I’m not an expert, but… you don’t have to be
I've done a few posts recently trying to look at blogs and blogging, and what it means to me. This is partly because of some things coming up in the near future - of which more soon, hopefully - and partly because I just fancied writing them.
I've been a 'blogger' for nearly three years now, which is longer than I've been able to stick out most of the jobs I've had, and I keep coming back to it, almost every day. Then again, I know I could just walk away from it tomorrow if the fancy took me, and leave it behind and never come back, and that would be perfectly OK - except I don't ever do that.
I read Septicisle's post the other week about looking back on his five years of blogging, and it made me think about my own, shorter, blog career. I wanted to think about all the things I love about blogging and all the things I love about the medium of blogs - and the shortcomings, of course, but I wanted to look at it positively and fondly. It's something I find myself almost ridiculously enthused about because, seriously, it's what I love doing - but particularly writing as a blogger rather than in any other medium. And I found there was so much I wanted to say, which is why I split it over so many posts (all the ones called "I'm not an expert, but..." in case you hadn't noticed already). This one, then, is just a way of tying it all up.
Blogs aren't the same as journalism, of course, and they'll never replace journalism as a like-for-like replacement. As newspapers die out, as they probably will, people's appetite for written entertainment will probably remain strong. Blogs are part of that, but certainly not all of it. I hope written journalism survives in some form or other, and I'm pretty sure it will, and blogs can help, and be part of it. Then again, blogs can break news stories and bloggers can be good journalists and write journalistically; and the blogging convention of constantly crediting sources and linking to them so that readers can see for themselves the article you're referring to and quoting from is good practice*.
A lot of the time, blogs are dismissed as 'chatter' or 'babble' but I've never really bought that. Don't get me wrong, there's an awful lot of bollocks out there. There's an awful lot of bollocks on this blog. And there are all kinds of things wrong with it, posts that didn't make much sense, articles I got wrong, pieces where I didn't really do very well, and so on. But then again there are blogs that make me roar with laughter in a way that I find myself doing less and less frequently with written newspapers or even their online articles; there's a spirit about blogs that I find infectious and fun, something anarchic almost. And yes, I know, a lot of bloggers end up being farty talking heads on political programmes and whatnot; as I always say, feel free to slap me round the face if you ever see my potato-like heading mouthing away dreary rehearsed nonsense to Brillo or any of those jokers. But a lot of us aren't in it for those meagre glories; we just love the idea of writing, and publishing, the instant-ness of it - the immediacy of it!
You don't have to be an expert, as well. Or even claim to be an expert. You can just be a punter and give your opinions on whatever you want - politics, the arts, culture, whatever takes your fancy. Blogging is often about an emotional response as much as an intellectual one that's steeped in paragraphs of context - it has a rawness and an honesty that people like. Again, this is why blogging is a lot like journalism - same same, but different - it's something that attempts to take the writer as the conveyor of facts and opinion and a version of the truth; except with blogging, as with a lot of modern journalism, you're never trying to detach yourself from the story - you're always in there, part of it, and writing in your own voice.
It's the voice that comes out the strongest. It took me a long time to get mine right, and perhaps I haven't even done that yet. But I find the words coming out on the screen a lot like the way my thoughts form themselves, rather than seeing myself trying to write a beginning, a middle and an end; or three acts; or trying to force an epiphany into the life of someone I don't want to have one; or trying to do any other kind of writing, except maybe poetry, but believe me, you wouldn't want to read my poetry. I hope my voice comes across nicely, though probably you think I'm a right sweary bastard - well, it doesn't matter, but so long as there's a personality, I think that's important.
I think it's one of the enjoyable things about blogs that they often have personalities, and you may like or dislike them, or think they're hideous or friendly, but they're there, and you can recognise them. I think the best blogs are the ones that you'd be able to tell who wrote it if you just saw the words on a sheet of paper; that means they've done their job in finding a voice. As well as that, your voice can mature over time, or your writing style can change, or evolve, and it all happens in public. Re-reading earlier entries is a bit jarring, but on the other hand, it's still me doing it, so that's fine, and I can't disassociate myself from them. That was me, then. This is me, now.
That's the other thing, honesty. You need to have honesty, I think. When you fuck up, you have to be honest and say you fucked up; and when you feel like shit, I think it's important to say you feel like shit. All of that matters, whereas it doesn't necessarily matter in other media. But this is a place where you're generally one person, regularly updating, in a kind of journal format - whether you want it to come out as some kind of emo stuff or not, it's inevitably going to be shaped by who you are and how you're feeling at a particularl time. I see that as an advantage to be embraced rather than something to be afraid of. Sometimes it involves talking about stuff that's pretty painful, but sometimes that can help, too. Sometimes just writing about some subjects can help.
And you can write about anything you want, for as long as you want, as often as you want. That's the scope you have available to you, and it's a liberating thing. You don't have to have seen 10,000 football matches or be an ex-professional to have an opinion on football; occasionally being detached from the industry you're writing about and not having to keep anyone sweet can mean that blogging content is refreshingly free of pandering to people you'd rather not pander to.
There are no deadlines, either. You can blog once at three in the morning, slightly pissed but with a massive idea in your head you can't get rid of; or you can go a week or a fortnight without putting anything down, and it's just the same, and you haven't damaged your 'brand' at all. The length of an article is the length you'd like it to be; you don't have to flesh it out with meaningless preamble or pointless dilly-dallying up garden paths and down dark alleys. You can just get on with it, straight to the point, or as near as straight to the point as your writing style will let you - which, as you can probably tell with mine, as 'not very straight to the point, I'm afraid, but you'll just have to lump it, mate.'
I see a blog entry as like those things they put in Chekhov's ear in Wrath of Khan. It's there, the idea in your head, growing in your brain, getting bigger and bigger, and all you want to do is just get it out before it drives you insane. People blog, I think, because they can't bear not to - in fact I think someone once said that was exactly why they did it. You have an idea, you want to express it, you need to get it out of you, you consign it to the ether, and there, it's gone, and you can relax a bit - until the comments start popping in, or you think of a follow-up, or someone blogs a rebuttal, and then it all starts again. But it's an intense, fun creative thing to do - just to write, because you feel like you have to, even though there's nothing other than your own mind compelling you.
And then there's someone else we need to talk about, which is you. I don't know who you are, or why you're here, or what your expectations are, or what you like, or whether you're picking your nose and flicking it onto the Anaglypta as we speak, and it doesn't matter. I write this for me, first and foremost, and then there's you as well. We kind of both exist. I'm just an orange monkey and an allonym and you could be anyone, for all I know, anywhere, reading this for any reason, and that's kind of nice and comforting. For some reason, lots of you keep reading, and keep coming back, and keep commenting (which I love) and keep telling your mates about this blog, and so it carries on. I'd do it to three sheep and a man with a funny stare, let alone all the lovely people who do come along. I'm very lucky, and all I can say is thank you for reading. If you managed to get to the end of this self-indulgent bollocks then you're tremendously patient, as well. There'll be funny stuff and all that in the next post, or the one after that. Or not. Who knows?
Anyway, I could have written about a million words on this. I very nearly have done by the looks of this. But, really, this is just a big love letter to blogging. It's something that has given me an enormous amount of enjoyment, and fun, and satisfaction over the years. I didn't realise quite how much I loved it before I wrote this very post, which is kind of what I'm on about - simply by writing, you can discover things about yourself, and about how you feel. Which is a thing that I think blogging does best of all.
* This is a convention I occasionally break in order not to give certain rubbish newspapers very much web traffic, and also because I don't like linking to people like Stormfront or Richard Littlejohn. But most of the rest of the time I do my best to link back to original stuff.
Awards and votes and shit
Hello. It's that time of the year again, when Total Politics runs its annual poll of blogs.
In the past I've boycotted it, because I think it's a bit of a tedious self-aggrandising circlejerk. And because of the fact it's by Total Politics, which is a dreadful vanity project with no journalistic or literary merit whatsoever, and because Lord Ashcroft's involved. And there's the other fella as well, can't remember his name, invented blogging, world's most brilliant commentator on everything, potato face, short temper, calls everyone pricks. You know the one.
All that still stands. I couldn't give a shit where I'm voted. In these things I inevitably end up behind people who are fucking terrible, and above people who are much more intelligent, insightful and all-round better writers than me. So it's largely arbitrary, a bit meaningless, a bit silly. If I cared about it, that would make me a bit of a dillon. And I don't want to be that. On the other hand, in the spirit of not trying to look like a meanie, I won't exclude myself this time. What I will say is that there are dozens more deserving people than me, so please pick them instead.
What I would ask is that if you must vote, you vote for people who are actually good. Please don't vote for the same old faces, time after time; it makes blogging look like some feeble boys' club - and it is usually boys, as well. There are many brilliant, lovely, startling, imaginative bloggers out there. Some are writing amazing stuff rather than trotting out infantile squabbling tribal garbage. They deserve to be recognised. Not me. Not the usual suspects, either.
So, if you'd like to vote for me, then by all means, I won't be ducking out this year. On the other hand, I won't beat you up for your dinner money if you don't.
But for Christ's sake, don't vote for them.
I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry
I'm sorry that I should have to be sorry, and if there's a reason to be sorry, I'm sorry; but if I feel that I really have no cause to be sorry, then all I can say is: I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry. I've received a bit of stick recently for a couple of things I've said and done, so I thought I'd clear the air with you, if that's all right with you. If you find it boring, I'm sorry for that. Well, I'm not sorry, because I'm doing it anyway, but you get the general idea.
Swearing in general I've done before. I don't apologise for that, really. You might see it as some kind of lalochezia - reading the tabloid press is a bit like hitting your thumb with a hammer - before you know where you are, a massive screaming swear has come out of your lips. It's just a thing that I do. I know not everyone likes it, and quite often nowadays I try to do posts without swearing every now and then - I did yesterday, and they got 6,000 pageviews. So it's not like I need to swear to get your attention. But it's part of my personality, my real personality as well as my written-down one, so I think that's not going to change in the near future.
I don't think I'm above criticism. I get a lot of criticism every week, and I don't really mind. Water off a duck's back, and all that, except it's criticism off a rubbish blogger's back; but you get the general idea. A lot of it you see in the comments under stories; some of it you don't, as it turns up in my inbox. Sometimes it's in CAPS LOCK and I have fun staring at the angry letters, marvelling at the way in which my silly words have such an effect on another human being. If anything, I always end up saying sorry. I really do. I've said sorry so many times to readers who appear to have been genuinely offended by what I've said, even by accident, and I always say sorry when I feel that I've upset someone - even if I didn't mean to upset someone.
Of course there are some people who deserve to be upset, in my opinion. And I'm not sorry if they have ever been upset. If Richard Littlejohn, for example, has ever got the impression that I think he's a sub-human piece of shit, then I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry, because that's exactly what I think he is - although as I said the other day, cloaca is a particularly apt way of dealing with such a vile orifice of a man.
There I go again, though, using the word 'man'. It's a good example of my unexamined privilege. As a male, you see, I don't realise that I'm unwittingly accelerating the language that has been used to destroy women for centuries; I can't help it. It's just the way I am, and I should really just accept that whatever I say, it's going to be misogynist, because sometimes I am going to use gender-specific words - you know, referring to a man as a man, for example. What a horrible man, sorry, person, that makes me. Why I even keep on writing anything is beyond me, because from time to time I'm going to refer to things from a male perspective and use words that refer specifically to men, meaning that I am hateful scum.
Well look, I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry. From time to time I am going to use gender-specific words and phrases. I am going to use certain words. Yes, I said goalkeeper Rob Green was 'man enough' to get over his blunder; but I meant 'man' as in 'Rob Green is a man, not a boy', and believing that he is in possession of a penis and a pair of testicles, I thought it might be fair enough to say he'd be man enough to get over it. Oh no! My bad. Apparently that meant that I thought courage and phlegm were distinctly male characteristics rather than female ones. I didn't think that, of course, and I didn't intend to give that impression - and, for what it's worth (which is apparently nothing whatsoever compared to the immense value of the unexamined privilege that weighs me down and crushes me) I don't think that courage or stoicism or phlegm or anything like that are particularly male qualities - it just so happened that Rob Green is a man. He really is. I thought that might be all right, to say something as innocuous as that. Stupid me. Bad me. Wrong me. Apparently that makes me the villain, the enemy, the scum.
The funny thing is I spend most of my time on here saying that the so-called PC Brigade haven't gone mad, and that political correctness is actually a good thing. And I do. The more churlish of you might revel in the thought that I have therefore been hoist by my own petard (is 'petard' a masculine word? Best not use it just in case) by receiving criticism for my use of apparently anti-feminist language. But I stick by my principles. I think political correctness is a good way of being polite and trying not to cause widespread offence - not that offence is something that's necessarily taboo, as I'll come to in a minute - and a good idea to use to try and stop conversations from annoying others. PC hasn't gone mad. It isn't the case that you can't say anything nowadays without the PC diversity Nazis kicking you in the bollocks*for not being as exquisitely inclusive as you otherwise might have been.
But fucking hell. Sometimes it gets a bit wearying, it really does.You try your best to try and be a decent writer, to fight the good fight and all that, but some tiny little apparent error in what you say, and all of a sudden you're a villain. I mean, really? What pisses me off the most is the impression I get that people aren't even offended by these errors, or slips, or perfectly legitimate sentences of mine (whichever way you want to look at it) - they just delight in the idea that they've seen something they regard as being a mistake so they want to put a great big red ring around it and tell me off. I can understand people who are offended by things and like I've said, I apologise, but this isn't even causing offence - if anything I get the impression it causes delight for people to be able to say "Haha! I spotted you doing something incorrect, let me put you straight about this one!"
I'm nearly finished, honest. I just need to get this out of me, otherwise it'll sit there festering, and that won't be good for either of us, you understand. Let's talk about other offences I may commit. Yes, I do wish death on people. I do want people who cause death to others, and who legitimise the use of military force to kill others with lying sophistry and other justifications, to die. In the cas of those responsible for war crimes, I'd like to see them legitimately tried and imprisoned, of course; but in the absence of that, and I'm afraid there always will be the absence of that for our modern-day western war criminals, all I can hope for is a swift but painful death. I don't apologise for that and I won't. When Margaret Thatcher dies I'm having a big fucking party with fireworks, sombreros and confetti cannons, and you're invited - we'll do a big long fucking conga line down the street. Yes, I was pleased to hear Chris Hitchens had cancer. I'm not sorry about any of this, rather unpleasant though it is. You think I'm nasty; there are plans for parties in entire fucking football stadiums in Miami ready for when Castro dies. It's a natural human instinct to wish ill on those whom we despise, and I'm pretty sure people will wish the same on me if they don't like me, or at least do a little dance round the room if I fell under a bus. Ah well. That's human nature, I'm afraid; a pretty unpleasant and despicable part of human nature, but I think we've all got it. I just veil mine a little less discreetly than other people.
Finally, and thanks for staying with me this long if you made it this far, cunt. I understand that certain terms - bitching, cunt, hysterical etc - can be seen as denigrating women by their usage. However, I should perhaps explain. Left Outside writes a nice post about this yesterday, for example, so have a look at that if you like. I use cunt a lot because it's the most taboo word we have - other than racial slurs - and therefore the one that I want to use most of all to describe some of the people I come across while writing this blog, who are truly cunts. Motherfucker, sure, there's that option, perhaps the most taboo word in US English, and that may well be where I would go if I weren't English.
But I try to spread the swearing love around to other words too. I don't confine it to cunt, so I'm not saying that a cunt is the worst thing you can be - people can certainly be fucksticks, or cocks, or wankers, or tools, or knobs, or bellends, or tosswipes, banjostrings, or knackers, or arseholes, or bumgrapes, or whatever. You know, I don't really try to imply that the female genitalia is the worst thing you can be, because it obviously isn't - am I perpetuating that through the use of cunt? I don't think so. Cunts are lovely things, really, they give us life. We all came out of a cunt in the beginning. Maybe Tim's right and we should go for cloaca instead. But until that has a certain currency, I think I'll probably stick with cunt as my word of choice for what I call people who are cunts. It's what I grew up with and I personally don't think it targets women through anger, rage or hatred. Our no 1 swear is cunt. If it were 'ironing board' I'd call Richard Littlejohn an ironing board. You may disagree but at least I hope you can see that where I'm coming from isn't a place where I think that cunt does legitimise hatred or denigration of women above all else.
Anyway, look, that is all. The faintly dispiriting thing is that I know for sure that no matter what I write as my defence, I'll be seen as guilty by some. But all I can do is say that I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry. I don't go out of my way to be offensive or unpleasant - but somewhere along the line, whatever you write, you're going to upset someone, particularly if you're very honest with your readers about how you feel about things. To those who are genuinely offended, I am truly sorry. It doesn't mean that I'm going to change what I do, but I am sorry for any offence caused. For other matters of language, I can't apologise because I honestly don't think that a crime has been committed by me. And that's as far as I can go.
* I did that one on purpose. No, I don't mean that everyone has bollocks. No, I don't mean to imply that you've got bollocks. Unless you have, in which case, I'm sure they're lovely.
So, it’s a bit of a hiatus
I had meant to write more than this before I headed off to Glastonbury - yes, think of me, won't you, suffering in all that warmth and cider - but events took a bit of an unexpected turn. I had meant to write about a few bits and bobs, nothing tremendously interesting, but you know how it is: nice to get a few things off your chest before you go away. Unfortunately, it hasn't quite worked out like that. Real life has intervened for a while.
One thing I should say before I go is to just say thanks, as ever, for reading.
Anyway, if you're interested at all in how I get on at Glasto then you can follow my tweets at the usual place. I can't respond as I only have a crappy phone, but it's the thought that counts, isn't it? I'll be back next week, anyway, so don't fret. I'll be back before you know it. And if you're there, you can't miss me - I'm the little orange monkey-shaped person.
Why bother writing about the media?
I've never really had a mission statement, because I've never had a mission. Still, every now and then there comes a time when I think it's worth explaining why I do what I do, if only so I can read it myself and see whether I believe it or not. I do this because Left Outside wrote an interesting and well-argued piece yesterday entitled "Is it worth writing a blog on the media?" - and since I write a blog (partly) on the media, it did intrigue me.
So why bother writing about the media? What does it achieve? Does it simply keep bringing me face-to-face with things I can't stand - much like the tabloids I claim to dislike so much bring out their own bogeymen to give everyone a good scare round the camp fire? Or is there some way in which it adds positively to a discourse about how we treat sources, how we believe what we read and how we trust what we're being told?
I think it's all of those things, and none of them. For me, at least. I can't speak about all those other fine coves who go rootling around in the media effluent; I can only speak for me. That's the first caveat. I can't claim to know the motivation of anyone but me. I can guess, but I don't know for certain. Even then, I'm never entirely sure why I do things. Who is? But I'll give it a whirl. My motivation is primarily this: I see, all over the place, voices saying things I disagree with. Not just in print, though that's where it's strongest, but elsewhere - BBC Have Your Say, the Jeremy Vine Show, everywhere that apparently seeks debate always seems to attract many more voices speaking out against what I would agree with. Is that because I'm in the minority? I don't know. All I do know is that there are a lot of angry people in the world, and they're getting their voices heard - and I want mine heard too. Given that I can't be bothered to be patronised by Jeremy Vine, I'll have to self-publish.
There's something else as well. I've often tried to comment under Daily Mail stories to correct inaccuracies or to put another side of the argument. So many times I've seen these comments simply rejected. I haven't sworn, or been unpleasant; I've simply tried to state things as I see them. A lot of debate is closed off to the likes of me and you; we're not allowed to 'have our say', even though there's a veneer of being allowed to. And that's frustrating. And that was another motivation for starting a blog up about the media - to try and provide another voice. Not to correct, or to change, anything. Just to provide another voice. Just to do something so I could have my say. In a lot of ways, I do think that is what blogging is about.
Left Outside says:
This all got me wondering whether or not we inflict the miserable quarters of our societies on ourselves. Numerous blogs have been created to monitor the media but I am beginning to wonder if they are tackling a symptom not a cause. They do great work, and I enjoy reading them immensely but blogging (and life in general) is about making an impact, and I am not sure if tackling the press directly is the best way to go about changing the press.
I disagree. I don't care whether I make an impact or not. I don't think blogging is about making an impact; it's about writing about those things that scream to be written. I'm not here to change anything, or anyone, and I understand that there's a likelihood that I may never have changed anyone's opinion about anything, that I'm simply preaching to the converted, that I'm just reinforcing people's existing prejudices. All of that is fine with me. I'm OK with it. It's not a problem.
My ambition isn't to reform the press, or change it, or make it better, or to make anyone not buy newspapers any more, or make anyone more cynical. I'm trying not to be simplistic, but I don't have any ambitions as far as this blog is concerned. Nor me. I don't want to change things for the better, nor do I think I have the ability or the power to do so. I just want to get my voice heard - that's pretty much the top and bottom of it. If others agree, and find this place, and like what I write, then that's great, and I'm pleased, and I hope that occasionally I might write stuff that entertains, or inspires, or makes people feel a sense of recognition, or agreement, or even disagreement and being annoyed. I have a couple of thousand regular readers now, and that's wonderful, and I find that tremendously pleasing, but I don't write this for anyone but me. I can't. That isn't the point of it. In a lot of ways, there isn't a point to it, other than me thinking "aaaaargh, that thing I've just seen has pissed me off, I must write about it", and then I write about it, and then it's all OK for a bit, and the urge to write calms down a bit, and I can get on with daily life, such that it is.
The other thing is, it's unavoidable. I did a bit a while ago where I tried avoiding the Daily Mail entirely - and found it impossible. I then spent an entire day reading the Mail to see what was really in there. I'm so pleased for those people who commented yesterday saying they'd never heard of James Corden - oh, the lucky lambs. But I'm someone who's usually quite immersed in the media, so I tend to come across stuff I don't like all the time. It's not as simple as the off switch, for me. I have a bit of a challenger type of personality, and if I have a fault - or a strength - it's not letting things lie when I disagree with them. I also like challenging myself. I like reading stuff I agree with, of course; but I can't help constantly trying to challenge myself by reading stuff I might not agree with. Sometimes you surprise yourself; sometimes you just reinforce what you already think. But that's the way I do things. Not everyone's the same.
So when people wonder, or worry, that I might be making myself miserable through all this, the answer is simple: no, not really. It makes me rather cheerful, and upbeat, to tell you the truth. I like reading the nonsense that gets printed on a daily basis; it's a bit wearying to think that the largest part of our printed debate in this country is often based on a complete myth, or a pack of lies, or lazily recycled press releases, and that can make you a little angry; but it doesn't make me miserable. It makes me cheerful to think I can write my own version of what I think, and it's published instantly, and there it is. And then that exists too, and is equivalent. Sure, it might not have the millions of readers that my inky counterparts have, but that's beside the point. It's there, and I have created it. That's a wondrous thing, and something I'll never tire of. And along the way I do hope that I have entertained people who might read what I've written. That's primarily the aim, entertainment, me first and then you; no point doing it if you're not going to have a bit of fun along the way. I hope that comes across. I don't want anyone worrying for my sanity, or health; I'm really very chipper about this whole business.
So why do I bother? Because it's fun. I love doing it. I am not trying to achieve anything; nor do I mistakenly think I am achieving anything other than creating another version of the truth, albeit one imbued with my own prejudices rather than someone else's. But then that to me is what blogging is, the creation of a worldview, putting down what you think because you can't bear not to. I don't think it will have an impact, or change anything, or change anyone's point of view, but I don't mind that at all; I'm only trying to entertain myself, and hopefully a few other people. If it works, magic. If not, never mind, at least I've had a bash.
FAIL
I had to try. I had to see if I could. But sadly, I couldn't. Things didn't quite work out.
I think if there's one word that sums up how we view things nowadays, it's FAIL. You don't quite get what you want and it's FAIL. You don't achieve what you set out to, you FAIL. Someone else doesn't understand what you're saying: FAIL. Fail, fail, fail. Sometimes it feels like we are trapped in a binary world between WIN=1 and FAIL=0. Sometimes, it's not quite that simple, I think, though it certainly feels like a FAIL for now.
Regular readers, bless you, might have guessed what it's a fail about. The rest of you might just have to bear with me while we plough through all this messy personal stuff; if you're not interested, then I really don't mind, by the way - we'll pull our ripcords and float down to Littlejohn-joke Island sometime tomorrow morning, I imagine.
I know some people think you shouldn't write about personal stuff, or that by writing about it publicly you somehow make it worse; but I don't really listen to that at all, and I don't think it's right, either, for what it's worth. This is, I think, what blogging is about - putting yourself into the story, or into what you write, rather than seeing yourself as a camera taking stills of the world. (I see as I write this that yet another "Is blogging journalism?" debate is being kicked around on Twitter at the moment, which I'll happily not be touching with the smellier end of a shitty stick.) One of the things I like about blogging is that it's the expression of yourself in relation to the things you see, and hear, and feel, rather than a simple snapshot of the world, imagining that you're capable of detaching yourself from it. Then it's important to say who you are, and how you feel, from time to time, or as often as you like, I think.
So, to the failure. Check previous entries like this and the other blog I used to write, for the backstory, if you like. Well, it's like this. Turns out it wasn't quite goodbye, or farewell, after all, I'm afraid: because this morning, after a lot of thinking, I gave up giving up. I started taking Prozac, or fluoexetine, or whatever you like to call it, again.
FAIL.
I don't really know what made me start again. It's a combination of things rather than one specific event. But generally it was this: everything just started to fall apart, a bit. Unfortunately, but there you are. Everything had seemed to be in place - as in place as it was ever probably going to be, I think - but I couldn't quite string it all together. Or perhaps I just should face up to the fact that having to take medication is something that I'm going to have to do, just like I take it for other things in my life, and that this is no different, and all the counselling or therapy or whatever else you might try in the meantime isn't going to change all of that. Is it time to face up to that, now? I suppose so. But I would never have known if I hadn't tried. You've got to try, otherwise you'll never know, and you have to know, so you have to try.
I feel disappointed, but not crushed. A little bit hurt, but not beaten. Low, but I've been lower. This isn't as bad as it could be. As I always say, it's only through learning where you're vulnerable that you learn where you're strong. I remember reading once that they knew where to reinforce planes that came back from the Battle of Britain because those were the bits where there weren't any bulletholes. It's only through getting hit, and surviving, you know how strong you really are. It's only through trying, and failing, you know where you succeed, and how you can do better. It's how you deal with it that counts. I'm not weak.
The rather odd thing is that yesterday I got some good news, the best news I've had in ages. Someone actually paid me for something I wrote - the cheque arrived, and no, I wasn't dreaming, it had actually happened. In a strange kind of way, perhaps that makes you look at things differently, when you hit your goals, even in a small way, on a small scale, in a way that matters not very much to anyone else at all, but means the whole world to you. WIN, you might say. The day didn't end up feeling full of WIN, but it doesn't always matter how things end up; what matters more, perhaps, is what happens next.
So what does happen next? I just carry on. A lot of things seem to have fallen apart and taken a knock - another thing that's gone wrong, to add to the list of things that have gone wrong? No, not really. Just a little fail. You don't need the capital letters. A little fail and a little win, within 24 hours of each other. Perhaps that's it. Perhaps if you can belittle the triumph, as much as you can the catastrophe, into as small a thing as you can make it, that makes everything small stuff, manageable, something you can deal with. A little fail, a little win. A little of each every day, it needn't add up to anything sinister, or problematic.
And knowing that you might not be strong enough to cope on your own? That's not a fail. That's strength over time - the strength to realise when you can't cope, and admit you're vulnerable, and need help; better that than blundering blindly along determined and stubborn, and ending up getting really hurt, or ruining things for those you love most.
Don't worry, jokes tomorrow. For now, a pause. It doesn't feel as bad as I thought it would do. It feels OK. Relief, if anything. And now, with help, and the love of those around me, to get the rest of it sorted out. And I will.
Am I doomed?
A startling thought struck me this morning when I read the stories about the Times deciding to charge £1 a day to enjoy their websites. Not just "Who the fuck is going to pay that?", although I did think that, obviously. Not even "Bloody hell, even when it was free I didn't really visit there that often", though I thought that as well.
No, the rather more self-centred thought I had was: if all newspaper websites start setting up toll booths, is that it? Am I doomed? There's no way I can afford £1s here and there to look up a couple of poxy stories on the internet and then blog about them; what am I supposed to do? Sneak around the back somehow? Start sneakily taking photos of newspapers in the corner shop? What am I going to do?
Serves you right, I'm sure some of you are thinking, you've been riding off the back of other people's hard work for too long. And I have some sympathy for that point of view; not a great deal, but enough to shrug my shoulders a tiny bit before going back to not giving a shit again because I don't think it's really true.
It's one of those things that I've heard said about blogging, that it's just a parasitic form of writing, and relies on leeching off source material. To an extent you can argue that, but that does a great disservice to what blogging is and what it can be. The very best blogging has opened up all kinds of material - published by the press or by the Government - to proper scrutiny from the punters, and that's got to be a good thing. It's one of the wonders of the web: open access to information, by everyone, so we can make up our minds. A says something. B writes about it. C blogs about it. D leaves annoying comment correcting what C said under C's blog post. C gets pissed off but grudgingly realises they didn't get it quite right. E corrects error in D's comment. And so on, and so on. I find it all an overwhelmingly positive thing for our culture, regardless of the racist CAPSLOCK you get under everything ever on YouTube, for example. That's like comparing the Daily Mail to journalism: it's just not fair on journalists.
It might suit all kinds of people to return to an age where the Fourth Estate is the only arbiter of what gets seen and what doesn't, and the only way you can see what they've got to say is by paying through the nose. But I don't know if you can put the lid back on the box in a news arena where the BBC will provide content accessible to all thanks to the licence fee (and no wonder Auntie is under sustained attack from the Murdoch papers), and other papers will too. I've always thought things like this are like Marxism: it only works if everyone does it at once. Naturally, if it makes that pus-filled cockroach Mr Murdoch a stack, then they'll all copy, but will it work? No-one really knows for sure.
Let's not pretend, by the way, that these brave and diligent news multinationals will use the money from subscriptions to fund quality journalism, instead of chucking it with all the speed and accuracy of a Gareth Edwards pass straight to the shareholders' wallets. They might get the onions out and tell you they're on their uppers and that if they don't get you pay then they're going to have to start buying bullets - but I don't think it's that desperate, just yet, despite the decline of the industry in general.
I'm pretty relaxed about it all as far as this blog and this type of blogging is concerned. You'll also notice I try to write about a little bit more than just the miserable excesses of the papers here. (All right, so you may not think it's all that interesting, the non-press-bashing bits, but I enjoy it... we can all pull our ripcords and float down to Tabloid Island later.) If it happens, it happens; if it doesn't, it doesn't. I'll keep writing about whatever, maybe go through a whole paper every now and then, like I did with the Mail last Friday.
There may be workarounds, anyway, but it might be interesting to see just how seriously papers will now take their content. Linky love doesn't mean too much if you're linking to something behind a drawbridge and moat; likewise quoting chunks of an article might be frowned upon, especially if people can't link to the original, or know their readers can't see the original. It might come to a point, you could reasonably predict, whereby a blogger might quote something out of context from a paywalled story, completely misrepresenting it, without readers being able to find it for themselves through an internet search or jumping straight there through a link. I wonder if the papers will be annoyed by that, or seek to target people who quote their paywalled stories?
Exciting times ahead, then. I don't know if it's going to work. If it makes that odious devil Murdoch more money, then I hope it doesn't. And it's not quite in the spirit of the web to start re-installing paywalls, a la 2001. Those days are gone, I think. The web isn't some shitty nightclub, and if your name's not down, I think you should be allowed in anyway.
But we'll see. All I will say is that I can't see a time when you have to pay to read this.
Chinny reckon
Author's note: The correct - and only - pronunciation is "Chinny reck-onnnn".
I have a face that's like two grey marbles sinking into a bowl of strawberry Angel Delight. I look a bit like a bewildered ghost.
You don't realise until you see yourself properly, like other people see you - not in the mirror, yawning out curry breath and wiping the grit out of your eyes; but as moving image on a screen.
I was in the local shop the other day. They used to be called "Smile" but I assume they were hauled up before the courts for breaching the Trades Descriptions Act or something like that. You'll never see a smile in there - the crouched-over alkies stumbling over to the fridge for a solitary can of Kestrel or Tennants Super; the gobby little kids stuffing lollys and chews into their coats; the thousand-yard stare of the half-dead old woman being wheeled around 'for a bit of fresh air' so the care home manager can hang the carrier bags of milk on the handles of the wheelchair. No smiles. Just repressed pain and misery. It sticks to the walls in there like cigarette smoke clings to Anaglypta.
But, as with so many shops, it has a little CCTV screen that greets you as you walk up to the counter - where, inevitably, some bumbling nitwit is trying to pay for mobile phone credit, their gas bill, their electricity bill, half a billion scratchcards and a tonne of Superkings, all with the contents of a smelly old hanky full of a coppers. As you're standing there in the queue softly crying to yourself, there you are. A picture of you, as you really are.
At first, of course, you think to yourself: Who is that balloon-headed, possibly borderline special-needs, man in the ill-fitting anorak and crumb-covered trousers standing in front of me in the queue? Hang on, there isn't anyone actually in front of me... it must be me. But, what manner of...?
And then you realise. That badly-dressed yo-yo with the Frijj milkshake and a packet of Poppets, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other while glaring straight ahead, is you.
So. Astonished by the awfulness of what I had seen, I experienced what you could call a moment of clarity. You could also call it a 'Bob Hoskins in the shower' moment, as I described it the other day when I realised I wasn't getting any younger. But more than that: not just not any younger, but actively deteriorating. And so I thought: Right, we're going to have to get through this somehow. And so I thought: what would be so wrong in trying to grow a beard?
Well, quite a few things, as it turns out. I'd forgotten - since my last beard was back in 1994, when I was a young and foolish young fool - how fucking itchy the whole thing is. How bristly it is. How annoying it is. They tell me that this phase will end, and things will get better; that I just have to push on through this awful thickety brambly nastiness, and somehow it'll turn into a Persian carpet.
I remain sceptical. And there's something else. The greyness. Oh, the greyness. My previous beard, the 94 vintage, didn't have any of that. It was inky black, and I loved it so very much. But now, no. The greyness spreads like mould. Grey, grim, old mould making me feel even worse than I did when I didn't have it there on my face at all. It's all so gently dispiriting.
But, then again, there it is, I suppose. It's there, and it's not going to go back into its box now. Might as well try and plough through this, and see where it goes. I suspect I'll be back as the sponge-faced spectre before too long, but you never know. Maybe it's really going to suit me, this time. Maybe even the grey does.
*sigh*
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Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
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