Happy New Year

So that’s it for 2011, then - we’re about to close the books.  Even though 31 December/1 January is an entirely arbitrary date, it’s as good a point as any to sit back and reflect on the past twelve months and perhaps make some plans for the next twelve.  I’ve spoken enough about my plans for 2012; I’m just busy working on them and trying to overcome the obstacles (mental and physical) between me and it.  But there are one or two things I’d like to say about 2011 before we leave it behind for good.

The quiet work situation, among other things, mean that I had a lot of time on my own and when I’m on my own I tend to think way too much! Apart from the Laceys, who have done more for me than they could possibly know and for which I cannot possibly repay them, two things kept me sane (just about) in 2011:

The gym

I may complain about going down there but once I’m there, I love it.  There’s something about it that is very soothing.  In fact, there have been times when, if it wasn’t for the gym, I wouldn’t have needed to leave the house for weeks on end.  I tweeted recently that I have often regretted not going to the gym but I’ve never once regretted going.  No matter how bad I felt beforehand, I always feel better afterwards and the ache that I feel in my muscles the day after - like the ache I’m feeling today - feels great.  When I have time away from the gym, it feels odd not to have stiff muscles somewhere (no sniggering at the back).

For the last year or so, I’ve also been focussing on nutrition and the results I’m seeing keep me motivated.  It’s not just the size of the weights I’m lifting: last year, I bought some 30 inch waist jeans in HK.  Despite being about 8kg heavier now than I was then, those jeans still fit perfectly.  T-shirts have started to become tight in all the right places.  I have a proper man-cleavage for the first time ever! At 45, without wishing to toot my own horn too much, I’m in the best shape of my life - it’s just a pity there’s no one else around to see it!

Twitter

That’s right - the second thing that kept me sane this year is you.  I’ve all but given up on Facebook and I never really got started with Google Plus but Twitter - oh, how I love you! I’ve had replies or retweets from Karun Chandock, Alistair Campbell, Seth Macfarlane, Noel Clarke and Graham Lineham among others - which doesn’t make me special but just makes me chuckle to think about because they’re all people that I admire.  Twitter connects people in a way that simply wasn’t possible before - and not just with celebs.  

I follow about 330 people but when you weed out the celebs, humorous accounts, news feeds and people who just don’t tweet any more, I reckon there are probably around a hundred “real” people.  Of them, I’ve had some contact with 25 or so and pretty much every one has been great - funny, supportive and kind.  Whether it’s been words of encouragement, jokes, recommendations of music, it’s so cool to know that there are other people out there, listening.  And that’s the really big thing about Twitter, I think, the reason why it’s so popular.  Without wanting to get too deep, we all want to be heard: all of us on Twitter use it because we want to know someone out there is listening, that someone - even a total stranger - is paying attention.  

I think that’s why retweets make me smile: it’s evidence that, whatever the tweet was, someone read it and liked it and wanted to share it with other people.  I especially enjoy it when I post links to articles - very often I’ll have someone in mind, someone I think will like it, and the times when they’ve retweeted it, or commented it or marked it as a favourite are a great little boost.

It’s not all been a bed of roses and Twitter can be a scary place, in a way. I remember once setting up a fake account in the name of a spider (it’s a long story - I was bored and in a hotel for work) and being terrified when I woke up the next morning to find that this spider had collected nearly 400 followers in about 8 hours.  There have been times when the pain in someone’s tweet and my inability to help them in any practical way has made the contact we’ve had seem very poor and very slight.  I’ve been bluntly reminded on a couple of occasions that I have somehow become very old in the eyes of people I like, even though I don’t feel it.  I’ve blocked my share of spammers, bots and trolls.  I’ve unfollowed people because of what they’ve said or what they appear to believe and I’m sure people have done the same to me.  

Overall, though, Twitter has been brilliant.  I’ve met some of you in real life - some deliberately, some by wild and freakish coincidence - and I hope to meet more of you before I go.  So, thank you very much for ever Tweet you wrote in 2011: give yourselves a big round of applause and have a drink on me!

Happy New Year.

A family mystery...

As I think I’ve mentioned, my great-grandfather was from Denmark.  For reasons I’m not entirely clear on, I’ve always felt slightly proud of this and have had a small inclination - when it suited me - to consider Denmark the “old country” and to passionately love The Killing. My ancestors were Vikings, which means they probably look down (or up) from Valhalla with a slight sense of disappointment at how the family line has turned out but having Viking ancestors is nothing to be sneezed at.  And if you do sneeze at it, I may well come round your house and pillage it, just for old time’s sake.

His name was Rasmussen - other famous Rasmussens were Prime Ministers of Denmark (at least two different ones), several football players and assorted poets, writers, film directors, singers, artists and architects.  I could be related to any one of them - or possibly even all of them; after all, Denmark is only a small place with only 5.5m people and less than 2% of them are called Rasmussen.  That’s only 110,000 people, roughly - surely the odds are good? 

The story was that he left Denmark in search of work in the early 20th century and moved to Wales, to work in the mines.  Given my current plans, I’ve felt a great deal of affinity with great-grandpappy Rasmussen, even if he did change the family name to Smith.  I was, I happily told myself, following in my ancestor’s footsteps - striking out for pastures new, to make a new life in a new country.  There was something very satisfying about it, a sense of completion.  The family lived in the UK for about a hundred years and then moved on to a different part of the world.

I say “the story’’because I can’t remember who told me this and, memory being plastic, there is a faint chance that I may just have made it up.  So I decided to check with my dad, just for confirmation and to see what else was known about his grandfather.  I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t asked.  The email I got back said that, as far as dad knows, great-grandpappy Rasmussen was in the Merchant Navy; his ship was sunk, probably in the Channel, and he settled in Wales.  

This is, I’m sure you’ll agree, extremely unsatisfactory.

This will not do. It can’t be that he just ended up here by accident, surely? That doesn’t fit with my idea of the past at all! It also raises more questions than it answers: why did he stay? How was he able to settle here?  What about his family in Denmark, presuming he had one? If he had been separated from them by accident, why not go back? 

I’d like to find out more but where do I begin? Anyone done this sort of thing before?

New Year's Eve

Well, that’s Christmas out of the way; in the end, it wasn’t so bad - spent time with my blood family on Christmas Eve and (one of) my family of choice on Boxing Day, with the small social interregnum on the day itself filled with whiskey (the “e” is deliberate - it was Irish) and chocolate and Mark Cousins’ glorious Story of Film, about which I have been gushing on Twitter for several weeks now.  There was a lot of driving - from 23rd to 27th I covered over 500 miles, which the maths experts will quickly spot equals roughly 100 miles a day) - but that’s what you get for living miles away from everyone else.

Christmas is a picnic compared to what’s coming up, though: New Year’s Eve.  I’m not trying to be grumpy (I don’t have to try, it just comes naturally) but I really do find New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day to be the most depressing time of the year.  The endless reviews of the year just gone, the reminders of the triumphs and the tragedies, the relentless pressure to celebrate what is, essentially, just another day, the “resolutions” that everyone knows will have been broken by the end of the month... When I was married, a lifetime ago, we used to go and stay in a local hotel on New Year’s Eve; they had a dinner dance which solved the problem of what to do quite nicely but for the last... I can’t remember how many years, I’ve spent NYE at home, on my own. I don’t think I was even awake at midnight last year.

Little ‘Un’s with me this year (his mother and I alternate) and he wants to stay up - last year he watched Jools Holland, apparently, and wants to do so again. (I really can’t think where he gets his musical taste from, bless him!) So, I’ll be up at midnight, raising a glass.  Not to 2011 - which was not a great year either for me or for some of the people I care about - but to 2012: the possibilities and the potential. I hope that 2012 will see some massive changes for the better for me - and for you, too.

Just to say...

I've noticed, from the stats that Google produces, that I'm getting readers from all around the world, which freaks me out a bit (but in the nicest possible way)! Thanks for reading and let me take this opportunity to say С Рождеством, Gelukkig kerstfeest, Frohe Weihnachten, Veselé Vánoce or Joyeux Noël! Please do feel free to say "hi" in the comments...

Who are you?

I was in the supermarket the other day, loading my stuff into those lovely hessian bags that Tesco sell instead of disposable one and the lady on the checkout commented on my packing.  It was an offhand comment - amusing enough and a nice bit of customer relations - but it stopped me in my tracks and made me think about what I was doing.  I was, very carefully, loading everything into the back like it was some kind of Tesco tetris.  

I never used to load bags like that - everything got chucked in as it came off the conveyor belt, in any old order; I pack that way because that’s the way an ex used to pack.  I started to think about this a bit more and noticed something interesting: I recycle pretty much all of my packaging because that’s what another ex used to do.  I have phrases that I use which are directly from former girlfriends.  Thinking about it more made me realise that it’s not just former girlfriends.  There are things I do, things I say, that I can attribute to specific friends - I’ve picked them up, consciously or subconsciously, over the years.  

Which started me wondering: are these things “me” or are they things that accrete gradually over the years, masking “me?” Or do they eventually become “me” through sustained usage?  Perhaps this pattern goes all the way back to when I was born, picking up the habits and practices of my parents and sister before I was even conscious of it.  If that’s the case, is “me” - or “you” for that matter - just the sum of all the individual transactions and relationships that we’ve had over the years? Is there even a “me?”

At this point, the lady on the checkout reminded me that she had other customers to serve and that I was holding everyone up.  But it makes you think, doesn’t it? Or is that just “me” - whoever that is...

Podcasts

I’ve just finished my last bit of study for my TEFL course and so I’m sitting here, in my dressing gown, wondering what to do.  I have nothing more to study; no homework, no assignments, no set reading... I didn’t realise what a comfort the TEFL stuff was when my degree finished! I’m no longer a student - for a while, at least.

So what do I do now?  How do I fill my time? While I’m pondering that, I thought I’d pick up on something I mentioned in a former post about podcasts.  So here, for all those of you who* asked, is my list of the top five podcasts you should check out:

In Our Time (BBC)

Here’s the deal: once a week, Melvyn Bragg gets a bunch of experts into a room and they talk about a subject for about forty-five minutes or so.  There’s no dumbing down, there’s no gimmicks - just the benefit of their expertise, with Melvyn to guide you through.  It shouldn’t work but it does, brilliantly, every time.  It’s impossible to listen to one of these podcasts and not come away knowing something new.

Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews (BBC)

Know to the cognoscenti as Wittertainment at its finest, this ninety minute weekly podcast edition of the good Doctors’ Radio 5 show is a must for anyone who likes films or listening in on an old married couple bickering.  Mayo is the perfect host (check out the podcast More Mayo for, not surprisingly, more Mayo, from his Radio 2 show) and Kermode an always entertaining critic.  Agree with him or not (and I mostly do) he’s always wittertaining. Hello to Jason Isaacs, love the show, Steve.

Savage Love (The Stranger)

Definitely NSFW and very definitely not for the faint hearted, Dan Savage’s weekly phone-in advice column on sex, love and relationships (mostly sex) is never less than brilliant.  Savage is warm, funny, human, empathic and, occasionally, savage - whenever I’m not sure about something, what would Dan do is a good question to ask. Almost impossible to describe, I’ve been listening to this podcast since it started - way back in 2006! I have every episode and, if I’m feeling bad about the state of my love-life, a few hours with Dan in the background normally sorts me out. (Savage also started the “It Gets Better” project on YouTube for which alone he deserves your attention.)

12 Byzantine Rulers (Lars Brownworth)

Technically no longer podcasting, this one is still around and still worth listening to.  If you thought the period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance was a dark age, this podcast is for you.  Telling the story of the eastern Roman Empire through 12 of its key emperors, Brownworth weaves a compelling and fascinating story. I fell in love with Byzantine history thanks to this podcast.

This American Life (NPR)

This is a recent one for me but I’ve quickly grown to love it.  It’s a simple premise: true stories. That’s it - often told by the people involved, sometimes funny, sometimes quirky, sometimes scary, sometimes sad. Real stories from real people.  Essential for those of us who forget, sometimes, that there’s a world out there.

So that’s it, my top five.  I could’ve included The Archers, The Word Podcast, Peter Day’s World of Business, Arts and Ideas and a special mention for Sidepodcast for those of you who are F1 fans, because they’ve been kind enough to mention my tweets a couple of times and because Christine and Mr C are brilliant. But if I’d have mentioned those, it wouldn’t have been a top five. 

*ie nobody; not a single person.  But I’m not letting that stop me.

So here it is...

I have a confession to make: I don't like Christmas. I know, I know - it's a magical time, peace on earth, goodwill to all men, all that sort of thing. I just don't like it.

I'm not religious, so it has no spiritual meaning for me; my family's not close so it's not a big time for getting together - in fact, I've spent the last three or four Christmas Days on my own and that's okay: it's just another day as far as I'm concerned.

Perhaps it's because I have some not particularly happy memories of previous Christmases; perhaps I object to the rampant commercialisation and the pressure it puts on families. Perhaps it's because I'm lonely and have no one to share Christmas with; perhaps I'm just a Scrooge. Whatever it is, I just don't much like it and I'll be a little bit relieved when it's all over for another year.

I happened to mention this to someone recently and he looked at me like I'd suggested I do something unspeakable to his pets. So generally, I keep my opinion to myself - except here, of course, where there's no one listening anyway. I have no objections to you celebrating Christmas - if you like it, knock yourself out. I join in with the present-buying and that kind of stuff, I'm not out to spoil anyone else's time... I just don't like it.

When I were a lad...

Many years ago, when I was just a lad (this is the point in my stories at which Little ‘Un’s eyes begin to glaze over), there were only three television channels and four, maybe five, radio stations - most of both run by the BBC.  Someone, somewhere (mostly at the BBC) decided what was on and when it was on and you were either in front of the TV or radio when it was on or you missed it.

While that was rather limiting - and quite a pain if two things were scheduled against each other or you happened to be out doing something else when the programme was aired - there was also something quite nice about it.  Those were the years of 24 million plus audience figures for things like The Two Ronnies or Morcombe and Wise.  There was a sense of occasion about certain shows, a sense of sharing something with the rest of the country.  All of us of a certain age can remember the Christmas EastEnders when Den served Angie with the divorce papers; it’s not exactly a Kennedy assassination moment, but it’s pretty close.

And then something happened.  In the eighties, video recorders became commercially available and cheap enough to be within the reach of my family.  After much nagging, my father eventually relented and bought one - a top-loading VHS machine with great big, chunky, lever-like buttons.  It was a revelation.  We went from believing that this machine was an impossible luxury to quickly being convinced that it was a complete necessity.  In fact, how did we live without it?

Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the BBC and ITV, people stirred nervously.  they still scheduled what we saw but they were beginning to lose control over when we saw it.  Now we, the viewer, had control over that aspect: we could record their programmes and watch them whenever we liked, at a time convenient to us.  It was the beginning of what is known today as timeshifting and it has drastically changed the way we “consume” media.

Fastforward to today.  I have a Sky Plus player.  This is, without doubt, the pinnacle of human civilization and it is completely impossible to imagine life without it.  I exaggerate, of course, but only a little.  It has completely changed the way I watch TV.  Nowadays, the only things I watch when they’re actually broadcast are the Formula 1 races and new episodes of Doctor Who - and only those on every other weekend, when Little ‘Un’s around.  The rest I watch whenever I have time and what I usually do when there’s a series on I want to watch, is set the “series link” option, forget all about it, and then watch the whole series back-to-back, like wading through a box-set of DVDs.

The same hasn’t really been possible for radios until a few years ago, when I discovered podcasts.  The BBC make available for download a whole range of excellent programmes, as do the World Service, the Guardian and a whole bunch of other providers, covering just about any and every topic you can think of.  Quality programmes, available for the princely sum of... nothing.  Free of charge.  All you have to do is subscribe to them and iTunes will do the rest.  And so, just like I did with the TV serveral years ago, I’ve all but stopped listening to the radio - the programmes I want to hear are delivered to my iPod, for me to enjoy when I want to.

That little man in the BBC is all but redundant for me, now; I control the schedule, whether it be TV or radio.  And that’s great - it’s the freedom to choose exactly what you want, when you want it.  But I can’t help but feel that, in all this freedom, a little something has been lost.  It’s harder to generate that sense of occasion that some programmes had, that sense of sharing something with everyone else.  Fortunately, it still happens to a degree. I didn’t watch the programme but I had an awful lot of fun watching Twitter watch the X-Factor final this weekend! More fun than I would have had actually watching the programme, I suspect!

Thought for the day

Unlike most of my usual ramblings, this post is about something that really matters.  For a little while I’ve been volunteering for the RNIB and as we approach Christmas, there’s something important that I’d like you to think about.

There are about two million blind and partially sighted people in the UK.  That’s a difficult number to imagine, so think of a city the size of Birmingham.  And then double it: that’s roughly two million people.  Every day, all over the country, a hundred people of all ages begin packing to move to that city because every day, a hundred people begin to lose their sight – and of them, approximately 50% lose their sight needlessly.  Imagine that on January 1st, 50 people were blinded in accidents; and then the same thing happened on January 2nd.  And again on January 3rd.  What date do you think it would it be before something was done?  That gives you a sense of the scale of what the RNIB deals with.

What did you do last night? Did you catch up with the latest Strictly... or EastEnders? Go to the cinema? Curl up on the sofa with a good book? Flick through a magazine?  Imagine being unable to do any of those things and you can begin to imagine the isolation and exclusion that blind and partially sighted people experience, every day. Not through any fault of their own but simply because they can’t see as well as you or I. That gives you a sense of the scope of what the RNIB deals with.

The RNIB’s talking book service began in 1935 but the first talking books were produced in the 1920s to help ex-servicemen, blinded in the First World War, who wanted to read but found Braille difficult to learn.  Over the years, the technology has changed but the principle has remained the same: to make books available to blind and partially sighted people. So that, just as fully sighted people can, they can have the simple pleasure of getting lost in a good book; of learning from a text book.

All books recorded by professionals – actors and broadcasters who volunteer their time - in the RNIB’S own studios and are played on a special player.  The whole process is supported by volunteers and subsidised by the RNIB and, as you can imagine, it provides a lifeline for people who have lost or are losing their sight.  It’s just one of the ways that the RNIB seeks to bridge the gap between those of us who are lucky enough to be fully sighted and those of us who aren’t.

Right now, today, a hundred people of all ages are packing for their journey to that city.  The RNIB provides vital help and support for those on their way and those already there.  They can’t do that without your help.  They’re a charity and get no money from government so, of course, I would love it if you could donate some money this Christmas, so they can continue with their work.  It would be fantastic if you could volunteer some of your time - there’s a great need for volunteers of all types.  But there are so many other demands on our time and our money these days, so if you can’t contribute and you can’t volunteer you can still help, simply by spreading the word – if you know of groups who’d be interested in a talk from the RNIB or if you know anyone who might need their help and support, please pass on details of the RNIB helpline: 0303 123 9999.

Thanks for reading.

Breaking up isn't always hard to do

I’ve just done something that I’ve only done twice before in my life - I’ve just “broken up” with a friend.  

All relationships are supposed to enhance your life; whether it’s a friend or a lover, that person should make your life better (even in some small way) by being a part of it.  I’m not talking about 100% of the time - everyone goes through difficulties, everyone needs support, everyone has their own stuff going on.  The main purpose of a friend can’t just be to make your life better - they have their own life to lead.

But when you repeatedly contact them and they don’t reply; when you repeatedly try to organise seeing them but it never happens; when you realise that the only time you ever hear from them is when they want something; when you start to feel bad because you never hear from that person... well, then it’s time to accept that the relationship has run its course and it’s time to say goodbye.

There comes a time when “I’m hopeless at staying in touch” just doesn’t cut it as an excuse anymore.  No, you're not hopeless at staying in touch, you're just lazy or thoughtless.  There's the phone, text messaging, Skype, Facebook and LinkedIn - there's no excuse not to be in touch, other than not wanting to be.  You can’t be a friend to someone if you never have any contact with them, so perhaps I’m not doing anything other than accepting a fait accompli.  Either way, deleting them from Skype, Facebook, LinkedIn and my contacts book felt pretty damned good...

Absorbed

Over the last few weeks, I have been completely absorbed by Murakami's 1Q84 trilogy. I know there's a lot of hype around it but on this occasion, I think I can say it's justified. I've loved every page and I can honestly say I don't want it to end. It's a slow burn but by the end of book 2 I was so hooked by the "cliffhanger" that I had to download and start book 3 immediately.

I like reading but this kind of obsession doesn't happen to me very often. There was Kafka, when I was a teenager, and for a while I couldn't decide whether Max Brod was a hero or a villain. Then I went through a Martin Amis phase in my twenties but lost interest around about "Money." Since then, there have been only occasional books that have gripped me.

There's "The Great Gatsby" of course - there's always Gatsby, which I tend to read about once a year. Recently, "Wolf Hall" and "We Need to Talk About Kevin" obsessed me, as did Colm Tóibín's "The Master" - a book so lambently beautiful that I dare not read it again, in case it doesn't live up to my memory of it!

So, as 1Q84 approaches its end, I'm surveying my pile of unread books and wondering what to pick up next. I have a feeling that, whatever it is and however good it is, it will only be an anticlimax.

Hospital

It's only in hospitals, I think, that you can truly understand the terrifying range of disasters, large and small, that can befall the human body and mind. And it's in hospitals that you can begin to comprehend the kindness that we are capable of.

As I type this, I'm in a hospital waiting room. For nothing serious, thank goodness - Little 'Un broke his little finger a few weeks ago and this is just a check up. Sitting opposite me is a young man - late 20s/early 30s. He has a bandage on his wrist but he has more serious challenges than that: he repeats himself incessantly, becomes easily agitated and aggressive, finds things hard to understand. The girl sitting next to him looks younger - sister, lover, friend, carer? - and I watched her, watching him.

I'm a fairly articulate guy but I lack the words to express the emotion I saw on her face and in her eyes. Some combination of pain, patience, love, sadness, weariness and something else, something stronger than all those other emotions put together. It was deeply moving; I know I'm a bit of a drama queen at the best of times and especially now, when I'm feeling generally a bit fragile but even I was surprised to find tears in my eyes.

Perhaps it was projection, or empathy, or a realisation that, deep down, I doubt I could cope with a situation like that: whatever it was, it was a touching moment. They left for their appointment before we did and I'll never see either of them again. Without wishing to be melodramatic, I don't think I'll ever forget them, though.