04:23

I awoke furious with someone who’d wronged me in a dream. I couldn’t recall what they’d done, exactly, but it was definitely egregious and done with the intent of being so. It had woken me up from a deep sleep too, a rare thing recently – so add that to the list for this prick.

A good ten minutes it took me to talk myself down.

It’s hardly their fault what’s going on in my psyche, is it? I told myself.

You’re angry at a swirl of your own subconscious, you bellend. It wasn’t them that did something dreadful and woke you up in a drowsy frenzy, it was your own troubled mind.

Problem was, I was also annoyed with this person in real life too, I think. I’d just not realised it. But for something completely unrelated to the dream thing.

I still couldn’t remember what the dream thing was, of course, but I did definitely know somehow that it was completely unrelated.

That’s dreams for you – elusive certainty.

Unpicking the justified IRL anger (which was to be acknowledged and properly processed in the morning) from the completely unfair dream anger (which was to be immediately forgiven and forgotten as it was my own invention) was what took so long. Especially at such an ungodly hour.

My watch was blank, so I knew it was before 7. I gave it a tap, 4:23 it dimly confessed.

Same as last night.

Why always 4:23? Like, exactly 4:23. I mean, not always, but even two nights in a row that’s weird.

Like a visitation. From what, I couldn’t say. But something.

The negotiations began. If I fall back asleep now, I’ll get another solid couple of hours. I won’t, of course, but that’s the theory.

I tried to figure out the optimal toilet strategy. Autumn’s finally kicked in, not far to the en suite, but if I get up in this cold I’ll definitely be fully awake. Then there’s no way I’ll be back asleep before, say, 5:15.

But I think I need a wee a bit already. Do I? Either way, there’s no way I’ll get beyond 6 without having to get up if I don’t go now. Even if I don’t really need one I should pre-empt.

It’s warm. It’s comfy here. It’s safe. It is empty, but it’s safe. I’ll just stay here.

But I won’t get to sleep anyway, the need will just keep creeping up, nagging. If I do start to drift off I’ll only have another stupid fucking dream where I’m searching unsuccessfully for a toilet, or I’m just endlessly pissing behind a tree to no relief.

That would be almost as annoying as the egregious shit that prick did to me. Whatever it was. I wish I could remember. It doesn’t matter because it wasn’t real, but why can’t I remember?

Another tap on the wrist. 4:57. Half an hour lost to my bullshit already.

I’ll go for a wee.

5:02 now. Still an hour and 45 possible if I’m quick about it.

Real life creeps in with the daylight. Birdsong the harbinger.

Harder to talk your way down from the real stuff than the misshapen fragments of a dream.

5:28. Is it even worth bothering now? Don’t look at your phone or it’s over. You’re definitely done then.

5:37. Feels like an age after this before I’m asleep again, but no more taps of the wrist, so I must have made it.

I turned my wrist and it brightly announced 7:13.

I got up, went to the bathroom and sat down. My watch buzzed to proudly congratulate me on achieving my sleep goal.

Amicable

Removed from its context it’s a nice little word, amicable.

Rhythmic, staccato, angular. Repeat it rapidly and it ricochets around your mouth like a Tom Verlaine riff.

And taken literally – characterised by friendliness and an absence of discord, says Google – it could scarcely be more benign.

But the trouble with angular things is, without great care, the edges will cut. Those razor-edge little slices, clean and precise, that you don’t feel at first but that, once opened, seem to never stop bleeding.

“Is it amicable?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I’m so glad, that’s so much better for everyone!”

Better for them is what they mean, their relief always palpable. But I’m sure they’re right. I’m sure it is better for me too.

Of course it’s better. The alternative of hating one another doesn’t bare thinking about.

But, amicable is a trickster. It suggests what isn’t there and obfuscates what is.

It leads people to believe everyone is ok, that we’re all moving on, that things are straightforward. Everyone’s fine.

Worse, amicable sneakily raises the suggestion that it was all a mutual decision. Everyone agreed we’d be better off.

For one of us, at least, none of those is true.

Another of amicable’s tricks is a reframing – better, yes, but better than a hypothetical alternative where we scream at one another. It is better than that. But that’s imaginary.

The real comparison is between who we were before, together, and who we are now, apart.

When you have loved someone for 20 years, and love them still and all of sudden (and it was sudden) the best you can now hope for your relationship is that it’s amicable?

Characterised by friendliness and a lack of discord.

It’s very hard to be glad about that. It’s very hard to see it as better.

Amicable is seen as easy, too. Or at least easier. But, again, easier than what? Nothing I’ve actually experienced.

When you love someone but hate the decision they’ve made and what it has meant for you, when you want to be closer to them and as far away as possible at the same time, when they are struggling too but would rather struggle than have you around?

Amicable is hard. It’s Herculean. Actually, it’s relentless and it’s forever now, so it’s perhaps more Sisyphean.

I’m trying not to slip. To keep pushing amicable up the mountain. But sometimes it’s just too heavy.

Today I slipped. It won’t be the last time. I will slip again, but I’m trying.

Amicable. The hollow, bottomless, echoing emptiness of a hug from someone who no longer loves you back.

“I’m so glad. It’s so much better for everyone!”

A Ghost at the Feast

It’s a painful thing to be here but to already be gone.

It’s now, it’s today, it’s this moment, but it’s also as though you’re looking back on an earlier you. Somehow outside yourself looking in. Seeing yourself there but watching as you slowly but unerringly disappear, ebb away.

Here, in the place you have always been, the place you thought, no, the place you knew you would always be. A place you have always loved and been loved. Not now. Not any longer.

And, yet, here I sit at the table, here I lie in the bed.

I am here. But I’m already gone.

Almost absent. So sad that you feel it in your bones, your chest, your head and, of course, in your heart.

Sometimes so angry you’re a tightly-coiled fist, but with nothing to strike at, no release. But mostly it’s just the sadness.

And some of them, they know. They know I’m only half-here, they can see it. They see me but look right through me. They know I just haunt these places now. Places I was once a part of, where I belonged, where I am but am no longer. I’m still here but I’m not a part of them now. Nor they of me.

Separated.

And they pretend. They pretend I haven’t already been shooed away. That I’m really still here. That I’m still welcome. That I’m not hurting and sad. That I’m not broken. That I’m not angry. I pretend too. Like nothing has changed when everything has.

But they know. I know.

They speak to me like I can still hear, they look at me as though I can still be seen.

But where I am there’s already nothing. An empty space, shaped like me but not quite. An outline, a sketch, a nearly memory.

It might be harder to be half-here than not at all. I’ll find out one way or another soon enough.

I wonder, what if I could slip through the walls and drift off unnoticed? Out into the cold winter air and away like vapour. Perhaps that wouldn’t be such a bad thing? Easier for everyone than to have me half-here, lurking beyond my welcome. Just a fog of sadness.

A token. A remnant. Like dust.

But the little ones. They don’t know. At least, not yet. To them I’m actually here, fully here, really here. Still a part of this place and it of me, part of an us, part of them.

They’re oblivious to what’s coming. What’s already here for the rest of us.

Knowing they see me, all of me, fills me with joy. I am only here for them. I wish I could always be. But that wasn’t up to me.

Any joy is short lived. I can’t hold it. There’s not enough of me left to keep it in nor the fear out. Or the anger. Or the pain.

And definitely not the sadness, the deep, thick, churning, overwhelming sadness.

Because I know I’m only half-here. And I know that very soon they will know too. They will have to. And then, then I’ll really be gone. Not lurking in the half-here, no longer pretending nothing has changed. We were all one, all together, all a part of this place and it of us. Wonderful us. But not now. No longer. No us.

What’s yours, what’s mine. Nothing is ours anymore. Except for them of course.

They don’t know what’s coming. But I do. The rest of them do. You do.

The agonising goodbye. The loaded car. The drive away.

Two families now, not one. Two places for them to be a part of, but only one they already are. Only one that’s home. Not the one where I’ll be.

Half here, half there. Never all of us, only ever some.

I didn’t want any of this. I don’t want any of this. But it’s me they will see leave.

I’m the one who was there, then half-there and soon gone from the place that was all of ours. That we built together.

It’s my absence they will feel in the place they know. And I will feel their absence. And the absence of that place. And the absence of us. I already feel it.

But that is all to come. For now, I sit here at the table, I stare at a tree, I try to eat, I wrap presents, I open some, I watch as they do. I half-smile. Occasionally, I even manage a laugh, but it’s as hollow as I am now. I pretend. We all pretend. Some better than others.

I don’t want them to know.

Here, but already gone.

A ghost at the feast.

Holding my MP to account on the Recall issue

I don’t tend to get involved in direct democracy very much but I think the issue of recalling MPs is important. In the modern slacktivist style, I picked up and sent a templated 38Degrees letter to my MP, Roger Godsiff. I must confess I know nothing about him and his general political outlook. It may be that we agree on some things, probably not all. I probably agree with him on more than I would typically agree with Zac Goldsmith – but I believe strongly in Zac Goldsmith’s amendments to the recall bill. They strike me as reasonable including sensible safeguards and as being completely democratic which the current proposed bill certainly is not. You can read about Goldsmith’s tabled amendments here – I think you will find them hard to disagree with.

The Rt. Hon. Mr Godsiff MP replied to with a mail  I suspect was every bit as templated as my own. I can’t really blame him for that given I’d not made the effort to author something unique myself. What I can blame him for is the fact that his letter was patronising and deflective. It talked about the complexity of the issue but dealt with none of it. Worst of all, it failed to tackle the key issue at hand – that what this fundamentally comes down to is whether you believe the people are trustworthy enough to decide the circumstances in which their representative should be recalled or whether the circumstances within which this is acceptable should be determined by the MPs themselves. Or, it did tackle it in a way, by suggesting lots of occasions where he felt it might be dangerous to allow people the power of recall – that is, situations where he disagreed with the reasons he ascribed the people to give.

This is important so I felt I would share my arguments. I would also share Mr Godsiff’s note, but it does have a confidentiality clause in the disclaimer at its foot so I won’t share it in the interests of respecting that.

Mr Godsiff,

Thank you for kindly for your reply but I do not find that your response adequately deals with the matter at hand, rather it deals in a series of irrelevant deflections related to the US system.
The fundamental question is whether you believe that, in a democracy, the people should have the power to hold their elected representative to account and remove them from office where the people believe they are no longer fit to hold that office. Mr Goldsmith’s proposed amendments are intended to ensure it is up to the people to decide what being no longer fit for office means, not that the very people supposedly being held to account limit this in such a narrow way as to be meaningless and to return no power at all to the people.
Let me deal with each or your deflections in turn.
  • No other European countries offer similar powers – I see no relevance for this point whatsoever. Just because democracy is deficient in comparable nations and they have a similarly entrenched political elite that does not want to hand power to its people, does not mean that we should follow that lead.
  • Recall in California – the implication here seems to be that you don’t believe the people of California were well enough informed to decide whether or not their Governor was at fault in his managing of the state’s energy prices. That they were too stupid to identify the real issue at hand and took it out on a powerless Governor. Rank elitism. Do you not see that what you think about the specific policy issue here is not the question? The question is not whether or not you feel Mr Gray Davis had erred sufficiently from his duty as to be recalled, the question is whether a sufficient proportion of the Californian electorate felt that he had.
  • Issues of moral/personal standing – just as I do not personally believe that energy companies should ride roughshod over people and those in public office seeking to prevent that should be held to some account, nor do I believe that an affair is sensible reason to recall an MP. But, again, this misses the point – should a reasonable proportion of the electorate (and I believe the proportions in Mr Goldsmith’s amendments are reasonable) be sufficiently offended or morally outraged by the behaviours of their representative as to believe they can no longer properly represent them, then yes, why should they not be recalled?
  • Special interest groups – I’m starting to feel a little like a broken record here, but here goes. I couldn’t have less sympathy for the views of America’s religious right, but again, whether I agree with them or not (or whether you do) is separate to the issue at hand. Campaigning organisations have every right to try to push for recall ballots – but Mr Goldsmith’s amendments actually make it less likely that minority interests such as these would be able to push through a recall because of 20% threshold to trigger a referendum and the requirement for a majority of the electorate to vote for recall in that referendum. Yes, they may be able to trigger the 5% of of the electorate required to create a recall petition in the first place – but to even make the 20% threshold at the next level seems unlikely for most minority groups. If they can achieve the threshold and can then win the subsequent election then, no matter how abhorrent you or I think their views, they are entitled to recall their representative and it’s clearly unfair to call them a minority group. That, surely, is the very essence of a properly functioning democracy.
So, I agree that it is a more complex issue than is typically being portrayed, but I don’t accept that your response deals with that complexity, it seeks to deflect from it. In your next reply, I’d appreciate it if you could deal explicitly with the following areas:
  • Why is it that you apparently believe the people of your constituency are not equipped to decide for themselves whether their representative should be recalled and that it is better for Westminster to decide a narrow set of criteria within which it is acceptable for recall to happen?
  • Do you agree that the criteria set out in the bill are correct? My view is that the only criterion should be the view of the people, that’s democracy. You may not be willing to go that far, but if you at least believe the current criteria laid out are too narrow – what, in your view, should they be?
  • Do you agree that, once these criteria for recall decided by Westminster are met, a by-election should be triggered on the basis of a petition signed by just 10% of the electorate, a figure so low that it is hard to conceive a circumstance where it will not be achieved? If you don’t believe this is an appropriate proportion then what level would you set it at?
  • Do you agree with me that is preferable that any system of recall should insist that a majority of the electorate in that constituency have the final say on whether an MP is recalled or not?
  • Do you agree with me that the checks and balances set out in Mr Goldsmith’s proposed amendments are sufficient that opportunistic, frivolous or vexatious petitions for recall are unlikely to pass even the first stage requiring 5% of the electorate to be petitioned, almost certain to fail at the second stage where 20% is required and would without question fail to win a majority in a recall referendum? If you feel these checks and balances are insufficient and would like to argue for the existing bill or something different, I’d be interested to hear your view.
This is a complex issue – but fundamentally it comes down to one thing –  do you trust the electorate to decide for themselves whether an MP should be recalled or do you believe MPs themselves should dictate the circumstances within which that is seen to be appropriate.
I look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
Andrew Jerina

Google Search: The Reunion

This Indian ad from Google is REALLY good. Parts of it are in Hindi but you won’t have any trouble understanding what’s going on provided you’re familiar with India’s partition.

This is a fantastically emotive subject, but I think Google treat it with respect here. And as a brand integration case study it’s fabulous. Google has a good track record for making emotionally resonant ads, Dear Hollie perhaps being the best known example. But for me, they’ve often tried to cram too much in, tried too hard to say WE’RE GOOGLE AND WE DO EVERYTING – gmail, Youtube, Chrome, search etc. This makes the ads feel crowded and you’re not really sure what they’re for or what they’re trying to say about why each tool is important to your life. In focussing on search here there is much greater clarity around the brand’s involvement in the story and, perhaps paradoxically, by talking about one thing rather than everything that idea of Google penetrating all aspects of our lives comes through much more cleanly.

Google search is absolutely integral to the story here. In my day job, we have always said that if you can describe what happens in the ad in a sentence without mentioning the brand then it is probably not well branded. I think you’d struggle to do that here.

Of course, it’s 3 and a half minutes long so there’s plenty of space for the story here and perhaps it seems odd to be congratulating such a long ad on its focus. But it also had a big subject to deal with in a respectful way. It achieves that rare thing of being a powerful film in its own right, but still having the brand at its heart in a way that does nothing to cheapen the subject matter.

I’m also certain shorter versions are possible and that this story can be developed across a longer campaign – perhaps bringing in other elements of Google’s portfolio as they go.

I believe Ogilvy India are the people to whom the credit belongs.

David Bailey on Advertising

Over on my new blog, Life Lessons from Desert Island Discs, I have just written my second proper entry on the photographer David Bailey. Bailey has also successfully directed a number of ads, including the classic one for Greenpeace shown above. In his Desert Island Discs, he also reflects a little on advertising. So to cross promote two of my blogs and also because what he says is interesting but not really an important lesson on life, I thought I’d share what he says about ads (specifically, how directing them is different from shooting stills) with you all here.

In a way it’s a luxury. Most of my life has been spent trying to tell a story in a 125th of a second so 30 seconds is quite a luxury and 60 seconds feels like War and Peace to me. Being a still photographer is a bit like being a sniper up a tree, all alone, very lonely. Being a director is a bit like being a General – with all the people around you as catalysts trying to bring things together.

So, next time you think you’re having a hard time squeezing it all into 30 seconds, think of that lonely sniper in a tree, trying to squeeze the trigger on the right 125th of a second.

Big Mac – Think with your mouth

I’m a Burger King man myself, I hate Big Macs, disgusting sauce. I was quite partial to a Chicken Maharajah Mac during my spell in the colonies, but I didn’t have Burger King to fall back on there. I was recently rather critical of one of their recent UK efforts so by way of redressing the balance I’d like to say that I really like these new Big Mac ads from over in that America.

An iconic product given the treatment it deserves – space to speak for itself and be the hero. You don’t need to make claims about something like the Big Mac (if you do about very much at all.) You just need to celebrate it in an interesting way. Also, 15 seconds each. Brilliant. You don’t need 90 seconds to make interesting ads. Don’t let anyone tell you that you do. Not to say, of course, that you can’t also make blinding long ads. Horses for courses (beef/horse substitution pun entirely intended.)

They put me in mind of MTV idents from back in the days when the ‘M’ in MTV actually meant something. A cynic might add that ‘Think with your mouth’ is a sensible way for McDonald’s to go given that thinking with anything else would lead you to avoid Big Macs altogether, but obviously I would never say such a thing.

The murder of a 16 year old girl

The murder of a 16 year old girl, apparently unprovoked, should be equally affecting regardless of the circumstance. The truth is, that’s not the case. Today was a stark reminder to me of how locally our lives are lived. Regardless of how worldly you believe your outlook to be, how well travelled you believe you are – events near home, in places you have lived your own life, shake you in a way that any number of horrors elsewhere in the world do not. This isn’t to say horrors further afield are not upsetting, tragic or infuriating, they very often are, but they are necessarily more abstract than events occuring in your immediate frame of experience. Emotionally distant as much as geographically.

Today, Christina Edkins was stabbed to death on a number 9 bus on the Hagley Road near the centre of Birmingham. I did not know her, but I feel strangely like I did.

I grew up in Halesowen. The number 9 was my bus route. Into Halesowen from our house on the Abbeyfields or up Manor Lane to friends houses at first. As I got older into and out of Birmingham for work and for play. I must have ridden this bus route hundreds of times and I would have ridden it most frequently when I was Christine’s age. We all know there are bus routes best avoided (if you are fortunate enough to have the choice), whilst it has its share of unusual characters as all routes do, the 9 is not one of them. Sadness for those close to Christina was mixed with no little shock.

Later the news emerged that Christina was on her way to school at Leasowes High School. Leasowes was my school. I am now too far removed  from the school and the community around it to know her, her friends or her family. But 15 years ago I would have done. 15 years ago she would have been my classmate. We may not have been friends, but we would have been classmates. I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to see a young life of your acquaintance snatched away so viciously when you too are so very young. I think back to my classmates, I imagine how each would have reacted to a death of one of us, how each would have coped. Some would pretend they weren’t but I can’t think of anyone who would not have been affected. Many would have been affected so deeply that their whole life’s course may change.

The school made statements of condolence to the family and talked of support offered to the pupils. Eloquently leading the school response was the Head Teacher, Neil Shaw. Mr Shaw was my English teacher. If you are a regular reader of this blog you presumably believe there is at least some small merit in my writing. That is due, in no small measure, to Mr Shaw’s teaching. He was my favourite and best teacher. No Head Teacher should have to deal with this but few could be better equipped to do so. It is a strange and moving thing to see a man who so inspired you in the words of Heaney and Shakespeare delivering, with calm solemnity, such simple but difficult words of condolence.

I don’t visit Halesowen much these days. My parents have moved away. But by coincidence I was going there today to visit a friend, a former classmate, who was recently run off his bike not all that far from the school. I drove there in the pounding rain listening to the latest news. The suspected killer had been arrested. To get to my friends house I had to drive up Kent Road past the school. The rain still poured as I drove past the huddle of young figures  stood in the dark outside the firmly-closed school gates, hoods up to protect from the rain and shield from the world’s harshness. Leaving flowers,  messages, reading what others had written, comforting each other. 15 years ago, we could have been stood there.

I’m not sure why I’m writing this really. I’m certainly not trying to make this about me. I think what I’m trying to say is that every young person who is stabbed, assaulted, shot, glassed, bottled, raped – whatever, is on somebody’s childhood bus route. Somebody’s English teacher is now the Head and has to try and comfort the family and the kids. And of course, most important of all, they are somebody’s daughter, sister, niece, granddaughter. They will never have the chance to be someone’s mother or grandmother.

Whilst it might not be possible to feel as deeply about deaths such as this when they are further from home, we should at the very least try and remember that every single one is close to home for somebody. Indeed, for many.

My thoughts tonight are with all those who knew Christine and will miss her.

The Andrex Puppy wants to know how you wipe your arse

So, there’s this. An ad about how people wipe their arses in which you are asked to submit a vote to a cuddly advertising icon stating how you, the viewer, prefer to wipe your own arse. My initial reaction to this was the same combination of shock and despair that you are probably feeling now if it’s the first time you have seen it – this excellent take down in The Vice about sums most of that up. But, for me, this ad was also revelatory. I hadn’t the slightest conception that anyone would ever do anything other than fold. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, his toilet is the Keep, where none shall surely pass except in the very gravest of circumstances. Our reservedness ensures that we keep life’s great pleasures such as having a lovely poo tightly locked away from any conversation. For the most part, that’s probably for the best but it has meant that I have spent my 31 years and some months entirely in the dark about “scrunching”. Scrunchies are 90s female hair accessories, not bum-wiping material.

I am a scruffy man. I do not iron my clothes, my house is fairly untidy – but I cannot imagine for a moment wiping my arse with a randomly scrunched up ball of toilet paper. The uneven surface, the variable thickness and the lack of a uniform size and shape seem to carry with them all kinds of risks that I prefer not to even countenance, let alone bring into play.

In the uncomfortable afterglow of this revelatory experience I thought I would open The Keep to my colleagues and explore further (I don’t mean I actually invited them into my bog, I just decided to discuss it with them.) The findings were really quite interesting (and of course entirely unscientific.) There does not seem to be a gender bias – at first it seemed girls were (unexpectedly? I don’t know) more likely to scrunch, but the more we asked it seemed to be about 50/50. More of my male colleagues were folders, but not to a degree sufficient to deduce a genuine skew given the sample size involved. Personality and outward physical appearance also seemed to be poor indicators. You might expect the scruffy buggers such as I (there are plenty of us in the Global team, we don’t get let out in public much so we can let ourselves go) to over-index on scrunching but they were as likely to be neat, tidy folders in the privacy of the smallest room in the house as anyone. Those with pristine, matching houses who iron their bed linen could very well be untidy (disgusting and risky in my view) scrunchers. There were some mad bastards who would do either, apparently willy-nilly with no clear criteria as to when they would change tack.

I was greatly relieved to discover that my wonderful girlfriend is also a folder, hopefully guaranteeing that our future children will also fold. But is there any guarantee? There seems to be no gender or personality pattern to all this. Who’s to say whether there’s anything genetic? But I can only hope that the combination of nature and nurture will see my unborn children right.

So, on reflection, maybe Kimberley Clark are on to something here. Maybe they will breakthrough our reticence to talk about wiping turd from our anuses and get us all debating the relative merits of the two leading approaches. Maybe people will vote in their droves. Maybe folders will ally with folders and seek to bring down the despicable practice of scrunching? Maybe all these years of toilet roll being a dull, low-interest category are over. I think there is more to talk about – optimum number of sheets, softness, quilted versus smooth, that tracing paper stuff from primary school. LET’S ALL ENGAGE AT INTERACT ON THE SUBJECT OF BOG ROLL.

Or, you know, maybe not.