'Solitude vivifies; isolation kills' Joseph Roux

Corrie and Loneliness and Solitude

Coronation Street celebrates it’s 50th birthday later this year and I must say that it seems to be aging rather better than I am. It is still relevant, topical and very funny and has some of the best writers crafting the characters and their adventures. I am always amazed that the depressing and ugly EastEnders beats Corrie each year on the awards circuit. Corrie Rules in my house.




The clip of Hayley and her bridesmaids rushing to the wedding after being uncoupled from the steam train (long story) on a Charlie Chaplin type trolley was hilarious. It was a classic scene and the sight of Hayley, looking incredibly regal, and her bedraggled bridesmaids hurtling along the rails was priceless. In last nights episodes the writers managed to mix comedy, suspense and drama and covered several themes including:

Civil Marriage –

Roy and transgender Hayley, who have being living as man and wife for over ten years are now able to formalise and celebrate their union and their wedding speeches were little gems of love and astute observation. Earlier Hayley had been reminded, by Mary the mad Wedding Czar, that she had a wealth of friends. Through gritted teeth Mary, quoting Mother Teresa said ‘The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved. Hayley, you are a rich woman. A millionaire’ she said. My son looked up from the lap top, where he was pretending to listen to Rap on YouTube but was in reality hanging on to Mary’s every word, and asked ‘What? Has she won the lottery?’ ‘No son,’ I explained. ‘There are many different kinds of wealth’.

Bullying -

‘Ah, whispering, furtive looks – reminds me of my school days and spit on my anorak’ sighed Roy when the wedding morning surprise was being discussed by his best man and the usher.

Lesbian Love -

The writers also covered teenage love. Two pretty young girls are ‘in love’ with each other and although they have longs sessions hidden in bushes kissing they have not actually gone any further. The girls are also committed Christians (which in itself is an interesting story line) and the story of young love is being handled sensitively by the whole team. This innocent infatuation is bound to cause a scandal among the Streets more conservative residents and they were sadly ‘outted’ last night. So of course the whole subject of homophobia and parental disapproval was tackled… all before the adverts!

Jealousy -

Mary Taylor, played by Pattie Clark, is one of the best soap characters ever invented and she excelled in last nights episodes in a quietly restrained manner. Mary is given some of the best lines by the writers (there was one last week when she refused a belated invitation to join the hen party because ‘I treat myself to a fish supper every third Friday of the month. So while I enjoy my marine feast you all go ahead and enjoy your debauchery’) and she delivers them in a dead pan way that just about hides the volcano of emotions that the viewer can see bubbling away below the surface.

Lies –

A fake pregnancy. The great thing about soap secrets is they are ALWAYS found out. This one sooner that later.

Loneliness -



It is hard to believe that William Roache, who plays Ken Barlow, is 78. Yes 78! Ken has been in the soap from the very beginning and has enjoyed some of the best story lines, and the most attractive women over the years - including Joanna Lumbley and, more recently, Stephanie Beecham. For the 50th Anniversay of the soap the writers have planned even more exciting adventures for Ken. One of which has had the foundations laid over the last few episodes by the discovery (by Nosy Norris, another wonderful character, looking for a mouse) of a lost letter written 50 years ago in which Ken's first love asks that he give their relationship another chance. Having never received the letter Ken embarked on a life literally littered with women, only to end up with chain smoking, chain belt wearing dreary Deirdre. At the moment Ken and Deirdre (whose relationship would not look out of place in an episode of ‘Human Remains’) are living together but not speaking, each cocooned in their own angry, resentful lonely space. Something my own parents frequently did. For weeks at a time. To quote Germaine Greer ‘Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate’ A new word I have learnt 'propinquity'.

There are many types of loneliness. This is an interesting article about the craving for solitude:

Author Erin Kelly thought she craved isolation – until she got it -

I was born with it – a need for solitude, for space, for silence. The call of my own company, if left unanswered, grows in volume until it is louder than friendship, family and love. I have lived with many people – friends and family – and bewildered most of them by retreating to my room at 7pm to read, or just be. Alone-time is as essential to me as food or sleep, and if I don’t have it, I simply cannot cope with the tumult of everyday life. Two years ago, I was granted my heart’s desire when a friend lent me her off-grid house in a tiny town on the Suffolk coast for free. I was ecstatic: it would just be me, a cat and a pile of books for four weeks. Like a woman who convinces herself that her whole life will receive an upgrade when she shifts that last half-stone, I was sure that if only I had enough time to myself, I would be happier, better. I anticipated it as eagerly as any luxury holiday. With no telephone, Internet or television, I experienced true solitude for the first time. By the second morning I was in the grip of an odd, restless, freewheeling sensation that I was reluctant to identify as loneliness. When I began singing folk songs to the cat, it was the first sign that something wasn’t quite right.

My behaviour grew more out of character each day. Without another person to frame my time around, all structure disappeared from my life. With no one to share meals with, I either forgot to eat or forgot to stop eating. I stopped showering and started crying; the tears lasted for 48 hours. When they dried, I still wasn’t sure why I had cried them.

I don’t watch much television but I was astonished by how much I missed it. I’d been using it as a kind of companion that entertained me without demanding anything. My laziness saddened me, and brought me to phase two of my alone-time experience: self-loathing. I despaired about everything, from the size of my thighs to the heat of my temper. I had always blamed the things I didn’t like about myself on a lack of me-time. If only I had more space, I wouldn’t be so irritable. If only I didn’t have to work so hard, I could go to the gym. If I didn’t have to keep up with family and friends, I would have time to write a book and not just a few abandoned chapters. Alone in Suffolk, there was nowhere to hide. The silence wasn’t filled with peace and creativity, as I had fantasised: it was filled with insecurity, loneliness and unease. It was a wretched, desolate time. And yet something stopped me from cycling into town and picking up the phone. While my feelings were unpleasant, I had to learn from them.

One concern came round again and again, like a broken spoke on a wheel: my unwritten novel. The realisation came to me on a cycle ride along the beach and made me skid to a halt in the sand: it was easier to nurture the dream than to risk the reality.
Alone for a month, I had nowhere to hide. The silence wasn't filled with peace, as I had fantasised, but with insecurity. If I didn’t try, I could not live with myself for the remaining fortnight of my stay in Suffolk, or back home in London.

I began to commit to the page the story I had been daydreaming for years. My first keystrokes were tentative but within hours I was hooked. I had found a way of dealing with the silence that wasn’t strange or self-destructive. With the discipline of writing came a loose routine – swimming in the sea every morning, porridge for breakfast, and writing, writing, writing. At the end of the month, I felt saner than I had for years. I’ll probably always be a bit unsociable, curmudgeonly even, but the difference was that I now accepted and acknowledged it. It was liberating.

I was more tolerant of others because I had learned to tolerate myself, and keener for company because I had felt its lack. When I was reunited with my husband he couldn’t believe the change in me, and my gratitude for him. I was so pleased to see him, I followed him from room to room like a puppy. Ironically, he was desperate for some space himself, having been on the road with a theatre company for months. When he insisted on going for a walk on his own, I got a taste of what it must have been like to be close to me.

That voice which called me to solitude? I don’t listen to it much any more. Another voice came along to drown out all others. I found out that I had been pregnant with my first child since the day before I left for Suffolk (which partly explains the tears and the binge-eating). Now a spirited, enchanting toddler Marine is always with me, whether she is present or not. It will be years now before I can be alone like that again – and I don’t mind a bit. I am grateful for the experience because it taught me that you can’t live with others until you can live with yourself – and I am equally grateful that it won’t happen again.

Solitude -




Having spent a busy week last week and a weekend that was filled with people I am looking forward to some solitude this week. Yesterday morning as I was getting ready to go out my son asked how long I was going to be. 'I will be back sometime this evening' I told him 'Are you thinking of asking J round? 'No' he replied 'I just want a day to myself'.

So - What Are the Benefits of Solitude?

Freedom – the opportunity to do what you want, when you want to do it. Whether that be to curl up with a book, take a long relaxing bath or to listen to music.

Focus – the opportunity to think clearly, without interruption. The chance to write a journal or a poem.

Familiarity – with yourself. The opportunity to become more self aware.

And the risks? Maybe becoming selfish, unsocial and unapproachable. To become too self absorbed and, ultimately, lonely.

Finding that once you have got to know yourself you don't like who you are.

Depression?

The secret is balance.

Reasons to be Single

Human Remains


Somehow I missed this when it was first aired 10 years ago but today, flicking through BT Vision, I came across this excellent dark comedy written by Rob Brydon and Julia Davis. (Note an early young 'Nessa')



Although a very black comedy the series is well made and funny and showcases Brydons and Davis' huge talent and versatility.

My friend Wiki says:

Human Remains (2000) was a BBC television comedy series consisting of six episodes written by and starring Rob Brydon (from Marion and Geoff) and Julia Davis (who later found fame in Nighty Night).

Each edition documented the relationship of a different couple, all of whom were played by Brydon and Davis and all but two of whom were extremely unhappy, in the style of a fly on the wall documentary. The series ran to critical acclaim.

A black comedy, much of the show’s humour derived from very bleak ideas and situations. Domestic violence, chronic depression and death all feature prominently throughout the six episodes. Julia Davis later used some of these themes in her solo project, Nighty Night.

The 'two couples' that weren't unhappy were, I would say, a touch mad - so all in all the series is not one that promotes marriage. Or relationships. Or love. Human Remains is a hilarious concoction of despair, madness, perversion and I suppose - hope. Bryson and Davis are great character actors and their timing is spot on.

The theme music 'Don't Want to Know' by John Martyn is a haunting sound.

And I don't want to know about evil
Only want to know about love
I don't want to know about evil
Only want to know about love.



I love stumbling on wonderful new things to watch and marvel at and being introduced to musical talent that has somehow passed me by, although I have heard many cover versions of Martyn's 'May You Never' including this Clapton cover:

You're just like a great strong brother of mine
And you know that I love you true
And you never talk dirty behind my back
And I know that there's those that do.



Wonderful stuff.

Flirtations

I thought I had lost my flirt and this concerned me so much that I looked up ‘Flirting’ on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia, says on flirting, the following:

Flirting is a common form of social interaction whereby one person obliquely indicates a romantic or sexual interest towards another. It can consist of conversation, body language, or brief physical contact. It may be one-sided or reciprocated (encouraged) with intentions of getting to know that person on a higher level. Flirting may involve speaking and acting in a way that suggests greater intimacy than is generally considered appropriate to the relationship (or to the amount of time the two people have known each other), without actually saying or doing anything that breaches any serious social norms. This may be accomplished by communicating a sense of playfulness or irony. Double entendres, with one meaning more formally appropriate and another more suggestive, may be used. While some of the subconscious signs are universal across cultures, flirting etiquette varies significantly across cultures which can lead to misunderstandings. There are differences in how closely people should stand (proxemics), how long to hold eye contact, and so forth.

Wikipedia goes on to list the types of flirting which is useful as I was able to check in minute detail if my flirt had really disappeared.

TYPES OF FLIRTING

1. Eye contact, batting eyelashes, staring, winking, etc. (batting? batting? I flutter mine occasionally and only ever ever wink at humans under the age of two.)
2. "Protean" signals, such as touching one's hair. (hands up to this one but I am sure it is just a habit and it has nothing to do with flirting)
3. Giggling, or laughing encouragingly at any slight hint of intimacy in the other's behavior. (hmmm, I am always laughing. But that is because most of my friends are very funny, and intimacy covers quite a lot of human interaction)
4. Casual touches; such as a woman gently touching a man's arm during conversation. (I keep touching my friend Gs leg but that is because the booths at work are very small and he is a big guy. I also try to touch C a lot as we are trying to encourage her to be tactile!)
5. Smiling suggestively (I smile a lot but suggestively? what does that look like? I suppose it's in the eyes and not the mouth.)
6. Sending notes, poems, or small gifts (is this flirting? Sharing thoughts, ideas and experiences or treating a friend to a little gift is surely just friendship?)
7. Flattery (regarding beauty, sexual attractiveness). (I do this all the time, to both men and women. But is that flirting? I just want some people to feel good about themselves.)
8. Online chat, texting and other one-on-one and direct messaging services (I have not done this for a long long time and when I did I never considered it flirting. Flirting suggests an innocence that I never had when I engaged in this activity)
9. Footsie, a form of flirtation in which people use their feet to play with each others' feet. This generally takes place under a table or in bed while rubbing feet. Participants often remove their shoes and play barefoot; however, it can also be played in socks, or wearing shoes. (I have NEVER done this. They may not have nice feet)
10. Teasing (I have never been able to tease.)
11. Staging of "chance" encounters (Isn’t this stalking as opposed to flirting?)
12. Imitating of behaviors, e.g. taking a drink when the other person takes a drink, changing posture as the other does, etc. (This is an unconsious one, maybe I do this. But if you admire someone you may imitate their behaviour without meaning to flirt. I will have to check this one out.)
13. Coyness, affectedly shy or modest, marked by cute, coquettish, or artful playfulness, e.g. pickup lines. (I blush… what can I say.)
14. Giving flying Kisses. (This is also something I only do to humans under a certain age.)
15. Singing love songs in presence of the Girl/Boy. (I would NOT do this if I wanted to attract someone! My voice would have the totally opposite effect from flirting.)
16. Maintaining very short distance during casual talking. (I am not comfortable with people ‘in my space’…unless it is in a booth of course)

From this list I am able to deduce that I haven’t actually lost my flirt. I have never actually had a flirt in the first place. This is a relief as, along with being responsible for the occasional loss of memory (what was I going to write today?), I thought the ‘change’ may have taken away my ability to flirt.

So that's alright then.

'I've Heard'

I’ve heard -
Some people can hear the colour of a word
Some say they can even taste the sound

I’ve heard
Some people can hear music in a single word
Some say they can even see them dance

I’ve heard
Some people hear words that act as anchors
Some say they keep them safe

I’ve heard
Some people hear words that propel them
Some say they can even make them fly

I’ve heard
Some people hear words that act like kites
Some say they can give them life.

Anchors And Propellers….And Kites

Anchors are the words and phrases that help keep you grounded:

‘Look before you leap.’

Propellers are the words and phrases that inspire you to leap into the unknown:

‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’

And Kites? Kites are the ideal strings of words. The words and phrases that comfort, replenish, invigorate and inspire. Words that are uttered to you by others that impel you to venture into adventures of the mind and body but, at the same time, offer you the comfort of a safe haven.

Cherish your Kite flyers.

Rat Diary: Biting the Bullet

Rat Diary: Biting the Bullet

Biting the Bullet

Last week I watched a documentary called ‘Stolen Brides’. It s a shame that this excellent documentary had this tabloid type name which sensationalised the programme in a way that did not reflect the seriousness of the subject. How can the atrocities that are carried out against women still happening in 2010? In a week where, in Britain, as huge fuss was being made about the small number of women who are CEOs of major companies, this programme revealed the Chechen ‘tradition’ of kidnapping women of the street and forcing them into marriage. The mobile phone footage of women being dragged off the street was shocking. On the surface it appeared to be absolutely horrifying but the truly horrifying thing is how, a few months down the line, these women all reported that they were now happy about the situation. What does that say about the opportunities for women in the former Eastern Block? What was really scary was the footage of dead prostitutes scattered on wasteland and filmed by a female human rights activist, who a couple of weeks after taking part in the programme, was found dead, shot in head, execution style. The security force that surrounds the President of the country, a thuggish man in his late 20s, is suspected of responsibility for these atrocities.

There were, for me, similarities with another documentary that I watched a few weeks ago, ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’. Both programmes showed women, dressed in full bridal regalia, looking terrified and trapped – about to marry a man/boy they had only met once or twice and had never spent any time alone with. Both wedding parties were strictly segregated on a gender basis, the male elders meeting to discuss matters of importance, and then – for the teenagers – dancing and the chance for the males to identify possible future brides. The one difference is at least the gypsy brides were in the same room as their intended as they made their vows. The Chechen brides had to cover their bridal veil and gown with a blanket as they said their vows as the Imam declared their vows would not be pure unless ‘they were covered up’. Their grooms were in a different room. And as far as I know the gypsy brides did not have to suffer the indignity of having to succumb to a exorcism for having the cheek to resist the prospect of marrying some bloke who has dragged you off the street as you were minding your own business and had only popped out to buy some tea bags.

'Exorcisms' performed on Chechen stolen brides By Lucy Ash

A woman who was stolen for marriage a few years ago receives an exorcism to treat her depression. Dozens of cars were parked outside. Crowds thronged the pavement, desperate to get through the metal gates. In the courtyard women were filling plastic bottles and Jerry cans with water blessed by the imam. As I took off my shoes, I noticed a marble plaque on the wall:

"There is no illness which Allah cannot cure".

Inside, huddles of families were camped out on sofas. There were many tearful faces. Men paced up and down. It might have been an ordinary hospital waiting room until a girl started shrieking and contorting. A man scooped her up and carried her off into a room off the landing. Spine-chilling yells came from behind the frosted glass door but nobody turned a hair. Gradually they were stifled by incantations from the Koran. Most of the patients here are young women and many have suffered breakdowns after being forced into marriage. They are brought to be exorcised and turned into Chechen-style Stepford Wives. The Centre for Islamic Medicine is an imposing red brick mansion near the centre of Grozny. It was once the headquarters of the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev - Russia's number one enemy and the man who masterminded the school hostage siege in Beslan in 2004. Like many buildings in the Chechen capital, the centre has been expensively renovated. Two wars for independence from Russia reduced Grozny to rubble.

Turning a blind eye

Since the ceasefire, the Kremlin has bankrolled a reconstruction programme and the main street, renamed Putin Avenue, is now unrecognisable with its pavement cafes, designer shops and sushi bars. But Ramzan Kadyrov, President of this once-rebel republic in southern Russia, has also built an extensive Muslim infrastructure. It includes one of the world's biggest mosques, religious schools and an Islamic university. The medical centre is run by Kadyrov's personal doctor. In its first year, it claimed to have cured more than 60,000 people suffering from "psycho-neurological diseases".

Centre for Islamic Medicine

After 15 years of fighting, there is no shortage of traumatised people in Chechnya.
Mr Kadyrov once fought the Russians but is now their key ally in keeping a lid on the insurgency in the North Caucasus. In return, the Kremlin turns a blind eye to allegations of torture and violence committed by his personal militia. Kadyrov routinely denies these. His officials also deny that the Chechen leader puts Islamic law above Russian law. But in practice Kadyrov has a free hand to impose his own version of what he calls "traditional Chechen Islam". Imams deemed disloyal to the regime are summarily dismissed. Gangs of men dressed in black, from his newly-opened Centre for Spiritual and Moral Education, roam the streets lecturing passers-by about the evils of alcohol and the right kind of Islam. Young men accused of siding with rebel fighters have disappeared from their beds at night never to be seen again. Their relatives have been arrested and their homes burned to the ground.

Bride stealings

Women too are targeted by Mr Kadyrov's reforms. Mullah Alvi investigates whether a 17-year-old girl was stolen or chose to go to her new husband. In 2007, in violation of Russian law, he issued an edict banning women and girls without a headscarf from schools, universities and other public buildings. Since June, unidentified men with paintball guns have driven round the centre of Grozny shooting at girls with uncovered heads. On state television, Mr Kadyrov said he did not know who was responsible for the attacks but added: "When I find them, I will express my gratitude."

When I met the Chechen president in the capital's football stadium last summer, he told me: "Women are so much more interesting when they are covered up." Officials nearby smiled awkwardly as Kadyrov boasted that Chechen men can take "second, third and fourth wives" and that polygamy, illegal in Russia, was the best way to revive his war-ravaged republic. According to some estimates, one in five Chechen marriages begins when a girl is snatched off the street and forced into a car by her future groom and his accomplices. The internet is full of videos of these "bride stealings" set to romantic music. More often than not, the girl is pressured into marrying her kidnapper to preserve family honour and avoid triggering a blood feud. Some are resigned to their fate and make a surprising success of their marriages. For others, that is far from the case.

Lipkhan Bazaeva, who runs an organisation called Women's Dignity, says brides are often brought in by mothers-in-law who believe the girl is possessed by evil spirits or "genies". "Just imagine - her son has stolen a girl he liked and married her. What they want is a nice, quiet, hard-working woman in the house, not someone who's feeling down from the moment she wakes up and who's hysterical in the evening. So they take them to the mullah."

Mullah Mairbek Yusupov is a small bearded man dressed in a green surgeon-style top and skull-cap. He appeared pleasant enough to me, softly spoken, until I saw him at work. The patient was lying blindfolded on her back, wearing a long, flowery robe. Mairbek began yelling verses from the Koran into her ear and beating her with a short stick.

"She feels no pain," he said. "We beat the genie and not the patient."

The woman, probably in her early twenties, was writhing on the bed: "Shut up! Leave me alone," she growled. Mairbek claimed this strange voice belonged to the genie possessing her. He shouted back: "Take your claws out of this woman. Aren't you ashamed? Go on! Leave her body like you did last time, through her toe." With a deadpan expression, Mairbek explained that the genie inside the girl was 340 years old. He was not a Muslim - he was a Russian man called Andrei and he had fallen in love with his victim. The genie was so jealous that he made her leave her husband. "It was a tough case," he added. This was already the seventh time he had treated this patient. Later I spoke to the girl's aunt, who had also watched the exorcism. She said her niece was stolen at the age of 16 and had since been through two divorces."She wants to be alone all the time," she sighed. "She doesn't want to talk or see anyone and nothing makes her happy." The girl's despairing family were hoping doctors at the Centre could turn her into an obedient wife so they could marry her off again.

A few days later I met Marryat, another patient. She had been stolen for marriage but found her kidnapper was already married to somebody else. Now she is convinced that his first wife put a curse on her in the form of two genies. When she split from her husband, Marryat had to give up her baby son. According to Chechen traditions, after divorce children are raised by the husband and in-laws. Former wives almost never get custody despite their rights under Russian law. It is considered shameful to go to court. I asked Mairbek if he always blamed the genies for marital breakdown. Perhaps, I suggested, some women are traumatised by being abducted and forced into marriage or by losing their children? Mairbek was dismissive.

"We have so many young girls with these problems. I had a patient today whose genie tells her she should divorce, that her husband doesn't love her; that she shouldn't stay in an unhappy marriage for the sake of the children."

"But that's just the genie trying to get its own way and we have to put a stop to that," he said.

Whatever I felt about his methods, Mairbek did not strike me as a sadistic man.
I was struck by the readiness of patients and relatives alike to accept the treatment, and even to come back for more. The therapy is a way of making them accept, or at least deal with, what has happened. But, it is most of all, an expression of their powerlessness. The tragedy of these women is that they have nowhere else to go.

Thank fuck my daughter lives in a country, and in a culture, where only a minority of women get to be in charge of big businesses. It could be worse.

I'm On My Way To Where I'm Going - 'Stay Too Long'

The second thing I love about the Plan B CD 'The Defamation of Strickland Banks' is that the CD looks like a 45 record. As does Lou Rawls Greatest Hits but the Plan B disc even has record crackling sounds on some of the tracks. The first thing I love is that the CD cover is reminiscent of Elton Johns 'Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player' album. I am such a sucker for nostalgia.






The third and best thing is that the first track is about cunnilingus.

I remember when I did you wrong, made you cry (I made you cry)
Made you feel so sad, I knew I had to apologise (apologise)
So I pulled you close, baby, and I laid you down on the bed
Took off your clothes, baby. Girl, you know the rest

My love goes down
My love goes down, down, down, yeah baby
Sweep your feet right off the ground, yeah Mama
I got that real love for you now, yeah baby
Know I got that real love for you now
Yeah yeah yeah yeah

A ballard from Plan B and beautifully sung by Drew. Now those lyrics may say that he is singing 'I got that real love for you now, yeah baby' but I hear 'I got that pillow for you now, yeah baby'.

Wikipedia says of the album, which is a tells the story of Strickland Banks, a soul singer who ends up in prison for a crime he did not commit -

The album tells the story from the first-hand perspective of Strickland Banks, a fictional character played by Plan B. The album's opening tracks, "Love Goes Down" and "Writing's on the Wall", are love songs sung by Strickland Bank at a concert, and are likely to be about his girlfriend, to whom he refers later in the album. "Stay Too Long" follows him and his entourage as they celebrates the success of his concert with a night out which culminates in him having a one night stand with a woman. In "She Said" we learn that this woman is obsessed with his music and believes herself to be in love with him. He rejects her so she alleges that he raped her. The subsequent trial results in his incarceration, and in "Welcome to Hell" he is sent to prison, and much of the rest of the album is about his experience inside. Throughout the course of the songs "Hard Times" and "The Recluse" we see Strickland get more isolated and insecure throughout as he struggles to cope with prison life. This results in his abuse at the hands of other prisoners, resulting in him purchasing a shiv on the prison black market throughout the course of "Traded In My Cigarettes". In "Prayin'" he is confronted by another prisoner who attacks him. With the help of another inmate Strickland kills the attacker in self-defence, with the other inmate taking the blame, and is burdened with this guilt during "Darkest Place". The penultimate tracks, "Free" and "I Know A Song" detail initally his anger, then his acceptance of his life inside prison. The last track, "What You Gonna Do" Strickland is in court again as new evidence has been brought up on his case. The album finishes with the listener not sure of whether he is sent back to prison or released, leaving it open to interpretation.

Some of the tracks are superb and some just so so. There is a real Smokey Robinson sound going on but Ben Drew has taken the Motown sound and updated it with relevant rap, funky hip hop, soul and a big band sound. It sounds live, alive and at times frantic. Strangely this works. I love the video for 'She Said' and keeping still in the car when it's playing is a real challange. 'Stay Too Long' is a great piece of work, and 'Darkest Place' paints a vivid picture of despair. I haven't seen the film 'Harry Brown' yet, in which Drew plays the worse kind of thug to Michael Caines vigilante character Harry, but I'm told Drew is truly obnoxious and vile in the film. So the boy can act, sing, and write. One to watch.

I

I want

things to slow down
time to think
the chance to sit
to be touched

I need

a walk in the woods
another day off
a chance to explore
and a kiss

I wish

every day brought promise
each action was kind
enlightenment surrounded me
enjoyment of life was mine

KC

Cold Passion

His cold passion Saps my strength
Making me Weak
Taking me to a places
That I don't want to go
Places filled with
Anger, Fear and Regret

His cold passion Sears through my thoughts
Leaving behind it a trail of
Disharmony and Discontent
Taking in its wake
All Reason and Resolve

His cold passion fills me with Fear
Immunity has proved to be impossible
Instead, with each exposure
The Uncertainty it evokes
Becomes a Living thing

His cold passion burns away my Pride
Making me Powerless and Vulnerable
And I think that maybe when it melts
I will be Free and able to breathe again

But I am Wrong...
His Cold Passion fuels my Desire

Katie Clapton

I'd be Lost without my Blogger

Another wonderful, atmospheric, interesting Sherlock puzzle and the last in the series. If you can call three a series. Wonderful stuff. Ended just like Saturday morning pictures.

I have fallen in lust with Sherlock. He looks just like a Lion with wide spaced eyes and a shiny mane of hair. His face is not given to smiling but when he does, wow, that smile is so unexpected and so alien to his normal face, that it sweeps you away and makes you want to do whatever it takes to make it happen again.

But I digress. Sherlock is definitely on the Autistic Spectrum. He has a phenomenal brain and stores information in the way a computer does. And he accesses it in much the same way. He has very little empathy, 'not much cop...this caring lark' but balances this, with an appreciation of the universe 'just because I don't care doesn't mean I can't appreciate it'. Sherlock is simply delicious. I want to wear long sweeping black coats and artfully tied scarfs, just like him. Sherlock is a Winter being, Bermuda shorts and Kiss Me Quick hats would look alien on him. He is my kinda guy. I feel sexy and desirable in my Winter wear and unattractively hot and pink in the Summer. Is he emotionally intelligent? Maybe not, but his instinctive intelligence counter balances this. Social Intelligence? Again no evidence of this. But you get the feeling that with a little effort, time and guidance Sherlock could be the the whole package.

The final episode spoke of stolen voices. Which reminded me of Aibileen. Speaking of which it was a pity that Moriarty sounded like Graham Norton but otherwise the series was faultless. And my London looked beautiful. Even its underbelly.

Things that I have learned this week from the TV. If somebody dies in front of you it is always advisable to call the police and an ambulance. DO NOT hide the body...that will ALWAYS look suspicious.

Which in a roundabout way brings me to 'Lock, Stock and Smoking Barrel'. I had avoided this film for years as I don't cope well with violence but me and my son spent a lovely couple of hours yesterday afternoon watching this incredibly stylelised ofereing from Guy Richie. Great movie with some great lines like 'Could everybody stop getting shot!'

He shoulda said 'Please!'

A child is born on that day and at that hour when the celestial rays are in mathematical harmony with his individual karma. ~Sri Yukteswar

Several times today, for no real or conscious reason, I took the time reflect on how good my life is. I have a nice home, a job I enjoy and that makes me enough money to keep a roof over my head and food on the table. I have a healthy happy family and many friends. There are no major worries to trouble me. I must, at this point, stress that this urge to reflect come out of nowhere and the urge happened several times today. As I reflected on my good fortune I was able to fully appreciate the Buddhist concept of impermanence and how important it was for me to take the time to stop, consider and appreciate what is happening in my life right now. Who knows what is around the corner and how easy, and how sad, would it be, when faced with some upheaval in life, to realise that you hadn't enjoyed the peaceful times when they happened but instead let them pass unacknowledged and uncherished.

So I was completely spooked when, for no real or conscious reason, I read my stars in today's paper. It is over a year since I last read Jonathan Cainer's predictions and I was surprised, given my thoughts today, to read the following:

'Do not dwell on the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate on the present moment.' When Buddha said these words he wasn't just addressing would be seers and sages. Or rather, he was, but he felt that included all of us. And why not? aren't we all ultimately looking for enlightenment, whether we know it or not? But there's only one way that any of us will ever find true happiness - and it's through learning to appreciate the hidden magic of the here and now. Give your heart to what's most important this week and you'll instantly understand what's needed next - and how you can make it happen.

Now I just need an Eureka moment that will tell me what to give my heart to this week!

And Cainer Rocks!

Rat Diary: Voices

Rat Diary: Voices

Voices

At the moment I am reading 'The Help' written by Kathryn Stockett. It is set in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960s.

Kathryn Stockett is a white from the American South, and, in fact, had a black 'nanny' as a child, and the book is about Afro American maids working for white families at the time of the Civil Rights Movement. The story is told from the perspective of three characters: Aibileen Clark, a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson, an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, a young white woman who aspires to be a writer.

According to Wikipedia the book, Stockett's first, 'was rejected by at least 45 literary agents. The Help has since been published in 35 countries and three languages. As of May 27, 2010, it had spent a full year on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list and was sitting at #1.'

In this scene the white women, Skeeter, and Aibileen, one of the black maids, meet to start a series of articles about what is like to be black and live in the South. Skeeter, an 'enlightened white' assumes that Aibileen, although with a story to tell, isn't a 'writer'.

I called Aibileen after Elizabeth gave me the note, and listened hopefully as Aibileen told me her idea – for her to write her own words down and then show me what she’d written. I tried to act excited. But I know I’ll have to rewrite everything she’d written, wasting even more time. I thought it might make it easier if she could see it in typeface instead of me reading it and telling her it can’t work this way.

We smile at each other. I take a sip of my Coke, smooth my blouse. ‘So….’ I say.

Aibileen has a wire-ringed notebook in front of her. ‘Want me to…just go ahead and read?’

‘Sure’ I say.

We both take deep breaths and she begins reading in a slow steady voice.

‘My first white baby to ever look after was named Alton Carrington Speers. It was 1924 and I’d just turned 15 years old. Alton was a long, skinny baby with hair as fine as silk in a corn…’

I begin typing as she reads, her words rhythmic, pronounced more clearly than her usual talk.

‘Every window in that filthy house was painted shut on the inside, even thought the house was big with a wide green lawn. I knew the air was bad, felt sick myself…’

‘Hang on’ I say. ‘I’ve typed wide greem'. I blow on the typing fluid, retype it. ‘Okay, go ahead’.

‘When the mama died six months later’ she reads, ‘of the lung disease’ they kept me on to raise Alton until they moved away to Memphis. I loved that baby and he love me and that’s when I knew I was good at making children feel proud of themselves…’

I hadn’t wanted to insult Aibileen when she told me her idea. I tried to urge her out of it, over the phone. ‘Writing isn’t that easy. And you wouldn’t have time for it anyway Aibileen, not with a full time job.’

‘Can’t be much different than writing my prayers down every night.’

It was the first interesting thing she told me about herself since we started the project, so I’d grabbed the shopping pad in the pantry. ‘You don’t say your prayers then?’

‘I never told anybody that before. Not even Minny. Find I can get my point across a lot better writing em down.’

‘So this is what you do on the weekends?’ I asked. ‘In your spare time?’

I like the idea of capturing her life outside of work, when she wasn’t under the eye of Elizabeth Leefolt.

‘Oh no, I write a hour, sometimes two everyday. Lot of ailing, sick people in this town.’

I was impressed. That was more than I wrote on some days. I told her we’d try it just to get the project going again.

Aibileen takes a breath, a swallow of coke, and reads on.

She backtracks to her first job at thirteen, cleaning the Francis the First silver service at the governor’s mansion. She reads how on her first morning she made a mistake on the chart where you filled in the number of pieces so they’d know you hadn’t stolen anything.

‘I come home that morning, after I’d been fired, and stood outside my house with my new work shoes on. The shoes my mama paid a month’s worth a light bill for. I guess that’s when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. Shame ain’t black, like dirt, like I’d always thought it was. Shame was the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge of speck of work-dirt on it.’

Aibileen looks up to see what I think. I stop typing. I’d expected the stories to be sweet, glossy. I realize I might be getting more than I bargained for. She reads on.

‘…so I go on and get chiffarobe straightened out and before I know it, that little white boy done cut his fingers clean off in that window fan I asked her to take out ten times. I never seen that much red come out of a person and I grab the boy, I grab them four fingers. Tote him to the colored hospital cause I didn’t know where the white one was. But when I got there a colored man stop me and say Is that boy white? ‘The typewriter keys are clacking like hail on a roof. Aibileen is reading faster and I am ignoring my mistakes, stopping her only to put in another page. Every eight seconds, I fling the carriage aside.

‘And I say. Yessuh, and he says them his white fingers? And I say Yessuh, and he say, well, you better tell em he your high yellow cause that colored doctor won’t operate on a white baby in a Negro hospital. And then a white policeman grab me and he say, Now you look a here –

She stops. Looks up. The clacking ceases.

‘What? The policeman said look a here what?’

‘Well, that’s all I put down. Had to catch the bus for work this morning’

I hit the return and the typewriter dings. Aibileen and I look at each other straight in the eye. I think this might actually work.

Although the voices of the black maids in 'The Help' comes across loud and clear they are still spoken through the mouth of white middle class woman. There are black female writers of the 'chic lit' genre but the ones that I have read are no different from the offerings of white 'chic lit' writers. The voices are all middle class and I can't identify with them at all which is usually why I avoid reading books of that genre and would only ever buy one at the airport for some light reading on the plane. The strange thing about this is that this is the only genre I avoid on a class basis. I adore Agatha Christie novels for example, which are stories of incredibly middle and upper class people, and Ms Christie is uncomfortably scathing about the lower classes. I can only think that it is because I certainly don't have the urge or talent to write a detective novel so I don't read those books with a critical eye. Unlike the'chic lits' where I invariably think 'I could write better than this'! Then I remember I don't have an Aga.

So how authentic is 'The Help'? Stockett grew up in the south and at a time when segregation was the norm. She had a black maid who she loved very much. Maybe she heard the black help chat and gossip to each other and maybe someone, someone like Aibileen, confided in her. But it is still not the voice of the black help but a verson of it, spoken by a white middle class woman. But to be fair 'The Help' isn't pretending to be autobiographal, it belongs to the 'chic lit' genre. But what is the history of the authentic southern black voice in literature?

Over the past century southern black literature has evolved from a relatively sparse body of writings, mainly imitative of Euro-American literary forms and thematically focused on the plight of blacks in the South, to a sophisticated literary canon whose forms and meanings coalesce to give it a distinct identity.

Southern black poetry was basically undistinguished before the 1920s. Slave poet George Moses Horton and abolitionist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper were the most prominent southern black voices in antebellum poetry. Some poets, such as Horton, adopted standard Euro-American poetic techniques and seldom wrote about racial issues. Still others, like Harper, used these standard forms primarily to concentrate on issues germane to southern black life. Post-Civil War poets Albery A. Whitman, George M. McClellan, and Joseph S. Cotter, Sr., at times wrote skillfully about racial and nonracial topics in conventional poetic forms.

Before the 1920s the South produced few black poets who had mastered the art form on a level equal to that of blacks elsewhere in the country. Southern blacks emerged, though, as the dominant voices in the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and thereafter they remained in the vanguard of black poets in America. One wing of the Harlem Renaissance arts movement looked to the black South for aesthetic inspiration and artistic direction. Langston Hughes's The Weary Blues (1926) and James Weldon Johnson's God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927) drew heavily from southern black folk culture and the experiences of the black masses within and outside the South. Hughes tapped an essentially secular component of southern black life—its music. Grounding his poetic technique in musical forms whose origins were southern and black and which, to a large extent, had evolved from the religious orientation of southern blacks, Hughes used blues and jazz to shape the form and meaning of his poetry. Johnson tapped the sacred side of the southern black experience. Choosing the black folk sermon as the embodiment of a southern black worldview and as an indigenous art form, Johnson elevated folk art to the level of high art. Poets, novelists, and playwrights after the 1920s (blacks and whites) followed the example of Hughes, Johnson, and others of the Harlem Renaissance by deriving artistic inspiration from the social and cultural life of the black South.

In the 1920s black poets' use of dialects became more refined as poetic form merged with content. Black dialect gave way to black idiom, and poets made even more extensive uses of features from the southern black oral tradition. Many southern black poets of the Harlem Renaissance also built their poetic canons with forms and themes not exclusively or predominantly black or southern. The lyricism of Jean Toomer's poetry and the intricate patterns of imagery drawn from nature by Anne Spencer revealed that a poetic voice originating from the black South could adopt the Euro-American literary heritage and yet remain relatively free of its constraints.

In the decades following the Harlem Renaissance, southern blacks continued to be major influences on black American poetry. Southerners Sterling Brown, Arna Bontemps, Margaret Walker, and Melvin B. Tolson were among black America's leading poets between the end of the Harlem Renaissance and the 1960s. A native of the District of Columbia, Sterling Brown in his Southern Road (1932) captured the spirit of the southern black folk character in the language, form, and personae of his poetry. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, Walker and Tolson exhibited in their poetry an intricate blending of the Euro-American and Afro-American heritages. Tolson became one of the best American poets of his time.

As the movement toward a black aesthetic gained impetus in the 1960s, southern black writers, many of them poets, were again among the leaders. During the 1960s and after, the poetry of southern blacks lost many of its more obvious regional qualities and merged with the larger body of black American poetry. The focus shifted from the rural South to the urban North with southern settings, themes, and female personae being replaced by northern settings, themes, and male personae. Nikki Giovanni, Etheridge Knight, Don L. Lee, Naomi Madgett, Sterling Plumpp, and Lance Jeffers are only a few of the widely read contemporary black poets whose origins are southern.

Southern blacks wrote few plays before the 1920s. William Wells Brown's Escape, or A Leap for Freedom (1858) and Joseph S. Cotter, Sr.'s, Caleb, the Degenerate (1903), both dramatic tracts, are notable now chiefly for their historical value. Before the Harlem Renaissance, southern blacks wrote minstrel shows, musical comedies, and a few serious social dramas, but the significance of these works in black American theater arts is also mainly historical. As an outgrowth of the Renaissance, however, Langston Hughes (Mulatto, When the Jack Hollers, and Little Ham), Zora Neale Hurston (Great Day), Hal Johnson (Run, Little Children), and Arna Bontemps (St. Louis Woman) emerged as successful southern black playwrights. In the 1930s the Works Progress Administration's support of black theater arts—plays, playwrights, actors, and actresses—provided for the writing and production of several dramas of social realism by and about southern blacks.

After 1940 the number of southern black playwrights and plays about southern black life declined. Randolph Edmonds, Theodore Ward, and Alice Childress have, however, produced works in this period that rank with the best American plays. From the 1930s through the early 1960s southern black playwrights, like their northern counterparts, used the music, folklore, religion, social history, and other components of southern black life as a major source for their art, but after about 1960 the use of distinctly southern materials decreased sharply in plays by northern and southern blacks. Settings, themes, and characters associated with the urban North became predominant. Still, Alice Childress's Wedding Band (1966) and Samm-Art Williams's Home, distinctly southern black works, were among the most successful post-1960 plays.

In another genre, southerners were among the earliest (if not the first) black short-fiction writers in America. Until well past 1900 southern black short fiction in the main was thematically about the slave experience and its aftermath and conformed largely to changes and developments in the short story as an American art form. William Wells Brown, Frederick Douglass, Frances W. Harper, and a few other southern blacks wrote various types of short prose fiction during the 19th Near the turn of the century Charles Waddell Chesnutt elevated southern black short fiction to the level of literary art. Many of Chesnutt's stories incorporated characteristics of the American local color movement and, regionally, several were classified as plantation literature. The tales of white southerner Thomas Nelson Page and those of Chesnutt exemplified the essential differences between black writers and white writers in approaches to the plantation South. Through characterization, theme, and incident black writers of the South repudiated the romantic image of the plantation. Chesnutt's Uncle Julius, for instance, contradicted the white portrayal of the faithful black servant, epitomized by Page's Sam and Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus. The idyllic portrait of plantation life created by white writers was in stark contrast to the image Chesnutt and other blacks showed of a system infested with greed, inhumanity, deception, and cruelty.

Southern black writers also embellished conventional short-fiction forms by adding features that reflected black life in the South. One such feature was the double entendre, a characteristic of narrative expression rooted especially in the secular and sacred music of the black South. A part of the trickster motif, it helped shape not only characterization but also plot structure, language, and meaning in the different forms of southern black short fiction. Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman (1899) exemplified the black writer's skillful use of double entendre.

The Conjure Woman was also an early example of the use of the short-story cycle. The cycle is a fictional narrative that combines techniques of the novel and the short story. Among other collections of short fiction, Langston Hughes's The Ways of White Folks (1934) and the Simple series (1950-65); Richard Wright's Uncle Tom's Children (1938) and Eight Men (1961) Alice Childress's Like One of the Family; James A. McPherson's Hue and Cry (1969) and Elbow Room (1977); and Ernest J. Gaines's Bloodline (1975) demonstrated the consistent expertise of southern black writers' use of the cycle. Hal Bennet, Toni Cade Bambara, and Henry Dumas are among the best contemporary black short-fiction writers of southern origin to have produced superior short-story cycles as well as excellent individual stories.

Between 1900 and the 1970s the novel has been the most widely read and critically acclaimed genre in southern black literature. The manner in which it has concerned itself with the past distinguished it from the general black American novel, the southern white novel, and the Anglo-American novel. The southern white novel has generally dealt with the effects of a real or an imagined past on a present generation, with characters grappling to come to terms with that past. Typically, the southern black novel made the physical and psychological landscapes of the past a living part of the novel; it recreated, repopulated, and critically examined the past as physical setting. Surprisingly, though, southern blacks produced few novels that can be strictly defined as historical novels. Arna Bontemps (Black Thunder, 1936), Frank Yerby (The Foxes of Harrow, 1946), Waters Turpin (The Rootless, 1957), and Margaret Walker (Jubilee, 1966) were exceptions.

Those novels concerned with the past, particularly the slave past, used a rather distinct thematic structure. Characteristically, the southern black novel was structurally tripartite —usually beginning in the present, shifting to the recent or remote past, and returning to the present. There were frequent variations: a flight-rejection-return pattern evident in Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars (1900) and in other novels in the "passing" vein; a South-North-South pattern in Jean Toomer's Cane (1923) and in a host of novels that concerned the southern black migrant in the North, from James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912) to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952); a (1913) fear-flight-fate pattern in Richard Wright's Native Son (1940), William Attaway's Blood on the Forge (1941), and several novels whose settings were almost exclusively northern or whose themes were grounded in the violence of living black in America.

Prior to the mid-1970s southern black novels characteristically were concerned with blacks' identity and their process of self-definition. This overarching theme remained prominent over the generations: the 19th-century novels often focused on the plight of the mulatto; the early 20th-century novels that frequently recount the aborted attempts of black characters to "pass" as white; the Harlem Renaissance novels affirmed blackness as a key to identity; the protest-era novels followed in the tradition of Native Son; post-1960 novels that dwelt on the effects of black affirmation in a drastically changed, but still white-dominated, society.

For its form and its content, the southern black novel found one of its most influential prose models in the Afro-American slave narrative, which itself was essentially a southern product. Various features of the southern version of the black American novel have their antecedents in the genre: the concentration on generic black experiences and incidents; the tendency toward representative central characters; the emphasis on the protagonist's process of self-definition; the use of the autobiographical mode and the portrayal of an exemplary life; the analysis of society by an author (or narrator) removed from that society. Indeed, the first black American novelist, William Wells Brown, was himself a fugitive slave, and he cast his first novel, Clotel (1853), solidly in the traditions of the slave-narrative genre.

As the southern black novel evolved, from the 19th into the 20th century, its use of narrative voice blended with other features of southern black narrative prose to produce a particularly (but not exclusively) southern point of view in the black novel. For more than a century southern blacks wrote numerous prose narratives, which in their variety conformed to the autobiographical mode. There have been the fugitive-slave narratives and the ex-slave narratives; the spiritual, social, political, and personal autobiographies; the confessionals, exemplary lives, the diary-type and journal-type autobiographies; as well as the autobiographical novel. At times, real-life experiences and incidents were the backdrop for fictional characters; at other times real-life characters become the nucleus around which true-to-life (fictional) experiences and incidents are presented. Southern black prose writers were so attracted to the autobiographical mode that in numerous prose narratives they drew a very thin line between fiction and fact.

One group of prose narratives used the techniques of fiction—a group that includes Richard Wright's Black Boy (1945), Will Thomas's The Seeking (1953), H. Rap Brown's Die Nigger Die! (1970), and Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) and Roots (1976). In another group the novels (fictional autobiographies) employed nonfiction techniques—Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man and Ernest J. Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971). Finally, in still another group there are novels such as Toomer's Cane and Ellison's Invisible Man that contain varying degrees and uses of autobiographical material.

Folktales and aphorisms, sacred and secular music, and the religious orientation or worldview of southern blacks all influenced language, undergirded imagery and symbolism, delineated characterization, and motivated plot structure in the southern black novel. This tendency was evident in the polemical, propagandistic, and apologetic novels that preceded World War I; it increased and became more refined in the novels between World War I and the 1930s; it pervaded such 1930s folk novels as Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and George W. Henderson's Ollie Miss (1935); it shaped themes and characterization in the social-protest novels of the 1940s; and it pervaded Ellison's Invisible Man and several other novels in the post-World War II period. Southern black novelists as a group have thus made wide and varied uses of the cultural traditions of their region.

The merits of southern black literature have been widely acclaimed nationally and internationally. Ellison's Invisible Man won a National Book Award; McPherson's collection of short fiction, Elbow Room, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, as was Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple (1982). The numerous awards, prizes, and distinctions accorded to works by blacks of southern origin throughout this century testify to the place they hold within the larger world of American literature.

J. Lee Greene
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Surely it is the story that matters, not the gender, race or class of the story teller? Maybe. But I love to hear authentic narrives, I want to hear the real voices, not a dressed up sanitised version. Maybe we do all have a story to tell. Aibileen has lots of stories as do many of her friends. What makes one persons story more desirable to listen to than anothers? The Voice. And sometimes it is the voice, not the story, that is the Unique Selling Point.

Jellyfish Blues

Mary, a relatively new character in Coronation Street, who is a perfect mix of comedy and terror said, in this evenings episode, ‘Without passion we may as well be Jellyfish’.

Is she right?

It is possible to be passionate about many things; food, music, sport, religion and, of course, the more obvious - good old sex. On one hand Mary is right; a life lived without passion is the life of a Jellyfish. And who would want to be a Jellyfish? I mean do Jellyfish have any worthwhile purpose in life?

It seems that Tom Jones is still passionate about music and if anyone is going to knock Emenim of the top spot in the album chart I am glad it is Tom. I can still remember my mother behaving in a very unmotherly way (more than usual that is) whenever Tom came on the radio but I can’t help but feel somewhat saddened to read that Tom says he has lost his passion for fucking groupies. This is a man who personified sexual passion. It was evident in his voice, the sway of his hip, the glint in his eye. A passionate man. His passion for music is audible in every note, his connection with the rhythm is obvious in every move he makes and, back in the day, the way he looked at his audience transmitted passion to his female fans, many of whom were whipped up into a state of ecstasy. So much so that lots of damp knickers were hurled in his direction. I was going to write his ‘long suffering’ wife must be relieved his hormones have packed up and left the building but I don’t imagine she was ‘long suffering’ for a moment. In every interview where Tom talks about his wife Linda if is clear that he loves her very much. But she doesn’t seem to have evoked his sexual passion. And it would seem that of all the passions the sexual passion is the first on to go.

"When you get older you're not as horny as you were when you were young and that's a fact," he said. "There's got to be an upside to growing old and that side of my life is not important any more, like it was."

"My wife and me still love each other dearly. We're growing old together. I'm not out and about clubbing like I used to be and that's a good thing. You can't. It's impossible. The desire to do all the shit just isn't there any more."

The "What's New Pussycat" hit maker also admits he doesn’t know how much longer he can go on in the music industry but insists he doesn't worry too much about what the future holds.

"With getting older, time is getting shorter and that's the problem," he added in an interview with The Sun newspaper. "It's a fact. I don't know how long I can go on. It's not like when I was 50. But I'm not going to moan about it because I'm still singing and I'm still doing it and it's hasn't affected me yet."

I don’t want to stop being passionate about music, books, knowledge, sex or life itself. But if sexual passion fades as one grows older I suppose that doesn't make you a Jellyfish. Providing your life is filled with other passions.

A friend and I had planned to go along to a woman's writing seminar due to be held in a posh London hotel at the end of this month and when we tried to book tickets today we were surprised to find that it was fully booked. It seems the whole of London is filled with women who write. When my friend originally suggested we go along I asked 'Do we have to bring proof we write?' and I was relieved to find that 'they' apparently take us at face value. We pays our money, attend the 'Women Writers' seminar and that makes us women who write. As the tickets are quite expensive I guess they don't want to put any potential amateur female writers off. Fired up with the offer of wine, nibbles and the chance to meet other like minded people I have suggested we gatecrash if we fail to get tickets. Strange I am prepared to do that but still haven't plucked up the courage to show anyone my work. My friend reckons that every woman believes she has a book inside her but very few of us have the discipline to write it, the talent to make it readable, or even have an interesting story to tell, or one that differs from the 'confessions' of all the other women with pens in their hands. Not long after this conversation, in a moment of synchronicity, my attention was drawn to an article that appeared in the Observer over the weekend:

'True confessions in new women's lit ' Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City columns inspired some dire chick lit, but also a generation of more serious young writers'

I imagine SATC has also inspired a lot of middle aged, or even old women, to put pen to paper. I imagine the seminar will be filled with it's fair share of women whose necks resemble that of a turkey (Nora Ephron 'I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman'), and women who spend more on a pair of shoes than I do on a months rent (Candance Bushnell 'Sex and the City'). Not to mention all those women who write about their horrendous childhoods. Now that would be a depressing couple of hours. Do I have a USP? Do I need one? Maybe for me the act of writing is enough. The sharing bit may be a step too far. Sharing means taking a leap of faith, it means admitting you have something important to say, something worthwhile. The stuff I write may not be the sexy, poignant, funny, sad, insightful, revealing, passionate stuff that, on a good day, I think it is. It might just be dire confessional chick lit that lots of women write and I am too old for that. But I am NOT a Jellyfish.

My Kind Of Town

I love London....

And I am enjoying 'Sherlock' very much. In this contemporary remake of Sir Conan Doyles 'Sherlock Holmes' the two hero's are played by Benedict Cumberbatch (great name) and Martin Freeman. Cumberbatch is perfectly cast as the 21st Century Holmes and Freeman is bringing a different, and immensely likeable, side of Dr Watson to the fore. The series has obviously been made with foreign sales in mind as it showcases London to perfection. Many of the iconic landmarks are featured and London looks very beautiful, if slightly dangerous. I watch it and think how lucky am to live in the great city. Viva la London.

I love my car...

But I also love going to work on the train. If I am planning a night out after work I try to organise my day that I won't need the car and have been catching the train occasionally. It is all so civilised. I stroll down to the station, wait a few minutes on the platform and invariably get a seat on the train (which is always clean and on time) and, not for me the Metro or a book, oh, no, for me the chance to look at 'hidden London'.

Peoples back gardens (trampolines are in almost every Deptford Garden), glimpses through windows of men shaving, women applying make-up (we may be travelling past very fast but if you don't draw your curtains we can see in you know), people smoking on their balconies, vast estates of high rises with no people to be seen, wild overgrown acres of land, a wildlife conservation area I didn't know was there, tucked away behind a tall fence I drive past every day, building sites stirring, huge machinery rumbling into action, the muddy inlets that feed the Thames. At one station a man with child in a buggy alighted to be met by a woman who took the child from him and with a quick farewell (although their eyes never met) he jumped back on the train to continue his journey. The grown ups barely had a chance to exchange more than a brief word and the man certainly did not have time to say goodbye to the child. I had time to see the woman's relieved face as she was reunited with the child. And the mans resigned face as he left the child. I look round the carriage and wonder where people are going and what their life's are like. In my car I see none of these things or experience any curiosity about my fellow commuters. Cars are very isolating and they are the physical box we put ourselves in. Similar to the mental box I hide in now and again and from which there is only one escape. Writing. The train ride for the mind.

I don't love my new job...

Yet. But it has only been a week. I think I loved my previous job a bit too much.