Here's what I really think

Art Auction for African Famine Appeal

2011-08-04T09:03:00.000Z

Please do support this initiative to raise money for the famine in Africa. Thank you ..!

Being a Writer

2010-08-09T16:28:00.003Z

I'm struggling here, trying to take on board the idea that I am not a real writer.

See, almost since I could ever hold a pencil, or certainly since my fingers were strong enough to depress the keys on my Marxwriter Deluxe, I have written. Like, every day. It's a bit like ingesting food - at a push I am sure I could go several days without eating, but I really would rather not.

Published writers sometimes appear to me - and I stress at this point that this is entirely MY perception, and not necessarily through their projection - to think that their writing carries more kudos than mine, because it has passed through the rite of passage of having been scrutinised and considered by a third party, and deemed worthy of being paid for.

Here's a typical conversation with a (published) writer.

Writer: "What do you do?"

Me: "Oh, amongst other things, I'm a writer like you!"

Writer: "Oh wow, great! Fabulous. What have you had published?"

Me: "I haven't been published. See, I - "

Writer: "I must get to the buffet table, sorry. They're about to run out of smoked salmon mousse."

Or perhaps, if I am lucky, they will spend a little while telling me why it is so imperative that I do everything in my power to get published and get paid - even a paltry few quid - for what I do. But why? As if my new-found 'success' will somehow reflect upon them, perhaps? I dunno.

Because I don't get paid for what I write, my writing carries less weight, it would seem. My writing doesn't have the battle trophies pinned to the legion's standard, or the ragged scars that ache when the weather changes, that prove it's worthiness.

Oh, don't get me wrong: I can see how my suggestion that I might be a writer could be confusing and irritating to someone who makes their living from the same activity, just as I can see that a "Fully Qualified, Board-Certified Music Therapist!" would perhaps feel discomfited by the fact that I do a job almost exactly the same way as they do, but without having jumped through all the professional, educational and certification hoops of flame that they have had to. That's why they have succeeded in making it illegal for me to call myself a music therapist, in spite of the fact that it is the description that most closely fits what I do.

(For years and years and years I did not even THINK to call myself a musician. I cannot read a note of music and therefore, I do not have what it takes to call myself a "musician". The best I could hope to call myself was an 'enthusiastic amateur'. Those days are behind me now.)

And then I read things like that pretentious, self-serving twaddle that journalist Joe Jackson had published (and was paid for!) in the Irish Independent magazine last week, and I think .. er, no. I don't think so. If that is what paid writing is about, then forget it.

I'm not saying that I sometimes feel my writing is worthless. I'm just saying that I'm occasionally talking to people and I feel like my writing is worth less.

Energetic Ranting. Plug me in!

2010-01-12T10:09:00.005Z

Gosh. If someone at the Physics Department of Imperial College, London could only develop a way to harness the power of The Rant, the entire energy/global warming crisis would go away instantly.

The other day I was listening, in desperation because there was nothing else, to Melvyn Bragg on BBC Radio Four's "In Our Time." Bragg has been working hard on celebrating the history of the Royal Society, which - for the benefit of those of you who've not heard of it before - is a British institution founded after our Civil War for the advancement of science and the betterment of human existence.

Uh-huuuuuh.

Well, get this. As part of the episode that was talking about what the Royal Society is up to today, there was an interview with a bright young student at some science fair thing they were running at Carlton House Terrace in London. Bragg described it as a sort of "Farmer's Market" for new scientific ideas but I found myself wondering if it was more like a car boot sale: For, as well as a smattering of NEW science ideas, there was also an unhealthy representation of OLD ideas about natural resources, and especially about who is entitled to reap (rape?) the natural resources in the African subcontinent.

An enthusiastic young go-getter was heard extolling the virtues of their wonderful new photovoltaic cell, which is something like twenty percent more efficient that the cell being commonly used around the world. Excellent, I hear you say. Superb. Yes. Give me three dozen. Have them gift-wrapped and sent to my apartment.

The student explained how these cells, which work by making use of ALL of the available light in the spectrum, and not just a small percentage of it, could be put in the Sahara Desert and then the power thus generated could be fed via high-voltage cables straight back to Europe.

Oh, I thought. Oh! OK. So .. because the Europeans have been able to pay for the development of these wonderful new power cells, then it is obviously they who should get all the benefits of the power that is generated, is that it?

So. Instead of feeding that power into the process of developing (especially) sub-Saharan Africa; powering its hospitals, its schools, its water pumps, its cooking stoves, its computer servers and its mobile phone networks, we should instead send that power directly back to Europe so we can use it to play on our Nintendo Wiis? Or leave our downstairs lights on all night for the dog to see where its water bowl is? Or to power our garage-mounted security lights that we are too stupid to programme to not come in during the day, triggered when a cat strolls over to the flower bed to have a dump? Or to power our ridiculous displays of Christmas lights every year - getting bigger and bigger in a pointless show of defiance against the moron over the road who has gone out to B&Q and bought YET ANOTHER string to go over the loft conversion?

Oh, I'm quite sure that the young person from the physics department at University College London was just nervous, was just all of a wibble at being interviewed for the radio, and as such can be forgiven for making a common error-of-speech; that OF COURSE the energy would also be made available to the poor Africans! I mean, after all - they wouldn't need awfully much of it would they .. just enough for a single low-voltage bulb to light the interior of their mud and straw hovel, isn't that it? Yes, I am sure we could spare them a bit.

Why don't people THINK before they open their gobs? No, don't answer that till you've really considered it.

The Imagery of Depression.

2009-11-23T15:50:00.006Z

I read a lot about depression, in an effort to try and understand it better. The different analogies that people use in order to describe it fascinate me endlessly. Depression is something that has troubled me since at least my teens, which is when I started to keep a diary about it.

I read a lot about Gabriel Byrne because I like his acting. People can take the piss out of me for this on occasion, which I also find depressing, until I remind myself that they do it on order to compensate for something lacking in their lives, by trying to belittle something good in mine.

This I stumbled across the other day, and it speaks volumes to me.

Excerpted from here: http://tinyurl.com/pbtu3e - An interview in the Irish Sunday Independent "Life Magazine." Interview by Barry Egan.

Emboldenment is mine. Those are the bits where I thought, "Blimey! He's inside my head. He's reading from the script I have written there..."

Of course, Gabriel Byrne has talked about his long, dark nights of the soul, recently describing his depression as being “about trying to not let other people know all you want to do is lie in a corner and have nothing to do with anyone”.

“I don’t think anyone is immune from...” he says, breaking off, when I raise the subject.

“First of all, I would dispel the notion that depression is some form of self-indulgence and some kind of desire to hide away from the world. It is not as simple as that.”

He says he believes “the roots of depression are as much physiological as psychological and emotional; they are a combination of many things”.

The award-winning and internationally acclaimed actor continues that he thinks “some people are more prone to depression than other people. There are some who are just born naturally optimistic. I envy those people. They are born with the happy gene. I don’t think I ever had that.”

He says that he doesn’t “quite buy people who say that they are permanently and totally and utterly happy. I don’t think you can live in this world and not experience the ...” he breaks off again.

“To be fully human would, in my opinion, embrace the notion of fighting against nihilism. You have to battle that. I have battled with depression. The only reason I [talked about depression publicly] was not because I wanted to be another of these people saying, ‘I have depression’ and then people saying, ‘What has he got to be depressed about?’”

That is, he says, a very easy assumption to make. Depression, like many other things in life, is no respecter of class or wealth, or success or lack of success, he adds. “It is something that can be exacerbated by the absence or the surfeit of any one of those things,” Gabriel believes. And he has good reason to believe this.

“Nobody actually really understands where it comes from; why it comes; how long it lasts and why it actually goes. They have theories about serotonin levels in the brain, but nobody truly understands the genesis of depression. But there are things that you can do to offset it. There are a lot of people, for example, who drink to get away from it, but that leads into a vicious cycle,” he says, adding that trying to maintain a positive outlook in life is something that he does daily.

“And there are some days I fall down. But most days I keep standing up. That’s just the way it is. You know, I have accepted it, and I acknowledge it. I don’t try to hide it any more. The only reason I spoke about it was not to do a kind of misery memoir, but so that other people would see it, too.

“People who really know me know that I have a tremendously light and humorous side to me,” he says. “If you spoke to anyone on the set of In Treatment, they would tell you that I am the one who is light-hearted.”

I could vouch for Gabriel’s whoopee-cushion funny side, too — having myself and Liam Neeson in knots of laughter with his anecdotes in a New York bar in 2003; him playing the piano in his red socks with holes in them in Yoko Ono’s apartment in Manhattan in 2001. He uses humour a lot.

“I do, don’t I?” he asks rhetorically. “I think for a lot of people who battle that particular demon, humour is something that they work with. A lot of comedians tend to veer towards that [depression] and humour is some kid of a weapon that they use to defend themselves. Humour is very important to me in my life. I try to keep a light spirit and I try to keep looking outward and forward. I wasn’t somebody who was going around in a black cloud all the time. I mean, most of the time I was in very good humour. These inexplicable attacks would come every so often. I have learnt how to deal with them now.”

Asked to explain how he deals with these inexplicable attacks of darkness, Gabriel says the first thing he has to do is acknowledge it — by acknowledging it, he says: “I mean, by saying: ‘Here it is.’”

And what is it?

“It is like a black serpent in the garden. It is a beautiful sunny day, you are lying under a tree and you know that in the garden somewhere there’s a serpent. Sometimes it can be asleep. Sometimes it can be roused. Sometimes you can step on it by accident. That’s kind of the way I feel about it. I look at it and I say: ‘There you go again.’”

Gabriel tries to do things for himself that are, he says, positive. Keep active. Read. Keep engaged with people. Don’t isolate. Remember that it will pass. It is not the reality of life. And so forth and so on.

“Why today does the world seem dark — whereas yesterday it was bright?” he muses.

“Try to talk to somebody else about it,” Gabriel adds. He says that one of the most difficult things you can do when you are depressed is to reach out and to talk to another human being.

Reaching out can be life saving and it can also be desperately difficult because, he says: “with depression goes a sense of shame and a sense of isolation and so forth. But I would hate to think that my life is defined by it. I think that life presents us all with challenges that we have to overcome and we have to battle.

“Some of us are better at fighting than others. You know,” he continues. “If I didn’t have that, I would have to say I would have a pretty happy life and a pretty contented life; even with the knowledge that [depression] is something that’s there now and again.” There is a final pause before he continues.

“So most of the time — 90% of the time — my life is pretty contented and pretty happy. I don’t want people to go around [thinking I'm] crippled by depression. That’s not true."

Death by Cynicism.

2009-09-29T08:47:00.002Z

Last night's review of "In Treatment" on the Radio Four programme 'Front Row' spoiled my dinner. In the end, I switched the radio off before the woman had even finished her ignorant and scathing tirade. I had begun to suspect that she was simply looking to be sensationalist. Some people are incapable of making a big enough impression on other people, and so they have to be deliberately objectionable in order to create some kind of reaction. Any kind of reaction.

The whole experience once again reminded me starkly of many of the reasons why I hate living in the United Kingdom. The ingrained cynicism. The unwillingness to embrace - or even to grasp - new ideas, new thinking, new ways of doing things. The harping on about the good old days. The sneering. The continual subtext, in so much of what is said, that the British are in some way superior to the Americans (amongst others.)

No wonder some of this country's greatest creative minds - people like Jony Ive, have upped sticks and fled this cold and sterile environment for the warmth - in more ways than just the weather - of California.

Spittle and Vaseline.

2009-08-07T06:04:00.008Z

I've been thinking a lot in the last week or so about a story I heard of a little boy who left Dublin when he was about eleven years old and travelled to London to join a seminary and train as a Catholic priest.

He was the oldest of six children and his decision to follow this vocation was probably a source of great pride to his parents and his siblings.

But when he was there, he found himself subjected to blatant violence in the form of beatings (not in the least unusual in any school in London in the mid-Sixties, it has to be said) but also to less blatant - indeed, thoroughly covered-up - sexual abuse. He and countless others learnt the facts of life whilst being physically penetrated "with spittle and Vaseline."

Now, many years later, the man is grown up. He never became a priest. He has lost touch with his god. He has managed to make his life a good one, a successful one, in spite of a slow start. His early adulthood was blighted by indecision and lack of confidence, and he was marked as a restless spirit. But now he is internationally recognised for what he does, and he tries to make the best use of his position.

So, he began to talk about what happened to him. "When you speak out about something, then the disease of silence begins to lose its power." Which is how I heard his story.

People were incensed, they were outraged, they were horrified. They begin to say things like: "The Catholic Church owes him an apology!"

But suppose - just suppose - that some fairly high-up member of the church hierarchy were to telephone this 60 year old man at his home in New York to effect some kind of apology. Yes, that would be a wonderful start.

But a start to what?

See, if you apologise to one person, then it stands to reason that you should take the process further. My question is not where the apologies should begin, but where would they end?

Who will apologise to the millions of Jews exterminated like vermin during the Second World War whilst the Pope stood idly by? Literally, stood idly by. (I'm thinking of what happened when the Nazi's rounded up the Sephardic Jews from their ghetto in Rome.)

Who will apologise for the women who have died giving birth to their tenth, eleventh, twelfth child, or whose lives continue to be little better than that of indentured slaves as a result of the church's failure to embrace modern birth control?

How about the countless hundreds of thousands of lives blighted in Africa by AIDS? The church could easily have simply accepted people's true nature where sexual activity is concerned, and promoted the use of condoms instead of continually banging on and on about the pipe-dream of marital fidelity.

Will the souls of all those women burnt at the stake as 'witches' in the Dark Ages ever be apologised to, or handed an official pardon? I doubt it, somehow. Who will express regret to the memories of those millions of women throughout history who have been branded as harlots and ostracised for the 'sin' of bearing a child out of wedlock?

What about all the Muslims killed during the Crusades? And I do not just mean the Crusades in the Eleventh Century. How about the ones going on right now?

And why should it stop with the Catholic Church? Who is going to say sorry to lesbians and homosexuals denied opportunities to live openly and to express their true natures by the Church of England, or the Evangelicals in the United States of America? Who is going to bow their heads in sorrow at the plight of the Palestinians routed from their homes on the West Bank to make room for illegal Jewish settlers? What about the countless numbers of Hindu women who were expected to immolate themselves on their husband's funeral pyres? Or who are murdered or mutilated by their fathers and brothers for the crime of falling in love with the 'wrong' man? Or the girls in Afghanistan denied the right to an education that might gove them a chance to make something out of their lives? Or the woman in the Sudan faced with the prospect of being whipped like an animal for the 'sin' of wearing trousers?

I suppose that, if someone were to telephone the middle-aged man in Brooklyn and apologise for the Catholic Church's utter failure to protect him when he was an impressionable and sensitive twelve year old boy, that would be a start. Of sorts. Maybe that is where the whole process has to begin - not with grandiose damage-limitation gestures engineered by public relations executives, but simply with one human being speaking quietly to another and expressing genuine regret.

Plane Sailing to New York City

2009-04-14T10:00:00.003Z

I actually sent this letter, with the top and tail of it changed appropriately, and of course I received no reply. That was sad, but not altogether surprising. I simply felt saddened that such a well-known and respected local company was behaving in the same faceless couldn't-care-less manner as their bigger rivals like Thompson or Thomas Cook.

Dear Relatively Small, Family-Owned Travel Agency based in Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset,

I understand that, legally, we are liable for the deposit money that we paid to your for our trip to New York City. Details of how we would have to forfeit that money are printed clearly, if in rather small type, in your Terms And Conditions. There is plenty of precedence for this kind of penalty charge across the whole of your industry. We can appreciate your legal standpoint on this matter, but are having a much bigger problem with your MORAL standpoint.

You say in your letter that "We look forward to being of assistance to you again in the future," and I just wanted to take a moment to explore this concept with you. See, I would never again even vaguely consider the possibility of coming to you again for holiday advice. From my perspective, you are the type of company who charge customers over £400 for having made two phone calls and written one letter on our behalf. I cannot believe that your company was at all inconvenienced - and certainly not to the tune of £400 - by our cancelling our family trip to NYC some thirty eight weeks before we were even due to depart.

It's a shame really. As a family we are committed to trying to support local businesses like yours as much as possible, especially in these stringent economic times. But this kind of behaviour is very off-putting, and is strongly reminiscent of the big faceless corporate travel agents who are your main competitors.

If you cannot show yourselves to be any better than they are, then why should you expect to get repeat business from anyone?

Yours sincerely,

A Pissed Off Person who is still trying to deal with the very real disappointment of having to cancel the trip in the first place, never mind losing 400 f****** quid over it.

Adult Education? What's Adult about it?

2009-04-14T09:57:00.002Z

I had a slack moment earlier on - no, honestly, I did - and I began thinking about my being a bit under-stimulated at the moment.

This condition can be near-fatal for me.

The kids are off school, and I am not going to be working for the next two weeks. I have lots of days out planned with the family, but with the best will in the world, this does not mean that I am not going to be greatly INTELLECTUALLY stimulated.

So, what to do? Plough my way through The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare? Naaaah. Reading is OK; reading is fine, but I do it all the time.

Maybe I should take an evening course! I thought to myself, glancing casually at the Adult Education brochure that had just fallen, limp and typically lifeless, through my letter box and onto my door mat.

Here's some of the things I have to choose from in my area (and can you guess my local demographic profile from what follows? I suspect you can ...)

FIRST STEPS IN JEWELLERY MAKING

POTTERY EVENING CLUB

ACUPRESSURE FOR STRESS RELEASE

BABY MASSAGE FOR MUMS

EFFECTIVE LIP READING

FIRST STEPS IN MICROSOFT EXCEL

ENGLISH FOR TEACHING ASSISTANTS

FIRST STEPS IN CAKE DECORATING

FLOWER ARRANGING THROUGH THE AGES (honestly, you couldn't make this s*** up)

PILATES FOR MIXED ABILITY

GET BY IN GERMAN

BASIC BICYCLE MAINTENANCE

DEVELOP YOUR CREATIVE WRITING TECHNIQUES

Myabe I need to find an evening class that will help me to be less cynical, less judgemental, and less dismissive. But where's the fun in that.

Real-Person Fiction (RPF)

2009-04-08T17:48:00.002Z

I'm a big fan of "Law and Order: Criminal Intent", and I especially enjoy the performances of Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe.

I write a lot of so-called "fan-fiction"; semi-original stories, based on the characters in the show.

Some people also write what is known as Real Person Fiction - which, as the title suggests, is fiction written about the actors themselves, rather than the characters they portray.

Recently I challenged someone on the ethics of writing this kind of thing. I got very, very uppity about it ...

"In my experience, people who say things like "I'm not going to try and defend my position in the face of such hostility" are normally covering up a very weak standpoint. What they mean is, "My position is ... uh, indefensible!" Take ownership of your sh**, especially if you are going to be throwing handfuls of it at the fan all the time.

If you aren't capable of telling what is basically Right, and what is basically Wrong, then I guess that shouldn't be my problem. Perhaps I should take issue with your parents, who evidently did such a piss-poor job of teaching you the basics. Problem is, it's people like you, with your desperate need to self-publicise, who end up having an undue amount of influence over MY children. Trashy, cheap television. "Reality drama." Tabloid newspaper reporting - oh, and incidentally, people who defend your writing by saying it was no worse than tabloid journalism were not in any way paying you a compliment. It could also be read as, "is no BETTER than tabloid journalism", which is in fact considered to be one of the lowest forms of literary output since the race-hate leaflet. Don't think that pathetic attempt as an excuse - "He dunnit first!" holds water.

People like you make it all the harder to teach MY children what is right and what is wrong. You increase my workload. You think I'm happy about that..?

Likewise, people who hide behind the excuse of "It's no different from (insert sad example here)" should perhaps consider a frontal lobotomy as a tool for self improvement. How far are you willing to go with that kind of attitude? What other things does it apply to in your life? How many of your own failings are you ignoring by comparing yourself to the shambling motion of others?

"Well-written"? "Well-written"? Well, I didn't read it so I've no idea. But that reminds me of someone saying: Look at the cool and elegant lines of this new dumpster. See how it utilises elements of classic design in it's construction." Uh, yeah. But it's still just a thing full of trash, isn't it?

This kind of writing, and the defence of it that I've heard so far, strikes me as further evidence of the rise of the Me Generation. An entire section of humanity that is devoted to deliberately failing to understand what it is like to be Someone Else. This failure to empathise is called egocentricity and normal children are supposed to have grown out of it by the time they are about 3 or 4 years old. Severely autistic people never lose this tendency, and consequently never manage to form any kind of idea of how something might feel for another person.

"Skip it, move on to the next post." / "It's not your problem." / "It has no personal bearing on your or your family." / "I'm not affected in any way, so who cares?" / "Oh, it's nothing to do with ME." Would you feel the same way if it was something that was written about, say, your father? Your uncle? Your husband? Your ex-wife? Your The nice lady who's daughter plays with yours after school? Your brother? Why is it so hard to imagine what it might feel like, were one of Vincent D'Onofrio's or Kathryn Erbe's friends or family members to stumble across an unprotected, high-visibility post that is all about the two of them having a fairly casual fu** (or whatever it was actually about.) Yeah, yeah yeah. Ignore it. Pretend it isn't there. Stick your head in the sand.

But it IS there.

"Famous people set themselves up for this kind of thing. They should expect it." Uh - were you still saying that when John Lennon was gunned down in front of his wife in NYC? Yeah, I bet you were. Certainly, some celebrities DO set themselves up for this kind of thing; they court notoriety because they have very little talent and have to get their regular 15 minutes of fame some other way. Jane Goody. Britney Spears. Kate Moss. Heather Mills. The Hilton Sisters. Even Michael Jackson, lately. In fact, the talent that these individuals have for flirting with the media and especially the gutter press, greatly outweighs any artistic talent that they might have. I don't think D'Onofrio and Erbe are in the same league, frankly. Neither of them has - until recently, with some high-profile charitable causes - give me any real reason to think that they go out and seek publicity of ANY kind, let alone the negative stuff. Quite the reverse, actually. I'd like to know what it is that VDO and KE have done to deserve this kind of malignment, apart from providing you with entertainment.

I'm prepared to accept that there may well be cultural differences at work here, too. Legally, things must be very different in the United States. Here in the UK, this kind of stuff would have solicitors sniffing around it hungrily, like a big juicy t-bone of a slander case.

"I am what I am" - oh, ho ho ho .. there it is, at last. The self-absolution so beloved of psychopaths, miss-fits and mass murderers throughout the ages. "I am what I am." Really? What a shame. I had thought you were so much more. "

Closer Than You Think: But, oh. Now so far away.

2008-11-06T10:05:00.005Z

It's not very often that I will compare Great Britian and California and find California to be lacking. Badly lacking.

Normally I am to be heard wailing melodramatically about the English weather, the lack of sunshine and warmth; the food, the curiously reticent nature of the native inhabitants, the over-crowding, the long dark winters and the lack of space in my house and garden. All of these elements of life in the Unkited Kingdom continue to grate on me even now, thirty years after I first arrived.

But today the tables have turned, and when I look at California today I feel ashamed and hurt. I realise that I've been nurturing all these fond childhood memories of coziness and long summers playing in the sand pit. But much has changed.

Voters in California yesterday were part of an extraordinary national movement that acheived a goal that a few decades ago would have been considered unimaginable - the election of a black man to the presidency of the United Sates.

But at the same time, Californians were voting on the controversial "Proposition Eight" - a legal movement to ban gay couples from getting married.

That something like this could even have been suggested in the first place is deeply offensive to me. It is an embarrasingly retrograde step, as California had earlier this year sanctioned gay marriage, following a Supreme Court ruling.

Now, this is where Great Britain shows itself to be morally superior to my old country, in a way that I find quite unsettling after so many years of Britain-Bashing on my part. In December 2005 the British Government made it legal for gay couples to enter into what is called a civil partnership, which secures for gay people the same legal rights enjoyed by hetero-sexual couples getting married.

For example - if one partner dies before the other, the survivor will be treated like a 'regular' married partner in the event of there being no will. Surviving partners inherit automatically. Social Security and pension rights will be the same as for hetero marriages, as will parental responsibility for a partner's children (thank God). There are also safeguards for same-sex couples in regard to immigration applications, income-related tax benefits, and responsibility for child support (if the partnership is dissolved). Crucuially, civil partners may jointly apply to adopt children.

In point of fact, here in Great Britain the laws are SO exhaustively inclusive and fair, that you do not have to be gay or lesbian to enter into a civil partnership. You must be unrelated by blood and over the age of 16 years. That's all.

Although technically civil partnership ceremonies cannot be conducted in a place of worship, in practice many same-sex unions receive a church blessing and there is even a same-sex liturgy. 'Blessings' are commonly used by heterosexual couples where one of the parties is divorced. David and I were told we could not marry in church because of his divorcee status - not that I would have wanted to, not in a million years. But still, it rankled that we were being discriminated against.

That California (and also Florida and Arizona) should give and then take away a couple's fundamental human rights in this manner is profoundly shocking to me and makes me ashamed of my heritage for the very first time that I can ever remember.

2008-09-21T12:49:00.002Z

It's fresher's Week for may universities here in the UK. That's when all the new kids start. I was attending a course at Chichester University yesterday and the campus was full to the brim with new arrivals; here where I live right smack bang next to Bournemouth University, the picture is much the same.

Older kids in yellow t-shirts showing gangs of fresh blood around the campus and the local area. Gangly boys on push-bikes stopping to look at maps, already slotting neatly into the stereotype of the 'man who will NEVER ask directions'. Young women in cars, stopping to ask direction - "Where's the nearest supermarket? We have to buy a microwave!"

Elderly hatch-back cars stuffed to the eye-balls with duvets and cardboard boxes full of Stella Artois and new stationery drive around and around the local area until the point where I have seen the same car go past me three times and I am considering waving to the occupants. Rather swankier 4WD 'unnecessary' cars, also stuffed to the eye-balls with everything a teenager away from the family home for the first time since Guide Camp could possibly need (and it all has to fit in a room 6 feet by 8 feet, did you know that?)

These kids are fitter, stronger, faster and perhaps better looking now than they will ever be. They have more free time and more opportunities for social contact (sex!) than at any other time in their life.

And they haven't got the least idea of ANY of this.

2008-08-23T15:38:00.000Z

My Dog Saved My Life Too, Daddy.

2008-08-22T08:12:00.001Z

When my father was aged somewhere between three and five years old he fell off a boat some place and into the water.

He never remembered being especially frightened - I suppose at that age your concept of impending doom is necessarily limited - but he does remember thinking how pretty the bubbles of air looked as they escaped his little body and made their inexorable journey to the surface.

Just as well they did, really, as it was this stream of silver, like blobs of mercury rising, that allowed the family's German Shepherd dog to locate him after it had dived into the water after him. Prior to that my father and "the dog" (it never had a name that he could remember) hadn't been on especially close terms, but the animal certainly felt this little human was important enough to leap in after and rescue. Apparently none of the other people on the boat had even had a chance to realise little David had fallen in.

Nothing so romantic (?) has ever happened to me as far as I can recall, but I do sometimes look at my dog and wish fervently that I was a religious woman so that I could give thanks to some higher being for her being here with us.

You see, in many small ways, depression can kill you. That's how I felt yesterday - that I was dying - of boredom, of self-loathing, of self-pity, of irritation and frustration. I could feel blackness closing in on me just as surely as the cold green waters of the canal pressed down on my father's head. I feel that people who do not suffer from depression might find it hard to understand what these emotions are like - after all, we most of us probably battle with one or two of these sets of feelings at least twice a week - but with depression, one feels strangely incapable of fighting back against the slings and arrows. All you can do is look upwards through the waters and watch as your life bubbles away from you.

My dog seemed to save me yesterday. Just as I was reaching a dangerous flashpoint, I decided to take her out for a walk. I didn't especially want to - it was cold, raining, windy, but I got myself suited and booted nonetheless and dragged myself and the dog out of the house.

Forty minutes or so later, I had returned to life. I felt like I'd been bathing in a wash of colours and smells and sounds. This is how my dog saves my life. Walking out with her allows me a glimpse of the world as she experiences it, allowing me a fresh perspective on what the world is up to whilst I am busy wallowing. I have long since given up berating myself or feeling guilty about suffering from depression - it isn't my fault after all - but I do still consider the process to be akin to "wallowing".

The dog surged ahead of me and pulled me up out of the mire, as I clung on to her leash.

I'm only glad she didn't try and give me the Kiss of Life. She is a Basset Hound, after all. Could have been very messy.

Reduce, Reuse, Bi-cycle

2008-07-02T13:19:00.004Z

By Laura Capellaro Cousins

The world's love-affair with the motor car is under pressure; as Peak Oil predictions start to become a reality and the situation in the Middle East. The UK has much higher fuel prices than in the United States, but now even those of you across the Pond are starting to feel the pinch.

I filled up my car - a modest Renault Scenic (5-door family car, seats 5 people and the dog in the back, CD player, no cup-holders) - this morning and it cost me £60.00. I sighed. When the assistant in the shop asked me how I would be paying, I replied "Through the nose, thanks." She didn't bat an eyelid. No doubt she had heard it many times before.

So what can I do?

Environmentally sound driving is big news at the moment. In the UK, we now have a higher rate of road tax for cars emitting higher levels of pollution. Plus, as I write this paragraph, the radio in the kitchen is announcing that forecourt prices of unleaded petrol are now at a record high, at just over £1.39 per litre.

(There are 3.785 litres to the standard American gallon. You do the maths please; I'm too busy tearing my hair out.)

Clearly, people who drive big cars, too fast, will end up paying more for the privilege of doing so. The government recently set aside £1.3m to help 'educate' bad drivers to use their vehicles and their fuel more efficiently. The Driving Standards Agency requires driving instructors to take teach 'eco-safe' driving, which is said to improve safety as well as minimising fuel consumption. Environmentally gentle driving may even become part Highway Code and the driving test.

So, I thought; what can I do in order to minimise the number of times I get attacked and robbed by an unassuming-looking petrol pump? Sounds like one of the monsters in an episode of Doctor Who. Is the answer really to trade in my nice little girlie motor and get a diesel job, then set up a bio-fuel producing still in my pleasant suburban double-fronted mock Tudor garage? Er, I don't think so.

Reduce, Reuse, Bi-cycle

The first thing I did was check out local public transport. I was surprised. When we moved here originally, public transport was as decried as it is all over the British Isles (so it seems), with bus companies staggering and convulsing, on the verge of breathing their last. But it appears that in the ensuing vacuum, a new company or two sprang up and immediately started filling the route gaps. I was a bit cynical about this as I had heard tales of new companies putting flashy new buses on loads of new routes, developing a high profile and seeming to run services every five minutes to all the most local areas, and then slowly but surely reducing the service over the following months to a level that was more economically profitable for them. For the moment though, my neck of the woods is well served by buses, but I cannot help feeling that we're enjoying a romantic honeymoon period and the frequency and duration of our passion will fade somewhat as the relationship matures. Public transport is often not an option for people travelling to work, but for leisure travel it is worth considering when possible.

Nevertheless: I do urge you to keep abreast of public transport in your area, even if you tried it a while ago and found it to be rubbish - do give it a go again. In many cases, local public transport (most especially buses) could only have got better.

I do have a bicycle. It is in the garage. I have not yet summoned the courage to dig it out and try riding it again - mostly when not using the car I rely on buses and Shanks' Pony. But I will use my bike. I will, honest.

Moving swiftly on:

There are one or two cunning tricks you can employ then driving your car that help to conserve petrol, too. I've been trying them out. Here, in no particular order:-

Slow Down
If it's safe to do so, travelling at 50mph as opposed to 70mph (or even faster!) conserves a lot of fuel. Additionally, I've found I arrive at my destination feeling a lot more relaxed than I would have done travelling at 70-odd. It means I need to leave my house approximately 15-20 minutes earlier than I might have done, which luckily isn't really a problem. It was hard for me to slow down at first as I freely admit to having been a bit of a speed freak in the past.

Get the Right Gear
Sorry - this is not an instruction to go out shopping for the most fashionable and expensive style of eco-driving clothing.

I use the highest gear I can without making the engine grumble, and frequently miss out 4th altogether - switching straight from 3rd to 5th. It's important to use as few "revs" (No. Not vicars) as possible - as revving the car engine simply uses fuel for nothing whatsoever. Plus it makes other drivers think you're a boy racer, which patently I am not.

Manoeuvre when Hot
The engine works more efficiently when it's warm. Hey, don't we all? As such, it is good to try and avoid lots of fiddly manoeuvring, reversing and 12-point turns, when you first start the car. I solved this one be remembering to reverse into my driveway when I get home, meaning that I drive straight out when my engine is cold. I try and do the same wherever I park up.

Unburden yourself
If a car is an extension of the male ... um, ego, it can also be said to be an extension of the female handbag. It was time to do a Life Laundry on the car, too - getting rid of all those silly little bits of stuff I had in there and was certain I would need, but actually never had. It's all excess baggage. Needless to say I left in the essentials - spare tyre, first aid kit, hazard triangle and plug-in curling tongs. But most everything else - including the obligatory kitchen sink (so THAT'S where it was!) - had to go.

Travel exclusively, tread lightly
It really is best to avoid the rush-hour. There are solid environmental reasons for this, too; stopping and starting all the time is hard work for the engine, gear box and clutch (not to mention the human components of the car). I always plan my route.

I try very hard to "read" the roads I'm on as efficiently as I can, so for example I use uphill gradients to help me slow down (instead of brakes) or speed up (starting off from a standstill on a downhill slope in 2nd gear and easing up the clutch as the car reaches the right speed), easing off the accelerator in plenty of time when approaching a junction. Don't watch the car in front of you, my driving instructor used to say to me. Look at the one in front of that. It helps you anticipate the speed of traffic flow and adjust your speed accordingly - the more you can avoid starting and stopping, the more fuel you can save.

If I am unavoidably stuck waiting for a bridge or a ferry or an entire school crossing the road in a crocodile at one time, then I switch off the engine altogether, and glare meaningfully at anyone around me who doesn't follow suit. You can imagine I have made several life-long friends in this manner.

Streamline!
See, Superman was wrong to have his underpants on the outside, and to wear a cape. Both those things would have had an impact on the aerodynamics of his body shape, causing additional drag and slowing him down. Or, in the case of your car, making you use more fuel to travel at any given speed. I needed to decrease my wind resistance.

After a great deal of scrabbling around in the garage, I finally found the Allen key I needed and took off my roof-rack bars. I also regularly take the back seats out of the car when it is only me using it - that was one of the selling points of this car, as comparable cars had seats that folded away but stayed in the car nonetheless. The three rear seats and the boot shelf thingy in my car weigh an absolute ton. They stay in the garage when not in use. Like most English people, my garage is used for everything except storing the car in, but don't tell my insurance brokers.

It's also important to keep your sun-roof and windows closed when travelling at speed - although be warned; cars with air-conditioning systems use extra fuel to run those systems. I have found travelling with just the ordinary ventilation fans going instead is almost as good. Short of avoiding travelling during the hottest parts of the day, I don't know what else to suggest. Wear aviator sunglasses. Then at least you'll LOOK cool.

Paying Maintenance
It's important to keep your car maintained regularly, for safety reasons as well as environmental ones. In particular, where fuel efficiency is concerned, I had to make sure my petrol cap was tight-fitting (petrol evaporates rapidly) and make sure my tyres were inflated properly (this was tricky to calculate, as the weight of my car tends to fluctuate pretty wildly). I used a foot pump, and now have thighs like footballer Wayne Rooney as a result, but at least I can cancel my gym membership this summer.

Are you still not convinced of the need to drive in an environmentally gentle manner? Well, how about I appeal to your wallets instead of your feelings of guilt regarding the state of the planet. The Department for Transport recently calculated that drivers of commercial diesel vehicles like vans could cut 10% off their fuel bills (about £650 a year), simply by adjusting the way they drive. I can't see the archetypal White Van Man being keen to change his ways for the sake of a load of trees and fluffy bunnies, but a direct impact on the contents of his cash box might just be enough to tip the balance.

The Driving Standards Agency claims that changing your driving habits in this way could save the average driver 1.5 litres of fuel for every 62 miles. For the fluffy bunny lovers - think about this: Drivers who cover 20,000 miles per annum and who change the way they drive could reduce their carbon emissions by a staggering quarter of a tonne PER CAR. How can you refuse?

Go on, break up with your car.

More Interesting Stuff.

The Walking Bus
Why not encourage your local school to cut the numbers of children travelling by car?
http://www.walkingbus.com/
http://www.school-run.org/

Driving Standards Agency
A small statement on the DSA’s commitment to improving driver awareness of environmentally friendly driving techniques
http://www.dsa.gov.uk/Road_safety.asp

Department for Transport
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_susttravel/documents/page/dft_susttravel_611384.hcsp
A list of documents relating to their Sustainable Travel policy

Transport 2000
“New Life for Main Roads” Network
http://www.newlifeformainroads.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=53
Some good links to other sites with details on cutting down your use of your car

Car Sharing schemes
http://www.liftshare.org/
http://www.nationalcarshare.co.uk/
http://www.shareacar.com/

DFT guidelines
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_susttravel/documents/divisionhomepage/035125.hcsp

2008-07-02T13:14:00.002Z

Closer Than You Think - 3 - Quitting The Supermarket Habit

by Laura Capellaro

For many, the idea of giving up supermarket shopping is comparable to giving up toilet paper. However, there has been a marked increase in the number of people who believe that everyone in the UK should have access to safe, nutritious, unadulterated and affordable food; produced locally by an independent, viable industry within a healthy and sustainable environment.

With the recent occurrences of many food-related health scares in Great Britain and abroad, people are now looking more closely at where their food comes from, and how it is produced. The benign, motherly face of most British supermarkets, which has gone unquestioned for two decades now, is looking increasingly worried as shoppers begin to voice their discontent.

But how exactly does one break the habit that is so ingrained in the pattern of your days that you find it hard to remember life as it was before? How do you give up supermarkets?

It is perhaps not as difficult as you might believe (and ask yourself: who it is that has made you believe that supermarkets are an indispensable part of your modern lifestyle? The supermarkets themselves, of course!). I live in Bournemouth, and my own local research has shown me that more and more opportunities now exist in Dorset to get hold of fresh, locally produced food than ever before.

So here’s some ideas on how you could give up Supermarket Shopping. Your own 12-Step Programme.

1. Admit you have a problem, and seek help

This stage happens when you awake one morning to the familiar headache-inducing slap of credit card bill landing on doormat. A brief, bleary-eyed inspection shows line upon line of debits in favour of your preferred supermarket choice. Discarded till receipts litter the floor, crunching underfoot. Crumpled plastic shopping bags flutter accusingly in the breeze. The remains of last night's chicken korma ready-meal gaze balefully at you from the overflowing bin in the kitchen. You need help.

2. Cupboard Love

Have a look in your cupboards (including the bathroom and under the kitchen sink), freezer and fridge. Are there things in there that you have bought but will never, in all honesty, get round to using? Why did you buy them? If there are more than 5 items in your cupboards that you know you will never use, then it seems you are already an athletic participant in the extreme sport of Downhill Impulse Buying. Supermarkets are specially designed to get you hooked on this pastime, and take a great deal of your money for the pleasure of it.

3. What a load of rubbish

Have a look in your rubbish bin. I'm not suggesting that you empty the contents of your wheelie bin onto a tarpaulin in your driveway - although this IS a very effective way of seeing how wasteful you are - but do have a think about the amount of waste you generate - especially food waste. Two recent reports on the BBC here and here claimed that about a third of the food produced for human consumption in the United Kingdom ends up needlessly clogging our already overwrought landfill sites. In financial terms, this represents about £420 per adult per year - quite a considerable amount of money to be tying up in black bin liners.

So can you change your habits to avoid wasting food? What if you gave your children smaller portions? Can you use up leftovers in other recipes? Could portions of cooked food be frozen for an "I-don't-wanna-cook-day" in the future?

4. BELIEVE that you can save money (and time) this way

Most people are convinced that shopping at supermarkets saves money and is convenient, and find it incredibly hard to break away from their conditioned responses to Three-For-Two offers, or managers' specials.

Buying food locally is not as expensive as you might think, either; a regional survey has shown that local food sold at farmers' markets represents very good value for money for the consumer. Four markets and a home delivery service were selected and their prices were compared to equivalent products in the local supermarket. Local food came out as 30-40% cheaper than supermarket prices!

5. A journey of a thousand miles, et cetera...

OK, so you are starting to get that itchy feeling in the ends of your fingers and at the back of your tongue that means you will soon be on your way to the supermarket. At this crucial point in your recovery, you are very vulnerable. It is time to move on to the next Step; try buying just ONE of your everyday essentials from a different source.

For me, it was milk. I needed to contact my local milkman. Briefly I became a hunter-gatherer again, sniffing the pavements, searching for his trail, trying to gauge his habits and finally, with the help of kindly natives (the old lady next door), laying in wait for him, ready to pounce. And what a shock I got!

Milkmen in the United Kingdom have had to adapt or die in the face of vicious competition for grazing rights from huge supermarket chains. The milkman of today bears little or no resemblance to the surly man smoking a shabby roll-up that I remember from my suburban childhood. That creature has evolved into a honed and toned home-delivery MACHINE, able to supply not only a plethora of different types of milk but also everything from frozen sausages to bags of compost to boxes of organic fruit and vegetables (although, as I write, this scheme is still in its infancy and suffering a few initial problems).

6. Get informed, get involved

There are plenty of opportunities to buy food and other supplies locally, if you know where to look. I discovered early on that word of mouth is one of the most efficient ways of finding new sources of good food shopping. Pick up a local food directory from your library, tourist information centre or local council. Look in your local paper. ASK people.

Even of you don't have the time or inclination to grow or make your own food, try and find others who DO. Not just at farmer's markets, but at craft fairs, Christmas shows and summer fetes. The more you dig and delve into the workings of your local community, the more you will benefit in real terms from your interest and commitment.

7. Try a box scheme for organic vegetables

I found that once the bulk of my vegetables were being delivered straight to my door every week, the requirement to visit the supermarket began to diminish rapidly. The unpredictability of the box's contents kept me on my culinary toes, trying vegetables and recipes I would never normally have bought, all fresh and seasonal.

8. Take up cooking again

Dust off those cookbooks; look on-line; scour charity shops and car boot sales; phone your mother; gossip in the bus queue ... start thinking more about what you would like to eat based on the ingredients you have, rather than worrying about how you will find the time to shop for something new. Learning new cooking techniques and developing an interest in new processes could even lead to your having a go at things like jam making and soap making!

9. Take up gardening again

Even if you have no garden to speak of, it is still possible to grow some of your own food - even if it is only window-box herbs and lettuces, or cherry tomatoes on a sunny windowsill, or mushrooms in the garage. Growing even a tiny percentage of your own food not only reduces your need to supermarket shop still further, but also imbues a real sense of achievement.

10. Take up shopping again

Do you really and honestly ENJOY the experience of traipsing around a crowded supermarket every week? You probably wouldn't even be reading this article if that were the case. Try going a whole week without going into a supermarket: imagine yourself on holiday in a strange place where supermarkets do not exist.

11. Consider alternatives

Stopping Supermarket shopping is a cumulative and ongoing process. The more things in your house you can do without, or find alternate sources of, the less often you will need to go to a supermarket.
How about washing balls instead of powder and conditioner? What about a local organic meat producer supplying meat by post or courier?

12. Don't beat yourself up!

It is perfectly possible that you will never be able to truly give up supermarkets and, unlike other addictions, continuing to visit your supermarket on the odd occasion does not constitute a potentially fatal fall from the wagon. I for example, have not been able to find another source for the type of hard Italian cheese that my children like on their pasta and go to the supermarket for that as well as to use the handy machine that sorts your small change for you. My son likes the Postman Pat ride outside the door, too - and there are cash points and recycling facilities in the car park.

There are so many benefits to local food. Shopping at a small local shop or a farmers’ market is a far more sociable and personalised experience than supermarkets can ever compete with. Plus, your health is likely to improve as you eat more food that is fresh; less processed, and not tainted with pesticides or genetically modified ingredients. I feel a certain freedom when I visit Sainsbury's nowadays - when I look back and see how I have gradually managed to overcome the brainwashing, advertising and numerous sneaky psychological strategies they adopt to encourage money out of your hand and into their directors' Christmas bonuses ... nowadays I find myself looking at over priced over packaged and unnecessary products and wondering how I could ever have been so duped.

2008-07-02T13:06:00.003Z

Closer Than You Think - 2 "Testing Times"

by Laura Capellaro

Parents in my daughter’s 2nd-year class at school were called in last week to meet their new teachers. We thought it might be the time when volunteers for the Christmas fair were called for, or nominations for School Governor read out, or yet another round of monetary requests were made. But no. This was the time when the SATs were first discussed with us.

‘Whatever you do,’ said her teacher conspiratorially, ‘don’t talk to your children about these as exams. In fact, don’t mention them at all. We prefer to try and keep them secret from the children at this stage, so that they don’t realise they are being tested. We don’t move them out into the sports hall when the time comes, for example. The testing will be done quietly, as much as possible as part of the child’s normal day, under so-called “classroom” conditions.’

Well, that’s a relief, I thought. The popular press is currently full of sensationalistic reports of 7 year-olds suddenly waking up in the night or puking at the school gates, paralysed with terror at the thought of having to sit exams. There is a now a growing campaign called “Stop the SATs”, launched in June of this year. It is an amalgam of parents and teachers working together to lobby the national government for a revision - or, preferably, a scrapping - of national testing for 7 , 11 and 14 year-olds in this country. Their argument is simple - even simplistic. Testing does not help the children to learn, and it does not help the teachers to teach. Many parents and teachers are united in their concern that the testing causes undue stress for children, and makes the schooling experience a negative one.

Teachers have additional cause for concern. SATs results reflect upon an individual teacher’s ability to do what it is they are paid to do - teach. The campaign to scrap the SATs is being led by the National Union of Teachers, the main teaching trade union. Obviously they would want to get rid of any measures that make their members appear in a bad light. It is in their interests to use their position to whip both parents and - more frighteningly - children, into a panic about the process of testing. Surely if less fuss were made about the tests, people would not pressure their children as much. Extra-curricular tutoring clubs are cashing in gleefully on parent’s concerns, and attendance is eating into children‘s precious free time. Time when children should be winding down, digesting what they have already learnt, or simply playing. Hey - remember that? Playing?

The parents and teachers in the Campaign Against SATs are just as much to blame for children suffering sleepless nights and stomach complaints as they claim the Government has been by introducing the testing in the first place. Where else would children get this notion of hysteria from, if not from their teachers and their parents?

The SAT results are also used to compile league tables of schools so that parents can make a better-informed comparison between local schools - particularly useful in today’s transitory society where families are moving house and school far more often than, say 20 years ago. SAT results give freedom of choice, and ensure that schools that do well are recognised (and hopefully their techniques copied elsewhere) and that failing schools are identified so that measures can be introduced to help.

As with anything to do with education and central Government, there is a flip-side, however. The Government has imposed a ruling whereby a school’s yearly money is cut if its attendance figures drop. But schools that perform badly in the SAT League Tables may suffer a dropping-off of numbers for that very reason. If they are then faced with having to cut numbers of staff and purchasing of equipment, surely this will only compound the problem?

So what else can be done to help our children? Studies conducted as long ago as 1968 consistently show that for children to do well at school - any school - parental involvement is crucial. The UK Charity, Campaign for Learning, was created in November 1997 with the sole purpose of championing the cause for lifelong learning. Recently they have highlighted research that shows the enormous value of parental involvement on the educational achievement of the child - particularly at primary level. The degree of help and support a child receives at home from his or her parents has an even greater effect on their achievement than social background or choice of school.

A study by Professor Charles Desforges has shown that where parents get actively interested and involved in with their children’s education at home, one sees "a significant positive effect on children's achievement, even after all other factors have been taken out of the equation".

So, maybe it is the parents who could do with a little out-of-school learning. Many in my generation and even immediate circle of friends do not feel confident about the idea of “learning” with their children. Perhaps they have suffered a negative experience in their own school days, which has put them off. But learning at home could mean anything - sitting down with a family photograph album and talking together about the pictures and what they show rather than a half-hour on the PlayStation, or a trip to the local museum rather than McDonalds, or to the library for Story Time rather than another cartoon on the TV. Many families feel daunted by the prospect of trying out such activities together.

As the government struggles to hit some of its key test and exam targets, there is one obvious way they could do more to boost standards: target the parents, not just the schools.

2008-07-02T12:53:00.004Z

Closer Than You Think - 1

By Laura Capellaro

As a mother of two small children I can often be found, gazing abstractly into the remnants of cold cup of tea, pondering questions of universal importance about my children's future.

What legacy would I like to be able to leave them? Apart from the obvious dreams about giving them a financial crank-start - driving lessons, a university education, maybe even a deposit on somewhere to live - there are moral and ethical considerations too; ideas I know I have to pass on about good manners, friendship, and hard work.

As I write this, I am sitting in a supermarket café, gazing abstractly into the remnants of a cold cup of tea, scribbling on a paper towel with a pen I found at the bottom of my capacious handbag. A surreptitious glance round at my fellow diners gives me with a sinking feeling, as I see plenty of evidence for the new trend in Great Britain - copied, as ever, from the United States. Obesity.

It is a relatively new trend, but one that seems set to stay. During the Second World War, the United Kingdom soon discovered that it was unable to feed itself. We relied heavily on imported food, from the United States amongst others. The Germans knew this and persistently attacked supply ships, hoping to starve the British into submission. The ploy was threatening to work, until the British Government introduced food rationing in January 1940 (in point of fact it was not only food that was rationed but many other commodities as well, including fuel and clothing).

The Ministry of Food was created, in order to research and disseminate information on how people could best feed themselves under these reduced circumstances.

Ironically, the effect of this was to make the country nutritionally far healthier than it had been for decades. Great stock was put on the importance of home-grown vegetables. Encouraged by the new 'Dig For Victory!' campaign, people ploughed up their front and back gardens and took to growing their own fruit and vegetables instead of petunias, roses and lavender. Public parks, playing fields and other open spaces were similarly used. This sudden emphasis on fresh, seasonal, locally grown food had tremendous health benefits for the population.

Rationing continued in this country until 1954 - nine whole years after the war had finished. Sugar, salt, fat, tobacco and alcohol consumption was greatly reduced, with all the attendant health benefits.

Nowadays by contrast all that good work seems to have been largely forgotten. Working hours in the United Kingdom are now longer than anywhere else in Europe and the steady gravitation towards pre-processed convenience food is having a detrimental effect on the nation's health. Obesity, allergies, heart disease and hypertension (high blood pressure) are all on the increase. Not just in adults, but in children as well. The food problem is further compounded by increased mechanisation and the use of technology, inflicting a more sedentary lifestyle on all of us.

Does this sound familiar to you in the United States? Ah - we are closer than you think.

I say “inflicting a more sedentary lifestyle” as if we are powerless to do anything about it. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, many Brits are now concerned enough about the threat to health posed by industrial farming techniques, processed food and genetically modified ingredients, that there has been a sudden revival - small, but growing - of interest in growing one’s own food. Since Mediaeval times small parcels of land called Allotments have been parcelled out by local government to individuals for the express purpose of growing one’s own food. I know from my own experience that they require a lot of time and hard work and are normally the domain of the retired classes, but nevertheless more and more younger people are becoming interested. Not only are there obvious benefits - financial as well as health-wise - in growing one’s own food, but the extra exercise, sunshine, fresh air and friendships cultured alongside the tomatoes and the onions are also conducive to good mental as well as physical health. This nation was once called a Nation of Shopkeepers. Now we are fast becoming a Nation of Gardeners.

Nationally, the backlash against processed food is beginning to bite. The supermarket I am sitting in now is one of the market leaders in this country and I have been watching how they respond to the new "anti-trend" with a mixture of cynicism and wry amusement. They are back-pedalling furiously, promoting their range of organic vegetables and "Be Good To Yourself!" range of pre-packaged, ready-to-nuke TV dinners. These articles are, of course, a good 25% more expensive than if you simply bought the raw ingredients and made the food yourself.

The meteoric rise of Health Clubs and Gyms is due to shrewd business people cashing in on the new hysteria. Business meetings that used to be held in high-calorie French restaurants in London's West End, now take place over a non-fat latte the horribly high-priced eating outlets that one invariably finds in horribly high-priced private gymnasia. There is so much money to be made, from machines for a hundred different exercises that you could quite easily do yourself at home with a kitchen chair and a skipping rope.

People have come to believe that they have not TIME in which to look after themselves properly. They buy the convenience version of health, instead. They quickly discover that they have to spend even more time working in order to pay for all this convenience, and the vicious circle is formed.

I drink my cold tea without thinking and grimace. My children munch sullenly on their Salt’n’Vinegar crisps. Increasingly I am beginning to realise that there is something else I need to teach them, even at the tender ages of 6 and 2. That is how to feed themselves correctly, and to look after their little bodies. In some ways I feel this might be the best legacy of all.

2008-06-14T08:39:00.000Z

I am in la-la land, seduced by the belief that the only person who either COULD or WOULD post this film is, in fact, Vincent himself.

**wibble**