Last night I went to my best friend's house for dinner. I've known her for 27 of my 28 years, so it was a nice relaxed chat around the dinner table, scarfing pasta with tomato sauce and brie chunks followed by the best cheesecake (with the most energetically compacted base) I've had in years, made jointly by her and her future husband.
Around 10pm, as we were considering moving our tired old bones off to bed, there was a crash - weirdly, as if of cutlery falling in the sink - and a cry. We rushed to the window. Em saw a man staggering around and then sitting down heavily on the ground next to a mangled bike. There were no cars around - it seemed his wheel had just caught on the uneven street paving.
Ashley won my heart all over again by bounding downstairs to see what he could do. Two women were milling around confusedly asking the victim if he wanted an ambulance. "He didn't know what he wanted, he was winded and shocked," commented Ashley, as he whipped his phone out and called an ambulance. I called down to see if a blanket was needed as it was a chilly night. Apparently one of the women had already nipped off to get a coat.
I headed down.
Lying on the ground was a young, stocky Asian man, breathing erratically and painfully, with a huge, bleeding scrape down one elbow and a smaller, coin-shaped oozing scab on the knee. He hadn't, thankfully, hit his head (no helmet!), but his chest had landed square on the handlebars.
The ambulance arrived, along with the mandatory police car. No statements were taken as no-one else was involved. His chest was horribly bruised and they checked him over carefully before gently leading him onto a stretcher - he cried out in pain as he sat back and his chest hurt - to be loaded into the ambulance, taken to hospital and x-rayed for broken or bruised ribs.
Except that they didn't leave. The road at the front is closed off into two sections; the gate between is complete controlled by the Fire Brigade. Perhaps that was why the ambulance stayed still? Nope, it was because the tailgate was stuck, lowered, and the vehicle couldn't move.
Another ambulance was summoned with a key to manually raise the tailgate. It didn't work, but our Asian friend (I'm afraid I've forgotten his name) was whisked off for further care. The policeman glumly summoned the Fire Bridgade both to help with the stranded ambulance and open the gate so that we could get out (my car was parked right between the gate the accident site).
We whinged, we moaned, we froze gently in the car; there was no point going back up to Em's flat because we thought we'd be going any minute for about 45 minutes. We worried, we winced and then we whined about wanting to get home to bed. Which, eventually, at around midnight, we did.
Just before my weary head blacked out as it hit the pillow I remembered to thank God for these things:
- That it wasn't me or mine in the accident
- That the man was going to be fine after a bit of TLC
- That I had a warm, cozy bed to go to
- That I had the golden glow of pride in my beloved husband (he might as well be - the wedding's just a formality, really)
I am trying to think of an appropriate way to mark my gratitude (a donation to Shelter? St. John's Ambulance? Doing something voluntary to help another charity?). I don't feel guilty about whining, because it was a way of coping with the situation. It was shocking, and surprisingly upsetting, and it was strange and cold and so I focussed on me, me, me so I didn't have to think about the bigger picture at the time that it was happening. But now that I have time to think, I wish the man well and I am brimming with gratitude.
1. Author
Isn't every blogger a writer already? I don't have the discipline at the moment to sit my arse down and write properly but I hope to manage it one day. I have a few faint ideas that need research, development, tea and Hob Nobs, so who knows?
My problem is partly that I'm so determined to be Neil Gaiman / John Irving / Donna Tartt and not be Dan Brown that I fail to even bother to reach Brownian heights because I have such lack of confidence in my abilities.
2. Children's Book Reader
You know those lovely bookshops that have a children's reading corner? I LOVE that. I was a pretty crap teacher but I used to get rounds of applause (started by kids who didn't like reading) when we had story time. I don't think I'm a brilliant narrator or anything, just so full of enthusiasm for any kind of book that I expect it shows. I don't shirk from silly faces and voices, either.
3. Disney Voiceover Artist
If only I could sing, dagnabbit.
4. Cat Cuddler
Actually, I'm trying to get in touch with the local Cats Protection to volunteer as this. You socialise nervous cats so that they can be rehomed. I so very badly want a cat but we have a no-pets rental and no garden. Arse.
Update:
5. Reviewer
Actually, I sort of am one from time to time, both on www.remotegoat.co.uk and on another blog of mine that I have let slide depressingly by the wayside in recent months, but it would be nice to have time to do it professionally. Theatre, film and books for me, rather than music (I love it, just not obsessive enough about it!). I could use the RG cards and contacts to do far more of it but I've been too busy and protective of my spare time of late to be very ambitious about it. It's on my Arse In Gear List.
Excuse the TMI, I'm just a bit preoccupied because I've got to go and be scraped with the mini bog brush today for the second time in six months. Apparently about 10% of tests come back with minor abnormalities which should clear up on their own but they've got to double check after half a year.
Honestly, I'm not remotely worried about the results. The chances of my having any form of reproductive system cancer are extremely slim as there is no family history and I do not fit the major risk categories in terms of age and general well-being. Plus if it's caught within six months of finding the original faint abnormalities I have total faith that it could be cured very quickly.
I shouldn't whinge, really, and I should thank my countryman for his groundbreaking and life-saving technique. Honest to God, I'm not really complaining, especially since I have such easy access to something that other women in the developing world are barely aware of. I just find that the indignity of it all is what gets to me. The cranking open and the scrapy-scrapy. *Shudder*
Meh. It'll be fine. And I get to leave work early for the afternoon on a warm day, so there's always a silver lining.
For some reason I am reminded of my sister, clamped to a breast pump around three days after the birth of her gorgeous son, wincing occasionally and saying, with a sigh: "It's not the soreness or the discomfort I object to, it's the feeling like a dairy cow."
So, I will start with the end and tell you that I'm currently checking out hypnotherapy for my increasingly disturbing anxiety attacks when flying. One therapist I'm interested in also claims to treat "excessive guilt", which sounds bloody good to me.
In keeping with going backwards, I'd like to take a moment to address the Greek teachers of Oxford Study Group or whatever the hell you were called, and I'd be happy to translate the following rant into Greek if you have any trouble understanding it:
Here's a tip from someone who didn't even manage to finish teacher training, but was born with a helping of common sense. When you take a group of early teen schoolkids on a summer trip on an aeroplane, please ensure that you don't fuck off down to the front of the plane and leave them to fend for themselves. What happens when you do is that they are obnoxious to cabin staff and are very loud and irritating. They throw blankets around, playfight in the aisles and whack their heads on the ceiling (actually, that bit made us laugh). They also need to be told off THREE TIMES by a member of the cabin crew who has better things to do like, oh, I don't know, keeping us safe and comfortable. Do your job and go and separate the fuckers, or next time I will raise an almighty fuss and embarrass you.
Bilingually.
So, we arrived back safely, if with added migraines, after two extremely restful and pleasant weeks. I can't tell you how much I needed the break. I do feel guilty that I never got round to contacting Iliask - I'd plead seeing relatives but most of the times I intended to drop him a line I fell asleep in the baking heat instead - but this was the first time in ages I actually considered living in Greece one day (as did Ashley, who's now looking around for Greek lessons to add to his fount of random requests and expletives).
The highlights:
- Five days in Athens
- Three nights on board the Ocean Countess taking in excursions to Patmos, Knossos (Heraklion), Mykonos, Santorini and Ephesus (in Kusadasi, Turkey)
- Four nights in Kefallonia, with twice-daily swims and sunbathing before and after the main heat of the day.
At 36 - 39 degrees Celsius every single day, I finally feel warm. Plus we've returned to the first decent days of British summer, which helps. I ate FAR too much of everything and gained 5lbs (most of it Kaimaki ice cream and semolina halva, I'm sure of it), but who could resist heaps of uber-fresh fish, octopus, grilled meat, salad, bread, tsatsiki and horta?
It's good to be back, but I would happily have had another week of it.
Anyway, how have you all been?
Not that I'm one to complain constantly or owt (or lie blatantly in the first line of a post), but there are certain habits, particularly prevalent on certain blogs and web fora, that drive me to want to pull out each of my eyelashes with blunt tweezers.
1. Lol - This is not a punctuation mark. It does not make a rude comment sound funny and it does not need to be added to the end of every sentence, lol.
2. Punctuation allergy - Seriously there is a point at which a sentence ends you need to understand it's not just unreadable its really annoying especially as you also cant seem to be bothered to spell or otherwise punctuate get a life lol.
3. Capitalism - Its Really Not Necessary To Capitalise Every Single Word In A Sentence Just The Names And Places Its Even More Irksome When Combined With Punctuation Allergy, Lol.
4. Multiple Orgasm - When you have to end everything with forty five exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or, even more annoying (lol):
5. Interrogation - When every question, particularly more arrogant and angry ones, ends with multiple question marks?????????????
(Oh, btw: lol)
6. Comic Sans - this makes me want to cry. You are costing typographers jobs, you know.
I'm all for shorthand, slang and abbreviation. I am. One of my Americanised habits, which Ash neither understands nor likes, is the ironic "much?" at the end of a sentence. But there's a time and a place for it. A blog, a letter, a text, a comedy programme: those are just a few acceptable media for slang. A serious, abuse-related petition? No.
As the social networking guru at work, it's my job to check out the online presence of other animal welfare groups. One MySpace page led me, not particularly surprisingly, to a petition against Huntingdon Life Sciences. This oft-attacked venue for animal experimentation, which has frequently been targetted by animal welfare activists thanks to evidence of excessive and unnecessary abuses beyond research, has had many a petition started against it.
What caused my jaw to drop was the petition text:
Huntingdon Life Sciences - a notorious laboratory that conducts the most cruel and awful experiments on animals in the name of science. They have been exposed repeatedly by undercover video of abusing the animals in their care - not only by carrying out the dreadful experiments but also by mistreating the animals punching them, kicking them - being in a position of power and control over the animals they tend to go really Auschwitz on the poor animals.
Say what?
I didn't quite know how to respond to that, so I sent it to Ashley. His response:
Yes, hon, that's exactly what they did. Now, you might or might not agree that it's a fair comparison. Personally, as a meat-eating, medicine-taking member of society, I find medical experimentation (closely monitored for its effectivess and necessity) acceptable. I don't mind if you disagree with me, that is your right. You've probably noticed the PETA posters with "Holocaust" written on cattle trucks and agree with the sentiment. I think you're wrong, but that's beside the point.Nice. So they equate animal experimentation (which, while I am not exactly overjoyed about, I see a place for) and the alleged actions of a few cruel individuals with the systematic torture and murder of millions of Jews, Communists, gay people, political prisoners, disabled people etc?
What disgusted me was the offhand way the sentence was thrown out there, as if Auschwitz were a footnote of history and could be relegated to teenspeak descriptiveness. Like, OMG.
If you want to be taken seriously, take yourself seriously. Dust off the emotive vacuous shell and start communicating with reasoned, intelligent arguments; they can be empassioned without being shallow.
Today, I am mostly suffering from the Bichon Frise.
No, not the small, fluffy dog of the type that dominates Amber McNaught's life and has his own blog. It's my ignoramus's term for lachon hara, since to begin with I could only remember the "chon" part of the term, and the fact that it went -u -u (in keyboard-approximate pentameter markings). B'dum, b'dum if you prefer. Yes, I'm publicising my own inanity, but that's the world of blogging for you.
Anyway back to lachon / lashon / loshon hara, tangles and all. The Jewish "evil tongue" isn't really about saying bad things about someone irrespective of whether they're true or not. There's a seperate prohibition against slander. This is about saying something true about someone when they're not there to defend themselves.
I do this all the time.
But here's the clincher - according to Ashley this includes saying pleasant and complimentary things about them is the purpose of saying them is to make the person you're talking to feel bad.
Ouch... done that too (though less commonly. Usually if I think something nice about you I'll tell you to your face and tell everyone I know just cos I think you're fab).
I'm working on improving my outward behaviour in a bid to make it second nature not to think bad thoughts about people, but it's easier said than done. Is it true that someone I know is childish, rude and arrogant as well as being funny and talented (the reason I still know them)? Yep. I can't help dwelling on it when they piss me off. And then, in order not to explode at THEM, I talk to Ashley about it. When what I should do is have the balls to sit down with them and say "this is why you're annoying me".
See, my lashon hara doesn't come from being a natural bitch (though I am one). It comes from this enormous desire to make everyone happy all the time. Last night a friend accused me of not seeing them enough (even though they slept through the last plans we made!) and even though I knew I was 100% right that they were being unfair - and told them so, since they were a close enough friend to do so with confidence - I still second-guessed myself. I have a puppy-like desire to please everyone and instead all that happens is that I pick away at myself and then end up both indulging in the lashon hara and feeling guilty about it.
Oh and yes, I know I'm not Jewish. But it's the same heritage an' all and I dare say Christ upheld this particular law.
So I've given up trying to solve the world's religious misunderstandings and just need to rant about a particular pet hate of mine: ignoring the empty toilet roll holder.
See, it's like this.
At home or in an environment like an office where there is bountiful spare bog roll around, why is it so very fucking difficult for the person who finished the roll (and opened the packet, unwound some paper and then left the new roll balanced precariously on the bin / lying on the damp floor / sitting on the back of the toilet) to take the old, empty, cardboard centre off the holder and replace it with the fresh roll?
It's the height of thoughtless idleness and leads many a person to think they need to root around in their pockets and bags for tissue paper before they find the 'helpful' place you left the new roll.
Seriously, people.
Also, please use deodorant in the summer (and winter. And in fact ever).
That is all.
I know that sounds ridiculous on the surface. Maybe it's ridiculous at its root; I don't claim to be an intellectual, just a reasonably intelligent woman living in the West in the 21st Century. I am the product of my upbringing, my community, my reading and myself, and so I cannot help but have my opinions steeped in my experiences.
It's slow at work today so I've been trawling Melanie Phillips' Spectator blog. Mostly because I once was briefly acquainted with her son, but also because I read something or other which referenced Israel and she was the first person who popped into my head.
I find her someone with whom it is difficult to agree to disagree. She is regularly either uncomfortably right or disquietingly wrong about whatever she is talking about. Even when she is making some of her more eye-opening (and by this I mean the eyes are opened and the eyebrows raised, not that she has convinced me of the truth of her words) and alarming statements, she is full of passion which can sometimes be taken for being embittered. She reminds me of Ashley's best friend Dan, who questions why people think he is vengeful simply because he doesn't believe in proportional response. In his, paraphrased from memory, words:
"If someone hurts you, if the little country messes with the powerful one, then you don't calculate how much to hurt them in return. When they took a swing at you and only left bruises, they still meant to hurt, to kill. So you don't just shove back; you obliterate."
I can't say I entirely agree with his viewpoint, and I'm not, at this point, going to go into why. It just illustrates that sense of bullish principle that I find in Phillips' writing as well.
As a Jewish journalist, one might expect a reasonable amount about Judaism and Israel. But the post that struck me (and lead to my title pronouncement) was one defending the rights of two Christian preachers - one, allegedly, a convert from Islam - who were seen out of an area of Birmingham where they were preaching by a Muslim PCO (Police Community Support Officer) on the grounds that it was a Muslim area and this was "hate crime". They were warned that if they came back and were assaulted, well, "they were warned".
Now there are a whole number of issues here.
1. What the hell is a Muslim area? There are Muslim countries but within a country that defends free speech (albeit nominally a Christian country) there are no demarcated areas. People can practice their faith wherever the hell they want.
2. Police should be dealing with the perpetrators, not the victims. If they think violence is likely to erupt, they should deal with the causes of that.
But that's a specific case. What it showed, more generally, is the dangerous gap between offence and defence.
At what point does the innocent, non-violent, perhaps hopeless practice of one religion become offensive to another? Nailing a pig's head to an Asian community centre as happened earlier this week? That's a hate crime. It's disgusting. It takes a particular element it knows to be forbidden and unclean to a particular faith and culture and forces it upon those people with the specific aim of hurting, offending and discouraging those people. Hence the "go home" signs that accompanied it. Intention has a lot to do with the hurt, and since nailing pig heads to the wall isn't really common practice in any culture it cannot be explained away by any other argument.
Had the two Christian men been trying to convert by preaching that the Muslim people in the area were 'wrong', I would also have taken a step back. Of course, sticks and stones, but we label other kinds of name-calling as offensive and abusive. They were not doing such a thing as far as anyone knows (I'm happy to be corrected on this point if anyone knows better). I'd still be inclined to leave them to it, and I'd still offer them protection because we have this wonderful thing known as "freedom of speech" (or we like to think we do) but I'd disagree with their aims.
In the end we cannot, if we have any faith in the land we live in, expect the law to take sides. There will be times, by the very nature of things, when people will clash over beliefs. The law must protect everyone, so it cannot be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Baha'i... etc. etc.
How can the law decide whether it is an offence, for example, for a Jewish person to hear words said on the street that they do not agree with?
Using the excuse that it is an offence under that person's faith's law isn't good enough. It cannot protect a person of another faith, so it's not strong enough as universal law.
As a Christian, I am not interested in living in a Christian country, although under John Locke's version of tacit consent I have agreed to this. In an ideal world, I would be interested in living in a country where I can practice my faith for as long as and as overtly as I choose. I would expect the law to curtail me only if I deliberately and premeditatedly offended or physically hurt another person.
Recently, with the furore over the Archbishop of Canterbury's words on including elements of Shariah law in the UK, I was watching a debate programme in which a Muslim man explained patiently that Shariah law protected women, allowed faster divorces, etc. To him I say: Great! It sounds like there are elements that ought to be present in a modern, egalitarian society. We can't have a religious law for a mixed population and Muslim women shouldn't be the only ones offered this protection. Let's campaign together to change the secular law to accommodate these excellent concepts.
Christianity is the modern whipping boy. In some cases, defensive, angry Christians, who completely misinterpret turning the other cheek (in my opinion), spring up to demand protection. Sorry, folks, but you don't need protecting. You really don't. I get just as irritated with the stupidity of some of the atheist arguments and roll my eyes just as hard when people spout that bullshit about religion having "killed the most people". (Tell it to Stalin, the great, murderous atheist of the 20th Century). My point is I have the choice of answering those arguments or refraining from getting involved in the debate. I don't need to loudly trumpet my offence because I'm too busy discussing it rationally with my friends, my family and my God.
At the moment I am highly irritated by the situation in Greece where two gay couples will be prosecuted for taking advantage of a loophole in the law that doesn't state the gender of those being married. They wed, and now they will be taken to court over it because the law was inadequately stated. And why would the government want to protect the inadquate law? Because they're all Greek Orthodox Christians. And they're legislating in a Christian way. I shake my head, and wait for them to catch up with reality.
When will people stop behaving like children? When will they realise that "fair" is not stopping other people from doing something you disagree with but allowing them to live a free(ish) life?
It's not that I don't know that all ethics is essentially based on what you agree with. But the things that we - almost universally - don't agree with are things that physically or materially disadvantage someone, and there's not a religion or ethical atheist group in the world that I can think of who would have a problem with protecting people against those crimes. We already have the universal agreement. Now can we have the universal agreement to disagree?
And why do I make the claim that I do in the title? Because in a world where there are no longer many places that are exclusively one faith, pushing back and forth over minor issues is only going to lead to more people saying "bugger this for a game of soldiers, religions are full of mentalists" and perpetuating the nonsense that is said about religions until the practice of all faiths is banned. In the case of many a rabid atheist, that's exactly what they want. I don't see why those of us who have faith need play into their hands by constantly wailing and gnashing our teeth. We must accept that if we want our own faith to survive, we must leave room for someone else's and be ruled by laws that only make reference to faith insofar as guaranteeing freedom of non-harmful practice.
Update: Boy threatened with legal action for saying Scientology is a 'cult'. Scientologists aren't the first religious types to try stamping all over free speech, but like most people protesting too much (like those Catholics who get outraged over Harry Potter) they end up looking rather ridiculous. This is not a new story, but I wanted to add Caitlin Moran's comments:
Aside from the fact that if we ignored our brains and filtered this story purely through our dumb animal emotions, it felt a bit as if Tom Cruise was about to throw a child in jail - which was obviously quite exciting - you do have to ask, what is happening to this country? Have we turned into a bunch of wet nuns? First, we should be thrilled that we've got at least one teenage kid up, fully dressed, philosophically engaged and able to spell. Secondly, I'm embarrassed that all the grown-up liberal countries such as Canada and Denmark are laughing at us.
