel who does a mediocre job on the back of large amounts of invisibility, but the multi-limbed polymorph, the learned hydra (one for the classics scholar) who can drop into any situation, acquit it, acquit themselves, and quit.

Someone who can flit yes, but not a fly-by-night.
Someone who can swoop, act while hovering and fly off.
Someone who can act yes, but not make a performance of everything.
Someone who can make a performance, but only when such a thing is called for.
Someone who is as rounded as a well oxygenated red.

Work is life.
Not to work, not to be useful, is not. It's cancer for the young unemployed.
Work can give you self-respect. But it can also take it unless you broaden your options. It grips your identity, imposes its walls, puts a face (or two) to your fears and slowly tightens the screw.
It describes your need and possessions and quantifies your hopes, dreams and holidays.
If you let it.... it owns you.
And if it envelops you, then you may lose your self.
Or just forget to develop self in the first place.

So give a cheery nod to the part timer and say a quirky "hello there" to its bigger brother, the portfolio renaissance man.
Oh... and woman, of course.

After all, this can't all be about me.

The Pricing Paradox

I was all for the government introducing a minimum price for alcohol.
But it looks as though the price is actually going to go up!

Someone's taking the Mickey.

What the Engelbert can I do for you?

In walked the prisoner,
"The last doctor gave me mirtazapine – I'm not depressed. I don't need antidepressant drugs".
I agreed with him. He wasn't exactly warm, but he didn't strike me as depressed.
"I can't sleep".
(Here we go...again) I got my volley in early. "Well of course we don't use sleeping drugs any more... but let me check what the last doctor was thinking".
"I don't want drugs", he offered.
Rather loudly.
He didn't want drugs. He mentioned that earlier.

I checked the notes. That last doctor had squeezed and forced every criteria to justify "depression", treated him for it (wrongly, with drugs alone), and started him on, well, let's say 6 to 9 months of brain altering drugs. (Isn't that the correct timeframe nowadays for these sort of drugs?)
She got the patient out of the room, managed to forget about telling him what the drugs were and the potential timeframe, and organised a review. But not with her of course. Because he is sitting in front of me.  What we call in general practice, a perfect dispatch. A home run.

"I agree with you, you're not depressed. Let me tell you about my sleep hygiene booklet".
"'I'm not reading no booklet. It is a waste of time".

"But it's the correct treatment", I pleaded.
(His elbows went up, his volume went up).
"How is your reading I ventured?", conjecturing he may be illiterate, although as far as I could tell all his tattoos were spelled (spelt) right (my Dad's favourite joke!)
"It's fine, I'm not reading no booklet".

"Good. I don't want you to read it, I want you to live, to rehearse it, to breathe it", I performed.
"You don't get better from booklets". (In principle I agreed with him, in another universe we could have been friends).

So if you don't want drugs and you don't want the correct behavioural treatment I'm looking to offer you and facilitate, and we both agreed that last doctor gave you antidepressants was well...liberal, what the Engelbert Humperdinck do you want?

The voice went up, his elbows went up, his volume went up.
He stormed out happily to explete to whoever would listen.
About me, of course.

He got away from me but I was close, so close. I nearly had him. I'd nearly broken through but the previous GP had left me a mountain to climb.
I never did discover what he wanted. (It's drugs by the way. I think the ingester prefers to call them tablets but I don't like to make it that easy for them to acquit their choices. You just hope to be able to save a few from themselves along the way).

But how much longer can I stick to the white line in the middle-of-the-road, not give up where my colleague (not my term) had sentenced him to brain altering drugs for no good reason before she was rumbled in absentia by her own patient?

I wouldn't have written this today (because it's one of a thousand similar occasions) except that Liam Farrell in the BMJ told a similar tale and it reminded me that a lone soldier sometimes isn't alone. His example was the good old legend of the sore throat.
Dishing out dubious medications doesn't bother the Americans, the French, the nurse practitioner (I could go on but I'm sticking to evidence-validated information).
It is left to the GP to avoid prescription and replace it with something. Clinical acumen maybe? Honed consultation skills? Starburst?

But you can't visualise the human brain.
It is just unfortunate that there are so many situations that, unlike Liam, means I can't call after my angry patient and scream helpfully "But it's only a virus".

Jackpot

I found two 3 leafed clovers today.

I pulled a leaf off one, and with a combination of a tiny staple and a little bit of PVA glue on the back and just the smallest little strip of Sellotape over the front, it took a couple of attempts, but I managed to graft the leaf onto the other 3-leafed clover so that you could barely tell.

Yes, I make my own luck, me.

Home Truths

I was telling you about a discovery that I made about myself.
That I'm going to have to face, with whatever belated dignity I can muster.

I recently went to the cinema.
You may have heard of the award-winning silent movie that has taken all the plaudits, The Artist, a ground-rebreaking tribute to silent film of (presumably) the 1920s, an artistic tour de force, with a combination of a supremely intelligent and witty script, Oscar-winning soundtrack and impeccable performances?
Yes?
Well, I went to watch the Muppets instead. (It was great).

I'm updating my stereo system.
I'm reliably informed you're not supposed to call it a stereo system any more. Frankly I'm not sure what you are supposed to call it. Let's go for micro hi-fi with DAB and iPod dock and agree never to speak of this again. I looked at the Denon, an award-winning annually impressive class act, that will be the pride of any home. I looked at the Marantz. I remember guys at school talking about these names as they made their masturbatory pilgrimages to Richer Sounds. It was always a bit scary, a bit serious.
Gold cable? Really?
And these devices had tough competition in the market from Sony and Pioneer.
But I've just bought the Pure machine.
Largely, because it was shinier and had more lights.

I've seen an opera or two.
Good ones.
I've listened to folk music,  in a weak moment, and sometimes found enjoyable bits in there.
But what I really quite like is electro-pop.
And for that matter, pop in general.
I've occasionally visited classical music, but I could take or leave it.
Preferably leave, if I'm honest.

On occasions, I've been to the ballet and modern dance.
I wasn't blown away by either of them.
I've seen a bit of Shakespeare but enjoyed it best when there was someone I knew from TV or a great comic turn.

And if I read anything before I go to bed, I reach past the Economist and pickup the Viz for 10 minutes and invariably have a giggle.

This is my discovery.
You see as it turns out...

I'm quite trashy.

About Face

A patient came to see me today.
He said. "You don't look like you know anything about reverse psychology".

I had to take the rest of the morning off.

Feedback Loopy

I received a positive comment on my derriere yesterday.
This is becoming quite a recurring thing, because it was also pinched in a nightclub in 1987. (I never did track down the fella who did it).

It's always nice to know I haven't lost the old magic but the fact is I do receive this sort of positive feedback quite regularly.

Whenever I walk provocatively past a bunch of girls, in a pub for example, they think I don't hear them but there's always one of them that comments in a loud whisper.....
"What an arse!"

Dead Links, Good Hearts.

I sorted my favourites folder today.
I know… I should have been working, but it's a task that has been burning a hole in me for years.

It told a tale of time passing.

Not particularly of my personal tastes becoming redundant, because they are a remarkably constant thing (and I will tell you why I know this tomorrow).
I like to think of myself as a grower but I know I'm really a broken record.
At least, I am able to console myself with the idea that that record is the theme tune to Dempsey and Makepeace.
And I'm willing to bet there isn't a human alive, with that information to hand, that would then doubt my grit.

But many of the links that I have saved.....of websites I wanted to revisit, ideas that took my fancy, businesses I thought were potentially wonderful. Many of those links of technologies that I thought would enhance my life, or enhance me, many of those links were well ...dead.

I wondered why.

I initially thought they represented a huge waste of human potential, a mistimed idea, the right dream – the wrong place – the wrong time, a bubble of hope. Burst.
And then I thought, maybe they were hugely successful and they were taken over by big multinationals and they're all living in the Bahamas.
And after that I thought, 'Don't be ridiculous, you were right the first time'.

All those energies, and emotions, and relationships, and beliefs, all of those ideas, now extinguished.
Dormant.
Dead.

Do you want me to tell you that life is about dead links?
Well I'd love to. (It would make it a lot easier to wrap this up).
But I'm afraid I can't. You've got the wrong guy.

I never look at photographs.
But I live in the texture of what they represent.
I live in the album of how I got here.
I think I do that because it feels current.
Real.
Honest.

I can't think of a dead link in my life that I don't see as a continuum.
Don't get me wrong. I do try to draw lines under things, but I still know that they are things that I have drawn lines under.
I am aware of the process, of my conscious imprint on events that I may have had a tenuous grip on.

So my brain is not full of dead ends. There are a lot of unexplored highways, and but only one or two loose ends awaiting fastening.

You can do a three-point turn even in a cul-de-sac.
But a road that leads to a precipice is just a bridge you haven't yet built.

Universally Challenged

Does anyone else think that the team captain in University Challenge should be allowed to substitute one of the members of his team?

Just a thought..

Forgiving, not forgetting and the greatest trick of all

What is forgiveness?
I have no reason to to be thinking about this just now but what really is it?
Wikipedia tells us that is is the process of concluding resentment, the granting of a free pardon and giving up all claim or debt on account of the offence.

So who can really do that?
Unless you're gifted with the blessing of Alzheimer's disease, in which case forgetting and forgiving would be a highly recommended approach, can you actually just forgive?
On its own?
Just like that?
Draw a line under something and relinquish all resentment?
Is that even possible?
Maybe you need to be religious, but if it takes believing in supernatural overlords and all their false prophecies to allow you to forgive, then I fear for forgiveness.
Isn't it in fact the ultimate joke that one of the commandments (and I think it's one that polls rather highly with those in the know) is not to worship false idols?
False idols!!!!
Isn't that the greatest trick god ever played?
Isn't that the greatest paradox, there is?

But forgiveness is certainly a necessary quality in these times.... as Paul McCartney would say.... "in which we live in".
Ah yes, I think I remember why I'm talking about it now. I had half an eye on a television programme last night. The man had been unfaithful to his wife, they were 'giving it another go' and at one point in the episode he said, "you have to forgive me at some point".
And I thought to myself, "No, she doesn't".

And then I realised it wasn't an instruction, it was actually really only half the sentence.
He was tacitly going on to say "you have to forgive me at some point, otherwise we don't make it, that's the end of us, I'm off". You couldn't say that of course because, to say the full sentence is to give an ultimatum. Ultimata end in fights.
Silent threats are the only way to go. (As long as you're not talking to somebody too thick or too forgiving to recognise them).

So, in fact, he was giving friendly advice. That advice being, 'on balance I (currently) want to be here' and 'on balance, I (currently) want to be with you in at least the medium-term, but if you're not going to forgive me, ever, then let's cut our losses'.

It has quite a subtext, this concept of forgiveness.
And it is wrapped in the deepest of emotions.
In terms of married life and television dramas, the dramatic event is frequently infidelity. So let's define that as well. You can have sex with 200 people before you get married but the second the ring goes on the finger, 201 is a no-no.
When you think about it, it's quite an abstract concept.

But as long as you successfully choose somebody who shares early 21st-century human sensibilities and isn't a bit of a psychopath, then hopefully this sacrifice is at least favourably mutual.
Many build that so-called security out of this mutual sacrifice, possibly even without making absolutely sure it is mutually understood. Possibly more in hope than expectation.
After all, it's the only code of practice that we can easily subscribe to that delivers this type of mutual control.

And yet, I have heard of the concept of open marriages. Indeed I once spent 5 or 6 hours on a trans-American flight talking to an international porn star who was very happily married. As a result I have yet to be convinced that the traditional approach is any more successful a recipe than a more modern one.

For me though, I am a traditional guy.
I surely don't need to prove it, but I play my internet torrent video downloads on an old 12" black and white TV and my up-tempo songs from the hit parade on what can only be described as a basic second-generation iPod.

Surely, it doesn't get much more traditional than that.

The Art

The thing about helping people is that you are a proxy for change. A prostitute for change, I suppose. They must be derived from the same root.
Like Derren Brown. He does a card trick and it is a miracle, but when he gives you the cards and gets you to do the same effect and stands back, well then miracle is too small a word.

If you are a doctor and you give the patient the tools to get better, not just pretend that you are the answer (or you are the tool!) then you're doing the best possible thing.
The subject sequences their own success. There are negotiating their own way.
They're getting better and the only person they have to really credit is themselves.
Is there any better success than that?
A success unencumbered by gratitude or, in the UK at least, cost.

And of course you as the instigator can sit there perfectly.
Perfectly ungratified.
Perfectly poor. Well, not really poor but compared to the level of achievement...

And because of the nature of the work you maybe frequently abused, insulted, invited for a fight, oh... and occasionally killed, if not you then a colleague, well… maybe this is warfare, after all.

Maybe this is what Sun Tzu was on about.
Maybe those of us cowards who've chosen a sedentary role and even shied at its claims that it is vocational.

Maybe.

Maybe some of us are soldiers after all.

The Twenty-Ninth

I'm going to take a few standing jumps this year. (Why is that not an Olympic sport? It could be hilarious. There's precious little comedy at the Olympics. We need more theatre sports).
I'm going to make a hop and skip in a new direction, maybe two.

Some things I feel as though I've been taking a tentative run up to for a while now.
But in one or two, my step has faltered, I've stumbled and I've fallen down a bit.

Anyway, 2012 feels like the right time to do just about everything.

Why don't you join me?
Because this is the year the world didn't really end, but changed like never before.

The is the year of opportunity, the chance to take off and the possibility of jubilee.

This is the year you were there.

This... is your leap year.

Bigger on the Inside

I saw a man with belly pains today.
It's an enlarged liver, he told me, clutching below his rib cage on the left-hand side.
I was a bit confused.
"But your liver is on the right-hand side" I said.

Exactly, he replied.

The Confessional

I see Gok Wan is telling people who have an eating disorder to come clean and own up today.
How many times can one man out himself?
Presumably this request is to make him feel better about his own eating disorders.

Well, in the modern spirit of the age, here I go... ahem..

Last night I had a piece of chocolate cake after 9pm.
There I said it.

Actually, it's a bit of a weight off....

Sleeping Draft

I have written a little visual induction for a little bit of auto-hypnosis.

Hypnosis, of course, means sleep which is what I want you to do so why not try this tonight to get you off to sleep.

• Get yourself comfortable in a position where you can doze off and close your eyes.
• In the extremes of your peripheral vision of your closed right eye, you notice a white dove.
• The dove is taking off and at the same time you notice a mirror image on the left-hand side of another dove taking off.
• The two doves are in the extremes of your vision but they rise up like the final third of a circle as you look straight down the middle.
• Take a deep breath as you look up as far as possible while they arch gracefully and then swoop down.
• You are staring straight ahead.
• Relax as they get closer enjoying their steady flight in the grey sky.
• You see them in the distance almost at midline and they turn toward you, tiny little specks that are going to come down gently towards you.
• They won't get much bigger than specks but they will land on your nose.
• When they do you will be asleep.
• Focus on them.
• Concentrate on their gentle progress.
• Allow your focus to drift. Gaze at them but start looking through them.
• At them then through them.
• Notice their slow steady progress further down deeper
• Getting closer but never growing much in size.
• Allow your eyes to lose focus.
• Realise that by the time they're close enough to reach you will be asleep.
• Repeat, slower.

Inside Out

I wonder if there is a danger of bringing the sort of questions you might use at work home with you.
I reckon a lot of managers will be trained to use such an approach, without any consideration of the line I'm about to take.
I reckon a lot of people would highly recommend the practice of inspected reflection (ask any GP appraisee) but is it really fair? Or reasonable?

Imagine such an approach by a gruff manager. You may be naive enough to think your response isn't going to be used against you.

Imagine being asked by somebody who isn't very good at their job.
Imagine, as they badly perform and mimic your answer later in a less favourable, more critical tone, prefixed by the words "and you know what she said next? or "and you know what he said then?".

So this is the key question... "How do you feel about that?"
I think reflexively you'd want to reply.
But should you?

Doesn't your internal state belong absolutely to you and you alone?
Yes, you might choose to share feelings with people with whom you've built up a relationship, but be very careful who you do that with.
We've surrendered too much privacy already.

Are you obliged to give it up simply in response to a direct question?
Isn't it an incredible arrogance to ask?
Isn't it an incredibly rude approach?
Think about it.
And could you honestly find a polite way to decline this interrogation that someone wouldn't find offensive?
Largely because they were dumb enough to think they'd been perfectly reasonable in asking?

Is it reasonable to hold a conversation like a psychiatrist, or talk to a friend like a busy GP?
Or do we actually have to be very careful about that sort of thing?
How do you feel about that?
Eh?
How do you feel?
Tell me.
Tell me now.

So that is the request paraphrased - "Tell me your internal private feelings and do it now".
The problem with direct questions is they appear to give direct answers.
But they don't.
They can just as easily generate untruth as truth.
It's a short hop from there to the sort of checklist mentality that discredited NHS management, and Health and Safety amongst other inglorious institutions.

So where does ownership of yourself begin?
I reckon it begins at the nipples, chest high, skin level.
Anything proximal to that point I own and you have no right.
If I choose to donate an organ, I'll let you know.
It used to be that in polite company, one didn't discuss religion or politics. While most people with half a brain now wear their atheism as a badge of honour, I still wouldn't expect to be asked about my political persuasion, assuming I had any. It's just the last flicker of a memory called politeness.

So anything from my skin inwards is mine.
Are we agreed?

Everything beyond that we can share.

You can borrow my cardigan, if you like.

Bleedin' Marvellous

A brilliant victory for old timer Steve Davis yesterday and fantastic win for Stephen Hendry today against the current young upstart Snooker Masters champion today.

I see sport's eternally compelling underdog stories as having a lot in common with the pain of third degree piles.

They both make the human spirit sore.

Snakes and Ladders

Of course, sometimes it's trickier than that.
Sometimes life is just a plod. Sometimes it's wading through treacle.
How do you cope with that?..

Well.... you plod.

It doesn't matter how quickly or slowly, you just do what you can. Plod to the beat of a funereal march if you want but plod on anyway.
And do it because well, because that's your job today. That's your privilege and your duty.

Life's a game of roulette.
And as every medical student who goes to the local casino occasionally on a Friday night, even if it is largely because they used to give you a free egg mayonnaise sandwich, realises, there is one simple truth.
You can be wiped out.

All you need is eight reds in a row and a positive feeling of inevitability towards black.
And the run of bad luck can continue.
It can even go on dialling up red forever. Every spin until the end of time itself could come up red.
Nothing in the laws of nature prevent that.
And there isn't a soul in the universe that wouldn't crumble at it.

But ...of course we have other options, because we don't have to play that game today.
We don't have to play it tomorrow either.
That's why god invented Blackjack.

We can leverage other inspirations - anything from a novel, a photo, an old school exercise book, a word, a play, a joke, a wink.
The trigger might come from buying a pint of milk at the shops or a bun at the bakery.
Or from an advert. A recipe. Youtube.
Interaction of any and every kind.

We don't have to play the same game over and over again.
Your new direction might come from a quote.
Your chink of light from an anecdote or a memory. Perhaps one that reminds you it is an idiot who does the same thing over and over again and expects different results.

Remind yourself and the spell is starting to bend.
Remind yourself again and look, it's breaking.

You can change the game.
You can always return later, rewrite the rules and kick its arse.

You've left old routines behind before.
Games that you loved that lie in the bin, on eBay, under the bed. You didn't even deliberately retire them. It just happened. You just moved on.
Time moved on.
Life moved on.
You could do it then couldn't you? Without even thinking.
You didn't really believe the deskilling myth did you? That's just a lie invented so blue sky thinkers can sell training videos.

There are some days when the sun will shine, the work gets done as though effortless and you could top it all off with running a steeplechase naked over a field of five bar gates and not spill your Pimm's.
And there are some days when you just have to plod.
Ploddy ploddy plod.
And you have other decisions – plod alone or drag someone into the mud with you.
These are decisions only you can make.

So mix up your unique recipe because there are really no metaphors here. Throw in as many little links of inspiration as you can to join the loose ends. Keep plodding and point your nose towards the spring.

In these times, you need to be your own physician.
Just make sure the doctor is in.
Because the monsters are coming anyway.

Einstein's Message from the Moon

Product Warning

Here is a tip for all you fellow purchasers of the MacLeans Cool mint mouthwash. Particularly that subset who are also are partial to a spot of Radox Stress Relief Rosemary & Eucalyptus Bath Soak, which as you will know has an identical colour and similar bottle.

When you next fancy a rinse, even though you are happy you know your way round your own bathroom, I recommend you always remember to turn the light on anyway.

Don't chance it.

There's no reason for any more people to suffer.

Powerplay

I don't know about you but I like to harp on quite a lot about strengths and weaknesses.
When meeting somebody new, or going to an interview, or writing a CV (resume), or a website or just talking about myself, I like to be asked what my strengths are. I'm happiest when this is quickly followed up with an opportunity to name any weaknesses that I have. They have to be juicy by the way. Not I work too hard, I'm too nice, I try to save too many animals. Your inquisitor can't get their rocks off with that now, can they? It helps if you spice it up a bit with a bit of genuinely performed self-doubt. If you're into Am Dram you're halfway there.
To the right person, really layering it on will do no end of good.
You'll come over great.

If you're short of weaknesses of course you may have to lie. For god's sake don't count that as a weakness otherwise you end up in a never-ending loop which could implode on its own futility.
I think I like this S&W approach partly because it's a referential twist on S&M. But mostly because it's a great way of communicating significant information, and I'm always surprised about how normal it feels.

So if you are meeting somebody new for the first time why not introduce yourself and ask the person what are their strengths? At the very least it is bound to lead to a terrific conversation and you will go up massively in their estimation. If you have the time to continue the conversation and you're able to take their weaknesses this gives you lots of opportunity to share your strengths. Then you can see if these counteract their weaknesses or indeed see if their weaknesses will in some way complement your strengths.
Or just humiliating them could be great fun too and you can repackage the information as anecdotes to entertain other people with.
If they are fat, it is a real bonus. It really is win-win.

Why not think about starting your own Internet dating agency where you can also go further with lists of Things You Like which will further define your uniquely lovable character.
Then at long last we can get rid of normal abstract communication altogether.

And we will all be a damn sight better off for it.

Postal Blues

It's nice to send out some stamps with pictures on them every now and again.
We tend to do it only a Christmas but they're available several times a year.
Today we have an attractive new set of Roald Dahl stamps. I bought myself a few Charlie and the Chocolate Factories. (And despite ordering them with exactly that phrasing still failed to get a titter out of the counter assistant).

Now there's a first class stamp - with 1st written on it to ensure that nobody in Britain knows the true price of a stamp.
And the other denominations in the set of six are 66p, 68p, 76p, £1, £1.10.
Are you with me so far? The only problem is if you want to send a letter or packet to someone it will cost you 39p, 44p, 55p, 58p, 75p, 65p, 79p, 92p, 90p, £1.09, £1.23, or £1.46.
Pretty much anything but the denominations available.

So why do you think those denominations are not available with pictures of Matilda or The Witches or The Twits or Fantastic Mister Fox or James and the Giant Peach.

Well, I thought I'd find out.

The answer: between them they can be used for Airmail to Europe, Airmail to the World, Airmail under 10 g and the 66p appears to be an inexplicable random filler.

So there you go - a nice set of stamps you can barely use. (There is no domestic second class).

And while we're on lessons of philately, should you make the mistake I've just made and send a relative some toothpicks weighing 12g, knowing that to become a large letter it needs to be 100g then please try to squeeze the envelope first. Otherwise when you eventually realise the packet was 6 mm deep, rather than the permitted 5mm, your mother will be sent to the post office, puts under hot lights, told to pay the difference (22p) and given a £1 fine on your behalf to teach everybody a lesson.

Thanks Royal Mail.
Happy New Year.

Save Our Stereotypes!

I think it's very important that nobody gets carried away with making jokes out of unfortunate situations.

For example you might be a celebrity chef, you're doing a bit of shopping and yes, you fancy a bit of cheese and wine but there's a problem with immediate funding.
Maybe you decide to have some anyway and pay later, is that such a crime?
Is it not the fault of the supermarkets who took away manned checkouts in the first place?

Anyone having a little bit of a joke at somebody's medical condition - a medical condition that a little bit of brie and perhaps a small glass of Chablis might well have alleviated should take a good long look at themselves.

People with a medical condition are not fair game for these jokes. That's why we have the gays and the blacks. They don't have a medical condition. And more importantly they don't mind if you take the mickey out of them. (Though for god's sake don't mention their skin colour or homosexuality or the police will be round. And quite right too!)

So if any of you find yourself reading a text such as "Why did the chicken cross the road? His head was stuffed in Anthony Worrall Thompson's pocket" and wrongly think it even vaguely amusing, or having a so-called "laugh" in the pub about poor old Anthony seeking treatment, and then claiming that a simple hair dye should cure the ginger prat, then shame on you!

When it comes to illness, I think we have to draw a line in the sand.
See it for what it really is.
He might have picked up a little Camembert and a drop of Chablis in Tesco but this wasn't an act against our society.
This was Wozza fighting back against the dirty womanising French.

Change / Pure / Marvellous.

We're living in a culture of psychology, talking therapies and  on the other side of things (apparently) is traditional medicine.
I'm going to cut to the chase. We need to find the point where change is made.
How often have you heard "but he doesn't want to change", "he's not ready for change".

And how often have we walked away, warm and justified in our own failure. In our own pathetic bleatings of inadequacy.
The world keeps turning, we collect our salary less income tax and national insurance, and nothing changes, nobody gets better.

But don't you see? You already have it.

You've made the diagnosis.

(Does anybody remember diagnosis? It was the bit you did before you installed your plan of management, now consigned frequently to history. Safety netting while laudable is not a replacement for diagnosis).

And by diagnosis I mean your best most brilliant guess. Your juiciest judgement that simultaneously drinks in the best cuts of your learning and the best bits of your character.

There we go - I said it. My blood pressure's dropped 10 points and I'm feeling a lot better. I owe you one.

The treatment that was needed was that change had to be supplied. (That has an echo of a line from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that I bumped into over the New Year period where Henry Jr says - "Knowledge was their Treasure".  I have capitalised the Tee for effect. Shoot me!
(Footnote: in the 10 seconds I spent looking for the exact quote, the most generous comment I found referred to this line as a polished turd. I won't tell you about the others)

Anyway just to remind you where we were before George Lucas got in the way...the treatment that was needed was that change had to be supplied.
Not antibiotics.
Not beta blockers.
Not proflavin on 5 metres of hilarious gauze.
But change.

So you've made the diagnosis.
Good.
Now what's your plan Poindexter?

What, and I mean exactly what, are you going to do about it?


Footnote 2: I've learnt a few things about myself today.
1. Footnotes should probably appear at the Foot.
2. I don't recognise a polished turd when I see one.