Directionally Challenged

Mid Saturday morning, as I walked through the empty streets of the city, the sun blistered against the chill in the air and my eyes still felt fuzzy from the night before and all those before that. I felt half there and half somewhere else, somewhere horizontal.

As I crossed Moorgate a man stepped out from behind a pillar. We wore a green boiler suit, with a fluorescent yellow jacket and a stained Santa hat. In one hand he held an open bottle of Magners and the other pressed a mobile phone to his ear.

As our paths crossed he whispered something that sounded like “can you help me?”
I carried on, lost in my own thoughts of desperation over what one of my cousins might want for Christmas.

“Oi!” he shouted and I instinctively turned to see him paused and glowering in my direction. “I was talking to you! Don’t ignore me!”

“Sorry, mate.” I replied, turning back on myself. “I thought you were on your phone.”

“What phone?”

“That one,” I half-pointed. “In your hand.”

“I haven’t got a phone.”

“Yes you have.”

“No he hasn’t,” said a voice out of the phone which still hovered close to his ear.

“So, are you going to tell me or not?” he continued.

“What?”

“Where it is?”

“Where what is?”

“Liverpool Street,” he shrugged cider into the air with exasperation.

“Oh,” I was relieved that it was something so simple. “Down the bottom of this road, mate.” I gesticulated in the direction I’d come from.

“No!” he cried (and inside I groaned).

“No!” said the phone, helpfully.

“Not the station. Duh! Liverpool STREET.”

“Well, um, I’m pretty sure it’s to the right of the station. So, if you go down here to the station, turn right onto Bishopsgate and then right again. I think that’s Liverpool Street.”

“Right,” he said nodding firmly. “Thanks a lot, man.” He suddenly seemed swallowed by a sense of serene calmness, as though from here on everything was going to work out.

“Hey,” said the phone, “Merry Christmas, yeah?”

“Yeah, right,” he turned away, “Merry fucking Christmas.”

Quite.

I must confess that I’d kind of forgotten places like this exist.

You know me. I like a pint. Of real ale. Ideally from the Midlands. And I like it a pub. A proper pub, that has pumps and stools and wood, but not too much. I’m not adverse to a bit of spit and sawdust on the floor, indeed I prefer it to the sheen of blandness like many of the indenti-kit pubs up and down the country.

There was a time, however, when on a Friday night there was a reasonable chance of finding me in a Spanish bar drinking that horrific Estrella stuff that gives you wind, somewhere in the shadows of Canary Wharf (this being a summer’s evening, obviously). Or perhaps I’d be in one of the warehouses converted into a cavernous experience of faceless computerised music and impossibly tall and thin glasses of Guinness.

But I was never that comfortable so far away from the things I understand. It was a relief, in 2004, to discover that the guys I’d gone to work for shared a similar suspicion of organised fun. Far more preferable was putting the world to rights over pint after pint of high-quality ale before inexplicably finding ourselves in the arse-hole Irish pub on the Holloway Road at the time when the trains have long stopped running.

Sigh. Good times.

So, it was something of a surprise when on Friday night I found myself gingerly descending marble steps into a red splattered tapas bar deep underneath Charing Cross Road. Video monitors showing footage of Salvador Dali frolicking with bikini-glad impossibly breasted women masqueraded as pictures; in the centre, a table was set within a gazebo; elsewhere other tables came complete with curtains for diners to seal themselves off. On the furthest wall there was a panel of glass that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Cathedral and in front of it a Japanese ankle height table with what might have been pom-poms scattered across.

Needless to say there wasn’t any bitter on tap, not even Guinness or a half-decent lager. In fact, there weren’t any taps, just bottles of the Newcastle brewed so-called Spanish beer, San Miguel. It was dark except for when it was too bright. It was loud. There was a bloke in the toilet who took up far too much space by insisting on turning the taps for everyone. There was even a god-damned cloakroom.

But, you know, I thought, this is what other people like. It’s probably me that’s more than a little unusual. It was certainly busy enough. The food was okay. There was nothing unpleasant as such. The people I was with seemed to like it and that was why I was there, after all.

Except, after we had eaten, they wanted to dance. Right on cue the volume jumped several notches and the quality nose-dived. The disco ball began to turn and people flocked to strut their stuff.

I hesitated. For about thirty minutes. I quite wanted to be sociable, but wasn’t sure whether I could bring myself to dance to Beyonce, or a succession of other pop songs I vaguely recognised and were probably recorded by failed contestants in television programmes I’ve never watched.

In the end, there was just the four of us left. Two guys and two girls. The girls danced smoothly in time to the music whilst I stumbled along about two beats behind. I gave up and reduced myself to little shuffles with the occasional head-bob and/or raised arm. I was watching the blonde, who kept glancing at the other guy, who was looking at the dark-haired girl I’d never seen before who seemed to be peering closely at me. It was like pass the parcel, but with glances bouncing around in sequence throughout our lopsided rhombus of hopeless gyrating bodies.

Time was getting on and on, arduously shuffling into the night. I remembered, with a groan, that the place stayed open until three and wondered whether I should just make my excuses and leave.

‘No’ a voice in my head ordered, ‘you’re a newly single man. Dancing with girls is what you’re supposed to be doing. Isn’t it?’

So, I battled on until, finally, a particularly trite song came on. So bad, in fact, that I currently have zero recollection of exactly what it was, but for arguments sake, let’s say it was something by Pink. I looked around and all about me people surged joyously. One youngish guy with what looked like a drizzle of puke down his shirt opened his mouth wide, his yellowy teeth reflecting in the neon and his eyes swirling with excitement. I was felt simultaneously sober, yet not.

Nor, indeed, was I enjoying myself.

“I think I’m off,” I said, adding something about last trains.

“Yeah,” the blonde perma-beamed, “I think I’ll call in a night too.”

‘Oh, aye?’ said the voice in my head.

‘Shut up,’ said the rest of my consciousness.

We chatted in the inexplicably long and slow moving coat queue about this and that.

Outside the rain was streaming down and the city shimmered in its damp overcoat. We said goodnight on the street corner as a rickshaw careered past.

As I walked towards Charing Cross the voice said: ‘What was that? Why didn’t you-‘

“That was nothing. Just shut up, you twat,” I growled back and got a funny look from a passing tramp.

I had, thanks to cloakroom inefficiency, missed the last train home. The voice and I argued the whole time on the long route back via Lewisham.

Magical Mystery Tour

You’ll all have seen this, but I couldn’t let it pass without comment.
Lapland Dorset (and by extension Lapland Wolverhampton) have been steadily ripped apart all week by the press and trading standards for promoting themselves as a winter wonderland, a festival of festive joy, when in fact they were just some tents in muddy fields, surrounded by scruffy imitation huskies, bored staff and run by chancers who saw everyone coming.

I mean, let’s be clear here: It was bound to be shit. Even aided by the coldest winter in eight years and several heavy frosts (if not actual real snow) it would have been impossible to live up to the hype of the original website, even if, to me, it was all suspiciously vague. What exactly is a ‘magical tunnel of light’? Surely an ‘absolutely magical scene’, given that magic isn’t real, is open to some interpretation?

Who goes to these places, anyway? Who reads about something that sounds like a nauseating con and thinks it’d be a good trip out for the kids? Who pays £25 a head for this sort of rubbish – plus extra to enter the so-called bustling Christmas market, which was really some trestle tables in a shed display the contents of a couple of old suitcases the organisers found in the attic? One woman splurged £3,000on 132 tickets for a social club’s outing. She has my sympathy, but was it really the right sort of place for them to go?

Okay, so may be it’s just me. Perhaps some people like tat. But my favourite bit of the whole fiasco, is the parents who became so angry at their darling one’s naive vision of Christmas as a happy and jolly time being shattered, then really put the boot in on the whole broken dreams theme by kicking the shit out of Santa. If that’s not going to make the delightful tots burst into tears, then they’re made of sterner stuff than most of the parents.

The thing I find interesting is the sheer number of people who turned up in the first place. People had a terrible experience and the place has been rightly shut down, but the owners did get away with it for a while. In other words, it proves that with a clever website and not a shred of honesty we can all get away with anything.

Here’s an idea: I’m going to turn my flat into a museum highlighting the wonders of the world. A palace where visitors are taken on a mystery tour of the exotic. They’ll ride on temporal time-looping luxury carriages throughout the entirety of human endeavour; from the gleaming spires of Chicago, to the yawning chasm of the Grand Canyon. From seeing the peaks of Scotland to the hearing the roar in the Coliseum as gladiators battle tigers. From the beguiling wonders of Constantinople to the teeming crowds Delhi. Everything from the sweat to the tears will seep into the visitors’ consciousness. At the end of this life changing experience they can feast on some of London finest cuisine.

What I’m really going to is put all my holiday snaps on the wall, make a suitably bad mix CD, bring them into the middle of the flat and spin the around rapidly. Then I’ll give them a cup of tea and piece of flapjack.

No, no, no.

What am I thinking? That’s a ridiculous idea. In fact it’s almost as crazy as if the BBC commissioned a Saturday teatime programme that consisted of an ex-international cricketer and some bloke off that dancing show trying to avoid being plunged into a swimming pool by a giant moving polystyrene wall with shapes cut of it. And if it was hosted by Dale Winton and everyone had to wear skin tight silver catsuits and got so over excited it was embarrassing to watch... I mean that’d be seriously bonkers.

Oh. Wait a second.

Just goes to show: no idea is ever is stupid enough to not appeal to someone, somewhere.

The Price We Pay

At some point during the summer I accidentally mislaid some body mass. To be slightly more accurate I lost a stone and a half very quickly and whilst it’s evened off, my weight still seems to be dropping.

Which would be fine – I think pretty much everyone who knows me would agree that I’m not exactly slender – were it not for two reasons.

Firstly, this isn’t actually deliberate. It just kind of happened without me noticing. I put it down to working in the pub: my beer quota dropped and I would eat my dinner at about four-thirty before spending seven hours either standing up or, pretty often, running my arse off. This was far healthier than my previous regime of eating between eight and nine, if not later, and then remaining fairly physically inert one way or another before going to bed.

However, I’ve been back in the doldrums of office life for two and a half months (Jesus, there goes the next decade) and whilst I’ve been trying consciously eat healthily I’m not doing significant amounts of exercise. So, shouldn’t I be sort of stabilising by now? If not actually going back up, at least remaining constant?

Anyway, the second problem (and in many ways a more significant one) is that now
none of my trousers fit me. Running for a bus is a no-no; carrying too much change a disaster waiting to happen. Take these jeans I’m wearing now. Okay, so you can’t see them, but they’re fairly standard jeans – a grey-blue, with white stitching down the outsides of the legs and a zipper on the left hand pocket. Got it? Good. Now,
I’ve had these since last Christmas and so they’re practically new. I don’t want to replace them, but they’re going to get me in trouble. As I walked along the road I could feel them snaking their way over my hips, dragged down by the rainwater clinging to the cuffs. To my left a gaggle of teenage girls at the bus stop. To my right two coppers in a patrol car, sitting outside the Chinese takeaway.

It was a close call.

So, I clearly need some new clothes (or at the very least a new belt), but cash flow makes this a challenge – plus I loathe going clothes shopping, but in December? Jesus. Perhaps a prison uniform would be simpler.

This is the thing that no-one ever mentions. We’re told that we’ve an obesity problem, that we’re a nation of fat fucks and that we need to sort ourselves out.
Floppy tongued Jamie Oliver and stool sniffing Gillian McKieth swoop down on unsuspecting Dominos Pizza mopeds, forcing the salivating customers into submission by being more irritating than having to wait for a replacement pizza.

But no-one in these credit-crunching days suggests how we are to re-clothe ourselves.

Presumably we could use the money we’re saving on excess food to buy new clothes, except we do still have to eat something and healthy food is so irritatingly more expensive than shit.

I guess the only solution must be that there will be lots of people with saggy skin never able to leave the house.

I am, of course, presupposing that everyone dislikes going shopping as much as I do. There’s plenty of evidence, however, to the contrary. People love shopping. They love the heat of the buildings, the ching of the cash registers, putting their cards in the little boxes and tapping out their unique numbers and spending money that was never theirs. My God, some love it so much that they’re prepared to kill for it.

Seriously.

In the early hours of last Friday out on Long Island, New York State, crowds were gathering outside a Wal-Mart where a sale was due to commence – the annual Black Friday Sales. Never heard it? No, me neither. The jostling punters were so impatient that they pressed ever closer to the doors, applied greater and greater pressure until the point – not of the door being forced open – but of the glass shattering.

Presumably this made quite a lot of noise, but rather than jump back in shock, or even pause to wonder exactly what was happening the mob surged forward desperate to gather up... Hell, I don’t know. What does a Wal-Mart sell? Cheap burgers? A tasteless festive jumper with fifteen percent off? Half-price Adam Sandler DVDs or Pussycat Dolls CDs? Whatever it was they wanted it badly enough to trample a store worker to death. Even after paramedics tried to clear the scene most shoppers simply refused and responded with a whinge about how long they’d had to wait in line.

So watch yourselves out there in this annoyingly advertising in advance season of so-called goodwill.

Me? I think I’ll simply break out the swiss army knife again and puncture another hole in this here belt.

No aimless exercise

I wake up on Sunday morning to a dusting of snow across the back garden. Not that it’s my back garden, you understand, so perhaps I should say the expanse of occasionally green space that can be seen out of the kitchen window and belongs to the man who lurks downstairs. But that’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? Snow is pretty rare in the urban heat centre – I don’t think we had any at all last winter – but there is was; just a little sprinkling that clung twee-like to the mock Roman plant pots.

“Hmrph,” I thought, switched the coffee machine on and took the four steps back into bed with the Sunday paper I’d confusingly bought on Saturday night.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. On Sunday morning I should have been waking up in a sleeping bag on a Swansea floor, feeling twinges in the backs of my knees from climbing a mountain the previous day.

Except I never made it because my car broke down. At least the bastard had the good grace to conk out in Chelsea rather than, say, somewhere in the no-man’s land of the M4 in-between Swindon and Bath. So my rescue by the RAC was comparatively straightforward, but I mean, come on! What else can go wrong for me at the moment?

And, as later on, I rang up various people and moaned I suddenly realised that I was dangerously close to becoming a rather pathetic figure of self pity.

“Oh, woe is me. It just isn’t fair.” Etc, etc.

So, I resolved to stop moaning and try to get something constructive done. After checking the car into a garage for futile attempts at resuscitation, I cracked on with writing – after all I can’t moan about not having enough time to write and then reject opportunities when they arise.

In a single seven hour stretch I managed to rework a twelve thousand word chunk of the novel. I trimmed back reams of stuff that didn’t work and tried to push forward the bits that hopefully did what I intended them to do, but it’s getting tricky.
I’ve now been redrafting for longer than the original first two drafts took (although September and most of October were write-offs) and the damn thing still isn’t working and I’ve spent so much time with these words that they’re becoming like the old friends’ whose failings you forgive all too easily. I think I might have to fall out with my words; get to the point where I hate them and can therefore be more merciless.

But anyway, after four-hundred-and-twenty minutes the tips of my fingers throbbed and the skin under my nails stung. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. “If it hurts,” I thought, “it must be good.”

An odd moment of Hemmingway-lite delusion.

I was determined to still find a way of getting some exercise and never being one for the aimless rigours of sit-ups or jogging, I like my excursions to have purpose. So, I decided to walk the seven or so miles into the centre of London whereupon I would meet a mate for a less healthy beer.

I walk briskly so whilst it didn’t exactly have the grandeur of the walking I’d expected to be doing it did get my blood pumping a little faster. I missed the sweeping valleys, the spring of damp grass beneath my feet, the camaraderie of walking with friends. Instead there was just the relentless trudge across concrete as I marched through some of the less salubrious parts of London. In particular I’d never noticed before quite how dark the quarter of a mile or so between Camberwell and Walworth is, nor how it seems to be solely the preserve of the Wyndham Estate. For a few minutes it was as though the city was abandoned for the dead. There were no cars, no-one on the streets, the lights flickered as though the electricity supply was about to be cut. There was just me and the eerie echo of my own rapid steps.

Then a number twenty-one roared round the corner in a mess of steaming pistons, bedraggled diesel and general bendiness.

By Sunday morning, though, my resolve to be productive was being tested. I was struggling to build up the enthusiasm for yet another day at the computer, but thoughts of doing anything else was nipping me with guilt.

I looked back through the work I’d done the day before and despaired. It still wasn’t working. It still wasn’t as good as it should be. I considered writing this blog, originally about Woolworths but David Mitchell beat me to it.

Pouring yet another cup of coffee I glanced out of the window and saw that the snow had evaporated already. It had hung around for about thirty minutes before realising it had better things to do, a place to go where it might be appreciated more. A little later I walked down the road to get some milk and passed the burnt-out wreckage of an old Escort that had mysteriously appeared earlier the week. It’s blackened and charred husk looked like something from twenty years ago displaced to here and now.

And then I thought that things aren’t always what they appear. Maybe the dark last night had only seemed so invasive because it fitted my mood. Maybe it wasn’t snow in the garden that morning, but ash drifting in the breeze. Maybe I should go home and beat some more words out of my brain.

Twelve

Breathe in.

I’m surprised by its commonality as it criss-crosses its way throughout time and space; between metaphorical and mythological, from psychological to physical - beating in tune to the rhythm of life.

One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-TWELVE.

Twa-lif, a Germanic compound meaning, literally, two is left before one takes away the base ten. A composite number, a sublime number, a semi-perfect number. A-one, a-two, just the gap of language between them.

Every year breaks down into twelve months, each with its own heart. December is warm and fuzzy inside yet ultimately frustrating. May is never quite summer, never quite good enough. Every single day consists of two blocks of twelve hours; each hour comprises six minutes and each minute sixty seconds. Each denomination is divisible by twelve. The same number curling inside itself again and again.

The Earthly Branches, the traditional Chinese calendar, is divided into twelve creatures – Rat, Ox, Panther, Rabbit, Goat, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Chicken, Dog, Hog - each but a manifestation of self.

Once upon a time, many, many moons ago the Earthly Branches trudged together across the dusty plains of what is now Eastern China, but then was just the world. The sun beat relentlessly down on their backs, the dust clogged up their throats and when they spat to drink what sparse water they carried, the salvia glowed clay-red.

The Monkey gambolled and chattered with fear. The Panther prowled determined to preserve her strength. They all prayed for rain, for cooling waters to flood the plain and carry them to the lush green hills at the end of sight. They prayed as hard as they could, but nothing came; the only clouds were of red, red dirt filling their imaginations. Eventually, the Horse, who was the largest and strongest of the Earthly Branches, abandoned his friends. He claimed he was going to seek help, but Goat kept muttering that it was purely to save his own mottled skin. The other Earthly Branches tried to ignore Goat, who was going lame and struggling more than most in the heat, but slowly her old bleating tugged at their collective consciousness.

Meanwhile far, far away in another time the twelve signs of the zodiac were blissfully unaware of the fate that had befallen their Eastern cousins. Here the Ram, the Bull, the Twins (two from one), the Crab, the Lion, the Virgin, the Scale, the Scorpion, the Archer, the Horned-Goat, the Water-Bearer and the Fish happily took it in turns to frolic through the twelve stations of the ecliptic, the passage of the sun as it crept across the Heavens.

But goodness can never last. The sparkle of pleasure will always fade and what had once been magical becomes mundane; there is always something else, something more desirable. The Zodiac, however, couldn’t even agree what the alternative was. And so the Horned-Goat and the Ram squabbled over who had the most majestic antlers; the Crab testily pinched at the Lion’s claws (before scuttling under a rock); the Fish taunted the Water-Bearer; the Scales shook her old tired head which the Virgin mysteriously took personally. In amongst all this pettiness only the Bull and the Archer remained entwined, riding out together into the woods to hunt bears, badgers and beetles. The Archers thighs clung close to the Bull’s sweating flanks as once again she pulled her bow, taunt raised and arrow to the line of her eye and held her breath.

In Shi’a Islam the descendents of the prophet Mohammed are the twelve Imams, the direct and legitimate heirs to the word of God.

Jacob had twelve sons, twelve boys whom did not necessarily love each over as well as their Father would have liked, but never-the-less each became a founder of the twelve tribes of Israel.

After the betrayal and suicide of Judas Iscariot the remaining Apostles elected Matthias to take his place, so as he could share their grief and keep the number as should be.

At twelve a Jewish girl comes of age with her Bat-mitzvah.

King Arthur fought twelve battles against twelve rebellious princes and repelled twelve Saxon invasions.

Not quite so long ago, up amongst the clouds that linger like tired souls in the warm Grecian sky the twelve Olympians of the Pantheon lazed, occasionally munching on grapes or olives or simply fornicated with one another. Zeus stroked his beard with amusement as Aphrodite lived up to her reputation and leaned in close to the sleeping Dionysus.

Aphrodite’s sweet sweat slithered through the wine fog that polluted Dionysus’ brain so as when he awoke and looked into her eyes they shimmered with the freshness of dew heavy spring mornings. Aphrodite opened her mouth a fraction and breath that tasted of honey and rosemary brushed against the weary Dionysus’ lips.

“This area was once known as Illyria,” the man says now as they sit on the rocky outcrop above the crashing waves.

“What?” the woman replies not moving her sleepy head of his shoulder.

He passes her the half-drunk, half-warm bottle of beer. The final droplets of condensation cling to their fingertips like tears.

“That’s what they called this bit of the Adriatic coast. All the way down from Croatia to Albania.” He looks down at her and wonders whether she is even listening. “Sebastian and Viola get shipwrecked here.”

In silence they look up at the Croatian stars that flood the sudden night sky.

The twelfth moon of Jupiter is called Lysithea.

A series of solar eclipses between 2680BC and 1129BC contained twelve separate yet connected arcs. One after another, like generations passing in the wind.

Edgar Mitchell took two lolloping, clumsy steps forward. His breath was hot and damp against the glass as he flung himself up into the air. The ground disappeared far beneath his feet, his back arched with the momentum and as the stars reflected in his visor he felt as though he might never stop.

Everyone has twelve ribs.

Edgar Mitchell turned himself upside down and inside out with the ease of waving, but the grace of an elk. As he finally started to float back down the ground, he stretched himself out into a star and glided like a petal on a morning stream and just for a second his breath stopped. When he silently touched down a flutter of grey, lifeless dust billowed up, sprinkling across his bulky suit and he knew how incredibly unique he was. Edgar Mitchell: one of twelve men to walk the surface of the moon.

“If music be the food of love, play on.” The man helps the woman to her feet, their fingers snake around each other, binding them forever in the moment.

“What are you going on about tonight?” She passes the dregs in the bottle into his free hand. His shirt collar flutters in the breeze; sand stings his cheek.

“So Viola and Sebastian get separated after being shipwrecked. Viola disguises herself as a man for no apparent reason and everyone falls in love with everyone else.”

“Oh, Twelfth Night.”

“And there’s an odd subplot about yellow stockings.”

“It’s set here is it? Illyria?”

Except it isn’t, because it’s a story. It’s all made it all up.

But sometimes stories come true anyway.

Dionysus’ and Aphrodite’s lust affair continued long enough for her to be with child. But these Olympians were Gods and nothing ever ran smooth. There always had to be a thunderbolt or a mysterious creature inside a complex puzzle on an isolated island to mess things up. And sometimes it was as simple as the lithe, sublime, temptress that was the Goddess of Love realising she would never stay forever in the arms of the drunken, rowdy God of Wine.

It was messy. Dionysus threw bottles and got so roaringly drunk that he said hateful, spiteful things that he never meant. Although, Aphrodite did seduce a shepherd just for the sake of it.

The Archer ran through the undergrowth, sweat settled on her brow like the weight of responsibility. The wildcat wasn’t going to escape her. It would fill the growing ache in her belly, or so she thought not knowing that really it was the pain of childlessness. She stumbled, but at the same moment saw something dart just outside of her vision. As she tumbled, she turned and let loose an arrow into the air.
There was a whish as it swooped through the forest, then the satisfying thunk of it striking hard into its target and then, rather than the meowl of a stricken wildcat, the deep mourning howl of the Bull.

The Archer ran across to her friend the Bull and was aghast at what she had done.
She leant in to hold him, but her forearms were instantly soaked in thick, muscular blood. Tears welled as she realised there was no way she could rectify her mistake, no way she could turn back time. The Bull knew he was dying, but there was no anger in his eyes, just the realisation of bitter despair that his murderer would be the one who he had trusted with his life.

Eventually even the Panther could walk no further, but the beast was proud and refused to yield. It kept hauling itself along by its claws through the muck, burning his tar black fur with the red of the sun’s heart. When the Panther finally howled his frustrated rage at the Heavens the response was the first cooling drops of rain beginning to fall.

Most of the animals sedately rejoiced, but the rabbit rolled onto her side, stretched across and gently kissed the dog on the nose. They looked into each others eyes and both thought the same thing: Be careful what you wish for. The rain was coming, but by now it would be a curse rather than a blessing.
In the distance, was that the canter of a dozen horses’ hooves or the thunderous torrent of floodwaters coming to sweep them away?

And breathe out.

Too much awe is a bad thing

So, Obama won. Anyone surprised?

I was a bit.

(Or perhaps relieved would be a better word.

Being black wasn’t the point, rather that American’s are always particularly anti-anyone with a vaguely socially liberal outlook and ever since I heard one batch of rednecks describing him as a Marxist (which he isn’t, that just people’s understanding in a country where there’s no left in the mainstream politics- oh, bugger, I just realised that’s us too now, thanks New Labour) I thought he might struggle.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

What wasn’t so surprising, though, is the pathetic squabbling of our own politicians in the scramble to align themselves next to Obama. Okay, so this is a man who in certain parts of the media hasn’t so much won an election, but been born of the almighty – no wonder both Gordon Brown and “Dave” Cameron are desperate to be his sidekick. The really funny thing is the almost childish strops over who is right.

“No! He’s MY friend! Not yours! When he was in the UK he came to see ME!” Feet have been stomped, hands curled into fists and lips pouted sulkily.

Come on, guys. Nobody is ever going to suggest that either of you two can walk on water and you shouldn’t want them to. That sort of adoration doesn’t last. Just ask Tony. And anyway, can we please concentrate on sorting out more pressing problems rather than bicker over who’s going to get to walk half a pace behind Obama at Camp David soon.

(Oh, and just as an aside. Can ITN, which I’ve started watching over my dinner because I’m getting home surprisingly early at the moment, stop saying things like “the Tories unveiled their plans for new tax cuts today, but will you be better off?” No. The answer is ‘no’, okay? It’s a pointless question because THEY’RE NOT THE GOVERNMENT! Yet.)

Then again, we all do it, don’t we? We all try to get along with the most popular guy in the office, we all go out and listen to the coolest band, we all have an opinion on Gary Glitter. We all want to be a part of any zeitgeist that happens to passing.

Saturday night in the Amersham Arms and my mate passes me a pint of Spitfire before nodding towards the corner:

“She is VERY pretty.”

And indeed she was. So, we strutted, alpha-male-esque, trying to manoeuvre as close as possible to her and her not so pretty friend.

Why?

It seemed like a good idea at the time, like the most natural thing in the world, but in hindsight it’s not as though either of us were interested in trying to pull her. He has a girlfriend, I’m, well, let’s not go there at the moment. Besides, by ten-thirty (or whatever time it was) the Amersham was the sixth pub we’d visited and we were well lubricated to say the least.

So we just hovered nearby and sat down next to them and then hovered a bit more, chattering along about stuff and, in probably too loud voices, her pleasant assets. But whilst in our heads we were probably funny and cool and good-looking all we really looked like was two almost middle-aged, fairly drunk, slightly lecherous berks.

And all around us were others doing more or less the same thing. Drifting into position, to be next to the great and the beautiful. We gravitate towards those we most want to be associated with; to those whom we think are most like ourselves and in moments of despicable arrogance we all think we’re Obama-like. We are all wonderful orators, we are all handsome and successful, we all crusade for what’s right and we all want to be in charge of our own destiny.

So we sidle up to others in imagined positions of authority, or those well-placed to help us, or sometimes just those who are wealthy. Even today, in these times where we are constantly told you can be anything it’s more about where you are from and who you know than what you can do. (Look at the shadow cabinet for a case in point!)

I do it sometimes without realising, or I worry that I’ve done it. Was I dismissive of one girl in particular on my course because we had nothing in common, or because I didn’t think her writing was good enough, or simply because I was being a twat?
It’s quite pathetic, really. We should be able to create our own identities instead of trying to position ourselves amongst others a similar ilk.

But it’s hard. I worry that working in a non-creative atmosphere is going to dampen my fledging creativity. A tutor once told Beck that she shouldn’t be bothering going out with a non-artist.

Is this the truth? No. Are they just silly paranoias? Yes. Can we help but think them? Probably not. Can we be someone who we think we might want to be just by basking in their shadow?

No, I’m afraid, we can’t.