Recent environmental protests - the Extinction Rebellion's passive aggressive sticking and gluing and the messianic Greta Thurnberg's wrathful adult-bashing - employed approaches that triggered even more social polarisation in our divided society. One feature of these and other contemporary demonstrations of concern for the future of the planet has been the claims of young people (or older people on behalf of their children) that they are genuinely SCARED. And they present this FEAR with all the earnest emotion of someone expecting that level of PANICKED HORROR to cause an imminent soiling of the underpants.
I've seen enough episodes of Doctor Who over the decades to understand that 'end of the world' fear can affect people in just such a way, although THAT horror has been exacerbated by whichever robots or monsters were causing that threat. It would seem that the monsters in the minds of Generation Z's environmental child protesters are adults. Because of all the plastic we make for them to use.
Now, I'll hold back from being too scathing about their concerns, because I believe that they are genuine and no matter what your view is on evidence of this planet's environmental malaise and impending disintegration, it is better for us to do what we can to protect ourselves. But I do find it impossible to equate their level of fear to what was scaring the shit out of me when I was growing up.
I'm not JUST talking about the Cold War and its shadow of nuclear holocaust, which everyone agreed on and which could have happened at any moment. Yes that was scary, but the very real, daily, poo-inducing fears that I recall suffering from are probably laughably trivial in your minds; and for that reason, I will detail them here:
1. Having my hair washed.
Like most mum's, ours would wash our hair by holding us backwards over the bathroom sink and pouring water from a plastic cup onto our foreheads, almost like a baptism. Getting water in your eyes, which invariably happened, was unpleasant; but if Vosene was your mum's shampoo of choice, then this unpleasantness paled in comparison to the impact of getting some of that stuff in your eye. If she'd poured kerosene over your eyeballs and set fire to them, it wouldn't have been any worse. Vosene, in its distinctive dark green bottle, looking not unlike a container for toxic, radioactive substances, was absolutely terrifying. Why riot police, armed militias or terrorists did not employ this as a weapon in the 70s is baffling, but fortunate.
2. Gaps between the planks on Brighton Pier.
You Tube often brings us videos of hysterically frightened Japanese people as they willingly do the walk of death, standing on glass floors at the top of 100-storey skyscrapers or perilously edging their way on tightropes or climbing hooks on the sides of sheer cliff edges, thousands of feet above the ground. The best reactions are when these 'volunteers for fear' weep and crawl, clinging to whatever is to hand. Well that was ME whenever we went onto Brighton Pier on childhood days out or holidays. The fact that you can see the sea between the gaps in the planks led me to believe that they could not possibly be secure enough to take my weight. Where possible, I walked along the joists in order to minimise the chances of falling through to a certain death in 3 feet of sea water.
3. The Dark.
Being brought up Catholic afforded me the joy of superstitious belief in just about everything. If you can believe in the Devil, then the natural sequence of credibility will take you to accept the existence of ghosts, monsters, goblins, witches, demons, the anti-Christ and the whole panorama of malevolent beings that have existed for centuries in folklore and culture. And because you never saw them during the day and because they were evil, logic dictated that they would exist in THE DARK. And THE DARK was everywhere. It was at the bottom of the garden at night, in your bedroom cupboard and even under your bed. Therefore, thanks to family religion, being allowed to watch The Omen at a young age and my Dad's regular attempts to scare us shitless by turning off lights and shouting, 'DAMIEN!' when we were alone upstairs, meant that I lived in a semi-permanent state of dread. THAT would put the willies up you much more than a melting iceberg would.
4. Getting caught doing something wrong like skidding your pants
Ironically, given that I have described FEAR in scatological terms (ha, I describe EVERYTHING in those terms, you might have noticed), it was the worry of our mum discovering that I'd skidded my pants that also caused me fear in those days. My parents were never nasty or abusive (although you might have made up your own mind about that during point 3 above), but they were strict enough for us to worry about getting caught for doing something wrong. In the 1970s all pants were white Y-fronts, meaning that if you didn't adequately apply enough rigour to your post-lavatorial hygiene machinations, you'd end up with some very conspicuous skidmarks (or worse) that you wouldn't want your mum to discover. As good as Persil and Aerial purported to be in those days, that sort of laundry would require a blow-torch and chisel. So rather than land ourselves in it by casually flinging any offensively soiled pants into the dirty wash, we'd strategically hide them behind the toilet or sink, where they'd dry out and fester for weeks before discovery. By which point I'd use that very human of excuses for wrong-doing, which is that I'd done it 'ages ago', implicitly claiming that TIME has naturally caused me to become a better person since then.
I could go on, but I might try your patience further. There are also tube trains coming out of tunnels, wasps, spiders, God, the Devil, nuns, waste disposal units, our PE and Geography teacher, older girls from Minchenden school who sat upstairs on the 121 and talked to you and having to drink a warm bottle of milk at primary school. I suppose I should fear global warming, but fear rarely led me to do the right thing in those days. I carried on using Vosene when I was old enough to wash my own hair, I dared myself to go to the bottom of the garden, I've been back to Brighton pier countless times. And as for skidding my pants... well, let's just say I don't throw them behind the toilet anymore.
Tuesday 22 October 2019
Thursday 10 October 2019
Moving to the Country
I've always considered the countryside - and nature in general - as something to be admired from afar, in pictures or on telly or for a few days holiday in comfortable surroundings (never a tent, I don't get the concept of 'holidaying' by recreating in tiny form the conditions of a Calais migrant camp). I admire its beauty, its peace and tranquillity and its spaciousness; especially the latter, which to a misanthropic bastard like me, holds much attraction. But as someone who has only ever lived in London or large satellite towns, where nature exists in mere bitesize chunks, I had viewed the countryside as something intrinsically DIRTY. Up close it's all mud and insects and bloody stinging nettles.
But 3 weeks ago, we moved house and now we live in a village (a small one at that, a hamlet to be more accurate perhaps, as it has no shops and just one pub and a village hall serving what I guess is less than 50 households.) We might only be a 5 minute walk to the edge of the city of St Albans and 10 from the nearest shop - and my wife, who grew up in a slightly more remote area of the countryside scoffs at me for even describing this as 'the country' - but we are surrounded by fields and therefore we ARE in the countryside and can now self-identify as proper yokel country folk. (By the current rules of self-identification, we could have claimed this living in a city, but without the credibility, obviously.)
The inevitable paranoia of a town-dwelling nature-phobe struck me on the day we walked through the door of our new home. There were spiders everywhere. I thought, fuck, it's the countryside, we have to share our house with a million spiders. I'd been used to houses where almost every crack was sealed up and spiders were a rare intrusion; and here we were in a house (part of which is an 1850s built cottage) which appeared practically open to nature. What else would we find living here? Small, round, hard, black bits all over the place led me to panic that it was also infested by mice. My wife insisted - as I rolled up and squished some of this evidence between finger and thumb - that this was not mouse poo, but it looked and felt like it and short of tasting it, I was not to be convinced otherwise.
Having reached this stage of unexpected anxiety at what should be a magic moment of walking into a new house, I was open to further panicked doom-mongering. The wallpaper was bumpy in places and I feared damp underneath. There were cracks in the plaster under this; and you'd get a sense of sloping floors as you walked from room to room - like the villains' hide-outs in the 60s Batman series - and I thought the house was sinking into some undiscovered Medieval cess pit and only months from fully collapsing.
The departing family, despite having nicely modernised the house and made it very presentable for viewings when selling, appear to have had adapted to country life by becoming slightly DIRTY themselves. I assumed that they came to accept spiders as part of the deal and thus left them hanging immobile around the ceiling edges of the lounge. One of my first actions - and most of you won't approve - was to run the hoover attachment along those edges to suck up every cobweb and every unsuspecting spider. (I did empty the hoover straight afterwards, so hopefully they survived the experience and escaped from our outside bin). Over a few days, noticing that spiders did not return in the same vast quantities, I was put at ease and even managed to tolerate them. (Was I becoming DIRTY thanks to nature?) The fact that we now only have a couple, they are very spindly and small and they don't move, means that I tend to leave them alone. (Any that DO move, however, especially if bigger or fatter, are electrocuted with a specially designed electrified tennis racket-shaped piece of anti-insect weaponry that, again, you will judge me poorly for resorting to. In my defence, I only do it because I feel my life is in danger. Ish.)
The previous owners' slight, nature-related DIRTYNESS also accounted for what I thought was mouse poo. It was just bits of dirt, possibly mud. It hasn't returned. Somehow, we don't have mice. Paranoia abated, thankfully.
And the wallpaper is only bumpy, because whoever put it up appears to have lacked one key skill required when wallpapering and that is the skill of 'not fucking up the wallpapering.' I suspect the decorator was wearing boxing gloves or a blindfold or was drunk. There is no damp problem. Cracks were in the plaster not the brickwork. We aren't crumbling into ruins.
So after that initial misguided and frankly quite stupid bout of pessimism, I find myself totally unable to moan about moving to the country. The feeling is a strange one. A sort of uneasy contentment, a realisation of being a bit of a lucky bastard and I am now void of ideas to write a cynical blog post about.
I will need to make sure I visit town regularly enough to remind myself of all the things I hate. otherwise I'll have less to write about.
But 3 weeks ago, we moved house and now we live in a village (a small one at that, a hamlet to be more accurate perhaps, as it has no shops and just one pub and a village hall serving what I guess is less than 50 households.) We might only be a 5 minute walk to the edge of the city of St Albans and 10 from the nearest shop - and my wife, who grew up in a slightly more remote area of the countryside scoffs at me for even describing this as 'the country' - but we are surrounded by fields and therefore we ARE in the countryside and can now self-identify as proper yokel country folk. (By the current rules of self-identification, we could have claimed this living in a city, but without the credibility, obviously.)
The inevitable paranoia of a town-dwelling nature-phobe struck me on the day we walked through the door of our new home. There were spiders everywhere. I thought, fuck, it's the countryside, we have to share our house with a million spiders. I'd been used to houses where almost every crack was sealed up and spiders were a rare intrusion; and here we were in a house (part of which is an 1850s built cottage) which appeared practically open to nature. What else would we find living here? Small, round, hard, black bits all over the place led me to panic that it was also infested by mice. My wife insisted - as I rolled up and squished some of this evidence between finger and thumb - that this was not mouse poo, but it looked and felt like it and short of tasting it, I was not to be convinced otherwise.
Having reached this stage of unexpected anxiety at what should be a magic moment of walking into a new house, I was open to further panicked doom-mongering. The wallpaper was bumpy in places and I feared damp underneath. There were cracks in the plaster under this; and you'd get a sense of sloping floors as you walked from room to room - like the villains' hide-outs in the 60s Batman series - and I thought the house was sinking into some undiscovered Medieval cess pit and only months from fully collapsing.
The departing family, despite having nicely modernised the house and made it very presentable for viewings when selling, appear to have had adapted to country life by becoming slightly DIRTY themselves. I assumed that they came to accept spiders as part of the deal and thus left them hanging immobile around the ceiling edges of the lounge. One of my first actions - and most of you won't approve - was to run the hoover attachment along those edges to suck up every cobweb and every unsuspecting spider. (I did empty the hoover straight afterwards, so hopefully they survived the experience and escaped from our outside bin). Over a few days, noticing that spiders did not return in the same vast quantities, I was put at ease and even managed to tolerate them. (Was I becoming DIRTY thanks to nature?) The fact that we now only have a couple, they are very spindly and small and they don't move, means that I tend to leave them alone. (Any that DO move, however, especially if bigger or fatter, are electrocuted with a specially designed electrified tennis racket-shaped piece of anti-insect weaponry that, again, you will judge me poorly for resorting to. In my defence, I only do it because I feel my life is in danger. Ish.)
The previous owners' slight, nature-related DIRTYNESS also accounted for what I thought was mouse poo. It was just bits of dirt, possibly mud. It hasn't returned. Somehow, we don't have mice. Paranoia abated, thankfully.
And the wallpaper is only bumpy, because whoever put it up appears to have lacked one key skill required when wallpapering and that is the skill of 'not fucking up the wallpapering.' I suspect the decorator was wearing boxing gloves or a blindfold or was drunk. There is no damp problem. Cracks were in the plaster not the brickwork. We aren't crumbling into ruins.
So after that initial misguided and frankly quite stupid bout of pessimism, I find myself totally unable to moan about moving to the country. The feeling is a strange one. A sort of uneasy contentment, a realisation of being a bit of a lucky bastard and I am now void of ideas to write a cynical blog post about.
I will need to make sure I visit town regularly enough to remind myself of all the things I hate. otherwise I'll have less to write about.
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