A pox on commuters with no train etiquette

Bad enough the mundaneness of life in the Canadian burbs has driven me to a career in PR I said I would never reprise and while I appreciate once again that 'Friday Feeling' for all of 8 hours - reneged as it is by the call of the 7am wild on a Saturday morning with the words, "Mummy read to me, reeeaaad to me", I'm now being subjected to the inwardly irritating practice of beings from the wiener end of the food chain who loudly watch/listen to mindless podcasts and YouYube clips on the train home. This is not a God given right.

Unless you are the president of the United States of America responding to a Tweet from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regarding annihilation of the western world: I. Don't. Freaking. Give. A. Toss. And neither, I imagine does anyone else. What happened to reading a book or doing a Sudoku puzzle?

It makes me want to do two things: drop kick their devices out the pigging train window and bitch slap the gormless expressions off their saturated fat-filled faces.

To add insult to injury, I am also being treated to front row seats at the 'cock and ball' show. I'm sorely tempted, in the style of a Jacobean tragedy to thrust the dagger of eternal pain into the hideous crotch of the man opposite who thinks his tackle warrants sitting with legs that splayed. Who are you trying to kid?

There had better not be any dirty dishes in the sink or stinking man undercrackers on the bedroom floor when I get home or there will be hell to pay.

On a lighter subject, I think I'll have salad for dinner tonight.

Nevermind the Nihilism

This is how excited I am that I'm writing a blog post about a book I'm not even 1/3 of the way into. It's Johnny Lydon's autobiography, Rotten, No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. He's a cultural hero of many a confused teen; ex lead singer of the Sex Pistols and reluctant figurehead of a generational pop cultural movement.

Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) has always and will always be a contrary little sod. That is his charm. Here was I thinking that 'Punk' was about 'tribe' when all along all Johnny ever wanted was for people to be themselves; to be individuals and in that sense to be different. When punk came along music in the UK was in a bit of a state according to John. There was David Bowie and The Beatles - oversimplifying things as only John can.

Punk, a term coined by music journalist Caroline Coon for reasons known only to her began with a bunch of poor kids from different inner city centres in the south east of England, mainly Bromley and London that were into art. They didn't have any other talents except that they were bored with the status quo so they invented looks and hung out together in gay clubs - the only sort that would let them in. So punk owes its success to gay disco- this was the setting for its incubation. It's brilliant really when we consider what the world would have us think about the movement. Intolerant. Violent. Small minded. It was the opposite of that and the only violence was the sort invented by the press when stories of mayhem resulted in more papers being sold. I'm not saying there weren't scuffles but when has a scuffle made the front pages without the help of embellishment here and there.

God Save the Queen came out a couple of months before the Queen's silver jubilee totally by chance. These kids had no idea of the timing and even if they had they were 17 - they wouldn't have understood the business sense of releasing a single of that name at that time. It was all a wonderful set of coincidences. It was chaos and that is definitely a driver of the punk mentality so in a roundabout way it was all meant to be.

The most wonderful thing of all was reading about places that I know intimately and discovering that Sid (Vicious) and John had rented a flat in Sunderland Avenue (West London) at the same time I lived there as a very young child (5 years old). I wonder whether either of those two ever patted me on the head in passing? It would explain how 13 years later given that I was going down the Hip Hop route, I suddenly detoured into punk for no apparent reason.

The biggest surprise was that punk was not a political movement. Most of its members wouldn't have known politics from shoe polish, certainly had they had any notion they would not have chosen the swastika as their emblem and not surprisingly this imagery disappeared early on (subsequently adopted by the skinheads who were on another trip altogether).

This was not a bunch of intellectuals making a statement - that sort of thing was always a hippie trait. They were more into the 'politics' of situation. Absurd, random sloganeering e.g. I hate Pink Floyd - that sort of thing with no real thought behind it. In many ways it's the dictionary definition of 'the teenager'. Hip Hop would would provide the vehicle for this next but not for another 10 years.

More than anything punk was something to do. There was no talent just boredom that led to invention (the mother of all necessity). It was its very lack of structure that gave punk its edge. When The Clash came along it all became too musical for the likes of Johnny who was deeply subversive in the most immature and directionless sense. He has since moved to California of all places. It had nothing to do with selling out but instead to do with finding respite from the British Bobby who in the 80s had nothing better to do than raid Rotten's house for no good reason other than perhaps their own 'punk' mentality - how deliciously ironic. Of course punk really was dead by then so it didn't matter. It was a moment in time where the moment and time were integral to the impact the band had on youth culture and society, impossible to reproduce and foolish, utterly moronic to even try but generation upon generation still does and thank god. Life really would be boring otherwise.

Priorities!

Standing among the commuter ranks this morning at the train station, everyone respectful of the established pecking order (huddles of people gather at strategic points on the platform where experience has taught them a train door will eventually stop) and just a couple of renegades like myself lolling about nowhere in particular, I wasn't in the mood to read as I would normally do. Instead I was content today to stare into the middle distance and sip my coffee happy to know that I had made it to the end of my first week at work without any issues at all whatsoever despite the fear and loathing that had preceded this happy state of affairs.

Having spent the previous day at an all day, off-site planning meeting (are you still awake? good) I was mind floating and then I half heartedly noticed how shiny and sleek the hair of one of the ladies on the platform was. Then I noticed how well conditioned another woman's barnet was. Slowly lots of shiny heads of hair came into focus and I wondered how it was they managed this given Canada's extreme weather conditions; My own crowning glory not having come through winter unscathed. As these sleek curtains of hair swept into view I started to feel slightly dishevelled until I noticed one lady whose hair was less than perfect (and it wasn't my reflection).

I started to size her up (terrible, I know). How am I like her? She was probably about 8-10 years older than me, not old by any means but you know...getting up there. She dressed well, not frumpy, hip but not 'mutton dressed as lamb' either (I believe the phrase here is 'like a cougar'.) Pretty lady who hadn't just fallen out of bed but wasn't quite as shiny. So I'm asking myself, what's missing? because if I can figure that out then I've solved my own problem. She's definitely not using shop's own brand conditioner. And then I saw it. A little piece of sticker on the back of her jeans; not an actual sticker but a piece of the sticky paper around the sticker that normally stays on the backing paper. She had the tiniest piece on one of her jean legs - instantly recognizable to those in the know. The mist lifted and I smiled.

Carefully, so as not to arouse suspicion I checked myself for signs of my 'other' life - the one where I'm knee deep in yoghurt, spaghetti, chocolate milk, stickers and finger paint and I smiled again. I would be insane to give up that time in favour of a more thorough beauty routine and I realised there was more beauty in what that sticker represented than in all the hair sheen in the world.

Next time I see a woman with haystack hair, I will remind myself that chances are this is a woman who has her priorities in order.

Fear - The Biggest Scam of All

Week 1 in the PR house and I'm still smiling. The 6am starts, the guilt of having to wake the nipper not much later for the somnolent shuffle to daycare, the relinquishing of traditional mummy duties to the nanny thereafter and the rigid regiment of a commute, not to mention the inability now to stay awake much past 10pm: ALL WORTH IT. The 8 months of questing all the more justified.

The fact that half my money goes towards childcare - all of it, every single trade-off: ALL WORTH IT.

In the end, I mean the very end, when death takes the final payment from me, I'll have regrets about many things, of that I have no doubt but the decision to go to work under the circumstances described above won't be one of them. Coming to Canada probably will but that is another story altogether and something I need to live with now, am living with and will live with. To be able to spend the coming long weekend with hubby and child will be all the sweeter now that I can approach the experience from a place of want and not need.

Ok gloating finished. I deserve it and so do you. Failure is redeemable, fear on the other hand is not. Don't let it dictate how far you go. Life is cheap and toilet paper expensive.

Melancholy and Infinite Sadness

I watched an episode of a programme called "Intervention" last night which is basically a fly-on-the-wall documentary that follows the utterly depressing anti-lives of various addicts as they plod with the pitiless step of a Greek tragedy down the path of self-destruction. Meanwhile their families and friends rat them out to a TV counsellor and trick them into going to rehab. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the first rule of recovery a desire to want to do it for yourself? Not surprisingly there is a high rate of relapse. Look, I don't for a second question the sincerity behind what drives and motivates said friends and relatives but it's still a bit shady. Trust is one of man's most undervalued qualities and these kinds of shenanigans do the cause no good at all.

Anyhow, all this to say that last night's victim was a young lad, not yet 20, who was drinking a gallon of vodka a day. A gallon. 4 Litres. That's insane. Of course they all have a tragic personal back story of loss, abuse and abandonment. Is it any wonder? It's so incredibly sad. This young boy struck a chord with me when he said, "I don't know why I drink so much; I think I'm just naturally melancholy." Smells like teen spirit. In one simple phrase he eloquently transmitted the force that defines the unchanging state of being a teenager - with knobs on in his case. It's an awkward enough stage under normal circumstances, imagine how much worse it is when you've experienced emotional trauma at an early age? This particular lad had been abused by an alcoholic step-parent and his beloved younger brother had then died of cancer at the age of 12. My heart went out to him. But it was his description of the emotional predicament that really spoke to me.

A wistful teen, I thankfully had a pretty happy upbringing and yet my mind generally tended (and it continues to be a defining trait of mine) to go to the dark side. I'm not alone. I have a friend who won't film his young kids because he would find it unbearable to watch should his kids die before him. On cold nights I often can't sleep thinking about homeless people. Images of starving children and helpless mothers in Darfur haunt me in the black of night. These are the things that I think about. I often see life scenes in sepia like that and I really don't know why. I wouldn't change it either as I feel it gives me a certain amount of compassion I might not otherwise have.

A self-confessed manic depressive himself, Stephen Fry once did a documentary on the condition. Interestingly, every sufferer he interviewed said that given the chance to 'switch' the symptoms off forever and erase all memory of past bouts - all but one said they wouldn't change a thing because despite their deep inexplicable pain, it made them who they were. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a manic D, I just have a tendency towards melancholy and infinite sadness, perhaps even a little bit highly strung at times however I'm finally at peace with it and I take comfort in knowing it's possibly one of the most common human tendencies around.

The Great White Wedding Swindle

I have a feeling I'm going to upset some of you with what I'm about to say but let me preface this with the following clause: Golly no, I mean, golly, no mine is not a prescriptive statement - merely an observation. Let's just say it's a matter of opinion that stems from a very British trait of gregariousness, especially where money is concerned. You only have to go to the pub with a Brit to see s/he is the first to put her/his hand in her/his pocket and start the albeit ridiculous but generous-natured cycle of the 'round' culture. In fact I was out with an old school friend once at a pub in Euston Square when he began acting very recalcitrant. Turns out I had allowed his pint to dip below an inch before offering to 'get the next round in.' I should have known better.

So here is what I have to say: If you can't afford a big wedding, you have a small one. But in Canada (perhaps also North America) as I've discovered, couples get around this niggling detail by having a thing called the Stag & Doe (S&D) to name just one money-making tradition.

For those of us new to Canada or not up to date with North American traditions the S&D is, simply put, a fundraising party. The idea behind an S&D party is the same as an engagement party - it's a chance for the people close to the bride and groom-to-be to celebrate the upcoming nuptials. The difference is that an S&D party is larger, more elaborate, and has the ultimate goal of generating as much cash as possible for the happy couple.

Call me cynical, call me a Cuban cigar-loving Communist even, but personally this tradition is as transparent as a bank manager's smile.

I think the closest we get to an S&D in the UK is an engagement party but this can be a small, intimate affair, easily accommodated by a house. Gifts are always a lovely surprise but not expected. Food and drinks are provided free of charge. Can you imagine?

This isn't the case for an S&D party. We're talking about a rented venue, with as many guests as you can convince to attend. The name of the game is selling tickets, and if you're going to sell enough tickets to turn a decent profit, then this party needs to be an outrageous bash that your friends will be talking about from now until your first wedding anniversary (assuming you make it that far...whaaat? I'm just saying..is all).

The saying "you have to spend money to make money" is embodied in the S&D party. You'll need to rent out a space, such as a bar or club, hire a DJ, find some servers and bartenders, and provide enough finger food and alcohol to keep your guests energized enough to party and SPEND, SPEND, SPEND on more booze and games all night long while your faithful volunteers (well you don't think the bride or groom work that night) keep ringing up those tills with the kerching ching ching of every dollar. Am I the only one here who feels cheated a little?

I've paid for one wedding already, my own and no doubt will have to pay towards that of my daughter's when/if the time comes but this is my happy duty; forgive me then if I'm not in the mood for paying for anyone else's nuptials. That is not to say I'm not delighted for the happy couple and eager to join in the celebration of their wedding - and I mean that with no hint of irony.

Now, the wedding list is a tradition I do understand and will abide by however with people marrying much later in life than in the past, the couple are usually already homeowners themselves with two of everything they would need to set up a home together. Worse still, they know this and add a little note explaining that because of all the above they would much rather have the money. Yes, well wouldn't we all. As if this recession wasn't lesson enough to teach people to live within their means....BAH HUMBUG!!!!