Silver Service

Life is changing for me. I am giving up a well paid job to chase the dream. All well and good in drunken conversations, but in the cold light of day, the mortgage has to be paid. Therefore, for the first time since I was 22, I have had to consider part time possibilities.
This may sound straightforward but there are actually a confusing plethora of fields to choose from. Since I am loosely considered a professional, I felt under pressure to make a decision that woulld validate my supposed self worth. Everyone has bleated about the wealth of cash there is to be made from tutoring (yawn). Whilst I shan't dismiss this received wisdom, in the absence of imminent exams, no-one wants to pay to subject their children to unnecessary learning opportunities.
I needed something that would bring in the readies and not chip away too brutally at my soul. I chose to apply for a vacancy at Chapter One: A well respected restaurant just outside of Bromley. I was promptly contacted and asked to come in for a "working" interview. In my haste, I accepted without really entertaining the prospect of working for free for two and a half hours.
Upon arriving, I was in awe. In a way it is quite lovely to be out of depth in decadence. I wanted the job.
Why did I gravitate towards the catering industry? I had indulged the idea that I was relatively experienced. I have, after all, worked at Longfield Fish Bar for seven years in my hey day.
I was not prepared for the intracacies of posh dining. There are so many obstacles. When an order is taken, it is protocol to stand in a specific place and number the clientele accordingly. From that point on, their desires are fulfilled without the need to bother them with such inconsequential matters like their order. I had to grapple with silver serving bread rolls; I was useless. I may as well have been using chopsticks for all the skill and panache I exhibited. After chasing an elusive granary square around the dish for an uncomfortable 49 seconds, I came clean about my lack of experience and appealed for the customer to grab it themselves. Polished.
Celebrity guest, Judith Chalmers was almost treated to a jug of ice water being poured over her as I tripped up on my own sense of inadequacy. I did learn certain truths about myself in this relatively short space of time. They basically amount to the fact that I am not a good waitress, at all. Will I get the job? Watch this space....

The Neo-Nothing Conundrum

I am worried. This is not surprising considering the amount of problems there are to dwell on at the moment. Yes- the issues disrupt my sleep, there is no doubt about that, but it is my lack of consistency that perturbs me more.
I may be operating under a false illusion, or perhaps I haven been naiively convinced by the nostalgic twaddle of older generations. However, if one believes what they are told, people used to know what they were. They had a clear set of beliefs, a regimented class system, societal infrastructure... Whether they lamented or embraced their circumstances, for better or worse, people were able to build a sustainable identity.
Please don't misunderstand me: I don't particularly want to revisit the past. Some would argue that we are doing a capable job of reitnroducing old problems in new contexts anyway. Xenophobia is omnipresent as are greed and inequality. Nevertheless, health issues and youth culture have adapted with growing trends. We cannot journey back into the past to find answers that are not there, even though some politicians would beg to differ.
What I want for myself is to look towards government and find something I can buy into. I want to connect with a party and an ideology and thus allow it to influence and shape my perception of society. Presently, I am in the vast abyss of political limbo: A schizophrenic, oscillating wildly across the political spectrum.
This week, I was reading Bromley News Shopper's Voices Against Violence. Although I advocate the intention behind the campaign, its survey results left me cold. My liberal side veered up in alarm when I read that 43% of those questioned want to reintroduce capital punishment. Futhermore the comment: 'Send them out to Iraq if they want to fight so much.' made me angry as these assertions merely provide a ridiculous anti-solution- kill them or ship them off to die somewhere else. These proposals only highlight part of the problem. Like choosing to rip the plaster off quickly rather than bear the gradual pulling of the flesh, in a culture where the public can consume 24 hours a day, instant results are wanted. Couple this with the extreme reluctance to accept responsibility for why things are the way they are and, unsurprisingly, the problem escalates.
One may assume I am a lefty liberal. Wonderful- hand me The Guardian , make me a fair trade coffee and then stop bothering me so I can tend to my organic vegetable patch. If only it were that simple.
Even I surprised myself during a recent conversation with a colleague. His wife is a primary teacher who is currently covering other teachers while they take part in a family education programme. I was interested so he explained. It is where parents come in and learn with their children; they become part of the process, suppporting the school and their own education. Sounds brilliant. He sighed, it would be good if the parents that needed the help turned up. The families who were part of the programme had a positive attitude about the school and their role anyway. The parents who would have benefitted were conspicuous by their absence. The problem lies with how to target specific families. This is when I found myself saying: 'Take their benefits away from them and I'm sure they would suddenly be more willing to attend.' What is my name? Jeremy Clarkson? I couldn't believe that I had uttered such a right wing view. Where had that been hiding? If I am a Tory then I have to support David Cameron.
Therefore you can appreciate my predicament. I have the angel/devil on my shoulder syndrome. I want to get off the fence and get in bed with someone or something. Please let me become inspired enough to maintain an opinion! Am I representative of all 20 somethings? I wonder if the Neo-Nothing Conundrum is an isolated problem, specific to me, or actually the reason why so many young people find it difficult to identify with government.

Hancock Phooey

Up until last night, Will Smith has had a positive influence on my life. I was brought up on a diet of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air; one of my first dates, with sweaty palms and lemon bon bons, was to see Men in Black and I have never missed to opportunity to throw some shapes, celebrating all things sunny, with Jazzy Jeff and his aforementioned partner in crime.
Therefore, I was aghast when I learned last week that Will Smith is 39. I couldn't believe that my peter pan prince is now middle aged. This is traumatic information. Nevertheless, it becomes less important in light of the bemused disappointment I felt as I stepped out of the cinema yesterday evening.
Hancock- the basic plot is fairly well known; I am not reviewing a fresh film in any sense. From the trailer and the opening, we know where we are: we accept the subversion of genre. Hancock is a reluctant superhero- gone are the days when these uberhumans embraced their duty, casting their own well-being aside for the altruistic prevention of imminent apocalyse. Hancock drinks whisky in abundance; doesn't wash and will sexually assault women if it doesn't involve too much effort.
He flounders with the concept of post millenium Armeggedon. He isn't a very thoughtful champion of the people (and they let him know as much). He frequently turfs up roads and likes bashing into buildings all at a heavy cost to the honest taxpayer. Quite frankly, his world saving antics cause far too much mess and LA have had it up to here. They call for his arrest and, at this convenient point, he happens to save the life of a benevolent philanthropist PR exec, Ray. Yes I was dubious about the existence of such a person but it gets better (well actually worse really).
Ray takes Hancock home and decides that he will be his new project. His son loves this rugged, smelly potential uncle figure but his wife is not keen. Actually she is ridiculously not keen, so much so that I wanted an explanation for her seemingly irrational hatred. I got it, but it came at a price...
Anyway, the high point of the film comes around one third in and involves several cathartic acts such as Hancock serving some retributive justice to an archetypal bully: a long haired, French boy with a girl's name. Also, under the advice of Ray, he incarcerates himself to gain the respect of the community again. He achieves Winstonesque daddy status quickly. At this point I sat back and thought, yes I am enjoying the anal humour here; but where will it go for the next 40 minutes or so?
Oh lordy, there are few films that I have seen that get so crap so quickly. The downward spiral involves an unconvincing villain and a farcical twist. Peter Berg was responsible for Friday Nights Light and I cannot comprehend how a director who is capable of clear virtuosity could churn out such dross. That said, the answer may lie with the £93 million worth of tickets it has sold.
I was shocked by how awful the ending was: it will haunt me. That said, I really don't want to stop getting nostalgically jiggy with Will- I can only hope he became prematurely excited after reading the first half of the script and ejaculated his signature all over the contract. Had he persisted, he may have thought better of it.

Mum

Your perfume wafts
Into every fragment of my life.
I see you in the size of
My hands, the depth
Of my eyes.

I trace our history out
On your back in the bath-
Chicken lasagna Tuesdays,
Creatively accounted phone bills
And the tickling monster.

You have never been too
Busy to help me edit my life.
You gave yourself
To me; a page to splatter
With ink, as I tried to

Make sense of myself.
Floundering as a
Nouveau adult,
You took me to buy a bed
To lay my troubles on.

Now I am a woman,
Apparently. I am still
Scared as I stare
Into the abyss, turning
History into mystery.

I can take the
Next step, nothing
Is impossible.
I know you will always
Heave ho with me.

Lineage

I have been conducting a secret experiment this week, cunning I know. It stems from my (and the rest if civilization's) quest for why the world is the way it is. Nature v. Nuture- the conundrum that plagues society's infrastructure. Are we made or are we born? This question is asked in millions of contexts as I write and you read. Whenever an event occurs that shakes our faith in humanity and our predisposition towards evil, we focus on the individuals involved and rationalise why they behaved the way they did.
An exercise in futility? It can be if you are looking for an answer you have already decided upon. When pursuing this problem, we err on the side of nurture. We prefer to come to the comfy conviction that people behave the way they do because of what has been done to them. Evil has become an infectious disease that is passed on or, more pertinently, caught. The idea that it is just simply there, with no purpose or motivation, ready to pounce, is something we ironically push under the proverbial carpet.
As any good investigator who is having issues with tackling a case, I decided to narrow the field, reduce the variables if you will. I cannot answer the wide-ranging enigma; therefore, a focus on a more simplistic, tangible elementmay prove more fruitful.
Lineage, a.k.a the pecking order- my hypothesis was that your position in the family has an influence over how you turn out. My research interested me because I come over all David Attenboroughish when observing siblings. I am an only child and have grown up watching the interaction of brothers and sisters with a mixture of both jealousy and horror. I learnt very quickly that whatever friends said about their siblings, however damning they were, it was never acceptable for me to attempt to be complicit in their character assassination. I initially found this level of hypocrisy hard to stomach but I now see it as part of the warped loyalty ethos surrounding siblinghood.
How far is your personality shaped by whether you are eldest, middle or youngest? It cannot be denied that it will have some bearing on your entire upbringing. In true documentary style, let us examine the current stereotypes that exist within our society and decide if we can endorse such vast generalisations.
If you are first past the post in your own house, would that not mean that you are naturally expected to be so in all walks of life? Friends who are the eldest seem to naturally accept responsibility rather than shirking it off at any given opportunity. Typically, the eldest is seen as a surrogate pat/matriarch for the family, a deputy parent. They are allowed to have the first taste of the apple but they are also expected to test the bath water to check it is cool enough for their siblings to plunge into.
Middle children are apparently very likely to have an uncomfortable chip on their shoulder; a burning need to be recognised in their own right. To be defined/labelled in some other way than the one in-between: the pretty, clever, funny one. Their need for attention can have a negative effect as well. Their "cry for help" can manifest itself in many different ways. Another common trait is for them is to evolve as the contrary antithesis of their elder sibling. Rather than exploring what they would naturally like to do, they purposely gravitate towards fields that have not been explored or, even better, have been unsuccessful.
The youngest- the baby. There is a tendency to view this sibling as the eternal Peter Pan. Families indulge them and consequently they dwell uncomfortably in studentville until their late 20s and beyond. Why? Because when the rest of the family allow the youngest to grow up, they have to admit their own stage of development (or lack of it).
Finally my own case, the einzelkind. This breed shares flaws from all of the above: innately selfish, unable to see anyone's opinions, needs, desires apart from their own; they are insufferably spoilt and mollycoddled with no understanding of what constitutes real life and "hard graft". It is believed that they expect everyone to rally round them and naturally assume that all and sundry are interested in their current circumstances but have no inclination to exhibit even a staged mild enthusiasm for anyone else's news.
These were my case studies as I embarked on surveying friends, families and acquaintances. Like any scientist, I was hoping that I would hold these prototypes up and my subjects would all comfortably fit into my pre-established perception and thus prove my hypothesis. What I found out was more complex.
Structurally, an experiment must end with a conclusion and I am loathe to deviate from accepted practice. My findings prove my hypothesis, but only in a lateral manner. When I spoke to individuals, they were very quick to agree that their position within the family was an important factor. I became the recipient of many tales of woe and longstanding resentment. I listened to accounts of entrenched, bitter struggles and prejudices that many of the divulgers felt powerless against. Ultimately, I decided this: whether you are the youngest, middle or eldest child, it affects your life as much as you allow it to. If you accept the label, then you will inevitably perpetuate it. In turn, if you allow your family to heap the stereotype upon you, then eventually you will become that person.
To arrive back at n v n, we feel comfortable with labels that we share with others. If we can find outside justification for our eccentricties and failures then we can casually shuffle away from accepting direct responsibility for our actions. It allows us to empathise with others and form some kind of affiliation. We would much rather blame our inadequacies on the the past, on something we had no control over, than on a clear decision we independently made in the present.
Out of interest and to consolidate my experiment, I looked up the lineage of Hitler, Madonna and Ghandi. I'll let you work out why I felt them to be relevant to my research. I was surprised to discover that none of them were the eldest or indeed the youngest child. Hitler was 4/6, but only his younger sister survived childhood; Madonna is 3/7 and Ghandi was 3/4. There purposely isn't a conclusion to draw from this information. That is because, for better or worse, neither Hitler, Madonna or Ghandi are/were defined by the position they held within their family. They were, and still are, defined by themselves.