Jesus Harry Christ, is there anything to be optimistic about any more?
Last week, one of the most positive and glass half full people I knew made the comment, "We all know life is shit and we just live for the good moments." That did nothing more than depress me some more, but not straight away. The person is a lapsed Catholic and I commented that we were in fact all in pergatory and the good moments only made the rest even worse.
Wow... this was one hell of an up tempo discussion, but the thing was neither of us were particularly depressed about this insight, it was like a resignation rather than a revelation.
It was only over the next few days that I started to realise that the world is basically a shit place and it doesn't matter how many optimists you meet, how many incredibly upbeat party animals you bump into, or the numerous people who seem to walk around town with a rictus grin on their face - smiling about something as pointless as the sun coming out or a pedestrian being run over by a bus, every one of us suffers woe, heartache, bad news, bad luck, incompetent services, over-charging, being under-valued. We feel dissatisfaction, disdain and hatred for just about anything you care to think of, from politics to public services, the next door neighbours, the kids down the street in their hoodies with fuck all to do, the imbeciles on the roads, the unnecessary speed cameras in places where they are used as revenue traps and not for public safety, the idiots on a Saturday night who turn your city or town centre into a sea of violence and vomit, taxes, rates, VAT, booking fees, lotteries, charities, companies pretending to be charities... If you sat down and made two columns, one for good things in life and one for the bad things, you'd soon find that the bad things that happen far outstrips the good things. Then, you look at all the good things in your life and then work out which of them are bad for you, or are detrimental in large quantities, suddenly you're left with very few things that can make you smile or happy, and even some of these things have hidden dangers or woes attached. Sex - be sure you know and trust your partner. The countryside - global warming is killing off species and replacing them with dangerous European varieties and the odd weather patterns mean we spend all the wrong times of the year looking like a desert and all the times we should look like a desert up to our knees in floods. Going on holiday - well, if you go by bike, then you're not damaging the environment, but if you fancy a trip to Spain or Florida then consider the amount of emissions your mode of transport is pumping into the atmosphere.
For fuck's sake... I just sat here and reeled that off in a few minutes; can you imagine what that would look like if I had a long time to contemplate it all?
You know what annoys me, people who insist that life is great and we should all cheer up. These people should be killed, or at least made to suffer in the same way as the rest of us.
Is there anything left that we can enjoy without having to earn money, or suffer in some way either physcially or mentally? Probably not and that's why life is ultimately depressing, because unless you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth or are blissfully unaware of your surroundings, life just catches up with and kicks you in the teeth, on a regular basis.
I'm actually having a good weekend, you wouldn't think so by reading that. But, there is nothing in the world that says you can't feel negative but still appreciate highs when they come along, however small they might be.
While I'm on odds n sods subjects. I find it really annoying when people say 'self-depreciating' when they mean 'self-deprecating' - are they just losing value all the time they stand there?
I'm quite taken by a slew of new(ish) bands that have taken my fancy. So underwhelmed by the BBC's Reading/Leeds festivals and the fact the hosts were getting orgasmically excited about bands that would have seemed amateurish in the early 1990s. Frankly, I'm still trying to understand why everyone and their aunts get worked up by Franz Ferdinand, the Arctic Monkeys, Dirty Pretty Things, Muse and treat bands such as Primal Scream like they have the same iconic status as The Beatles or The Stones. Yeah, I'm older and maybe my tastes are mellowing, but that doesn't stop me from listening to stuff that's obscure, new or hip and trendy, even if it does look like a list of bands who raided their hippy parents' record collections. Bands like Mew, The Secret Machines, Blow Up Hollywood and the more commercially viable Kasabian all feature on heavy rotation on my CD player, so I can't be that bloody old.
Still think 80% of music produced nowadays has little or nothing to compliment it, or is basically just shite.
Music has been a great pleasure, even if it costs if you want to do it legally - which I do.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
The Invisible Man
In my line of work, politics is either a burning issue or something that is never talked about - it depends where you are, really. My colleagues burn and bristle about cutbacks, budgets and bureaucracy, while my clients avoid the subject - actually 'avoid' is the wrong word, they ignore it, it doesn't exist, it means nothing to them.
Imagine my surprise then, when one of my young charges, someone who isn't renowned for interacting with people, started a conversation with me about politics - albeit basic politics. There's nothing wrong with talking about basics, especially to the youth of today, because for many of them the entire political world is like a field at a rainy Glastonbury Festival - a quagmire of brown.
"Politics is something that adults do." He said, driving passed the constituency office of his local MP. I commented that the MP must be a brave man to have an office in the middle of the town, it being such an urban sprawl of struggle and the MP being a Conservative. "I think everyone thinks they're all the same, Labour or Conservative. They're just as bad as each other." I made the comment about it not mattering who you vote for because the government always get in, but I think the irony was lost on him - like I said, Politics isn't even on the radar, so political humour doesn't work.
The conversation went a bit odd, he asked me a couple of questions, unrelated to politics, then he asked me something unusual, "I suppose you earn lots of money?"
"Not really. I'm comfortable, but only as far as a point."
"What does your wife do?"
"Government."
"Is your wife a politician?"
"No, she's a civil servant. An office manager, she manages people rather than products." He frowned.
"What's the problem?"
"There's something I don't understand." I asked him to try and tell me what it was. "What's tax?" Jesus, where do you start? I asked him to be more specific. "My dad pays income tax, he also pays National Insurance, he pays Council Tax and we have a purchase tax as well, he says." I frowned, 'purchase tax', then it struck me what he meant.
"You mean VAT?"
"That's it, VAT. I get the impression that adults all work for the government." I smiled, wiser words and all that. "Are there any more taxes?" I had to think about that one.
"Not that will affect you for a long time," I said, deciding against mentioning stuff like Death Duties, Corporation tax and all the other taxes that don't appear to affect the general public - indirect indirect taxes?
The lad shook his head and mumbled something about prison being a better option, because that way you won't be giving the government anything and they have to pay for you. I saw this as a typical idiot mentality you get from urban council estates - someone with half a brain comes up with this plausible (to them) reason for justifying prison. "Yeah, you're right. It costs the government about 50 grand a year to keep a kid like you in a YOI." He grinned, "Of course, the government don't get your money, but they get your freedom and they control you and continue to control you once you come out of prison. You become known to the system and the system never lets you go." He understood exactly what I meant.
"So, why do we pay so much money to them?"
"The basis for this is that we are a country and in this country there are millions of people and with millions of people there are millions of problems and duties, tasks and responsibilities. Everything from looking after the health of the population to making sure they have proper facilities and lastly to make sure that we always have the things we want when we want them."
"But why does it cost so much money?"
"If some politicians had their way we would pay even more money in taxes, to pay for such things as schools and hospitals, prisons and recreational schemes to occupy your time, but there are other politicians who want taxes to drop even lower than they are now, but these politicians only want direct taxes to fall - the tax you pay to the government out of your wages rather than the taxes you pay everywhere else by cash or direct debit, so that people think they have more money in their pockets and therefore make them feel good about the government. But the problem here is that when a government cuts tax, they cut their own revenue and that means that things they would normally pay for become the responsibility of councils and councils are like mini governments, who also take money from their residents to pay for the upkeep of the town rather than the upkeep of the country. This money pays for your street lights, your bin collection and passed that I struggle to think what it pays for, probably a lot of wage bills for council employees, employed specifically to make the life of its residents... awkward. If the government hasn't got enough money, then it has to place the onus on councils and they have to charge their residents more council tax and almost always you end up paying more money in indirect taxation (that's what it's called) than you would have done if it had all been centralised in one place."
"That's stupid."
"No, it's political blame deflecting. Councils are like 4th division football teams, they rarely perform giant killing acts, because government has more power than them. Chelsea are one of the richest football clubs in the world, but they're also enormously in debt [the boy is a Chelsea fan] and that's a bit like what our government is like, so it is difficult for councils to fight them, so normally the money that has been given back will be taken away and a bit more by the unsuspecting pawns of the central government, the council worker." I think I was starting to lose him. We sat in silence for a while.
"Will it ever get better?" How do you not shatter a kids allusions?
"How much are a packet of fags?"
"Fiver."
"Do you know how much they were when I was your age?"
"Two quid?"
"26p. I could buy 10 No.6 for 14p and have enough money left for a bag of chips and a bus home." He laughed, thinking I was joking. I wasn't. "In five years time, cigarettes will be £7.50 a packet." He looked horrified. "But you might have had a wage rise according to inflation, because that is why fags have gone from being pennies to being many pounds - inflation - the cost of living is always going to go up and the cost of running countries and towns and cities is always going to increase and councils will not be able to afford it and eventually everything will have to be paid for by the individual. I can't imagine a town like this ever being able to drag itself away from poverty and crime because there is never going to be enough money." I could see myself going off on some dystopian tangent and making the kid want to kill himself. "You have to play the game and try to stay one step ahead of it - having a job and doing stuff that you wouldn't expect is something you'll grow accustomed to and maybe one day you'll try to change it inside a council rather than in a stolen car." It sounded patronising, but he nodded, as if he'd learned more today than he could ever be taught in a school.
What is needed is for a government to explain how it works to the people who don't know, or don't care. People have forgotten what politicians do, they have become detached from our real lives and when they try to claw back some of their credibility they are pilloried by the press and quite rightly so, because there are very few politicians that many of the voters would trust as far as they could spit. Politics should be about passion and fighting for the rights of the people, not about what it appears to be - a new cult of personality.
I don't care what a politicians background is (with obvious exceptions) as long as he does a good job and achieves things. I don't care if he has gay, adulterous or criminal skeletons in his cupboard, just so long as they don't affect him doing his job. Some of the best people I've worked with in Youth Justice have got criminal backgrounds and they are by far the most effective workers. I don't care if a prime minister has smoked pot or taken cocaine in his youth, in fact I'd rather welcome it, because at least we'd have a person in charge who maybe knew what it was like to be young, bored and out of work.
Politics needs a complete overhaul if it is not to lose touch with its future mandate givers. It needs people in it that can actually relate to issues and are prepared to stand up and tell the suits that unless something is done then it's just going to get worse and whatever government inherits the former's handywork is never going to be able to fix it.
Politicians need to get real.
Imagine my surprise then, when one of my young charges, someone who isn't renowned for interacting with people, started a conversation with me about politics - albeit basic politics. There's nothing wrong with talking about basics, especially to the youth of today, because for many of them the entire political world is like a field at a rainy Glastonbury Festival - a quagmire of brown.
"Politics is something that adults do." He said, driving passed the constituency office of his local MP. I commented that the MP must be a brave man to have an office in the middle of the town, it being such an urban sprawl of struggle and the MP being a Conservative. "I think everyone thinks they're all the same, Labour or Conservative. They're just as bad as each other." I made the comment about it not mattering who you vote for because the government always get in, but I think the irony was lost on him - like I said, Politics isn't even on the radar, so political humour doesn't work.
The conversation went a bit odd, he asked me a couple of questions, unrelated to politics, then he asked me something unusual, "I suppose you earn lots of money?"
"Not really. I'm comfortable, but only as far as a point."
"What does your wife do?"
"Government."
"Is your wife a politician?"
"No, she's a civil servant. An office manager, she manages people rather than products." He frowned.
"What's the problem?"
"There's something I don't understand." I asked him to try and tell me what it was. "What's tax?" Jesus, where do you start? I asked him to be more specific. "My dad pays income tax, he also pays National Insurance, he pays Council Tax and we have a purchase tax as well, he says." I frowned, 'purchase tax', then it struck me what he meant.
"You mean VAT?"
"That's it, VAT. I get the impression that adults all work for the government." I smiled, wiser words and all that. "Are there any more taxes?" I had to think about that one.
"Not that will affect you for a long time," I said, deciding against mentioning stuff like Death Duties, Corporation tax and all the other taxes that don't appear to affect the general public - indirect indirect taxes?
The lad shook his head and mumbled something about prison being a better option, because that way you won't be giving the government anything and they have to pay for you. I saw this as a typical idiot mentality you get from urban council estates - someone with half a brain comes up with this plausible (to them) reason for justifying prison. "Yeah, you're right. It costs the government about 50 grand a year to keep a kid like you in a YOI." He grinned, "Of course, the government don't get your money, but they get your freedom and they control you and continue to control you once you come out of prison. You become known to the system and the system never lets you go." He understood exactly what I meant.
"So, why do we pay so much money to them?"
"The basis for this is that we are a country and in this country there are millions of people and with millions of people there are millions of problems and duties, tasks and responsibilities. Everything from looking after the health of the population to making sure they have proper facilities and lastly to make sure that we always have the things we want when we want them."
"But why does it cost so much money?"
"If some politicians had their way we would pay even more money in taxes, to pay for such things as schools and hospitals, prisons and recreational schemes to occupy your time, but there are other politicians who want taxes to drop even lower than they are now, but these politicians only want direct taxes to fall - the tax you pay to the government out of your wages rather than the taxes you pay everywhere else by cash or direct debit, so that people think they have more money in their pockets and therefore make them feel good about the government. But the problem here is that when a government cuts tax, they cut their own revenue and that means that things they would normally pay for become the responsibility of councils and councils are like mini governments, who also take money from their residents to pay for the upkeep of the town rather than the upkeep of the country. This money pays for your street lights, your bin collection and passed that I struggle to think what it pays for, probably a lot of wage bills for council employees, employed specifically to make the life of its residents... awkward. If the government hasn't got enough money, then it has to place the onus on councils and they have to charge their residents more council tax and almost always you end up paying more money in indirect taxation (that's what it's called) than you would have done if it had all been centralised in one place."
"That's stupid."
"No, it's political blame deflecting. Councils are like 4th division football teams, they rarely perform giant killing acts, because government has more power than them. Chelsea are one of the richest football clubs in the world, but they're also enormously in debt [the boy is a Chelsea fan] and that's a bit like what our government is like, so it is difficult for councils to fight them, so normally the money that has been given back will be taken away and a bit more by the unsuspecting pawns of the central government, the council worker." I think I was starting to lose him. We sat in silence for a while.
"Will it ever get better?" How do you not shatter a kids allusions?
"How much are a packet of fags?"
"Fiver."
"Do you know how much they were when I was your age?"
"Two quid?"
"26p. I could buy 10 No.6 for 14p and have enough money left for a bag of chips and a bus home." He laughed, thinking I was joking. I wasn't. "In five years time, cigarettes will be £7.50 a packet." He looked horrified. "But you might have had a wage rise according to inflation, because that is why fags have gone from being pennies to being many pounds - inflation - the cost of living is always going to go up and the cost of running countries and towns and cities is always going to increase and councils will not be able to afford it and eventually everything will have to be paid for by the individual. I can't imagine a town like this ever being able to drag itself away from poverty and crime because there is never going to be enough money." I could see myself going off on some dystopian tangent and making the kid want to kill himself. "You have to play the game and try to stay one step ahead of it - having a job and doing stuff that you wouldn't expect is something you'll grow accustomed to and maybe one day you'll try to change it inside a council rather than in a stolen car." It sounded patronising, but he nodded, as if he'd learned more today than he could ever be taught in a school.
What is needed is for a government to explain how it works to the people who don't know, or don't care. People have forgotten what politicians do, they have become detached from our real lives and when they try to claw back some of their credibility they are pilloried by the press and quite rightly so, because there are very few politicians that many of the voters would trust as far as they could spit. Politics should be about passion and fighting for the rights of the people, not about what it appears to be - a new cult of personality.
I don't care what a politicians background is (with obvious exceptions) as long as he does a good job and achieves things. I don't care if he has gay, adulterous or criminal skeletons in his cupboard, just so long as they don't affect him doing his job. Some of the best people I've worked with in Youth Justice have got criminal backgrounds and they are by far the most effective workers. I don't care if a prime minister has smoked pot or taken cocaine in his youth, in fact I'd rather welcome it, because at least we'd have a person in charge who maybe knew what it was like to be young, bored and out of work.
Politics needs a complete overhaul if it is not to lose touch with its future mandate givers. It needs people in it that can actually relate to issues and are prepared to stand up and tell the suits that unless something is done then it's just going to get worse and whatever government inherits the former's handywork is never going to be able to fix it.
Politicians need to get real.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Forgiveness
I'm not the world's most prolific blogger, although I do have another blog that is about football and I have religiously kept that blog up all year. Today I find it has been blocked by Blogger, because it has all the characteristics of a spam blog... What the?
This is robot software for you, it couldn't spot a spammer in a box of pork luncheonmeat.
This is robot software for you, it couldn't spot a spammer in a box of pork luncheonmeat.
Monday, April 17, 2006
I'm a believer
I abhor the BNP and everything they stand for. It's evasive, hidden and nasty politics, but it is also the choice of the people who belong to it and it is the choice of the electorate if they choose to vote BNP as opposed to someone else (who won't give them what they need).
I cannot understand the role of the BNP in a widely multi-cultural country, but I can understand that people feel the ethos of the BNP is closer to their beliefs than those of Conservative or Liberal and therefore, because we live in a democracy (of sorts) they must be allowed to exist. Just because their politics are abhorant and offensive to most people doesn't mean they should be precluded from discussion. I know people who find members of the Green party just as vile and insidious, but we don't have government sponsored campaigns to rid us of the Green Party once and for all, do we?
The BNP is a face of Britishness that cannot be ignored or forgotten. The BNP appeal to a small minority of the population that will never change and will continue to procreate, so there will be a constant stream of poorly-educated bigots ready to carry the BNP standard. We need to remember that the world is made up of people - extremists - who don't agree with the rest of us (generally). The best way to treat people like this is with ignorance and a lack of respect - giving them coverage on TV and radio does nothing but polarise them in the eyes of those who maybe don't understand the BNP and might be tempted to follow their politics because of exposure they just shouldn't get. They exist, so do Jesus Freaks and conmen, but we don't acknowledge the others in the House.
I cannot understand the role of the BNP in a widely multi-cultural country, but I can understand that people feel the ethos of the BNP is closer to their beliefs than those of Conservative or Liberal and therefore, because we live in a democracy (of sorts) they must be allowed to exist. Just because their politics are abhorant and offensive to most people doesn't mean they should be precluded from discussion. I know people who find members of the Green party just as vile and insidious, but we don't have government sponsored campaigns to rid us of the Green Party once and for all, do we?
The BNP is a face of Britishness that cannot be ignored or forgotten. The BNP appeal to a small minority of the population that will never change and will continue to procreate, so there will be a constant stream of poorly-educated bigots ready to carry the BNP standard. We need to remember that the world is made up of people - extremists - who don't agree with the rest of us (generally). The best way to treat people like this is with ignorance and a lack of respect - giving them coverage on TV and radio does nothing but polarise them in the eyes of those who maybe don't understand the BNP and might be tempted to follow their politics because of exposure they just shouldn't get. They exist, so do Jesus Freaks and conmen, but we don't acknowledge the others in the House.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Who Killed Tangerine?
There is no such thing as a happy ending.
Call this life, purgatory more like.
I said to friends, sitting in a smoke filled living room in the late 1980s, 'This is as good as it's going to get guys. It isn't going to get better and in ten years we can look back on this time and say, "see, I told you so!"'.
I was accused of being a pessimist, which is probably a fair guess as I tend to be a 'glass is half empty' kind of bloke. The thing you need to remember is that Margaret Thatcher was the PM and we were halfway under the Tory regime that destroyed everything that made Britain great.
The thing was ten years later, sitting in a less smoky room, with many of the people I was with originally, we all eventually agreed that I was right. Yes, many of us were, individually, much better off than we were ten years earlier and there were, individually, great achievements; but the world as a whole was worse. This was 1998 and we had been under New Labour for 18 months and people, including us, were still in that blessed honeymoon period that this Labour government had bestowed upon us. Yet we all agreed that the country was worse than it had been and none of us had any allusions that it wasn't Maggie's fault.
I was in the pub last week with two of the blokes that shared the original forecast with me 18 years ago and were also there 8 years ago for the update. They both witnessed me say, in a God almighty like assuredness that, "It's going to be a damned sight worse in ten years."
I'm a Labour supporter. For a while, during the Iraq nonsense I considered switching my allegiance to the Lib Dems, but I soon realised that this was something I should only consider when I live in a marginal Tory seat. I realised something not so long ago - it doesn't matter.
IT DOESN'T MATTER! Whoever is in power they're going to fuck up eventually. It's got nothing to do with complacency or power mad bureaucrats (although Labour has always had a problem with that), it doesn't matter who is charge of the country, we are hurtling towards a MASSIVE economic and social upheaval. We are running out of fuel, we are running out of money, we have no future to look forward to because there will be even less then than there is now. We have social decay running rampant across forgotten council estates, we have growing civil disrespect, we have cutbacks and cost-cutting exercises that are depriving these victims of social decay of what little they already had and we have a National Health Service that, whoever runs it, will continue to place a massive drain on the resources of a people that are living longer.
The reason we have a Labour government that looks no different from a Tory one is because when all the chips are down and it's a matter of survival and making the country tick over until the next schmuck comes along, we're all fucked and it's just going to continue to get worse. Life in the UK has become, for many, entropy. But perhaps that's what it was all about anyhow...
Call this life, purgatory more like.
I said to friends, sitting in a smoke filled living room in the late 1980s, 'This is as good as it's going to get guys. It isn't going to get better and in ten years we can look back on this time and say, "see, I told you so!"'.
I was accused of being a pessimist, which is probably a fair guess as I tend to be a 'glass is half empty' kind of bloke. The thing you need to remember is that Margaret Thatcher was the PM and we were halfway under the Tory regime that destroyed everything that made Britain great.
The thing was ten years later, sitting in a less smoky room, with many of the people I was with originally, we all eventually agreed that I was right. Yes, many of us were, individually, much better off than we were ten years earlier and there were, individually, great achievements; but the world as a whole was worse. This was 1998 and we had been under New Labour for 18 months and people, including us, were still in that blessed honeymoon period that this Labour government had bestowed upon us. Yet we all agreed that the country was worse than it had been and none of us had any allusions that it wasn't Maggie's fault.
I was in the pub last week with two of the blokes that shared the original forecast with me 18 years ago and were also there 8 years ago for the update. They both witnessed me say, in a God almighty like assuredness that, "It's going to be a damned sight worse in ten years."
I'm a Labour supporter. For a while, during the Iraq nonsense I considered switching my allegiance to the Lib Dems, but I soon realised that this was something I should only consider when I live in a marginal Tory seat. I realised something not so long ago - it doesn't matter.
IT DOESN'T MATTER! Whoever is in power they're going to fuck up eventually. It's got nothing to do with complacency or power mad bureaucrats (although Labour has always had a problem with that), it doesn't matter who is charge of the country, we are hurtling towards a MASSIVE economic and social upheaval. We are running out of fuel, we are running out of money, we have no future to look forward to because there will be even less then than there is now. We have social decay running rampant across forgotten council estates, we have growing civil disrespect, we have cutbacks and cost-cutting exercises that are depriving these victims of social decay of what little they already had and we have a National Health Service that, whoever runs it, will continue to place a massive drain on the resources of a people that are living longer.
The reason we have a Labour government that looks no different from a Tory one is because when all the chips are down and it's a matter of survival and making the country tick over until the next schmuck comes along, we're all fucked and it's just going to continue to get worse. Life in the UK has become, for many, entropy. But perhaps that's what it was all about anyhow...
Monday, March 06, 2006
Jacket Hangs
In a previous life, I was a little above a nobody. It actually suited me. In this previous life I had my fifteen minutes of 'fame' - within the context of the life I led. And like has-been celebrities from the real world, I clung onto it with every fibre of my being - which was a bit sad really when you boil it all down, mainly because this world was nothing special in the first place.
Someone asked me why I kept going back even though this former life had bitten me on the arse so many times and to be honest I can't really give a definitive answer for that. I've given answers, but none of them seemed to be really heartfelt. Then, amazingly, without any fuss I managed to leave it all behind - much the same way I gave up drugs - quickly and quietly, with no fuss and no fanfare.
This last couple of weeks there has been a concerted effort by certain people from my old life to try and get me involved in my old life again. I can't fathom why it means so much to some people, I wasn't a somebody, I was just above a nobody - that doesn't count for much. But, there have been a number of things, that I would describe as 'chain-rattling', that seem to have been designed to get me roaring back into my old life with all guns blazing. And I just don't understand why. Well, actually I can, but it's so screwy most people wouldn't believe me and I'd need to write a 300,000 word history to reinforce my belief.
Life's too fucking short.
Someone asked me why I kept going back even though this former life had bitten me on the arse so many times and to be honest I can't really give a definitive answer for that. I've given answers, but none of them seemed to be really heartfelt. Then, amazingly, without any fuss I managed to leave it all behind - much the same way I gave up drugs - quickly and quietly, with no fuss and no fanfare.
This last couple of weeks there has been a concerted effort by certain people from my old life to try and get me involved in my old life again. I can't fathom why it means so much to some people, I wasn't a somebody, I was just above a nobody - that doesn't count for much. But, there have been a number of things, that I would describe as 'chain-rattling', that seem to have been designed to get me roaring back into my old life with all guns blazing. And I just don't understand why. Well, actually I can, but it's so screwy most people wouldn't believe me and I'd need to write a 300,000 word history to reinforce my belief.
Life's too fucking short.
Friday, January 06, 2006
Dying From the Inside Out
Time passes.
Lives change.
New horizons and vast improvements in my working life have made the last few months a happy place to be in. My friends are envious of me and I have a air of confidence about me that is clear to see. I've had some excellent results and have integrated into the existing teams with ease. I discovered just before Christmas that my services are highly rated and a reputation that was once almost in tatters has been rebuilt better than before.
A lot of that is down to the people I work with. Three people in particular have been constant colleagues during my initial five months in the job. We'll call them Julie, Tony and Karen (because they're good names) and you could tell there was a real sense of friendship, camaraderie and cohesion between us. I work in other areas of my new job, but the place to go for a cup of tea, to hang my hat for a minute, or just to get some 'reality' was Julie, Tony and Karen's office. I even kept my herbal teabags in Karen's desk for convenience and safety... And oddly enough it's been the teabags I've had on my mind, but I'll get back to them.
In the lead up to Christmas, the four of us sat in their office and chinwagged - we'd all exchanged Christmas cards (the only ones I sent, apart from to my boss) and talked about our plans. We were all going to the Christmas meal the next day, apart from Karen, who had double-booked and was picking up her father from the station - he was visiting her for Christmas and she seemed really happy about it. She was going off on an extended holiday leave and really regretted not being able to come along.
The Christmas meal was OK. Tony, Julie, me and my boss all sat together - we were tight and during the meal we commented that it was a shame that Karen couldn't have made it along. You know how sometimes when a colleague is missing from a gathering, you occasionally get some snide remarks? Karen never generated those, she was always regarded with immense fondness and respect - we missed her sharing the day with us and it was noted.
Little did we know that that previous day, sitting, having a laugh in their office, would be the last time any of us saw Karen alive again.
The job I now do is potentially dangerous. I work, alongside others, with young offenders and rehabilitated criminals, but on the whole we work with mixed up kids and Karen was brilliant at it. I worked on three specific cases with her and we got to know each other, respect each other and above all like each other, working closely on cases involving young people we cared deeply about the welfare and futures of.
On Thursday morning, something cropped up and I needed to talk to Karen urgently. I rang the office early, but she hadn't come in. The problem was, she hadn't been in since Tuesday, but her diary was full of appointments and it being just post Christmas, I'm betting people in the office had other things on their mind. So, it never crossed anyone's mind that something might have been wrong until I phoned a third time looking for her. This time, fortunately, I managed to contact someone with more common sense in the office and by the time I checked in at 3:00pm, the office manager was on the case.
Today passed without incident. I had little to do, so I did some paperwork, made some phonecalls and worked in the locale. This evening my boss called and asked me if I was sitting down. I said I was, even though I wasn't. Then he told me and I soon found I was sitting down. The little information we have is thin and sketchy, but it seems she was found by colleagues in her flat, there is evidence of foul play (but maybe not, it's difficult to work out the fact from the speculation) and the police are involved and everyone is in a state of shock.
Karen was good. It's tough making friends at this age and its tougher losing them, but sounds like I'm turning this around and I'm not - she's a great loss to everyone that knew her and I'm going to have the very unpleasant job of telling our joint clients that the main reason for their success is no longer with us.
Sleep well, Karen. You're going to have one long big party, mate!
Lives change.
New horizons and vast improvements in my working life have made the last few months a happy place to be in. My friends are envious of me and I have a air of confidence about me that is clear to see. I've had some excellent results and have integrated into the existing teams with ease. I discovered just before Christmas that my services are highly rated and a reputation that was once almost in tatters has been rebuilt better than before.
A lot of that is down to the people I work with. Three people in particular have been constant colleagues during my initial five months in the job. We'll call them Julie, Tony and Karen (because they're good names) and you could tell there was a real sense of friendship, camaraderie and cohesion between us. I work in other areas of my new job, but the place to go for a cup of tea, to hang my hat for a minute, or just to get some 'reality' was Julie, Tony and Karen's office. I even kept my herbal teabags in Karen's desk for convenience and safety... And oddly enough it's been the teabags I've had on my mind, but I'll get back to them.
In the lead up to Christmas, the four of us sat in their office and chinwagged - we'd all exchanged Christmas cards (the only ones I sent, apart from to my boss) and talked about our plans. We were all going to the Christmas meal the next day, apart from Karen, who had double-booked and was picking up her father from the station - he was visiting her for Christmas and she seemed really happy about it. She was going off on an extended holiday leave and really regretted not being able to come along.
The Christmas meal was OK. Tony, Julie, me and my boss all sat together - we were tight and during the meal we commented that it was a shame that Karen couldn't have made it along. You know how sometimes when a colleague is missing from a gathering, you occasionally get some snide remarks? Karen never generated those, she was always regarded with immense fondness and respect - we missed her sharing the day with us and it was noted.
Little did we know that that previous day, sitting, having a laugh in their office, would be the last time any of us saw Karen alive again.
The job I now do is potentially dangerous. I work, alongside others, with young offenders and rehabilitated criminals, but on the whole we work with mixed up kids and Karen was brilliant at it. I worked on three specific cases with her and we got to know each other, respect each other and above all like each other, working closely on cases involving young people we cared deeply about the welfare and futures of.
On Thursday morning, something cropped up and I needed to talk to Karen urgently. I rang the office early, but she hadn't come in. The problem was, she hadn't been in since Tuesday, but her diary was full of appointments and it being just post Christmas, I'm betting people in the office had other things on their mind. So, it never crossed anyone's mind that something might have been wrong until I phoned a third time looking for her. This time, fortunately, I managed to contact someone with more common sense in the office and by the time I checked in at 3:00pm, the office manager was on the case.
Today passed without incident. I had little to do, so I did some paperwork, made some phonecalls and worked in the locale. This evening my boss called and asked me if I was sitting down. I said I was, even though I wasn't. Then he told me and I soon found I was sitting down. The little information we have is thin and sketchy, but it seems she was found by colleagues in her flat, there is evidence of foul play (but maybe not, it's difficult to work out the fact from the speculation) and the police are involved and everyone is in a state of shock.
Karen was good. It's tough making friends at this age and its tougher losing them, but sounds like I'm turning this around and I'm not - she's a great loss to everyone that knew her and I'm going to have the very unpleasant job of telling our joint clients that the main reason for their success is no longer with us.
Sleep well, Karen. You're going to have one long big party, mate!
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