Happily Imperfect 2018

Master of Suspense

Vertigo is acknowledged by many to be not only Alfred Hitchcock’s best work but one of the greatest movies of all time. It is, and has been since I first viewed it, in my top 5 (usually in first or second place). The sense of creepy weirdness, the growing tension as Scotty pursues a vision of a woman he once knew, coupled with the now legendary reverse zoom shot to impart the very sense of Vertigo that ties the whole slightly unsettling movie together, I have seen it far too many times yet it never feels old.

Both lead actors, as many did back then, tread the line of ham acting at times but if you look past that (and the obvious age gap between lead male and lead female, again a common weird theme that Hollywood continues to perpetuate) I think they both do well to convey two sides of the same coin, both knowing deep down that something isn’t right with what is going on, but both so flawed that they can’t NOT be a part of it, can’t stop it playing out. It’s that very human element of the characters, the twisting of normality into something odd which becomes their new normal, that I find so appealling, so real, so identifiable.

How often have you looked back at a situation you were in the middle of and wondered, how did I end up there? It’s that aspect of humanity that always fascinates me, how we can allow ourselves to, increment by increment, change our world view and accept was is in front us as ‘normal’; The Stanford Prison Experiment can be held up as an extreme example.

It’s this fascination that pulls me back to Vertigo, time and time again I find myself gripped and drawn in to the angst and continued sense of foreboding that bumbles along in the background. Whilst not a scary thriller, I find the slightly off-kilter nature of it all endlessly fascinating; a trait it shares with The Shining (check out the documentary Room 237 for more details on the weirdness that is The Outlook Hotel). That sense of ‘not normal’ is something that, given I haven’t exactly lived a ‘normal/traditional’ life in some ways, maybe makes it easier for me to accept people acting in ways that look odd from the outside yet will likely feel very natural to those living in those moments day to day.

Hitchcock had many flaws as a director, and as a human being, but when he got things right the results are wonderful and his choice of stories are always a big part of that. Add in his talent for visual flair, and a seemingly natural inclination to iconic scenes (played out to grand effect in North by Northwest). His attention to the small moments and how he leans on the details of the performances of his actors, skills learned from his early days in the (silent) movie business help elevate the movie to something more than the sum of its parts and, I believe, earn it the right to be at the top of cinematic pile.

Yet with all that ability to give us grand vistas and sweeping broad themes when Hitchcock started to deliberately limit the scope of his visions and the scale of his sets, think Lifeboat or the ‘one-shot’ Rope, is where he maybe plays best and all of the lessons learned in both styles of movie culminated in 1954 with the sumptuously performed, shot and directed Rear Window.

The setting and backstory is key to helping narrow the constraints of what, and where, things can happen and this in turn lets the actors carry the movie; James Stewart gives his usually solid performance and is the perfect lens for the viewer, the interplay between Jeff and Lisa (Grace Kelly) are light and realistic and the scene stealing asides by Stella (Thelma Ritter) bring this claustrophobic masterpiece to life, seating it in the best type of ‘everyman’ conspiracies that Hitch loved so much.

After Rear Window, Hitchcock moved up and out again culminating in the aforementioned, iconically scened, North by Northwest before returning to the confines of the Bates Motel… and we all know how that ended up.

And so it turns out that my favourite Hitchcock movie is one I often overlook yet is the most Hitchcockian of them all. A nice twist on a straightforward story, some excellent acting, humour, thrills, and of course a sight of the portly Sir Alfred himself (26 minutes in if you want to check). And you can’t really ever go wrong with Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly, can you.

Rear Window is probably the first clever movie I ever watched. It was a world away from his earlier movies with actors moving from scene to scene, location to location, which allowed us a pause, a breathing point during those transitions. His other movies largely have story twists to carry the entire movie (Dial M for Murder is not awash with wonderful performances) but the confines of the apartment blocks in Rear Window forces Hitchcock to adapt and switch styles, once the action starts there is no escape, like Jeff we cannot get away to a different place, we are stuck and have to watch it all unfolded, rapt and stuck on the edge of our seats.

I’m currently re-watching the rest of his movies, and whilst I struggle with the representation of women in all of them – you need only look at Tippi Hedren as an example – but throughout them all is a deftness of camera work and scene management, and a focus on the story above all. Hitch knew how to build tension, how to allow gaps, when to make us laugh, when to make us relax, and embraced all aspects of movie-making as part of a whole experience.

In his wake Spielberg was the next, most obvious, example of a true master of the cinematic experience, building visuals, sounds and knowing that it was just as important NOT to show the viewer details (how many times do you actually see the shark in Jaws?). Even in Hitchcocks earliest films, which were a little too keen to make sure the audience was following along, there is a tension, a knowing nod to the audience that whilst you might know some of the things that are going on, you don’t know everything.

I watch a lot of movies and most of the best examples, or at least most of my favourites, of the genre share some common traits; they are well shot with each frame telling its own part of the story, the directing is tight enough without suffocating the action and muting the story, and you are brought along on the journey with enough detail to enlighten but not so much as to remove the intrigue. That all adds up and helps me suspend my belief and buy-in to the world the movie inhabits. Hitchcock understood that this was key to get audiences to want to watch his movies.

One of the many phrases associated with Hitchcock is “Master of Suspense”, and given the breadth and depth of his work it’s not hard to understand why.

The big question is what to watch next, The Birds? Psycho? or Dial M for Murder?

May 17, 2018

Vinyl is dead, long live vinyl

How do you pronounce it? Vahyn-l? Vīnĭl?

The living room in my childhood home had a big wide bay window. Standing on either side of the windows were two tall white bookcases my Dad built. They had a deeper base section to house the record player and my parents combined record collection; my Mum was a screaming Beatles fan in her youth, my Dad tended towards folk, but both met in the middle ground of singer songwriters and rock bands.

My parents are both musical, Mum played the piano, Dad the guitar and banjo, both sang in choirs and my Dad still performs at the Royal Concert Hall. Music was a constant part of my upbringing and their record collection was a source of fascination and as I look back on music as part of my childhood it’s clear that it holds the key to my musical proclivities.

Somewhere in that collection was an album with an oddly hypnotic cover. I was around 9 or 10 years old when I came across it, around about the time I was starting to discover my own tastes. Top of the Pops was must-see TV, a radio a necessity, and later a tape deck so the Top 40 could be recorded and played over and over. Yet that album, and the subsequent discovery of other albums by this ‘old’ band called Queen (the joys of the local library music section), was one that would stick with me through the years. From the opening Arabic call it offers piano driven ballads, upbeat rock tracks and still one of my favourite Queen tracks of all time, Fat Bottomed Girls (ohhh those opening harmonies).

That said, music is always about fashion and 9 year old Gordon was doing his very best to ‘fit in’ although I always seemed to naturally veer a little off the beaten track. The first LP I bought was Adam & The Ants, Friend or Foe. It was 1982 and Goody Two Shoes was high in the charts. Yet it was the track A Man Called Marco that grabbed my ear, all minor keys, jangling guitar and in contrast to the new romantic pop the rest of the album offers it gave me an entirely ‘other’ musical landscape to explore.

For a while I collected LPs like everyone else until along came Compact Discs. Tiny silver discs you could smother in jam and they’d still play (no, they didn’t demonstrate that on Tomorrows World, take a look for yourself). My Dad has always been a bit of a tech gadget nut, the acorn didn’t fall all that far, and so we had a CD player pretty early on. The player came with a couple of discs as part of some promotion or another, one of which was Live at Marquee which featured a guitar shredding, monster riff of a track by some American dude called Jimi Hendrix who was singing about a Purple Haze and, whilst I didn’t understand what the heck he was going on about, I sure as hell knew that this noise was something I wanted more of. And I wanted it as loud as possible.

And then it was 1984. The year started with talk of Orwell and Big Brother and then along came a band I already knew, with a new album which gave me exactly some of the noise I was craving. Radio GaGa rightly got the headlines, but it was Hammer To Fall and Tear It Up that continued my path towards rock. Fast forward another few years and I’d rattled through early Iron Maiden, Saxon, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and the like, switching my allegiance between vinyl and CD depending on what I could get my hands on.

A few years later takes you to the moment when I walked into the kitchen to the sight of my Dad washing the dishes to the accompaniment of Appetite for Destruction (on cassette tap I should point out). All the kids at his school were talking about it so he thought he’d give it a listen. I quickly snaffled it for myself.

My own CD player soon arrived, a mini-stereo. Just in time for Rage Against the Machine, and whilst the first track I played on it was The Silencers Painted Moon, Killing in the Name Of, was the one that got the “turn that down” shout from downstairs… (I slammed my door and turned it up in protest).

A few years after that, Smells Like Teen Spirit posted on my bedroom wall and a re-introduction to vinyl at Hospital Radio Lennox. 1000 LPs and 4000-odd singles lined the shelves, with regular additions every week. A mixing desk, microphones, even broadcasting live from the Balloch Highland Games (from a caravan, also known as our outside broadcast unit).

DJs never really left vinyl and whilst CDs were useful at times, the joy of getting that crossfade between tracks just right, teasing in the few opening bars before dropping THAT track that always got people dancing. To help raise funds for the hospital radio I used to DJ at parties (think local bowling greens, Aunties and Uncles getting their groove on) and over time you got to know what would work, disco classics for the 40th birthdays, 2 Unlimited for the kids.

Of course let’s not forget the humble cassette tape which was the format for the majority of my music listening through my teenage years. A double tape deck at home allowed for mixtapes, a walkman (my first Boots own brand still the best) gave me freedom to take my music with me everywhere. A habit that persists to this day.

I moved away from vinyl in those years and my CD collection grew and grew; the first CD I ever bought was Bananarama: Greatest Hits (1988), the last was Foo Fighters Wasting Light (2011). Somewhere in the latter half of those 23 years the ‘mobile’ part of my listening habits moved to mini-discs; I had a mini-disc component in my stereo, a personal player, and even a mini-disc player in the car (where it was an obvious upgrade over cassette tape). Alas it never really took off and I was left with a betamax solution in a VHS world. RIP Mini-disc.

Let’s speed things up, it’s 2018 and we’ve zipped on past MP3s, Winamp and Napster and I now stream all my music from the cloud. I have one only device capable of playing CDs in my home (a Playstation) and I’m not even sure if my car has a CD player as I just connect my phone via bluetooth, or listen to (DAB) radio. The future is here and it’s online, bye bye physical manifestations of media!

I should at this point mention that up until last year I still owned a record player and when my parents moved out of the family home their depleted vinyl collection came to me. I spent a few wonderful weeks reliving my childhood through Abbey Road, Andy Williams, Simon & Garfunkel and Queen. I revisited my own LPs – Deacon Blue, Martin Stephenson & The Daintees, Simple Minds – and let the nostalgia wash over me. Such great times and memories to be had.

The scratchy sound on the older Beatles albums, all recorded in Mono, the remembered skip part way through Bridge over Troubled Waters, to my first ever gig to the strains of Belfast Child.

Kadunk, kadunk, kadunk. Time to flip the record over for side 2.

Kadunk, kadunk, kadunk. Flip the record over.

Kadunk, kad… ok that’s enough of that.

I had forgotten the downside to vinyl.

Unless you are playing through a stack of singles (who else had a ‘drop arm’ on their record player?) it gets a little monotonous flipping sides and whilst that can some churlish and, I think, for some it is entirely the point, a way to slow down and be ‘part of’ the listening experience for me it starts to getting mildly annoying.

A long bath is out of the question, kadunk, kadunk, kadunk. Some music to accompany washing up? Kadunk, kadunk, kadunk. Want some background music whilst you tidy up a couple of rooms… you get the picture.

That veneer of nostalgia soon faded, I put the records away and returned to Spotify. I threw together a quick playlist to replicate the songs I’d been playing on vinyl and after a couple of (uninterrupted playback) hours it struck me that the physical manifestation of the albums are not where my memories are stored, I can access the same memories, same emotions just by hearing the music.

It will transport me to the same time and space – The Heat Is On is the drive to my grandparents in Rutherglen – regardless of format. With that mindset I suddenly had a few boxes of vinyl that were, essentially, worthless to me.

So I got rid of them.

I passed a selection to someone who I knew would appreciate them and the rest went to the charity shop. I have no emotional attachment to the pressed black circles other than a mild case of ‘things were better in my day’ nostalgia. My attachment is to the tracks, the music and the performances they held, music and performances which are readily available in other formats, other formats which are decidely less hassle to use.

Editors Note: He’s steering clear of any discussion about fidelity on purpose.

It was World Vinyl Day recently (technically Record Store Day but that just makes me think of the Guinness Book, Norris McWhirter, Roy Castle…) and given the queues outside the record stores it’s safe to say that vinyl is not dead. But why?

I ponder this fully aware that I’m challenging the progress of technology in another area (books) by resorting to paperbacks instead of my Kindle…

The very thing that ends up annoying me about vinyl is perhaps the very reason to embrace it all the more. I mean sure every 20 mins or so you have to get up, or stop doing whatever your doing, to flip the damn thing over but in our always-on hyper-connected world, is that such an onerous task? Is it so hard to tear ourselves away from our screens for those few seconds?

I’ve no doubt there is likely an element of rose-tinted viewing when some people, particularly of my generation, look back at their experiences of vinyl. Yet looking at the people in the record stores today and you’ll find the usual mish-mash of ages, so it can’t all be that.

Putting aside those whose argument is seated in fidelity (hey, I wrote that Editors note ya know!) is this, to coin a phrase from James Murphy, simply “borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties” *, a harking back to something deemed to be somehow better without any substance to that argument?

I have no idea what the real answer is and no doubt there isn’t AN answer at all. I’m sticking to my take, vinyl is popular because it’s a way of taking some ownership of your time. In the fight against social media and the tiny electronic miracles we keep in our pocket, it seems that an ageing non-digital format, one that is prone to damage and can only do one thing at a time, is managing holding its own.

May 8, 2018

Time for me

The house I grew up wasn’t far from a large roundabout, you could see it from where I sat at my desk in front of the bedroom window. I used to sit there in the evenings and watch the cars driving up and down the hill, round and round that roundabout.

Of course I wasn’t sitting there with the express purpose of watching cars; I was supposed to be there to do my homework or study for exams but I think it was an important time for me to properly learn the art of procrastination, and I would like to point out just how well that particular skill has served me over the years!

Evening after evening I’d sit there and pretty soon I could recognise a car from the shape of the headlights as they came down the hill towards me, or the rear light cluster as they disappeared from view.

Sierra, Granada, Golf, Escort, Astra, Fiesta, Corsa, Fiesta, Astra, Corsa, Civic, Peugeot 306…

It was a simple distraction yet it was so totally engrossing that I could lose a whole hour just sitting watching cars drive round and round the roundabout, a gentle way to relax whilst completely avoiding what I should’ve been doing and one of a few ways I’d spend my ‘me time’.

Due to the age gap between me and my sister, I spent a lot of my younger years as essentially an only child. I was 7 1/2 when she was born and that difference in our ages always meant we were at different schools, different stages of our lives as we grew up. As such, I was used to spending time on my own, lost in my imagination, creating my own worlds. It’s fair to say I was, and still can be, a bit of a daydreamer.

As I got older those moments moved from my own imagination to the imagination of others as I discovered the joy of books and the wonder of the silver screen. Pivotal moments in each revolve around the same story; the novel written by Arthur C. Clarke that was then adaptated for film by Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I read the novel when I was 12 and it was a step up from anything I’d ever read before. I’d already started into Sc-fi with Nicholas Fisks Trillions, a book aimed at children, and descending into the hyper-described world that Arthur C. Clarke created was like walking through the door of the Tardis. It lead me to start exploring ‘older’ books and I was lucky that my father was a voracious reader so there were plenty of books to choose from. Next up was an author called Richard Bachman who also has had some of his stories adapt into movies (The Running Man the most prominent under that pseudonym, but you know him better as Stephen King…).

As for 2001 the movie, I can’t remember exactly when I first saw it but it feels like it was only a couple of years later. I used to watch old movies with my Mum, the old Hollywood Classics with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, the MGM musicals and the like. My Dad took me to the cinema to see E.T. when I was 9, a rare outing, and I have vague memories of being taken to see The Empire Strikes Back around the same time. Both movies are classics but are very mainstream, 2001 was an entirely other type of thing and my first glimpse into the real power of cinematography to present something beautiful, esoteric, and challenging.

In the intervening years, as more and more ways to distract myself became available – hello internet, hello social media, hello smartphone! – I managed to lose the ability to sit quietly by myself and just let time pass. The ability to be ‘always on’ and ‘always busy and productive’ meant I didn’t really notice this slow change of how I spend my time evolving; I guess it’s hard to notice the absence of something you weren’t really aware of in the first place, at least I certainly wasn’t aware of the value of such ‘me time’ activities.

In more recent years and as a direct result of all that decluttering and simplifying stuff I’ve been harping on about here for the last few months, I have more time available and that in turn has started me thinking about how I spend it, what values I attach to both the time/space and the activities I fill them with.

I was chatting to a friend the other day and she mentioned that she’d considered seeing if I was free last Sunday afternoon but she didn’t ask because “you are always busy”. I responded to that honestly and said that she was always welcome to ask but that sometimes I might say yes, or sometimes I might say no even if I’ve nothing really planned.

I didn’t really think about what I saying to her at the time, it just came tumbling out but I realised that I’ve started to be more protective of ‘me time’ as I now see how valuable and needed it is. This isn’t about not wanting to spend time with my friend, but about making sure that the next time we hang out I’ll be in a better, happier place (and hopefully a better friend because of it).

I didn’t feel guilty. I didn’t feel like I was failing to meet her expectation of me. I didn’t feel bad for saying it. It was factual, honest and open, and was the right thing to say at that time.

I think a lot of us can give ourselves far too hard a time if we choose to be alone for a while, or turn down an invitation because you’ve already got a lot going on. I love socialising, I love going out, but I also know that sometimes I need to say no and just stay in and let my spoons* recharge.

Despite the gigs and events that litter my calendar, regardless of evenings spent catching up with friends, meals out, family visits and the like, I’m much more conscious to carve out time for me. It’s not always easy as it means saying no, and the flipside is that having TOO much time on my own isn’t all that great either. The real kicker is trying to figure out when I will need more or less of either, as that changes week to week (day to day at times!).

I’m also trying to use my ‘me time’ better, and I’ve been returning to those activities that I now see have additional benefits. Sure I could put on the TV and watch some mind numbingly dull soap whilst endlessly checking social media but I know that I’ll just get bored. More and more these days I’ll use that time to read a book, or watch a movie or documentary, and in the last few weeks it’s also meant time to re-learn how to play piano (which is going much better than I expected).

It’s not always been this way of course, looking back I know I have a tendency to put others first to my own detriment, and it’s taken me some time to get to where I am today, it

Telling someone in your life that ‘I need some me time’ is not selfish, not a bad thing, and definitely should be viewed (by all parties if possible) as a positive choice. As the cliche says ‘those that matter won’t mind, and those that mind don’t matter’**. I am very lucky to have friends and family that know and respect that decision. I don’t use it often because I am careful to keep a day or so here and there to myself anyway – the benefit of being old is that I know I have to do that now – and I never use ‘me time’ as an excuse NOT to go out and have fun with all my awesome friends and acquaintances (and those random strangers, except for that guy that said he might stab me…) no matter how tempting it can be after a long week.

Some days you need to push yourself – Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead? – and some days you need to take care of yourself. Thankfully the taboo that is mental health is starting to shrink, it’s getting easier to be honest and most importantly unashamed when you are making decisions that are good for you and you alone.

* very aware I am abusing the notion of spoons being transferable but they kinda are for me, but only because I’m lucky enough to currently be living without any major mental or physical health issues or disabilities.

** Full quote is “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” Bernard M. Baruch

May 3, 2018

Finding the glimmers

As a child of the 70s our future was bright, so bright we had to wear shades. It was full of rockets and space exploration as the buzz of the moon landing continued to pervade my childhood years, spurned on by Star Wars and the promise of galaxies far far away…

It’s easy to question where our jetpacks are, why I’m not eating meals in pill form, and what ever became of space elevators anyway? We had dreams and hopes and aspirations all of which were to be manifest in many wonderous objects that would impact our daily lives.

It makes me wonder though, what do the youth of today aspire to? What do they dream for their future? Is the pinnacle of achievement now to be famous? Where are the inventors and dreamers? For all his haters, is Elon Musk really the leading light, the JFK of our time with a Mars-shot mission?

Or is it just too hard to dream anymore? Are our hopes pulled down to earth by the constant barrage of reality, writ large at every turn, unescapable horrors and tragedy abound.

The news delivers the usual stories of turmoil and hatred, death and destruction. Social media amplifies the worst aspects and our always on society ripples and rears up in reaction. Peer past the headlines and the future is laid bare, Atwood and Orwell nod wisely from the sidelines.

Russian cyber terrorists turn off the power to a city block. American journalists are chided from on high. Governments form around power and control, serving themselves and not the people. Brexit, Trump, ISIS, cyber-warfare. Anti anti anti.

Money the root of all, absolutely corrupting power, over-inflated egos target the disenfranchised, divide and divide. Them against us.

It’s hard to look away. Cars crashing over and over, the video loops, we stare and stare, we are numb, we are seemingly ineffective. Protest all you want, nothing will change. We are the endlessly silent majority, powerless against the feckless thugs that rule the world.

Bleak. Desolate times.

How can we dream?

How do we combat this endless, relentless, stomping down?

Can we push back? Can we retrace our steps and find a different way?

What are we missing as the world spins in a maelstrom of bedlam?

When all around seems so so dark it can be hard to find those small moments of beauty, of compassion, of love.

But they are there and the more light we shine on them the brighter they become. A smile between strangers, a flower between the paving stones, a shard of sunlight between the buildings, these things are timeless and can’t be captured by a glowing screen. Look around.

Look for the glimmers. They are always there. Sometimes they are hidden and you need to seek them out. Sometimes they are there in plain view if only you choose to see. Sometimes they make you stop, a slap in the face, the wakeup.

Beauty exists.

Love is real.

Compassion and care are the quietest noises but can build and build to a cacophony, a soaring roar of the masses that will push back. Me too, they said, and so it was. What’s next?

Raise them up, these wonderful moments. Elevate and amplify. Stand behind them. Stand shoulder to shoulder. Stand firm.

They are always there.

These magical moments of beauty and wonder.

The glimmers.

April 24, 2018

No such thing as over sharing

I’ve only ever taken one shower with my clothes on.

I was alone at the time and can still remember the sensations as my t-shirt started clinging to me, my jeans growing heavy and cold on my legs. I was drunk, had just thrown up then crawled into the bath and turned the shower tap on. I lay there as the water fell on me and I cried. My wife had (rightly) just left me and gone back to Scotland, I was alone and in the early grips of the darkest days of my depression.

I’m not sure why I turned the shower on, perhaps a memory from a movie scene was my inspiration, yet looking back it all seems a bit emo-angsty and overly dramatic. At the time I think I was just hoping to feel something other than emptiness but it’s a hazy memory at best but I don’t think that should detract from the reason why I just shared that story in the first place.

I’ve shared a lot of things about me on this blog. Some would say too much at times but, as I’ve said before, this blog is not all of me. Even the most personal posts exclude some details; sometimes that is due to embarassment, sometimes to protect others, sometimes because it just didn’t feel right to share (or it would’ve detracted from what I was trying to write), sometimes because it’s can be hard to share things with complete honesty, and sometimes because I don’t really know the people reading it and, to be blunt, you haven’t earned my trust.

As an example, take that opening paragraph. There is much more to that story, much more to the before and after of that moment, but my point isn’t to lay out my life in fine detail its just to lay out the sense of a moment, just to give something to say ‘I’ve been there too’ to anyone who reads it, after all you don’t share a map when you come back from a holiday, just the best snapshots (do I win the worst analogy award for that??).

I’ve written about my depression in the past, in fact the 20 year anniversary of that post is later this year. When I wrote it I wasn’t even sure I would publish it but I’m glad I did, not just because it helped me process things but because it also helped a couple of other people who emailed me at the time to say thank you. Before that I hadn’t even thought about what I was sharing nor that it might actually be helpful to someone else.

And here’s the thing about mental health issues. Everyone has them. EVERYONE. Even if you don’t want to acknowledge it within yourself, there is probably something going on somewhere, a disquiet or unease, even just that low level feeling of ‘I’ve HAD IT with people today’. It may manifest itself in other ways, like my more recent feeling of being a bit stuck that sent me back to counselling. That wasn’t about depression, but was mostly definitely something that was affecting my mental health and I’m so glad I got some help with it. I spoke to my closest friends and family about it, and they were all supportive and, ultimately, it teased out some stories from them as well about their own mental health.

Everyone has mental health issues of some sort.

Everyone.

Many people can get through entire working days, weeks even, without anyone knowing what is really going on in their heads. Like many other kinds of illness mental health issues can be completely invisible. Ask any of the colleagues I worked with during that time in my life, 20 years ago, and I doubt they’d have known; I didn’t miss a days work and was my usual sarcastic self the entire time. They didn’t know about the lay-by on the way home I’d often stop at because I realised I was seriously considering crashing my car on purpose, they didn’t know about the late nights lying in the dark and wondering if anyone would really miss me if I was no longer around.

More recently I wrote about the loneliness of Sunday mornings and had a couple of people contact me to say I had struck a chord and that they felt that way too. They thanked me for sharing it, after all a problem shared is a problem halved (well, shared again at least) and, again, it struck me that sharing MORE is a good thing.

And that is one of the reasons I wrote about, and will continue to write about these things. The stigma around mental health is loosening but, as with most of these things, it’ll take time to change and I think the more people who share their own stories, the quicker it’ll happen.

As I get older and continue to figure out (and challenge) who I am, the further away those dark days of my depression seem. I’m lucky that these days my worst ‘down days’ are probably no more than a few hours of feeling maudlin. There is no real rhyme or reason to them, Sunday mornings excluded, but I’ve learned when to accept them and let myself wallow a little (but not too much).

Sometimes it’s ok to give in for a little bit, have a cry, eat some chocolate, hide from the world under a blanket, whatever works for you.

As I age I find my darker thoughts turning to my future. When will I be able to afford to retire? When I’m very old, if I’m still single, what happens if I fall and can’t get up? Will I find someone to share Sunday mornings with again? Do I really want to find someone to live with when I am old? Ohhh how my brain so easily picks up on the smallest thought, the tiniest concern, and quickly nurtures it until it grows large enough to block out the sun.

It turns out the black cloud is never all that far away.

Sharing these moments of my life on this blog, publically, is not something I do lightly. I’m aware they may be triggering for some people, I’m aware that some people will think less of me for doing so, but I’m also aware that sharing these thoughts, no matter how little they may relate to the lives of others means that now and then someone who does read them may feel a little less alone, a little less broken, a little more hopeful that they too can get through things.

When I started this blog I wrote about topical things, nonsense things, things that zipped by me on the ever growing internet. I spent time digging around in the Yahoo directories or reading other weblogs as I found them. I wrote about things I was doing, about events in my life, movies I’d watched. For a while it was more diary than blog, but for a long time now this is place where I write to think. I don’t publish all of it but sometimes when I’m in the midst of writing a post I’ll realise that maybe, just maybe, it might be beneficial to others to read that someone else is going through something similar.

We are all human, we all have foibles and faults. We all carry with us many demons of differing size and emotion. We are imperfect.

A few days after I took that shower I managed to summon up the courage to talk to my doctor. I told her I was feeling depressed, that my life seemed to be stuck behind a glass wall where the sounds and colours and connections were muted. A couple of weeks later I had my first counselling session.

To this day I’ve never taken another shower with my clothes on.

April 19, 2018

Podcast: Distraction Pieces

Hosted by Scroobius Pip, this weekly podcast is always, ALWAYS, interesting. Not only because the host is a smart guy but because he manages to put his guests at ease no matter how dark or deep the topic. He’s as adept at bringing out moments of humour and humanity as he is treading the fine lines of discussions around, for example, addiction.

And what a mixed bag of guests. Refreshingly, for every episode I’ve listened to so far, each guest realises this is a conversation about wider topics and no-one appears to be selling their latest product or pushing a certain storyline. Yes, it’s an interview, but it’s more a frank exchange of ideas and thoughts between intelligent, erudite, people.

Some examples to peruse:

You can subscribe to future episodes using this RSS Link.

April 12, 2018