Too busy writing, to write.

The frustrating thing about writing for a living, is that there’s no time to write for pleasure. Being self-employed instils a guilt complex that materialises when you sit down with good intentions to write more of that second novel, or jot your blog, or stretch your Twitter threads, etc. But the second you’re facing the screen you realise this that needs doing, or that needs writing, or another thing needs to be added to someone’s website, or something needs to be sent to someone. Even as I write this I’m mildly anxious because I should really be writing a user manual for a piece of e-commerce software (sorry Peter  — if you’re reading this).

In this house, the evening is the best time to write — toddler and dog have both been walked and fed and are now sleeping; cat is currently balancing on the edge of the dog’s drinking water bowl considering the best form of entry (it turned out to be chin first). Mrs C is studying for her driving theory test next week. The phones and Skype are quiet. Email is confined to the latest offers from Aldi, Waitrose and various insurance companies. Rather than requests for stuff to be written, edited, designed, created, sent, thought about, etc.

It’s quiet.

But I’m self-employed, with a mortgage to pay, bills, an almost-2 years toddler. The future is the problem, because it’s always there. So while I’ve paid the bills this month, I have to make sure I can pay them next month, and the month after that, ad infinitum (not literally of course — it just seems that it takes infinity to pay off your mortgage).

I can’t be frivolous with time.

I was never any good at sprinting, but loved running loads of miles. I love long, long walks up big hills. I love big projects. I’ve just completed an e-commerce site that’s taken the best part of three months to put together. And I really enjoy writing book-length stuff. Although the absence of a publisher or an agent, and the lack of available time to find one, means any stuff that does get written gets shelved. I work on the basis that at some time in the future I’ll have time to do what I need to do to try and get my own stuff published. Even if that means starting up a digital publishing business — which I could do if I had the time to do it. But the point is that I enjoy big, complicated, difficult stuff. It’s an endurance thang.

I have more patience than just about anyone I know. Apart from possibly Ed. But I’ll eliminate him on the basis that he works extremely hard to be inert by thinking a lot, which takes a lot of mental energy. And any kind of energy counts as work. Being professionally inert doesn’t count.

I can wait for years.

My dentist, wonderful man that he is, always keeps me waiting — for at least 45 minutes. Then apologises profusely. I always tell him not too, because sitting in that waiting room every six months, with my mobile switched off and nothing to do but wait is one of the most enjoyable things to do. No guilt about the fact I should be doing something else, and totally excusable inaccessibility. Where else can you enjoy that these days? Driving.

I enjoy driving long distances on my own. I don’t have in-car access to my mobile. If it rings I stop when I can and call back. I can’t use a computer in the car either. So again I can enjoy totally excusable inaccessbility. Driving is a luxury.

When is ‘one day’? One day I’ll sit all day, and all night if I want to, and write books, or plays, or short stories, or any damned thing I want to. I took a year off once, and wrote solidly for six months. It was probably the best thing I’ve ever done. I’ll do it again one day.

Oh well. I guess I’d better get back to that manual…

Thanks for your time.

Letter from a fly to Huntingdon District Council

Huntingdon District Council
Pathfinder House
St. Marys St,
Huntingdon,
PE29 3TN

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing as a follow-up to my recent letter, to thank you from the bottom of my thorax for changing your refuse collection cycle so that you now empty the bins every two weeks. As I explained in my last letter:  previously my family and I led a precarious existence for reasons which I was too distressed at the time to talk about, but which I am now happy to explain. I hope I’m not being too risqué by talking about the lifecycle of what is often called the ‘Common’ Housefly — I cannot think why we are labelled with this insulting misnomer, but this is a separate issue I am currently pursuing with the Equal Opportunities Commission. That aside, the reproductive cycle of a housefly is around 12 days. I cannot begin to tell you how heartbreaking it was to see great hoards of my prospective family — most merely maggots, some no more than tiny eggs — being transported away when the refuse was collected on a weekly basis. The new two-week collection is infinitely better, as it fits in perfectly with our reproductive cycle.
Our adult life is preciously short as it is — between one and three months, and that’s without various threats to our already slight existence, especially being pursued relentlessly by newspapers, mostly tabloids.  During this time we can produce up to five batches of up to 150 eggs. These can take up to two days to hatch into larvae. What follow is a few difficult days, when each maggot is a seething mass of hormones — a state with which the parents of any teenager will no doubt sympathise. Dealing with one unruly teenager can be difficult enough, imagine what it’s like trying to deal with 150! Needless to say it’s a blessing when they finally pupate, a stage which can take anything from three days to four weeks. And I don’t mind admitting that it’s a case of the longer the better if one has a particularly boisterous batch. I hope that doesn’t make me sound like a bad mother. Thankfully they emerge as full-grown adults, and of course have only two thoughts on their mind…
With as many as 12 generations in one season, you don’t have to be a genius at arithmetic to work out that this totals 4.75145E+24, give or take a few. Of course this is an ideal figure, but sadly — as I’ve already mentioned, many don’t survive. Good taste forbids me from mentioning the number taken by anglers for example — it breaks my heart to think about the fate of those poor little maggots.
The weekly cycle of refuse collection played havoc with our reproduction: whole generations carried off without a thought. That’s what prompted me to write in the first place. Thankfully, we’re now back to normal, and the place is buzzing again. So I’d like to thank you not once, but several millions of times on behalf of my family and me.
Wishing you all the best for this festive season. Oh, and a special thank you for our Christmas bonus of the extra few days before the next collection. We’ll certainly take advantage of this, especially with all those extra turkey and goose carcasses around!

I remain

Yours faithfully,

etc.

An open letter to the National Lottery Jackpot Manager

The Jackpot Manager
The National Lottery
PO Box 1010
Liverpool
L70 1NL

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you in connection with the National Lottery, because I am seriously considering giving it up, and you only have yourselves to blame. The reason is that whenever I do it, I never win. Of course — as you’ll see from your records — I don’t do it very often. However I have done it on and off regularly since it started, so I must be one of your most loyal customers. But where’s the incentive if I’m consistently losing my investment? I’m not alone when I say that I think if you could see your way to making me win now and again, I would definitely consider doing it more often, which would be a win-win situation, because you would gain more funds from my investment to put towards good causes, and towards the jackpot fund. In fact if I did win a large sum, such as the jackpot of say, several million, I would buy twice the number of tickets as I do now. Which means that I’d buy a ticket on alternate Wednesdays as well as my twice-monthly Saturday ticket. (So you’d actually be getting some of the money back!). Furthermore, I think I am probably one of your most committed customers when it comes to being ‘In it to win it’.
I would be an ideal candidate for a jackpot win because unlike many of your winners, I truly understand the responsibility that comes with that amount of money, and I am able and more than ready to take it on. You can rest assured that I won’t go down the Vivienne Westwood route of ‘Spend! Spend! Spend!’, nor will I fill a remote corner of Norfolk with pimped-up cars and loose women. I am a fully-grown adult with a responsible wife and son, both of whom are poised, ready to invest in sensible shoes and educational toys. Of course there’s a wild streak in everyone, but I can assure you my wife keeps my dreams of owning a touring motorcycle well in check. She also keeps a diligent eye on my modest consumption of alcohol. So any of the usual fears you might have about adverse publicity would not apply. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the money would be in a safe pair of hands. I do not even have a criminal record, which I hope won’t count against me as a prospective jackpot prize-winner. I am more than willing to eschew any publicity and manage my winnings in virtual anonymity (please note I use the word ‘manage’, rather than ‘enjoy’). In fact it’s fair to say that fame has never held any attraction for me. As you may have guessed by now, I’m a fairly philosophical person, I understand true values and I have always held that the only real luxuries in life are time and space. Winning the lottery jackpot would help me enjoy both of these with deeper intent (i.e. ‘enjoy’ in a philosophical sense, rather than the material). And finally, I would add that I am more than prepared to take on the added responsibility of winning during a rollover week. I hope this helps. And one last point — I’d be very grateful if you could sort this out in the next week or two, as I was recently made redundant.

Yours sincerely,

Mr C L Bollington

PS: It’s just been pointed out to me that it wasn’t Vivienne Westood who spent all her money, it was Viv Nicholson (and it was only a £152,319 pools win, so I can’t see what the fuss was about anyway). Apparently Vivienne Westwood is a humble seamstress, who probably also could do with a lottery win, so apologies for this slight error.

Loose men, loose women and good losers.

The subject of grace has been at the back of my mind for some time. But recently two incidents have dragged it forwards: The two contracting incidents I’m referring to are Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand’s call to Andrew Sachs, and John McCain’s concession speech minutes after losing the to Barack Obama. Russell Brand’s priapism is no secret. But there is an inherent irony in his actions. He probably sees himself as a some kind of libertine, rake, debauchee, Don Juan, Casanova, stud, or any other of the romantic titles available to loose men. But a true lover, even a casual and fleeting one, is not a lover without grace. Georgina Baillie, Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter, describes herself as ‘no shrinking violet’, but she can’t have expected her liaison with Brand to have been used in such a public and disgraceful way.
I am no prude. Until my marriage six years ago I led a very promiscuous life. During that time I enjoyed sex with women whom I know other men would label at best as ‘loose’. But there is a fundamental difference in attitude between loose men and loose women, which I hope doesn’t exist as much in today’s teens and twenties. ‘Loose’ women can be labelled ’slags’, ’slappers’, ‘easy’, ‘nympho’, ‘tart’, and any of many other derogatory terms. ‘Loose’ men, on the other hand, are called…and here I’m having trouble thinking of words that in any way equal the female versions: ‘wolf’, ’seducer’, ‘lothario’ — which don’t really have the same sleazy ring to them. The closest I can think of is ’shagger’.
In my experience, so-called ‘loose’ women have one quality that men who label them as such don’t appreciate or understand: they are generous. Generous with their bodies, their affections, their intimacy and their time. They are also more honest in their approach to sex and sexuality. For their generosity and their honesty they should be admired.
So why is it that some men find it necessary to attach derogatory labels to women who are doing nothing more than men themselves do? Paradoxically: when those same men often have had sex with those women? I think it has to be because of the male’s attitude to himself. If a man has the attitude that a ‘generous’ woman is a slag, but still has sex with her, then he must have a fundamentally low opinion of himself, otherwise why do it? More than this, I think because the terms ’slag’ and ’slapper’, are not bestowed on a woman by the woman, but by the man, it expresses his own attitude towards not just this woman, but women in general. If he has sex with someone whom he considers to be a slag, morally isn’t that sexual abuse? And if a sexually generous woman is to him a slag, what does he expect from a woman? And where does it come from — this expectation of what a woman’s attitude towards sexuality should be?
The point is, and there is a point to all this, that Russell Brand must, mid-conscously, have an extremely low opinion of himself and his own sexuality to want to publicise the fact that he had sex with Georgina Baillie or any other of his ‘conquests’. Indeed the fact that he is so open about his own promiscuity raises the questions as to why he feels it necessary to be that way? As in why so promiscuous? And why so public about it? Sex is a private act, (even if there are more than two people involved). It is a generous act in which two people share, not just their bodies, but their intimacy. Intimacy is such a valuable thing. It is not then graceful to go public about this intimacy, especially to grandparents — who often have such a unque relationship of love and respect with their grandchildren. Russell Brand considered it to be a prank: telling Andrew Sachs what happened with his granddaughter. But there are innumerable other pranks, lots of which are clever, funny and enjoyable. What drove this ‘prank’? Fundamentally Russell Brand must have had no respect for Georgina Baillie, otherwise he wouldn’t have done what he did. And if he had no respect for her, why did he sleep with her? Because at heart, he has no respect for himself?
I realised, after several decades of promiscuity, that I was addicted to casual sex. The more risky and fleeting it was, the more I enjoyed it. But like all addictions it is ultimately unfulfilling. Even though it was often wonderfully enjoyable. Looking for it was often more exciting than doing it. I also realised that there is no such think as sex without emotional responsibility of some kind. What’s the value of a quick fuck? It’s really nothing more than masturbating with a partner. For me, a faithful sexual relationship developed with a long-term, committed partner is infinitely more fulfilling. But of course that’s only my personal view, and the world is made up of all kinds of people whose attitudes we should try and respect if their driven by truth and honesty.  I can’t comment on what drives Russell Brand, because I’ve never met or spoken to him.
There was no grace in Russell Brand’s actions. And in getting carried along in the glee of the moment, there was no grace in Jonathan Ross’ actions either. There needs to be a lot more grace in our society. Instead we seem to be doing everything possible to eliminate it. You only have to read the papers, magazines, watch TV — or listen to the radio it seems. But grace is a true and wonderful quality that adds depth and character to people and to situations. I supported Barack Obama and I’m delighted that he’s in. A world without Emperor Bush as a leader in it has to be an even slightly safer place. I watched Obama’s acceptance with joy. It was only by chance that I sat and watched all of John McCain’s concession speech, and I was struck by the sheer eloquent grace of it. Even when some of his supporters were jeering at the start, someone even shouting ‘bullshit!’, he carried on with a speech that couldn’t fail to move you in some way. If you didn’t hear it or read it, you can find it on lots of places on the internet.
Grace provides a key to many other qualities. Thoughfulness, consideration, generosity, inner strength and caring being just some that come to mind. It seems that all the qualities it offers are needed in our increasingly superficial and selfish world.
I should add that there are aspects of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross I admire. Although I’m not a big fan of his stand-up stuff (no double entendre intended), I think Brand writes well, and I look forward to this developing over the years. And when Ross is interested in the person he’s interviewing and lays his ego to one side, he’s excellent.
I guess I should state my view on whether I think they should have been suspended? I would say if their apologies had been handled with grace and timeliness it wouldn’t have been necessary. They are both intelligent adult people who would probably have benefited more from an honest and adult discussion about good grace than a slap on the wrist to satisfy the witch-hunt that happened after the event. Better management would have helped.
Please can we all try and have a bit more grace.

Why you should keep nursery rhymes out of the nursery

‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad.’ Philip Larkin wrote. How? They start early — by reading you nursery rhymes. Why for heaven’s sake! They’re so depressing. So full of doom and gloom. Take Humpty Dumpty for starters: Fat, sits on a wall, falls off, breaks into loads of pieces and is irreparable. Or Little Miss Muffet: sits down for a simple snack of sour milk and gets jumped by a giant spider. Jack and Jill — all they did was walk up a hill to get some water and they both fell, leaving Jack with a nasty head injury. Call out the doctor or get off to casualty? No chance, has to leg it home and fix it with brown paper and vinegar, which can’t have been that successful — it wasn’t just a scratch, the poor bloke broke his head. Then there’s the maid in Sing a Song of Sixpence who had her nose pecked off by a blackbird when all she was doing was hanging out the washing. And as for the poor three blind mice — or as they are now three blind mice with no tails thanks to the carving knife of the farmer’s wife. Do the RSPCA know about this woman?

Even the tiniest of babies is not free from doom and gloom. The most widely-sung lullaby is:
‘Rock-a-bye baby in the tree top.
When the wind blows the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall.
And down will come cradle and baby and all.’

So there was a baby in cradle up a tree, a bit of wind blows, the branch breaks and the cradle and the baby fall out of the tree and comes crashing down to earth. Who were the parents of this poor unfortunate child. What were they doing putting a cradle up a tree in a gale?  What were they thinking?

John: ‘I’m fed up with rocking the baby, he won’t go to sleep.’
Janet: ‘Tell me about it. I can’t do it I’m too busy. I’ve got to bake bread for tomorrow, milk the goat, put the chickens away…’
John: ‘OK, OK, don’t go on. I get the picture.’
Silence. John carries on rocking the cradle and stares out of the window at a tree swaying backwards and forwards in the wind.
John: ‘I’ve had an idea.’
Janet: ‘Here we go again…’
John: ‘What?’
Janet: ‘Your ideas — they always end in disaster.’
John: ‘That’s not very fair.’
Janet: ‘True though.’
John: ‘No it’s not. One day I’ll invent something and we’ll be rich — you’ll see. We’ll get out of this hovel. You won’t be so damning then!
Janet: ‘What kind of thing? Like the washing machine?’
John: ‘I knew you’d mention that! There was nothing wrong with it. It just needed tweaking.’
Janet: ‘Tweaking! What made you think a donkey pulling a barrel full of stones, water and clothes behind it was going to make your fortune?’
John: ‘It was labour-saving.’
Janet: ‘Labour saving! It took the best part of an hour to load the clothes in the barrel, find the right kind of stones — which, incidentally, you made me carry from the river, and fetch the water from the river, seal the whole thing up, strap it to that contraption you’d tied to the poor donkey, and then watch everything get destroyed: your breeches, my aprons, even my Sunday-best frock! And that barrel was all we had for collecting rainwater. And who is it that now has to walk to the river and carry all our water back in a bucket?’
John: ‘Steady lass, you’ve made your point! But one day, you’ll see. Anyway this  idea will work. It’s simple and will give us both a lot of time to do other things.’
Janet: ‘What other things? I don’t want to do other things! I like doing the things I do and the way I do them.’
John: ‘You could relax a bit more.’
Janet: ‘Relax! Why would I want to relax? What do think I am — a man! Anyway, I’ve been standing here talking long enough. I’ve got work to do. I’m going out to the barn. Keep an eye on the little ‘un.’
Janet wraps her shawl around her shoulders and leaves the room.
John sits for a few moments, staring out of the window at the swaying trees. Then he rises from his seat picks up the cradle and carries it outside. The baby has been crying continuously. John walks over to the tree and puts the cradle down. He picks up a ladder and props it against the tree, takes a length of rope that was lying nearby, then picks up the cradle and climbs. He wedges the cradle in the crook of a branch and secures it with the rope, using the kind of knot only a man who thinks he knows about stuff would tie. He then climbs down the ladder and sits on the ground against a nearby tree stump.
The tree sways gently. The cradle sways gently. And for the first time in what seems like an age, the baby stops crying. John realises how exhausted he is. He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep for months. He watches the tree sway rhythmically back and forth, and drifts into a deep slumber, the luxury of which can only be truly appreciated by someone comparatively new to fatherhood.
Janet finishes her chores, the last of which is locking the chickens away for the night. The wind is building gust by gust. She’s worried about how secure the chicken coop would be during the night if the wind got any stronger. She went back into the house, and as John and the baby weren’t there, she presumed John had put the cradle in the handcart and gone for a walk. He’d done it before as the little ‘un seemed to like it, and it helped him go to sleep. Exhausted, she flopped into a chair, and stoked some life into the red embers of the fire with a few twigs. She sat back on the chair and dozed off.
The wind grew. It whistled through the branches of the trees, turning the gentle swaying into violent rocking. The branch creaked under the weight of the cradle and the pressure of the wind. John, still sleeping, drew his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around his legs to keep snug. A large gust ripped the roof off the hen-house and twisted the branch of the tree on which the cradle sat. The canon-shot sound it made as it cracked away from the trunk awoke John with a start. His instincts made him look up towards the cradle, which still tied to the branch, was now crashing down through the lower limbs of the tree.
John had tied the cradle to a stout branch. But its weight, and the weight of the cradle were too heavy to withstand the added pressure of the wind. Fortunately, because the branch was so heavy, it dragged the cradle down through the tree and landed on the ground with the cradle still on top. John was already on his feet and running towards it. His heart was in his mouth, he would have cried out but his mouth was as dry as sawdust. He scrambled though the twigs and leaves of the fallen branch and reached the cradle. He didn’t want to look inside at his precious son, but had no choice. He wondered what he would say to Janet. How could he explain.
The baby was still, his eyes closed. John reached into the cradle and picked him up. Upset at being stirred from its slumber, the baby started to cry. John had never experienced such a flood of relief. He hugged his son to his chest and cried like a baby. After a few minutes, he put the boy back in the cradle, which he then untied from the branch, before carrying it back into the house. Janet heard the baby crying as they came in.
Janet: ‘Still not settled then? The handcart usually works?’
John: ‘What? Oh, er, no. It must be the wind.’
Janet: ‘Oh yes, it must be, they never settle when it’s blowin’.’
Janet looked quizzically towards the window. ‘Can you hear that?’
John looked toward the window and listened.
John: ‘What? The chickens?
Janet: ‘Yes, it sounds like they’re out. The roof must have blown off.’
John: ‘Probably, it’s a strong wind tonight. Brought a branch down from that big Horsechestnut.
Janet: ‘Oh well. At least we’ll have some more firewood. Here, pass me the little ‘un, I’ll rock him for a bit. What was your idea, by the way?’
John: ‘What?’
Janet: ‘Earlier — you said you had an idea.’
John: ‘Oh that! On nothing, nothing. Just another stupid thought. I’d better go and sort out the hens and see if I can do anything about that roof.’
Janet: ‘Be careful, it’s blowing a gale out there.’
John: ‘Don’t worry.’
John left the room. Janet absentmindedly picked a small piece of twig caught in the baby’s clothes and tossed it into the fire.

It’s no wonder the British are generally so pessimistic. It’s instilled into us from birth. Maybe we should write a whole new set of optimistic, upbeat nursery rhymes, where good things happen to the characters. Such as:

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
But as they’d climbed, a voice behind said:
“Wait! Came back! Please don’t do that,
I’ll come right round and fit a tap.
There’s no need now to climb that hill.
I’ll sort you out, I’m plumber Bill!
I’ll fit a tap for you for free!
Just brew me up a mug of tea.
A tap for free would save a crown,
Thought Jack — and so they turned around,
And down they got, and off they trot
As fast as they could caper.
Plumber Bill was drinking tea,
From Jack’s tap two hours later.

Mind you, a plumber fitting a tap for free is more like a fairy tale than a nursery rhyme. Feel free to have a go.

This unsustainable world

It amazes me that anyone is amazed at the current state of the economic world. It doesn’t take an expert to realise that it can never work the way it was and is. I’m no economist. I’m just your average person with an average intelligence, who’s aware of the world I live in. For what it’s worth — here’s what I think: The problem started by increasing the amount of mortgage that was available to us. Forty years ago it was not easy to buy a house. You needed a good deposit, and you could only borrow low multiples of your salary. I’m not sure what, but I think about two-and-a-half times. By the mid-eighties you could borrow four times your salary and a multiple of your partner’s salary. You didn’t even need much of a deposit. Buying a house became within reach of millions more people, demand rocketed, and a massive sellers’ market was created. any capitalist economy exists on growth, and growth demands profit. Profit is the value that’s added to something to makes it worth more than its cost. An economy based upon this is a beast that needs constant feeding. But which of us stops to think that the fundamental nature of this is flawed. Infinite profit — infinitely adding value — is an impossible fundament on which to build a society. The concept of profit is as abstract and insubstantial as a plume of smoke.
The demand for property led to prices rising at a totally ludicrous rate. I was a staff writer for a computer magazine in 1983, and bought a one-bedroomed flat in Brixton for £17,000. I sold two years later for £34,000, and I know it sold three years after that for £62,000. You may think that was brilliant. But peel away the veneer of bank-notes, and the problems are clear. Firstly, who’s making the money? OK, I walked away with £17,000 profit. But the estate agents charge a percentage, so suddenly they’re making twice as much money. Then I moved back up to Manchester and searched for a house. What was £12,000 two years previously, was now the best part of £20,000 and rising by the day, almost as fast as prices are falling today. Gazumping was rife, not just from other buyers, but by the owners. More people than ever before were borrowing money, and borrowing more money than ever before. The banks and building societies were booming, lending money generates profits. People were buying and selling houses and making more money in a year than their salaries. They released equity, borrowed against the growth in the price of their home to buy cars, homes abroad, even buy-to-let properties in the UK. Credit card companies were happy, banks were happy, building societies were happy, retailers where happy, the consumer was happy, shareholders were happy (the selling of public utilities back to its owners is another story). And so it grew. Lots of people were ‘wealthier’ than they had ever been. There was the slight blip of a recession of course, and those who had overstretched their borrowing out of blind optimism slipped into ‘negative equity’, and had their houses  repossessed. But this didn’t stop the march, or even stall it much. By the mid-nineties house prices were still rising steadily and money invested in property was considered to be ‘as safe as houses’.
But the greed trap started to filter upwards, through the housebuyer to banks, building societies, the shareholders, and so on. All of them lending and borrowing, investing and creaming in the profits, overstretching themselves in every way on the basis that property prices would continue to rise. And it is property prices that are the key. Because what happened since the eighties was that property prices became the backbone of the economy. ‘Service industries’ took over from manufacturing industries as the UK’s national business. Apart from everything else they were virtually union free, so part of the theory was that the country couldn’t be held to ransom (but again — that’s another story). But these service industries were, and still are, almost entirely based upon house prices, and that they should forever rise.
What has happened now, starting in the US. Is that the banks have found themselves in ‘negative equity’, in a similar way to a home owner who had overstretched his or herself. They lent money to people who they knew couldn’t repay their mortgages, but that didn’t matter, because in year or so, when the house was repossessed, the lender would make their profit on the resale as the value of the property rose as expected. By offering cheap mortgages, they were feeding the demand, and demand was supposed to keep property values on the up. But what happens when they stop rising? You can see the pattern here of course. What happens to each of us is no different than what happens to the banks, governments, and countries. Of course at this level the process is hidden in jargon, pseudo-justifications, layers of bureaucracy, ego and pride. But it’s all smoke and mirrors hiding exactly the same mechanics as each of us experiences on a day-to-day basis.
The problem is that we all presume people running things know what they’re doing. Which is not always the case. Someone in a position of power has to be driven by power — another abstract concept that has no place in the running of a business, never mind a country. (How many politicians become politicians for the sake of being one rather than for being seen to be one?) There’s in interested paradox worth mention here. The reason communism doesn’t work is because of greed: there’s always someone who wants more, better or bigger than someone else. Capitalism suffers from the same fundamental flaw — greed is the  fuel that drives the engine of profit. The only way that capitalism can work is for profits to be limited. That’s what governments are discovering now. Banks are driven by their shareholders. And shareholders only invest in places that bring the biggest returns. The result is an economy that is underpinned by fear. Keep your mirrors polished and your smoke thick and you’ll attract investors. That’s what lots of public affairs companies get paid to do. It’s also why we live in a ridiculous economy where a company’s value can be much higher than the sum of all its assets. With ‘perceived value’, we scale even higher into obscurity and surrealism (or should that be sinking lower?) What happens when the fuel begins to run out and smoke gets thinner? Value that was never there disappears. There are even those, the so-called ’short traders’ who made billions on predicting and encouraging this very scenario. And now we’re being faced with an inevitability. It was so obviously going to happen. The reason no action was taken to avert it, was because everyone was in it to make as much money as they could for as long as they could. And they probably have. But guess who’s going to have to pay for it.

Things I’ve said this week to my teething son:

Dominic, please don’t eat mummy’s slipper.
Dominic, please don’t eat mummy.
Dominic, please don’t eat your cot.
Dominic, please don’t eat the fireguard.
Dominic, please don’t eat the carpet.
Dominic, please don’t eat the piano … or the piano stool.
Dominic, please don’t eat Mr gorilla’s arm (torn from a pop-up book).
Dominic, please don’t eat poor parrot’s tail (torn from the same book).
Dominic please don’t eat your book.
Dominic, please don’t eat the chair.
Dominic, please don’t eat daddy.

Surging into the future

Monday morning. Strange waking up and not having a job to go to, so I decided to carry on with my usual routine of babysitting, drinking coffee and dog walking, then settling down to work. I never used to drink coffee, only green tea. Which is not strictly true, as I always had one cup of coffee of a Sunday morning. I started drinking it on a daily basis shortly after Dominic was born. I needed the morning kickstart and still do.
I wallowed a bit yesterday — unusually for me. I was expecting a bit of a post-redundancy bump after my initial sense of weightlessness last week. I wallowed in how unfair it was to have been put in this position after all the hard work I’d put into the company I worked for. But what has fairness in life ever got to do with anything? And that was yesterday, and yesterday is history. Today the sun is shining and I’m looking forward to a brighter future. I’m back to being optimistic and a touch scared — which is healthy as it will keep me motivated. My dog, a lanky, black, five-year-old labrador called Leo, is enjoying my unemployment. He now gets taken for longer walks every morning: along the river and up through the woods, instead of the quick dash around the park he used to get before I went to work. He now thinks every day’s the weekend. Not that I know what he thinks of course, I’m just guessing. It’s interesting that ‘redundancy’, comes from Latin ‘redundare’, which means ’surge’.

On the market

Like I said, I’m not one to hang around. We’ve put our house on the market — again. During the summer we were going to sell up and rent, but decided instead to sit tight for a couple of years until Dominic is two years old. We took it off the market at the beginning of September because we had a prospective buyer and we didn’t want to waste her time with a second viewing. In the end she bought a house about five doors away. As you might imagine I was slightly frustrated at having to then put ours back on the market, especially given the way things are out there right now.
I’ve decided to go back to freelance copywriting, PR and creative project management. There’s one school of thought that says I’m screaming mad for going self-employed given the business environment at the moment. But I reckon lots of companies will be cutting costs, and from experience I know one of the first thing they cut back on is their marketing and use of agencies. I can sell myself as being as experienced and as good as any large agency, but loads cheaper. I also have a really good network of friends involved in website design and programming, advertising and marketing design and artwork, so I reckon I’m in with as good a chance as anyone of succeeding. Anyway, you have to be optimistic, after all — someone’s got to do the work, so why not me. The alternative is to get a job. However as someone wrote in a comment to my last posting, I’d have to deal with being ‘too experienced’, for which read too old. I’m 53. Not too old to be a dad for the first time, but pushing it in today’s working world, where experience counts for less than blind enthusiasm, desire and total commitment — the ‘110%’ factor. But that’s another posting. I’ll give it three months, and if I’m getting nowhere then look for a job.

Oh dear! I’ve been made redundant.

Yesterday I was made redundant from my job at a media training company. I was the MD, so I knew last week that it was coming. I had to tell the owners of the company that they needed to ditch me because the business was too small for two senior managers. Even though I did all the managing, and pulled the company from a massive loss to a small profit in not much over a year, I didn’t own the company, so I had to be one of those who trudged to the jobcentre this morning, P45 fluttering wildly in wind. Actually I didn’t trudge, I drove, and my P45 was in my briefcase, but that doesn’t create any atmosphere. It was windy though. Really there’s no need to conjure up an image of a forlorn, unemployed middle-aged man (middle-age! How did that happen?), because I woke up this morning with a smile on my face that I’ve worn for most of the day. The subconscious is a wonderful thing. Of course it could be ‘banging your head against a brick wall’ syndrome, and I might take a psychological dive in a few days. But I’m going to enjoy this sense of relief for as long as it lasts. As it turns out, the trip to the jobcentre was a waste of time. You do it all either on the phone or online these days.
I haven’t got a clue what I’ll do now. Look for a job? Maybe. Go back to freelance copywriting and PR? Possibly. Go back up north? Probably. For now I’m going to take a couple of days to think about things, and enjoy being with my ten-month-old baby boy and my wife. I’m not one for sitting around and doing nothing, so I guess I’ll have plans in place by the end of next week. The book website project has been on hold due to lack of time, so maybe I’ll resurrect that too. In the meantime I have a finished, half-decent novel that needs a publisher and an agent. Any suggestions gratefully received.