“They may dress it up with fancy words — “tribute” is a favourite — but the cruder truth is that ersatz grief is now the new pornography; like the worst of hard-core, it is stimulus by proxy, voyeuristically piggy-backing upon that which might otherwise be deemed personal and private, for no better reason than frisson and the quickening of an otherwise jaded pulse. The only difference is that with old pornography at least we do our best to keep it away from children. “

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2402693.ece

A friend pointed me in the direction of this excellent piece in the Times.

It is a phenomenon that has deeply disturbed me since the sickening scenes of mass hysteria over the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, although I also found the mass euphoria over her engagement and wedding, many years before was equally verging on vomitous.

It has become one of those pivotal moments in a nation’s history but sadly not one that marks some great age of enlightenment and illumination. Where were you when Kennedy was shot? No, more important than that, where were you when you heard the news about Diana?

And the galling thing for me is that I can remember precisely where I was. I, who had so carefully avoided being anywhere near a television set when the royal wedding was on, could not escape the televisual spectacle of the reporting of her passing.

I was having a lovely lie-in at the time; I was on holiday in a little self-catering flat with my mother and my two children in Emsworth. And I was cursing my mother’s early morning TV watching - it was on all the channels she was clicking through – because if I had been at home I would have missed being subjected to that endless repetitious reporting of a few simple facts which had to be regurgitated in a hundred different ways to pad out the time slots.

That was at the beginning of our little holiday break and it affected the whole of the rest of it as people everywhere felt unable to carry on as normal. Shops and eating places were so consumed with grief that we struggled to find places to mooch round comfortably and resorted to abandoning civilisation as far as possible to avoid these terrifying demonstrations of unnecessary national anguish and despair.

These scenes of ridiculous and nauseating public hysteria have always made me uneasy in a way that horror films can only do if made really well. The nations gone Psycho. That moment in Fatal Attraction when she rears up and the entire cinema audience I was with screamed in unison, with pulses surging and hearts racing and stomachs churning. The Birds.

But real life shouldn’t be Hitchcockianly disturbing – should it?

“An opinion is a person's ideas and thoughts towards something. It is an assessment, judgment or evaluation of something. An opinion is not a fact, because opinions are either not falsifiable, or the opinion has not been proven or verified. If it later becomes proven or verified, it is no longer an opinion, but a fact.”

But then what happens when opinion cannot be verified or proven or what proof is found is ambiguous and therefore contestable. I had a lengthy debate with a friend about whether you can say someone’s opinion is wrong. And I still maintain that you cannot say an opinion is wrong, any more than you can say it is right, it is an opinion. Freedom of thought should surely be the last refuge of human rights. As it is we claim to have freedom of speech but we don’t have true freedom of speech because we are constrained by the law to limit ourselves to society’s standards of what is right and wrong in what we say to, and about, fellow society members. But our thoughts are our thoughts, and it is really the only right and privilege we have that we can think as we want to think. I took this subject out with me in the evening and mentioned it to a couple of chaps I was rehearsing with. It was interesting that one of them agreed and one of them disagreed. Clearly opinion is divided.

What started the debate in the first place was somehow lost in the process.

It all began I believe with my voicing my views on society and more especially the media and the double standards that they apply to situations. Probably what I had at the back of my mind but never got as far as talking about was my firmly held opinion that society trivializes motherhood. It is a contentious statement to make but I have for many years felt that motherhood is not something that society encourages people to look on as a central issue in their lives. It is something we do as a side issue. When I had my children I was incredibly lucky because I did not have to juggle it with a career and 24 years and 18 years down the line I can look back and I feel absolutely no regrets about the way I brought my children up. I have over the years occasionally felt inadequate because I did not wish to have a career as well; I chose to be a full-time parent because I believe that it is the most important job any woman - who is lucky enough to have children - will ever get to do. But I have also over the years spoken to so many more women who have been less fortunate. They will defend themselves against criticism on this score - before and without it ever occurring since I criticize no-one’s life choices. They will quickly make a case for why they chose to go out to work and leave their children with a child-minder or a nanny as though they are trying to appease their own consciences. They throw money and possessions and treats and expensive holidays at these offspring in the hope of somehow making up for it. You can feel the sadness in them so palpably sometimes. And I feel so much for these people. It has been said that rearing babies and small children is not as exciting as some high-flying career types would need – not challenging enough, not stimulating enough, not important enough. Why? Surely it is as interesting and stimulating as you choose to make it. My mother is a highly intelligent lady who for the most part was a full time parent. She subjected us to an incredible array of stimuli because she was intrigued and fascinated by so many things herself and who better to learn with and educate than her mini-mes. This is the woman who read us Kafka and Orwell for bedtime reading for goodness sake! I didn’t, incidentally. Motherhood though is looked on as something that is ok for a side-line but it isn’t something you want to put your whole time and effort into and this I disagree with – I think it is and it should be. How long are little ones little, not very long, and how long is your working life? Considerably longer!

I watched Grand Designs last night with the 78 year old lady who built a house at the end of her garden. We have a lifetime to do the things we want to do so I don’t see that it is a huge problem to donate of few of those years absolutely to each of our children and thereby creating the future.

But hey this is only my opinion.

“Everyone always told me that once I met a nice guy, my "nesting instinct" would kick in. But in a cruel twist of fate, getting shagged regularly seems to make one much more attractive to the opposite sex. So even though I'm having a great time with Paul, I can't help getting turned on when the hot French waiter at the local bistro winks at me. I wonder if he would be into a three-way? That's the kind of love nest I had in mind.”

Catherine Townsend in The Independent

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2184480.ece

I think I may have used a piece from her before for a blog post but then maybe I am drawn to the subject matter of her pieces – being about relationships! Relationships are a good study subject. I am endlessly dissecting my own relationships – and maybe that’s why they are in a mess!

But reading this column today made me think of the wide differences in life between women of a certain age and women of a certain age because yesterday I was out for a meal with a group of female work colleagues and relationships are inevitably a de rigueur subject for discussion among women. In part it was to celebrate the promotion of one and in another part was to celebrate the impending marriage of another. The one getting married is a divorcee on the mature side of 45 who is embarking on another marital adventure. At this table the majority of the women are in their 40’s and 50’s, some married, some co-habiting and some not-so-comfortably single. One lady (also a divorcee), a cheerful, loquacious soul was talking quite wistfully about wanting ‘a man’, just someone to share the everyday things of life - and obviously a bit of sex thrown in as well. Someone just to be comfortably cosy with and a bit of company by the fireside.

Reading the above mentioned article made it seem more poignant. That on the one hand there are women of a certain age happily flitting from one unemcumbered relationship to another. Heavy on the petting and low on commitment. Easy on, easy off. No ties, no strings. And if they were men of course they would get criticised for their lack of commitment but that is another issue.

And on the other hand women of a certain age, an older age usually but not necessarily, hunting for and hungry for just one relationship to cuddle up with, a snuggle and slippers. A comfortable, kind, loving and, afters the rigours of divorce (s), easy-going chap.

It all goes pear shaped along the way somewhere though. A friend of my mothers is unable to leave the house for long for fear of what her husband with dementia will do to the house in her absence. But still, we all want a little bit of loving, whatever form it comes in. Loneliness stalks us all at some time in our lives.

Maybe it is just as well to hang onto the husband who irritates the piss out of me sometimes. The alternative might be even more depressing.

Insomnia

“Counting sheep is a useless way of dropping off to sleep, scientists have found. Instead, you should have been dreaming up a mental image of somewhere relaxing, such as a waterfall or a holiday.”

http://www.studentbmj.com/back_issues/0302/news/53a.html

I suffer regular bouts of insomnia. I used to worry about it but of course that just makes the problem worse so now I don’t fuss about it. I could try thinking about a relaxing location of course but quite frankly my mind is usually too busy to keep it still for more than a couple of minutes. I have found it best now to just give in to the wakefulness. Go with the flow.

Last night for instance I went to bed at 11ish but woke again at 1am and spent half an hour chasing round my mind for a word that had eluded me all evening. I ran strings of words all through my head but it remained utterly out of reach. So eventually I got out of bed and went downstairs to find the thesaurus. I found my word – it was discriminate. I don’t know why it is that a word can just slip away from you like that but it can be so frustrating. Another time I went through all the poems I can recite by heart but missed a line somewhere and had to get up and go hunting round the house for the book with the poem in. Not easy in a house that has well over a thousand books, and it would really have been a good idea to put my specs on.

I have accepted my periods of insomnia and the only aspect that bothers me now is that my insomnia might impact on the rest of my family. I can accept my own wakefulness but the thought of disturbing the repose of my loved ones is a nagging worry still.

I tried counting sheep once but it bored me to sleep.

Pen Yr Orsedd Quarry, Nantlle, Caernarfon

These workshops, part of a complex that includes offices and barracks. The site lies in a spectacular setting looking down onto Llyn Nantlle Lake and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. The offices were built in stages, firstly in 1863 when the quarry was bought by WA Darbishire and Company. They were substantially modernised to make the most of new water and steam technologies, and then again between 1899 and 1907.
The offices occupy a single storey T-block of coursed slate rubble construction. The earlier workshops are in two halves, one of which has slate roofing and the other a corrugated iron roof and elegant slate rubble buttressing. Both are metal-framed buildings hung or clad with slate slabs. A substantial amount of the workshops' original machinery and fittings have survived intact and include 'tuyere' hearths, woodworking equipment, storage racks, an overhead gantry crane and two railway lines with a small locomotive table.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/restoration/2006/wales_pen_yr_orsedd_01.shtml

I haven’t watched the whole series unfortunately but I have caught up with the last three of Restoration Village and I will attempt to see the final instalments. I have so far been most moved by the ‘working’ or ‘industrial’ buildings like this glorious project at Nantlle and I think this will probably remain my favourite, partly because I was really fascinated by the film clips of the splitting of the slates!
I’m not quite sure why these places my throat wobble, maybe it’s the feeling that these are the living, breathing histories of real and ordinary working people. The everyday lives of the unknown and average villagers seem so much more poignant and interesting than the trials and tribulations of the rich and infamous.

"We also believe in the 'what is beautiful is good' stereotype - an irrational but deep-seated belief that physically attractive people possess other desirable characteristics such as intelligence, competence, social skills, confidence - even moral virtue. (The good fairy/princess is always beautiful; the wicked stepmother is always ugly)"
http://www.sirc.org/publik/mirror.html

Body image – a whole can of worms.

I have brought this topic up before but it is a major problem to so many.

I watched the programme about the fat beauty contest, yesterday was it? It left me with a whole heap of mixed feelings.

I have had a hang-up about my body image all my adult life since I was told by my grandmother that I was stout when I was in my late teens. I was a blossoming size 10 at the time. However having had two children has kept me in a constant battle with my weight ever since and size 10 is a very distant memory.

I watched the programme with curious interest really and to be honest I applauded the idea of trying to challenge society’s perception of beauty but we are still only looking at these girls’ outward aspect. I am all for the ‘empowerment of women’, for these big girls, but……

Women are already empowered anyway aren’t they?

In all honesty the idea of parading big girls around in a beauty pageant for plus sizes is as vacuous and mindless as plastering our magazines with ridiculous airbrushed pictures of painfully thin celebrities. Creating unrealistic ideals for a younger generation. We are drawing some very dangerous pictures for our children here. On the one hand we have the skinnies who for many young girls represent an impossible model to emulate. Cue some eating disorders. Now are were going to put the idea to them on the other hand that they can be beautiful because they are seriously overweight? Obesity is only too prevalent in our society now and a contributory factor to many life shortening conditions.

A whole big can of worms as I said!

From another era………

“Should an actress marry?

Should an actress marry? Does marriage make for the better actress? Is a life with real love and passion in it helpful to the woman who has to exhibit love and passion upon the stage? It is generally held so, but I believe that such ideas have no solid foundation. Why should mere boys and girls sometimes be capable of realising perfectly for others emotions they can never have experienced? There is no justification sensual abandonment in a stage career. Control is the great secret.”

Taken from Acting for the Stage by Sydney W. Carroll.

I have to say as a rule it is not usually a problem to control passion on stage – in my personal experience. Whipping it up is another matter, what with the smell of the greasepaint, the inevitable halitosis and B.O. and the excessive perspiration under the hot lights….and that’s just in the dressing room!

“Women pick up on subtleties and then think about them. Men need things explained IN CAPITAL LETTERS before the message gets through.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3002946.stm

It’s a super list but there must be some more out there…….

"Rio Ferdinand says England have the players to achieve FIFA World Cup success even if injured striker Wayne Rooney misses the finals."

http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/060529/7/6zac.html

Well quite frankly the other 22 must feel they are quite insignificant sometimes. It’s like ‘Hellloooo, Rooney isn’t the only one in the squad’.

Someone, somewhere – can’t remember where I was reading it - did also point out that following his injury Beckham failed to sizzle on the field so perhaps it would be a good idea to ease off this Rooney hype for a bit.

Why on earth am I reading about football anyway!

"Not that there was much to see. On Thursday we were told that Prezza – two Jags, two jabs, two shags - was two small. “Ex revels Prezza’s manhood is size of cocktail sausage,” said the Mirror’s headline. “2 INCH.””

http://www.anorak.co.uk/news.cfm?id=169574

No good for Tracey Emin then. I remember reading in her first column in The Independent that she couldn’t have sex with men with small dicks. She had tried, she said, but it was no use.

Being that it is something most men would be a little shy about too many people knowing, the fact that the whole country now knows that he has a cocktail weenie might mean years of therapy for Prezza. But you are not alone John, I know that for a fact.

He will fool no-one now by stuffing a couple of pairs of rolled up sports socks down the front of his trousers. And any ads for penis enlargers winging their way to his door? The makers of such merchandise should be looking to him now for maybe fronting their ad campaign.

Poor guy.

So….back to the World Cup