Unrest In Suburbia – Is it the ASBOs or the OAPs?

As a young person living in England, perhaps I am not qualified to give an objective view on the apparent ill feeling from the elderly towards the youth of this country; so if the following two accounts don’t present much of a balanced argument for both parties, just assume I’m in the camp of the youngsters.

As far back as I can remember old people have given young people hassle. This might be because of the generally accepted elderly view of youngsters in England being that they all go marauding around in large groups, clad in loose fitting trousers hanging below their waistlines, and swearing sporadically at road signs and shopkeepers. This is generally speaking not true, but I suppose reading the Daily Express every day, filled with imposing words like ‘ASBO’ and ‘Knife Crime’ will eventually influence your opinion.

I suppose the lines could get blurred between what you believe to be a crime and merely a nuisance, I can accept that. Living in perpetual fear of ‘youths’ must be a tiring existence, especially for the oh so righteous pensioners of England. One day you’re sitting at home sucking on a Werther’s Original tutting at the latest spate of stabbings in the ‘streets’ on the news, the next you’re face to face with one of the remorseless bastards yourself whilst walking your dog peacefully en route to meet your wife. That was the stark reality faced by such an elderly man; we shall call Jeff, yesterday afternoon.

I was riding my bike home from work, enjoying the sunshine when I saw Jeff on the horizon of the hill I was headed up. Now I had encountered Jeff once before on the very same stretch of path about a month and a half before and he had yelled some obscenity in my direction then for not riding my bike on the road. Whilst I accept that he was indeed right, I should have been riding on the road, its not like I am the only person in England to do it and how did it give him the right to launch his tirade at me, a person he had never met before in his life?

I had felt angry that time but rode along home, putting the incident down to the prejudice I knew was so rife amongst his age group. But yesterday I encountered him again and this time, rather than simply shouting at me, he actually jumped in front of my bike. Luckily for Jeff and I (and his border collie) I was toiling up a hill and not careering down one, giving me ample time to avoid him and swerve onto the grassy bank running alongside the pavement.

“Bloody criminal!” He bellowed at me, once I was safely out of his area of course. This made me pretty irate as you can imagine, so I did a quick about-turn and rolled up alongside him as he plodded on down the hill. The surprise and fear in his eyes was tangible as I quietly asked:

“What did you just call me?” I folded my arms as I sat on my saddle, expectant.

“I called you a criminal.” He said.

“And why would you do that?” I asked.

“Because you are. A woman was killed by a cyclist three years ago.” He trembled on the spot and gripped his dog’s lead tightly to hide it.

“Well, whilst that is a regrettable story, I have yet to maim or indeed kill anybody whilst riding my bike.” His eyes widened as the realisation dawned on him that I was not a brain dead McDonald’s employee.

“But it’s dangerous! Don’t you even care?” I spotted my chance.

“Of course I care but don’t you think it’s more dangerous to go leaping in front of cyclists? I think anyone would stand less chance of survival if they kept doing that.”

“That’s not the point. You need telling.” The way he said you implied a group of people rather than just me. At the same moment I spotted an elderly woman riding her bike on the footpath across the road.

“Shall we go and stop her too?” I make like I’m about to whistle for her attention.

“Now you’re just being silly.” He shifted his weight onto his other leg to stop it trembling.

“I’m being silly? Don’t you think it was pretty silly calling me a criminal?”

“You are a criminal.” By this time Jeff’s stupidity was annoying me, so I proposed a dare. I knew I needed to make a grand gesture to win this particular argument.

“In that case you’d better call the police, if you really believe me to be a criminal that is.” I regretted my rash words instantly but I had to follow through, I was certain he had only stopped me in particular because I was a ‘youth’ (or so he believed) and I wanted desperately to make him feel a fool.

“I will you know.” He threatened.

“And what do you think will happen? They’ll put the phone down and think ‘What a stupid old codger if he thinks we’ll send a car because a boy is riding on the pavement’” My firm tone seemed to make him tremble more vigorously.

“Ok I’m calling them.” And he did. I heard him describe me as ‘young’ and ‘shaven headed’. When he put his mobile away in his pocket, he turned to me and said, “They’re on their way now.”

“Ok. I’ll wait. I don’t mind seeing you make yourself a criminal too when you waste police time.”

So we waited. Twenty minutes. No sirens. No vans. No cars. No luminous yellow jackets. He fidgeted as we waited. Eventually I broke the silence.

“It doesn’t look promising for you.”

“Well they said they’d send a car.”

His cause was empty and he looked desolate, my humanitarian side kicked in. I explained to him that if he believed so vehemently that cyclists posed a threat to the people of England, he ought to pursue instigating change through the appropriate channels.

“You can’t go on leaping in front of cyclists like some crazed vigilante.” I said. I was mocking him, but he deserved it. I was certain he had picked on me because of my age and he was wrong to do that. “You need to look after yourself a bit more, what if I had been one of those ‘hoodies’ you hear so much about.” I threw a condescending look of faux concern at him. He was defeated. His crusade against the young people of England for that day was over.

The other account I mentioned was similar. I was walking home, listening to music one day when I spotted an elderly man stooping down in front of a couple of young boys. His finger was wagging and his head was jolting sharply up and down as though he was yelling. As I got closer to him I saw that he actually had hold of them both by the scruff of their necks and was issuing them with a royal dressing down for something or other. I grew agitated at the scene and took out my earphones. I drew level with them and offered,

“Is everything alright?” The old man was clearly shocked and straightened his back to stand upright to face me. As soon as his grip on the boys relented, they bolted for safety and I immediately suspected they weren’t his grandchildren.

“Yes. Yes of course.”

“Were they your grandchildren?” I asked.

“No.” His tone was puzzled.

“What happened?”

“They threw stones at my window. I see kids throwing stuff around all the time on this street and I’m sick of it.” He too trembled as he blurted out his defence.

“Ok. But why did you grab them like that?” I folded my arms as I awaited his response.

“I didn’t.” His denial was pitiful.

“Look, I was standing right there. You had them by the scruff of their necks.”

“I didn’t. I only told them they shouldn’t throw stones.” His assumption that I would be taken in by his story irked me into pressing him further.

“I agree that throwing stones isn’t acceptable, but even less acceptable is grabbing someone else’s children and pushing them against a wall.” His eyes were livid.

“But I didn’t grab them. I just did this.” He sidled up to me and grabbed my jacket. I looked down disgustedly at his hands on my chest and he immediately let go.

“You really ought to stop touching people you don’t know.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But these kids need some fear putting in them.”

“And you’re the man to do it?”

“Eh?” My sarcasm was lost on him.

“Look. I’d recommend in future not grabbing any more people, young or otherwise by the scruff of the neck. It’s not your place.” I walked away, the valiant defender of youth and he slinked off in the opposite direction, visibly shaken by the confrontation.

You’ll probably notice in both of these accounts that the old men were both seemingly motivated by a sense of dubious civic duty, to protect their territory and walkways. You’ll also notice that the only physical acts in both stories were actually carried out by them. Does that mean the ‘youths’ reading this post should begin to consider elderly men a menace to society? Should they start crossing the road to avoid them, start writing to their local MP’s to report elderly ‘anti-social behaviour’? Or should they continue to make up their own minds and form their own opinions about them? As a young person living in England I know that answer is most likely to be the latter, but I’m not so sure that the same honour will ever be afforded to us.

Ronaldo reaction a Real shame

You’d have thought after being cultured by years of Champions League football, witnessing the finest talent from across the continent, that Manchester United fans would know the true value of naturally skilled players? These are after all the fans who famously gave Ronaldo (Brazilian) and most recently Barcelona’s diminutive midfield schemer Andrés Iniesta standing ovations in the light of such skill.

Lessons taught by artists like Stoichkov, Romario and Zidane right the way up to date with Kaká, Xavi and Messi over the past couple of decades appeared to have been taken to heart by the United faithful with some proudly citing their appreciation for cultured footballers as a reason for their superiority over other more traditionally English sets of fans.

Why then, was the announcement United had accepted Real Madrid’s world-record bid for Cristiano Ronaldo met with such a torrent of bitterness by the majority of them? On most forums since the news broke, literally 7 out of every 10 comments condemned Ronaldo for either his petulance whenever he lost the ball, or his refusal to track back, or his lack of grit, or ridiculously his lack of a smile when celebrating a goal.

All of a sudden Ronaldo had become public enemy number one. Is it not enough to drive your team to three consecutive Premier League titles and a Champions League triumph, if you don’t track back enough whilst doing it? Would these fans have traded in 10 of his 42 goals for some bone crunching challenges on the half-way line last season? Would they rather he hadn’t have scored if it meant avoiding a gloomy celebration afterwards? It is a bitter, defensive reaction and the ones who are saying these things clearly don’t understand how top-level football operates.

If you canvassed a large number of United fans at around midday yesterday on their team for next season, they would have all featured Ronaldo. You would have been hard pushed to find someone who left him out purely on account of the above ‘flaws’. If you’d have carried out the same survey today at midday, most of them it would seem would rather have had a team with Carlos Tevez in every position. How far do you propose that team would have gotten in the Champions League?

The real shame is that after graciously accepting defeat to a technically superior Barcelona side in Rome a couple of weeks ago, some United fans appear to have regressed into your typical ill-informed English football follower, criticising him for aspects of his game that for a player of his calibre are absolutely irrelevant. Are you being more of a team player if you track back all the way to your own area if you are then out of position to finish off a counter attack at the other end? Perhaps it was this fundamental lack of appreciation for what Ronaldo did bring to the pitch that ultimately forced him to want to leave in the first place? Perhaps he was misunderstood and undervalued by the United fans? Certainly the comments posted all across the internet today point in that direction.

Paradoxically a pattern emerged in these forums whereby some United fans completely contradicted themselves by at once jeering (Like a drunken ex-boyfriend to his former squeeze) ‘Good riddance Ronaldo, we’ll be better off without a workshy fop like you’ and then claiming the greatest silver lining of all was that it would finally allow Rooney to operate centrally, freeing him from his defensive duties out wide. (So let me get this straight; you’ve hated Ronaldo all along because he’s idle and doesn’t chip in defensively, but you hate that Rooney actually does?) Work that one out? The impression I got is that a lot of them were regurgitating content from other posters without much thought as to if it actually made sense (That or they actually knew it made no sense but were just hoping nobody would notice).

What irritates me the most is that a lot of these internet posters don’t seem to understand that some players don’t have to try as hard as others, and that if they did try harder, it would not add anything to their game. Would these people have omitted a talent like Zidane because of his languid playing style? Football is constantly developing with players like Ronaldinho who challenged the conceptions of what was possible a few years ago, now we have players like Messi and Ronaldo carrying on that mantle. Without these players, the sport would cease to progress. We forget that it is as much mass entertainment as it is a partisan and tribal event. Yes we need the Gattusos of the world but that’s only to allow the Pirlos the room to operate.

I just wanted to get that off my chest because United fans have not given a very good account of themselves by and large today…and if I hear another person criticise Berbatov for “being lazy” I think my head might just implode.

BBQs and the BNP

We Brits love the sun don’t we? The first sign of it and were whipping off our pants and caking ourselves in coconut oil. One minute you’re strolling through the vegetable section in Morrisons, dreamily whistling along to a cover version of Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’, the next there’s a break in the clouds and you’re knocked to the ground by a marauding posse of topless, tattooed skinheads desperate to ransack the meat and booze aisles. To be honest I can’t blame them, we didn’t get a summer last year (rain) or the year before (lots of rain) so it’s only natural that they greet the advent of a true heat wave with such unbridled joy, but the sun seemed to bring out more than their love of barbeques this weekend.

Whilst British people choose to enjoy the sun in different ways, most of them migrate to their nearest seaside town and this weekend I was no different. On Saturday afternoon strolling along Cleveleys’ sweltering promenade I encountered a vibrant and colourful beach scene crowded with a wide variety of people. Dog walkers, wheelchair users collecting for charity, young couples, old couples, elderly women with sagging breasts, elderly men with sagging breasts, rambunctious children, kite flying middle aged men and the sum of those motley images, I thought combined to paint a delightful portrait of what can make England such a great place to be in the summertime. I happened to be with a South African girl at the time and was giving her a brief outline of what sort of place Cleveleys was and had become, and it had pretty much lived up to its billing thus far. We sat atop the steps leading down to the sea with our ice creams and for once I actually felt quite proud of where I came from. She snapped away with her camera and seemed genuinely enamoured with the place and in that moment it would have been difficult not to be.

However one thing rankled with me. There may very well have been a plethora of weird and wonderful people out there that day but none of them were black or Asian; just white. Literally there were no other races represented in my entire field of vision whatsoever. I said as much to my friend and she said she had noticed too which launched us into a conversation about race and inevitably apartheid. She explained the whole unfortunate episode to me in a nutshell, about how it affected people she knew and how the country was still a tense place and as we walked along the top of the steps I felt a genuine regretful wistfulness coming from her. I gave her my world-view; that I thought the concept of nation states was archaic and that passports should be abolished allowing free travel between countries and she agreed it would be a nicer world to live in then we dropped the topic to concentrate on the dogs in the distance.

There are lots of British people who believe that such a thing as apartheid couldn’t happen here, that we are too modern, too integrated a people for such a blatant segregation to take effect, but I believe that to be an extremely slippery slope and what I saw next on Cleveleys beach gave that belief conviction.

The beach has these thick wooden panels that help control the tide at regular intervals, which act as a barrier between areas of sand. One side of this particular barrier (the side closest to the hustle and bustle) was choc-a-bloc with white people all throwing Frisbees, playing with dogs, sunbathing, paddling in the tide, swilling down alcohol and generally doing what one would accurately describe as ‘merry making’. On the other side of the barrier all huddled together in the middle of the vast plain of sand stood a single Asian family literally segregated from everyone else. All dressed in traditional black, they had come to share in the great British party but it seemed sadly that they weren’t invited. The view from the top of the steps provided me with a microcosmic snapshot of exactly what is wrong with the country and why we may well be headed for our very own regretful incident in the near future. If I had been down on the sand level with them, I would not have played witness to the gigantic ‘BNP’ logo scraped deep into the beach’s flesh. Flanked by an even bigger, more dreadful ‘VOTE BNP’ I felt embarrassed of the perpetrators. It was obvious why no other races were represented back towards where we had eaten our ice cream. The poor Asian family must have felt frightened and outcast and all of a sudden, those images that had moments earlier painted such a quaint playful picture of England, morphed into something else, something terrible. Now I only noticed the St.George’s flags flaming forth from the proud bared chests of the skin-headed men, now I only saw the intense hatred behind the knock-off sunglasses and felt utterly ashamed of my countrymen. This is exactly why I am not proud to say I am English.

These people need to realise that England, Britain, Europe, the world is changing. Countries are no longer inhabited by only one race or one nationality. Diversity in our personal lives and our social lives is the key to remaining young, to remaining relevant. The BNP cannot seriously lay claim to having any semblance of a connection with young people in this country, but unfortunately they obviously do strike a chord with a past generation. A generation consisting of narrow minded, ill informed, prejudiced white people and if the BNP get their votes, that prejudice borders on outright fascism because they are actively exercising their right as an elector to oust that which holds the key to Britain’s future; diversity.

Disgusted by the display, my South African and I walked back towards a pub and started talking about other things.

What A Bloody Swine!

People generally don’t panic like they used to do they? In the good old days the threat of economic meltdown or a global flu pandemic would have had everybody hugging their knees to their chests, eyeballs bulging with fear, rocking gently back and forth on the floor. In the good old days these kinds of things were met with a widespread and utterly irrational urge to hide indoors clinging to the walls until the crisis passed, but no more. Since the internet came and ruined everything by granting all equal knowledge, global crises have just gotten dull.

I realised this last night when, upon watching the evening news and hearing about the first confirmed case of swine flu in Europe, I felt a pang of panic in the pit of my stomach. As a person with moderate to low levels of medical expertise, I simply put together what I had heard coming out of Mexico (about the swine flu fatalities), and added that to the announcement of the case in Spain. My brain then proceeded to calculate that I would be dead by the morning.

I figured that if it had already arrived in Spain, which is only a two hour flight from where I was, then it would surely have taken over the UK by midnight at the very latest; the simple calculation was made and my fate sealed, there could be no avoiding it. I considered leaning over to my sister to tell her the sort code and account number for my savings which she could have used to fund my funeral, and what music I wanted playing (Decades by Joy Division probably).

At this point the panic would only have snowballed in simpler times. The rest of my evening would have been spent going over the same questions in my head again and again, never getting closer to any actual answers. Questions about the threat posed by the virus, the risk of infection and the possible complications for someone of my health, the symptoms…ah the symptoms. This is where things would have gotten really scary. I’d have imagined steaming volcanic boils sprouting all over my skin, my limbs seizing up, my hair falling out, my feet falling off, my tongue swelling to fill my mouth and my eyes turning into my head or something. It would have been truly awful. Yet instead of the torrid futile suffering that would have ensued years prior, I simply got out my iPhone and Googled “swine flu”.

Literally less than a minute later and my mind was eased. I learned that my feet wouldn’t be falling off anytime soon and apparently here in the UK we have a natural basic immunity to the particular strain of flu in question and I wouldn’t be dying either. The deaths in Mexico were being viewed as something of an anomaly and we were being encouraged to wait and see what happened in Europe before making any major decisions. I put my phone back in my pocket, safe in the knowledge that I would live to see another day at least. I’d even go so far as to say that I might have even stood up to mild questioning on the topic, and this only a minute after accepting the inevitability of my impending doom.

This is what disappointed me today as I read about more confirmed cases of the virus in New Zealand and Israel. Before the internet we might have all grown closer as a people, united in our crippling fear of the absolute unknown. We might have sat around the TV eagerly awaiting further news or instruction. I can picture us walking around with those funny surgical masks on and stocking up on bottled water (which seems to be our national reaction to any such news – we are but a nation of hypochondriac water hoarders), something we could have told our grand-children about and hear them laugh at the very concept of illness, because of course by then people will all be intricately engineered super-robots of the future with full immunity to all ills (And they’ll probably roll around on laser guided silver rollerblades as well; powered by mere thoughts). These days the camaraderie created by such an event is more likely to manifest itself in a “Top 5 pandemics that never were” list on Facebook (My particular favourite being SARS).

Is it too much to ask for me to be able to induce some undue panic in my office tearoom by nonchalantly mentioning, in full earshot of my colleagues, about the increasing number of swine flu deaths, without being shot down by some smart arse in the corner with a Blackberry?

It’s all such a let down isn’t it? But still, nice we’re not going to die.

Upon Meeting The Boy

I met the boy for the first time yesterday afternoon around 2. Paid me little attention. He seemed pretty enamoured with his new bits and pieces to be fair to the lad. He squirmed about a bit, waved his arms, scrunched his face up, kicked his legs and generally ignored everyone in the room. There were comments;

“He has a lot of hair.”

“He looks Chinese.”

“He is very placid.”

And he was…extremely. It was the second thing I noticed after how much he moved. There didn’t seem to be any sound coming from the boy whatsoever, to the extent that I felt compelled to move in closer to observe. His eyes darted around manically, as though attempting to harvest as much data from his surroundings as possible. Of course to the casual enthusiast it may have appeared as though the eyes operated without purpose, but I knew better. I got the impression that he was privy to some great secret about humanity. I wanted to know what it was but somehow the boy made me feel unworthy. He had judged me, and all else present. I looked harder into his eyes but he rejected me and turned over. It was futile, he knew he was superior.

I returned today and observed once more. It was largely the same; lots of movement, only with more intensity than yesterday’s displays, lots of eye movement and a total lack of sound. The visitation was more serene than yesterday’s which filled me with hope that he might have more of an opportunity to assess my worthiness. I held him in my arms and he wriggled and kicked and squirmed for a time, until he heard my voice and he settled. I spoke to him as an equal and he responded the only way he could; with silence. His eyes halted on my own and it was then I realised what he was saying to me.

The thing is he swore me to secrecy so I can’t disclose any details.

I sang him a little bit of a Muddy Waters song and he didn’t react much except for a nonchalant brush of his hand over my chest. The longer in his presence I remained, the more I grew convinced of his superiority. Nothing fazed him. He had been poked, lifted, injected, exposed and talked at since he arrived yet retained a vicelike grip over his composure that made me feel in awe.

Maybe when we’re born we harbour all the knowledge in the world?

This boy though, he represents humanity in its newest, purest form yet he came across to me as the finished article. Clearly I’m not talking about physically, but only a moron could fail to notice the obvious mental capabilities. Just think, by the time his body grows and his ability to communicate his philosophy to everyone else improves, he will be a formidable being.

That’s what went through my mind upon meeting the boy anyway.

Nightclubbin

Inspired by true events.

“What’s your name?” the girl shouts in my ear. I think I see her point to herself. Her dark fringe is sticking to the sweat on her forehead and her eyes are all puffy from runny black mascara. Her handbag is perilously close to falling from her shoulder onto her forearm, its making me nervous because she’s holding her drink in that hand.

“What’s my name?” I shout back pointing at her.

“Yeah your name…what is it?” I’m pretty puzzled because in my state it’s coming across as though she wants me to guess what her name is. Her bag falls onto her forearm, a little wine splashes onto my jeans.

“Rachel?” I make an ‘am I close?’ gesture.

“What? Rachel?” She’s obviously not following. She replaces the handbag back onto her shoulder but it’s already slipping off again.

“How am I supposed to know?” I yell. She skulks off. My brain instantly discards the fumbled exchange. I spot my friend and signal to him to continue with the ‘reverse robot’ manoeuvre we had been engaged in prior to the female interruption. The dance begins and I look down at my arms to ensure I’m performing it properly. For a second the music is distorted as my head lowers to concentrate on the moves but just as quickly is purified again as I raise my head back up. ‘This must be what it feels like to stick your face above cloud level’ I think. I smile.

My friend’s face turns bright blue and it appears as though he is wearing a mask of himself, his smile is fixed; permanent. I squint to make sure my eyes are still working after my ascent above the clouds. His smile grows wider and I am reassured by the slight alteration in his expression and carry on with my dance. My arms, all right-angles, are making jerky movements back and forth whilst my feet beat out the constant rhythm of the ‘funky-house’ song that’s playing somewhere in the distance.

I look down once more and see heels, trainers, loafers, more heels, more trainers. I realise that if I concentrate really hard I can almost hear the stompstompstomp of all the feet on the floor. I pray for the music to stop abruptly so I can match up the real sound with what I imagine it to be. Time slows down slightly and the blue changes to pink, or is it red? The pink/red glow filters down to my Dunlops and makes them seem brand new in spite of their age. ‘My trainers have cancer’ I joke to myself and then vow to make them enjoy their remaining time on earth so I dance harder and get hotter. I hear my friend yell;

“WHOA!” I feel encouraged and keep moving. He disappears and I am left alone on the dancefloor bathed in this pink/red light that seems brighter on people’s faces than it does on shoes with progressive illnesses. I slow the dance down as the sweat on my body threatens to take over and my ‘reverse robot’ morphs into an altogether more manageable ‘raise the roof’ move. I extend one arm to the ceiling and place the other in close proximity to my face and proceed to pump. I pump for all I’m worth and feel as though this move, this holy manoeuvre deserves followers.

I look about me for willing disciples and find one pretty close to hand. It’s a blonde girl wearing some kind of ribbon tied across her forehead. I look down to see her wearing a pair of tight black jeans and a billowy vest. She apes my movements, albeit without much conviction. ‘You’re doing it wrong’ I think. I smile.

“You’re cute!” She shouts in my ear.

“Oh…thanks.” I shout back. ‘Where the hell are you?’ I implore my friend telepathically. The girl and I are still pumping our arms and covering our faces with our spare hand. She breaks away from the dance intermittently to let out a giggle. She performs these giggles with a feigned ‘bent-double’ gesture that irritates me because I know she isn’t really finding it that funny, she can’t possibly be. Pretty soon her execution of the lovingly choreographed ‘raise the roof’ dance grows sloppy and she loses interest. She doesn’t realise that in this moment it is all I care about.

“What’s your name?” She shouts into my ear. I decide I’m not going to make a fool of myself this time.

“My name?”

“Yeah! Your name.”

“My name is Andrew. What’s yours?” She grabs my head in an unnecessarily aggressive manner.

“Why don’t you ask her?” She points to her identical looking friend. I honestly cannot tell them apart. I am confused. I look at the floor and back at the girl again.

“What? Why?” I shout.

“What?” she shouts.

“I said why?” I shout.

“Why?” she shouts.

“Yeah!” I shout.

“What?” Thankfully my friend breaks the deadlock and hands me another drink. We stand there drinking whilst ‘Blonde Girl Number 1′ stares at me perplexed. ‘If I just ignore her, she’ll disappear,’ I think. I drink. She disappears. My friend launches back into a move from earlier that night; the ‘shoulder shimmy’. It’s perfectly executed. He gets the balance just right between caricature and faux seriousness. I tell him.

“That’s pretty funny!” I shout.

“OH YEAH!” He shouts back. I finish my drink. The colours change again, this time it goes all green.

“I’m going to the toilet.” I’m leaving the dancefloor. Somebody taps me on my shoulder. It’s a small girl.

“Hey, it’s you!” It’s that girl…Lindsay Not-a-clue from High School.

“Yeah! Hey, how are you?” A mistake. Already the suffocating discomfort of a forced conversation grips me. I negotiate my way through mundane questions such as;

“What have you been up to since uni? How long are you home for? Do you still know X?” I hack and slash my way through the vines of languid conversation spewing from her mouth and stumble down some stairs to the johns.

I notice that I can see myself in a mirror as I urinate. I examine my hairline for some reason. ‘You’re lucky that you won’t be bald,’ I tell myself. My eyes fall further down and look at my eyes. I’m repulsed. I look down and concentrate on the job in hand. A man crashes into the toilets singing in his best ‘footy crowd’ voice some lyrics that I don’t recognise. Disregarding this fact I begin bopping my head in time to his broken melody as my urge to move begins to take hold again. So much so that I neglect to dry my hands under the hand-dryer after getting them wet under the faucet. I make my way back to my friend who seems to be in a standing coma.

“Lets f***ing eat.” He announces. I nod. He fights his way through the elbows and handbags. Drinks get spilt in our wake. Angry glances are thrown. It’s not good really. Standing outside I say,

“I can’t be arsed eating actually.” Its too late, he’s already dead. He gets that way. I can’t remember anything else.

Expectation Vs Happiness

A number of events in my life have caused me to consider the concept of expectation recently and I have come to the conclusion that it is both a strange and perilously potent thing.

It changes the way everything works, the way everyone thinks. If someone expects something of you, you generally strive to fulfil what it is that is expected so as not to suffer the public disgrace of falling short; at work and with friends and family. “I expect this to be done by…I expect you to be there…I expected much more of you.” If someone says something like this to you, chances are you won’t even consider failing them. It’s a modern human instinct that is the root of some of life’s major problems.

It’s not just expectations delivered directly from people to other people, expectation can simply arise from a situation. A girl who is pregnant one day is a regular girl, the next she gives birth and is a mother. Everything has shifted, everything has changed. Her entire life must now be focussed on the wellbeing of her baby; her old lifestyle must practically disappear. She can no longer go out every weekend or meet up with friends at short notice; she must turn down social invitations in favour of looking after her baby. Is this change brought about through genuine maternal instinct or by society’s expectation of how a mother should conduct herself? There is no point asking any mother this question because you’ll never get an objective answer; they are after all mothers now. My guess is that the majority of younger mothers in particular would like to retain their previous lifestyle and that it is actually the weight of expectation forcing the shift in their behaviour.

However, expectation does not always have such a positive effect on people’s behaviour. Depending on the character in question, expectation can cripple a person; it can stifle their outlook, narrowing it onto one focal point, shutting out all else in their life to the obvious detriment of their personal health. Think of a graduate diving headfirst into a career job, immersing themselves in their new role, completely at the behest of their paymaster’s expectation. For these people it can be a sentence to a period (indefinite or otherwise) of inevitable misery in which they will toil, however fruitlessly to fulfil these expectations. It can clearly be a force for great positive change but also of significant negative influence also.

Going even further on the scale, some people simply decide at one point that they just cannot cope with life; that they no longer wish to go on living. I’m talking about people with depression, people in isolation, people looking to escape some way or how. I believe that what these people have actually been defeated by is not life itself but rather their expectation of it. What I mean is these people feel as though they cannot manage their lives effectively enough for them to be deemed a success and that the source of this ill feeling can only be expectation; their own expectation of life, their interpretation of what society expects of them.

It can be difficult to cope with expectation even on a small level for people, myself included. The biggest source of stress throughout my life has been, and will probably never cease to be, my own expectations of myself. I constantly strive to improve myself at all times, which is a positive thing of course but it wasn’t too far back that it weighed on me greatly. Cutting to the chase I changed my outlook; I adapted and altered my approach and as a result I can now cope with these expectations far more productively than I could before.

Anybody seeing their friends achieving great things (having children, getting married, earning promotion) can easily get dragged down thinking they should be doing more with their lives but they really ought not to. What they should do is accept that they have a different life to lead, a life no less valid for not having similar events take place, and enjoy aiming for their own goals. It is difficult I know. I think the key to remaining sane is making sure the only expectations you aim to fulfil are your own and that they are actually attainable.

Expectation can drive you crazy if you let it so my message, especially to people round about my age (twenty somethings!) reading this, is to not get caught up trying to fulfil other people’s expectations for your life, just do your own thing and you’ll probably discover that what makes you happy is not what you ever expected it to be.

New Fiction Post!

Chapter 3 of my novel ‘Split’ is now up for consumption.You can read this on the fiction page of the site, just scroll beyond chapter 2.

Read, absorb, enjoy.

Premier League Review – 20th January 2009

So we can all breathe a sigh of relief, the craziest transfer in history is not going to happen after all and the football world can carry on as though Jermaine Pennant was never linked with Real Madrid and AC Milan in the first place.

The news that Portsmouth have taken the middling wide-man on loan for the rest of the season comes just half a day after another ludicrous transfer flirtation was brought to a satisfyingly conclusive end. The public declaration of affection by Kaka for his paymasters at Milan marked the end of a worrying week for all connected with the game.

Whilst I accept that wages are always going to increase and that any fee paid to Milan would have re-circulated back into the market anyway, I also believe that such a big leap from the current market benchmarks of around £46m for a record fee & £130-150k per week for top reported wages to the figures bandied for the Kaka deal could well have distorted the market to a dangerous degree.

Should the deal have gone through we might have seen an immediate knock on effect in which top players across Europe demanded parity with Kaka’s salary. Could you really see players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and the like happily accepting a salary a mere quarter or so of Kaka’s? We should all be pointing to the sky, like the religious Brazilian does himself, and thanking the Lord that the deal fell through. I’m not sure I could have lived in a world where Ashley Cole could realistically command the Prime Minister’s salary for a week’s wage!

There was a significant faction of City fans nay-saying the bid for Kaka in the first place on account of problems elsewhere in the side that need immediate attention and it is these fans who will be delighted with Mark Hughes’ own transfer manoeuvrings this January. Craig Bellamy has received high praise on this blog before and his signing, in my opinion, is the exact right kind at this stage of the Sheikh’s “project”. He will add control and poise to their attack, something they lack sometimes especially if the (innocently) AWOL Robinho doesn’t bring his A-game, as well as his obvious pace and goal scoring threat.

Perhaps even more key to City’s progress could be the imminent double signing of Hamburg SV’s excellent Nigel de Jong and Wilson Palacios. City are rumoured to be the mystery second club to have lodged a bid for the Honduran and a midfield consisting of that concurrently combative and creative duo should be something genuinely worthy of excitement for their fans. If Hughes is given enough control over who is brought into the club I honestly can see them challenging for major trophies within 3 years. First things first though eh City fans? You really ought to ship out Richard ‘Sunday League’ Dunne!

Speaking of Sunday league, (Only joking Liverpool fans!) Rafa Benitez saw his side’s title bid take another hit last night with Tim Cahill’s glancing equaliser at Anfield. Of course the defiant Spaniard will tell you that they are still level with Man Utd on points, but that would be papering over what has been a disastrous couple of weeks for the club.

In a previous blog I wrote that I didn’t believe titles can be lost in January and I maintain that point of view, but what can be lost in this dreary month is momentum and confidence and this latest round of Premier League fixtures will have done some serious damage to their players’ belief. I’m not talking about Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher or even Fernando Torres, I’m talking about the players that carry you over the finishing line when all the points are added up, the Kuyts, Lucases and Keanes of this world; the kinds of players who perhaps don’t have such unshakeable self-belief but rather draw from the collective belief within the camp. It’s the performances of these types that Liverpool fans should be worried about over the next month or so. Remember Arsenal’s February last year? I’m just saying.

Goal of the Weekend – Pablo Zabaleta vs. Wigan

Quote of the Weekend – “I felt worthless here under Paul Jewell.” Robbie Savage on his former manager. Turns out Paul Jewell did achieve something worthwhile at Derby then.

Hero of the Weekend – Carlos Tevez. For effectively sending Man Utd top with his battling assist.

Loser of the Weekend – Joey Barton. For allowing his, ahem, ‘passion’ to boil over after conceding another against Blackburn.

Results

Blackburn 3-0 Newcastle
Bolton 0-1 Man Utd
Chelsea 2-1 Stoke
Hull 1-3 Arsenal
Man City 1-0 Wigan
Sunderland 1-2 Aston Villa
West Brom 3-0 Middlesbrough
Tottenham 1-1 Portsmouth
West Ham 3-1 Fulham
Liverpool 1-1 Everton

New Fiction Post!

Chapter 2 of my novel ‘Split’ is now up for consumption.You can read this on the fiction page of the site, just scroll beyond chapter 1.

Read, absorb, enjoy.