In The Firing Line

As a rule I don’t do reality TV shows.

As a rule I don’t – if I have any choice about it – do reality though being a hyper-cautious moral wuss my flights of escapism are normally fuelled by books and cinema rather than Charlie or H. My highs might only be literary or cinematic but at least they don’t involve kidney failure or brain damage. That said I have got the Withnail & I boxed set on order and there’s always the possibility of playing the traditional 'Withnail & I drinking game' whilst watching it.

The only reality show I do do is The Apprentice. And paradoxically it probably appeals so much because it is so not real.

The premise is real. The tasks are real(ish). The prize is real (though I imagine it to be something of a poisoned chalice).

The applicants are not. They are without fail the biggest bunch of fakers and self-deluded charlatans ever to dissemble across the face of the earth. And they get more fake each year.

Overblown. Pompous. Constantly self-centredly orgasming over their own self-directed, egocentric hyperbole. Totally blind to the way they willingly sacrifice what little shred of dignity they may possess on the televised altar of their own mistaken self-belief that they are “the one”. I utterly loathe them.

But I utterly love loathing them.

And that’s why I watch.

In a real sense The Apprentice is educational. This is how you do not do business. This is how you do not succeed. The dinosaurs and the outmoded concepts that still abound in this grubby little mercantile world are both amazing and appalling. In the first week the leader of the girl’s team urged her female associates to wear heels and a short skirt as it would help them all sell more product. A woman. A woman said this to other women. And could not understand why they objected. I would have loved her to suggest a shorter skirt to Karen Brady. Actually, sod that, I would have loved her to suggest it to Nick Hewer.

Nick is great. His expression couldn't look more sour if he was sucking a Haribo’s Tangfastic that had been soaked in vinegar from Craig Revel Horwood’s left armpit.

Ultimately though the true draw of the show is Sir Alan Sugar. I won’t pretend to like him. But compared to the applicants he’s the lesser of two evils. My enemy’s enemy is my friend, etc. And Sir Alan is certainly no friend to the contestants.

They’ve introduced a new schtick into this current series. Nearly twice the number of combatants but the potential for multiple firings in each show. It sounds like something out of a hard-core porn movie - e.g. last week Sir Alan dispatched 2 twats in one go. One before he'd even made it to the final boardroom stand-off. It’s beautiful; seeing all these plastically confident god-complexes crumble with the sudden realization that Sir Alan could finger them all out of the running at any possible moment.

And it’s good for them too. It humanises them. It strips away their self-erected façade of impervious eternally-ensured victory. Seeing them tramp away dejectedly with their Gucci luggage trolleys we finally get to see the disappointed (and disappointing) little children at heart that, without fail, they all secretly are.

But Sir Alan doesn’t go far enough. I want to see them tortured mercilessly with a constant weight of stress... I want to see them weeping snottily beneath a tonne-heavy sword of Damoclesiastic anxiety suspended by the merest spider’s web of Sir Alan's diminutive mercy... Psychologically waterboarded with the spectre of Sir Alan suddenly appearing at any given moment to kick them off the show with his career-ending fingerpoint of shame. When the telephone rings at the delegate's house at the start of the show to tell them where the next task is to take place I want Sir Alan to suddenly come onto the line and randomly fire whatever pole-greaser has got to the phone first to answer it. When they’re in the middle of Camden Town selling moody spuds from an Amstrad owned market stall I want Sir Alan to appear in the queue in a cloth cap and a Frank Spencer overcoat to hurl their Maris Piper’s back into their faces and tell them they’ve had their chips and the taxi is waiting in the gutter to take them back home to Crapchester. And most delicious of all, I want the boardroom showdown survivors to stagger back to the house at the end of the show, full of anecdotal PTSD and the lone survivor’s raconteur spirit only to have Sir Alan leap out of the wardrobe before they can get their hands on a conciliatory glass of Prosecco and say, ”Ha! Fooled you, worm! You have no right to your smarmy sense of relief! Get out – you’re fired! Fired just because I can do it and the all-sucking vacuum at the heart of my demonic and blackened soul is bigger and far mightier than yours!”

Boom. The ghost in the machine morphs into Frankenstein’s monster. Or a smaller, hairier, coconut headed Godzilla.

Now that, my friends, would be a show.

And true reality.

Because as we all know, that is how real life works.

It tests whether you’ve got balls. And then it kicks you in them.

Welcome to my world.

Now get out. You’re fired.

The Leamington Spliff

I am aware of unnatural behaviour. Of trends being bucked. Of moulds being broken.

The natural order of things has changed. I first noticed it on a personal level. A sudden dropping off of ambition. I didn’t feel like writing so much anymore. All these amazing projects that normally fill my head suddenly felt tired and trad, man, and not at all in the spirit of filling up my senses like a night in the forest. They felt like too much work. Like I’d be directing my energies into channels that would just end up clogging my chakras, dude. I mean, why stress so much? Just kick back and relax. Let life wash over me. Surf it on the surfboard of my mind. Commune with my naval. Inhale deeply and imbibe. You know?

And then I kinda stopped caring so much. About stuff. Stuff that I can’t even get my head around to describe to you here. Big stuff. Complicated stuff. Stuff that doesn’t really matter because it is in no way cosmic or fundamental to my inner child.

And I thought hey this is weird. This is sooo not like me. I usually dig a bit of stress. I like a prick or two to kick against. But I was suddenly like all woo rather than all whoa. My yin was coping fine without my yang. What was happening?

And then I noticed changes on the outside of me too. Among my fellow town brethren. Everyone seemed more at ease. Like on a chilled level. Even the police crime statistics state that violent crime in the county has, like, totally dropped off. People are downing their knives and Kalashnikovs and just shooting the breeze with each other. They’re chilling with their bros and hos. Good times, you know?

So, like, what’s the causality behind this sudden mellowness?

For a long, long time I couldn’t even think about it ‘cos I was just so chillaxed. But then it kinda wafted against me on the breeze as I drifted home from work the other night. It kinda sidled up to me and then got right up inside me in a totally non-sexual way. It was in the air, man, and I breathed it in.

Marijuana.

It’s like scenting the air all over town. You can’t walk anywhere for long in this town of mine without some generous bro sending a special token of his love spiralling out into the atmosphere – it’s big toke love time, dudes.

Walking home for me is like walking through a huge hollowed out spliff. I travel through a drug tunnel every time I leave the house.

And suddenly my increased cravings for chocolate and snacks about mid-afternoon make perfect sense. Life is giving me the munchies.

And on one level I should be upset ‘cos it means I ain’t writing like I ought to. It means I’m not getting myself out of my career situation by the sweat of my brow or the toil of my mind. But on the other, sometimes it just nice to step outside and breathe in the free air.

You know what I’m saying?

Hmm?

Would Have Should Have Could Have

Being a sentimental sort of chap whose sentimentality is triggered by feelings of profound frustration with my current circumstances I am often given to bouts of “if only I’d...” and “why didn’t I [fill in the blank] when I had the chance?”

These bouts of bemoaning the clouds in my coffee for not realizing themselves into the life I have always dreamed of seem to increase the older I get. Maybe because I have more to regret or even because, as my knowledge and understanding increase (albeit in small increments), I am perhaps more aware of what I should have done when I look back at my formative years.

Don’t get me wrong. I have much to be thankful for. A loving wife and two healthy rumbustious boys.

But I can’t help feeling that modern living is inimical to my spiritual contentment.

Take my career. Or what I laughingly refer to as my career.

I never aspired to anything.

Well. That’s not strictly true. I have always and still do aspire to write. All I ever wanted to do was write. So as a consequence I never aspired to be anything tangible in the career food-chain. I never wanted to be a bank manager. Or a bus driver. Or an electrician. Something that would have required training or an apprenticeship. Something whose usefulness to modern society (with the exception of bank manager) would never go out of date or popularity.

I was a fool to myself. I would still have strived to write but I would have had a fallback position.

But even this wouldn’t have been smart enough. And I think what I am bemoaning most of all in this post is my naivety and my laziness in not properly contemplating how I would really like to spend my work days back when I had the youth and the non-pressure of living at home with my parents to actually invest some time and sacrifice some wages in order to achieve it.

Because any kind of retraining now is going to cost money and time that I don’t have. And energy beyond my capacity to generate.

*sigh*

You know what I’d most like to do? How I’d ideally like to spend my days and earn my money?
I’d like to work outside.

Forestry commission. Farming. Landscape gardening.

Just something... out there; outside, out of the dull soul-eating cube of the office. Away from the dusty fans of soulless PCs and the subliminal thought-knife of the telephone ringtone.

And years ago I could have done it. I could have still written. I wouldn’t have lost anything because, beyond a few published poems, I was never in danger of hitting the big time.

And right now I’d be coppicing a wood (no euphemism intended) in the sunshine. I’d have my hand up a cow’s arse in the Cotswolds. I’d be digging out the foundations for a ha-ha at Blenheim Palace.

But instead of those things I am beating my brains out against a brick wall of spreadsheets and Health & Safety legislation, wondering where the hell the sunshine has gone.

Well, I’ll tell you where it’s bloody gone.

It’s hiding behind the ruddy great clouds in my coffee.

Enemies

It’s been a slow realization. But no less shocking for the gentle way it has hit me.

But I have enemies.

People who don’t like me. People who snipe about me behind my back. People who plot and talk and actively seek opportunities to bring me down.

Some of you may shrug. Some of you may live and work in environments where this is the norm. Some of you may have immured yourself in a den of poisonous vipers so long ago that you now see such acid writhing as part and parcel of normal existence. Living with daggers aimed at your back is as normal as the sunrise.

For me it is a relatively new thing.

Up to a few years ago I considered myself to be someone who operates as peaceably and as harmoniously with my surroundings as possible. I naturally gravitate towards peace and appeasement. I don’t like making waves or being in the midst of stormy seas. Life is too short to contend with such unnecessary stress.

Over the last few years though I have slowly awoken to the fact that I exist alongside those whose methods of behaviour and operation are diametrically opposed to mine; opposed to my sense of right and wrong. This fundamental opposition alone, I suppose, has drawn the line in the sand for me and for them. Mistrust grows fat on itself and is forever hungry and whines its complaints to both sides.

It is not a nice environment to find yourself living in. I don’t relish it. I don’t feed off it as others do.

But I have amazed myself by surviving. By weathering the various storms that my enemies have regularly blown up for me.

And it has had a curious effect. I am no longer scared. No longer scared to stick my head above the parapet. No longer scared to stick with what I think is right even in the face of opposing demands. They have done their worst and I am still here. I am still me.

More than that I have discovered that I have a loyal support network around me to combat these cowardly would-be assassins.

It might shock my enemies to learn that there is no sniping, no bitching, no plotting that they have ever undertaken that I have not known about and not known who the authors were.

People talk. People snipe. But mostly they talk and snipe about those who do the talking and the sniping.

My response is and always will be to carry on as normal. To live to the best of my abilities and to work as professionally as I can. Dignity does not care if we like someone or not or if we are liked or not. It merely demands a certain mode of behaviour.

We sell our dignity down the river at a cost only to ourselves.

To my enemies then, I say this: carry on as you are; smile to me, offer fake camaraderie whilst badmouthing me behind my back. I know who you are and every word that you say.

When I smile back at you it isn’t because I like you or wish to appease you. Not anymore.

It is because you cannot touch me. It is because, really, genuinely, you do not matter.

Going Round The Twist

It’s amazing what you turn to in times of trouble. What crutches present themselves. What wild ports in even wilder storms you find yourself seeking succour in.

Some turn to drink. Others to drugs. Some try lighting up innocuous substances like banana skins or dried hummus because they’re too scared to get sorted for E’s and Whizz. A few turn to hallucinogenic combinations of all these in the hope that the absurd cocktail they have created blows their mind to greener grass and a more comforting mental ambience.

Some, of course, seek solace in the wild abandon that physical pleasure can bring. Gorging themselves on fishnet wrapped flesh and the tangy odours of perfumed armpit and crotch. Excuse me while I pause and take a few deep breaths here.

Yes, a person’s elected path of escape says a lot about their character. It is only in extremis that the world sees us for what we really are.

And Lord knows I have needed to seek comfort of late. The recent troubles with Tom’s nursery have nearly driven me over the edge. It has been brinkmanship of the highest order.

You have to believe me when I say I wouldn’t usually have done this. But... needs must when the devil drives. I was pushed to it. And when the chips were down this proved to be the sauce that saved me.

Round The Twist.

I happened to see the boxed set of all 4 series going for a veritable song on Amazon. Little more than a tenner for all 52 episodes. I bought it instantly and I swear to God that this show has saved me during the last few weeks when things were at their worst.

For those of you who missed Round The Twist first time around, well, I offer you my sympathies. You have been truly deprived. It was originally made in Australia (all the best kids TV shows are made in Australia – excepting The Wiggles) and broadcast on the BBC in the UK back in the early 1990’s. It is just about the funniest, most inventive kid’s TV show ever. Paul Jennings, the show’s writer, is a genius. Each episode is little more than 25 minutes long but is packed with ideas and jokes and (sometimes rather near the knuckle) fun.

I’ve managed to turn Karen and our eldest boy, Ben, into instant Round The Twist converts. For me, it is a real trip down memory lane. Sure the effects are as ropey as all hell and the music dates the show horribly but once that theme tune is stuck in your head it’s stuck in there forever.

After I’ve been laid low with a day’s worth of trial and tribulation, just a quick hit of Round The Twist and I’m right as rain again. I’m reminded that life can be weird and wonderful and fun. You just have to look for it.

And the best thing of all is I don’t have to deviate my septum sniffing coke or wear that damned gimp mask anymore.

(Oops...! Sorry. Too much information?)

If you can’t live in a haunted lighthouse yourself then buying Round The Twist is honestly the next best thing. They just don’t make shows like this anymore. Alas.

Now nick off, you big galah!

Crossing Boundaries

I’ve discovered that it doesn’t take very much to jolt me off track. To so unsettle me that I find even writing – my instinctual outlet since I was 9 years old – impossible.

Problems with my family will pretty much do it every time.

If you’re a regular reader you’ll know from a previous post the trouble we’ve been having with our youngest, Tom, at nursery (or, to put it another way, the trouble our youngest has been having with his nursery) and if you’re not, well, this is probably not a great post to be introduced to me (I suggest you read the one preceding it).

I’m not going to go into detail as (a) it’s not fair to Tom and (b) it’s not fair to the nursery... but suffice to say the last 3 weeks have been hell. Stress overload. Karen and I have not been able to relax for a second as the nursery, once they crossed the boundary of ringing us when Tom was having a “rampage” then more or less rang us every single day. We’ve spent the last two weeks on tenterhooks waiting for the next phone call, not being able to relax, and just generally feeling sick.

Karen had been signed off work, ill, since the beginning of the month anyway so with all this going on any chance she’s had of resting and recuperating has been machine gunned down without mercy. Meanwhile, I’ve had my ability to perform my job impaired as I’ve found myself on call to the nursery. I don’t get paid for time away from my job so I’ve found myself hotfooting it to the nursery without pay to do the job that I pay them to do.

Farcical.

I don’t think Karen and I have slept properly for weeks. It’s been too much. And ridiculous to boot.

In short, a change of management at the nursery has led to a subtle change in ethos and method which has lead to Tom pushing boundaries which bowed and then collapsed leading to a downward spiral in behaviour. Behaviour that is not exhibited at home or elsewhere as Karen and I run a tight ship in the old discipline department. But this has just led to further frustration for us: when we can see how little effort and thought it takes to get control of Tom and yet the “experts” are just not doing it for a whole raft of reasons verging from “staffing levels” to “health & safety”.

Over the last 3 weeks Tom has been gossiped about by staff at the school that the nursery is affiliated to. He’s come home and twice has said something along the lines that “something is wrong / not right with him” – something Karen and I have never even thought let alone said; clearly someone else has said this to him or in front of him which is appalling. It’s been implied that he needs one-to-one help as if he were a special needs child. We were told that a pregnant care worker he hit ended up in hospital – we later found out that she had issues with blood clots; nothing at all to do with Tom but it was nice of the nursery to leave us with that guilt and responsibility for the best part of a week. The manager also pranged her car this week and informed us it was “because she was thinking about Tom”. I wonder how much responsibility a 4 year old can take for the world? The final straw came this Monday when the manager told us that “maybe Tom wasn’t ready for full time nursery care”.

He’s been in full time nursery care at this same nursery since he was 11 months old.

Needless to say Karen and I are not happy and have demanded a meeting with the director next week. For the best part of 3 years Tom’s behaviour has been managed adeptly but since New Year the nursery have allowed Tom’s behaviour to slip and fall and have now exacerbated the problem with H&S rubbish rather than nip it in the bud. The poor kid is confused and wondering what the hell is going on.

I’d like to point out that Karen and I are not excusing his bad behaviour at nursery. It needs bringing into line. But it needs doing calmly and wisely and not with all this hysteria that has been built up – it’s all become about the nursery’s lack of control rather than focusing on teaching Tom the right way to interact. It’s no good Karen and I upholding the rules at home if nursery then go and fumble them during the week. Karen and I are followers of the Super Nanny school of education. But get this – the manager implied that our isolating Tom on a naughty step or a naughty room (where he can’t see us but we can see him) is technically “child abuse” and that “she ought to report it to the authorities”.

Sheesh.

Let’s just say the manager did a child abuse course before Christmas and has the zealotry of a new convert.

It has been yet another straw to break our backs.

So Karen and I have, with heavy heart, been checking out other nurseries – we don’t really want to move him as our master plan was for him to move to the school affiliated with the nursery in September with friends that he’s built up over the last 4 years. This plan is now in jeopardy. Unless there is a massive turn around at our meeting with the nursery director on Tuesday there is little point in keeping him where he is now – Karen and I have completely lost our confidence in the place. Part of what we pay for is peace of mind and a calm, consistent approach to socially educating our children. We no longer have any of that. The manager who announced she was “in for the long haul” a mere 3 weeks ago was the one saying Tom couldn’t cope with full time nursery on Monday. Read that as she couldn’t cope with it. Hence her minor car crash.

The director we are seeing on Tuesday is a lovely lady – grandmotherly and old school. Up until Christmas she was working at the nursery (but then went into semi retirement) and often sorted Tom out when he’d misbehaved. Karen and I have lost count of the number of times she’d shrugged his latest escapade off with “He’s fine – these young girls flap so much!” We’re sorry to be bringing her out of retirement but if anyone can sort it, she can. We’re sure she’ll be horrified at the thought that her nursery can’t handle a 4 year old!

Because at the end of the day the other nurseries Karen and I have viewed this week as possible alternatives have all but shrugged when told the reason we are considering moving Tom. Nothing new. Nothing special. Not out of the ordinary. Normal. Most figure it can be sorted out within a month.

It’s been good to hear. Good to see people reacting measuredly and sanely and not calling for the local priest. Good to know we have choices. But we will still be sad if we have to move Tom so close to him starting school at the end of the year. We want him unsettled as little as possible until then.

It’s been a dreadful month. We’ve had our parenting called into question, the nature of our little boy called into question and all of our plans for him thrown up into the air whilst having parenting leaflets and behavioural training leaflets waved into our faces by those that most need to read them.

Whatever happens next week we can’t go on as we have been. This level of constant extremis just cannot be maintained by any of us.

Something has got to give.