'Me first' mentality, Victory Vs, snowbound and Charles Simic

So the snow falls and then falls some more and friends in the States and Canada laugh at the pathetic sight of us grinding to a halt. I battled through snow on Monday, sliding gracefully round bends flanked by deep fen drainage dykes wondering if the tale of the man dredged in his car from the dyke after several months in which his wife just presumed he had run off with another woman is true or a rural, as opposed to urban, myth. When the snow fell again during the night on Thursday, this time thicker and more luxurious, I had a ‘Snow Day’ as all my meetings were cancelled, I could have walked through the snow to the office as our secretary did, taking an hour to slither what would normally have taken her fifteen minutes, but I had no need to as I could log on at home and busy myself with the same stuff I would have done had I displayed the Dunkirk spirit and gone into work. Where is my Dunkirk spirit, did I leave it in my parents genes, did I misplace it when I failed to produce fairy cakes for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Street party, am I now the sort of person to stock pile in a shortage situation, queue to get my money out of Northern Rock?

There was a lot of publicity this week surrounding a recent report that came to the conclusion that children’s lives were being adversely effected by the selfish behaviour of adults around them, the ‘me first’ mentality was, they seemed to indicate, pervasive and having a long term toxic effect on our young. I was a little dismayed to see that the single parent working mother was again dredged up by others (not the report) as the prime example of this attitude. As an ex single parent working mother (the child now having grown, not past mothering but past being counted statistically as a child of a working single parent) my hackles rise and the ‘me first’ mentality does come into play; ‘me first’ to kick the smug pundits that trot out such tripe into touch. Most single working parents have no time to put the ‘me first’ into action they are too busy trying to do the best they can to bring up their children and give them a decent and secure and love filled life. There are always exceptions that can be trotted out to the rule but the vast majority of single parents have no real ‘me time’ and do not resent that because others, their children, always come first. Perhaps some want to see the so called demise of the community spirit as an indication of the rise of the ‘me’ society. I am always suspicious of looking back at the communities and societies of the past through rose coloured spectacles. My mother used to talk about the fights that went on in the Second World War, between women outside butchers' shops when there was a merest rumour of offal or some woman being given an extra sausage. My father as an ex policeman who walked the beat during the war in a cheek by jowl so called slum area could name all the people that profiteered even on a tiny scale and those that burgled peoples houses when they took to the shelters during the air raids. People helped each other because this was the most effective way of surviving on the whole and most people have a desire to be kind if possible.

I personally think people are just as kind, just as helpful but the nature of how people work now and how housing and finances dictate how we live makes it more difficult to show that kindness. Violence, rape, child abuse of all kinds, all went on in the past, most of it undetected or even unmarked by society as it was within the normal parameters of social expectation or even to speak of it was taboo. The premise that people were less selfless then cannot be upheld solely by looking at the crime statistics or mental health referrals of the young now or pointing to nostalgic anecdotes about the way people sang together down the air raid shelters or could let their kids roam free all day without supervision or how people would more readily help a neighbour clear their path of snow. I have known great acts of kindness and care displayed by the people who live in my small town, the toxin of the ‘me first’ culture if it exists at all may just boil down to that old socio-political concept, alienation, when you don’t feel connected to anything or anyone there is only yourself to tend to. If you don’t feel part of the great web of life and want your children to be part of it, all that’s left is to be the spider or the fly

I have craved Victory V lozenges throughout the cold snap and could not find them locally, it takes my Philadelphian friend to send me a link to a web site where I can purchase nostalgic confectionery until I’m sick of the sight of sherbet fountains, Poppets, Fisherman’s Friends, Tootie Fruities, shrimps, Imps, Jelly Tots and the very un PC sweet tobacco. Perhaps the confectionery of old contained chemicals that inhibited the operation of the selfish gene, perhaps there was a government conspiracy to keep the population acquiescent and more community conscious through ensuring children were brought up on a diet of sweets chemically infused with certain colourings or sugars.The old Victory Vs for instance contained liquorice, ether and chloroform. As a child I must have been exposed to them and to more sugar and artificial colourings (long banned) than several herds of lab rats. The amount of sunshine yellow colourant in the fish fingers I consumed alone could now keep a whole class full of children bouncing of the walls, or so some say. The way we were is a very dodgy tool to use, a detailed understanding of history is of course hugely important, where we have been is vital to allow us to examine the here and now rationally and put it in context but to profess that human beings were less selfish then and more selfish now seems unwise, unproductive and just plain wrong. I think I have harped on in a similar vein in previous posts but the publication of this report about the future of our children was jabbing at my brain.

I was sorry to miss Charles Simic’s Poetry Society lecture in London because of he snow but have been informed that the text of the lecture will be made available to all those who want it and there should be a recording of it available at some point.

I have been asked to contribute a square( ish poem) about Spring to an anthology, I must now go off into a darkened room and think spring like thoughts despite the snow, now rapidly turning to slush that the forecasts say will turn to ice overnight and likely to stay icy for a few days. Dear Reader , this week I shall be mostly eating Victory V’s and falling over.

A Raven, Spoofers, Charles Simic and the Ticking Clock

So today I received over 300 failure to deliver Mailer Daemon notices. (I thought daemons were meant to be animal versions of our soul invented by Phillip Pullman) I contact my email provider who allows me to chat on line, which is nice of them. It appears I am being seriously spoofed, they are emails with failure to deliver notice as the heading and not what they seem to be (in life as on the internet I seem to attract those who are not what they at first appear to be, it is a medium designed for such as they). The spoofers appear to be trying to sell electronic goods in very poor English. I have a quick live chat with the Customer Care person who calls themselves Raven (I immediately imagine someone dressed in Goth clothes trying to earn their way out of student debt). They (I am unsure whether I am chatting to a male or female raven) treated me very efficiently and kindly and explained about spoofing as opposed to spamming. I ask basic question of course such as, can a spoof be passed on , how do I stop this and other spoofs, how have I suddenly become the object of spoofing, when does a jolly jape stop being a jolly jape and tip over into a spoof? I feel myself back in the school playground wondering if the cool but slightly malign group are picking on me because they can, because I have done something wrong, because I was wearing a ladybird vest in PE, because I am stupid enough to let them do it, because I am unable to fathom the deep recesses of their mind to understand why they would want to do this to me. Raven tells me, in what I am beginning to read as a soothing prescribed tone, that spoofing isn’t personal. Every fibre of my being denies this, if when I open my e mail account I have 300 ‘Failure to Deliver’ notices I take it very personally. Someone out there is out to get me.

The internet opens up so many more opportunities to experience paranoia. I used to think that junk mail through the letter box, delivered by the Royal Mail was an affront. Our postal service that had for years ensured that the good people of Great Britain received letters, telegrams, parcels delivered by liveried officers with cheery smiles and bikes was now fast becoming nothing more than a sullied leaflet distributor. I will now digress.

I knew an old man who delivered telegrams when he was a boy. He told me in his day telegrams were always either bad or good news, usually bad. In my father’s effects after he died, I found the original telegram that informed him his mother had died. It was in the original brown envelope, the words on the thin sepia paper bore the impressed weight of one of those very heavy old fashioned typewriters. It was very brief, words cost money in those days. Mother died today. The old man told me he sometimes had to wait for an answer, write it down and take payment for it. In the days when phones were few and far between the telegram was the only means of quick communication. He hated those telegrams that he knew were bad news, he couldn’t just shove them through the door. The Royal Mail in those days demanded telegrams be handed over to a real person and then he would have to wait while they read it, absorbed the contents. Next he had to pipe up with the ‘Any answer?’ question that he dreaded. Almost always it was a blank look and a shake of the head, ‘No, there’s no answer.’ I don’t know if my father sent an answer, probably not he would have written a letter in reply.

I will now return from the slow slightly lavender world of digression. The spoofers and spammers must take the time to generate their mail or at least take time to work out how to circumvent the spam guards; the virtual equivalent of the vicious terriers that wait behind hedges for unsuspecting postmen. Of course my letterbox on my front door is open to anybody; everybody is free to stick something through it that they want me to read. The pile this week alone contains leaflets about; tree lopping, wet fish delivery, a new Tandoori Restaurant, three local election leaflets, a scrap mental dealer visiting the area, savings to be made at the local Co-op supermarket on wines and spirits this week, four charities and a small hand-printed poster about a lost cat. I have not resorted to the ‘NO JUNK MAIL’ sign as I am told by those that have them that everyone just ignores them anyway and besides I may want to know about the new Tandoori, cheap wine and the lost cat. I fill up my blue recycle bin with leaflets that are then re-cycled into more leaflets and so it goes on, it is the wheel of life in text and images of lost cats, children in refugee camps near Dafur, wine and politicians’ promises and a drawing of a Bengal Lancer holding what looks like a dish of rice.

My bulk folder despite resetting the parameters of my spam guard overflows with junk mail, no trees of course were harmed in its making, its carbon footprint is probably very low, it does not require men to take it away once a week and yet today it feels more intrusive and more annoying to get it than all the other hard copy junk I get. Someone out there is out to get me electronically and I suppose our lives are so interwoven with the virtual world these days that trashing that world, littering that, with unwanted stuff feels far more aggressive. Of course three hundred leaflets stuffed through my letterbox about a Tandoori Restaurant opening would no doubt annoy me as much, yet because of costs and economics etc that never happens. For spammers and spoofers the whole virtual world is their playground. I have thought myself back to that playground scenario again…they are getting at me, making my life a misery, simply because they can. Who says we shouldn’t treat it as personal Mr/Ms/Mrs Raven?

If the world seems a tad frightening to me today it is because this incident has underlined to me how bizarre and interconnected our world is becoming for good and ill. How the press of a button in India can flood in-boxes all over the world, the old cliché about America catching a cold and the world sneezing has never been more true both economically and politically and the time lag is diminishing, the clock is ticking faster and faster. How fast can it go before it breaks and the clock stops? You can virtually hear that tick dying out and taste the fear in this poem by Charles Simic

Facing up to Facebook,the Camera and Charles Simic

Oh dear god help me I have added a garden and a virtual bookshelf to my Facebook profile. I am beginning to keep a note of how many published writers or poets my friends seem to have whilst I have my hairdresser or did have before she deleted me for some reason which may or may not be connected with the fact that the last time I went to see her she was appalled at my attempts to cut my own fringe. I pointed out that it was getting in my eyes and it was only a few snips here and there. I kept to myself the thought that I was hardly likely to book an appointment with her at £25 a time just to have my fringe snipped. She pointed out that she wouldn’t begin to know how to write a decent poem or story so why did I think I would know how to cut my own fringe properly. We have been together for a number of years my hairdresser and I, we have a strange relationship which swings between honesty and marital bickering.
“I think I’d like my hair really short this time, almost cropped.” I demand.
“No, you’ll look like a bloke or a Nazi prison camp guard.”
“No I won’t, I think it would be quite funky especially if you put blonde highlights in it.” I stand my ground clear in my vision.
“No, you’re fifty-five you can’t do funky, whatever that is when it’s at home and you are not exactly elvin faced and as for blonde highlights ….”
There is a pause whilst she looks for the word she is running after but is defeated and just pulls a face into the mirror. Of course I am talking to her via the mirror I am seated facing. I stare ahead at the reflection of her sucked a lemon face.
“I just want something different I’m bored with my hair the way it is.”
She takes on a soothing tone as if she is trying to get a child to eat Brussel sprouts.
“It suits you like it is now, it just needs tidying up that’s all, I’m not going to do something you’ll regret tomorrow.”
My hairdresser always uses the word tidying when referring to my hair as if it is a teenager’s bedroom. I half expect her to snip old coffee mugs and apple cores out of it and pull unwashed knickers from under my fringe.
I give in of course as an hormonal tightly wound hairdresser with a very sharp pair of scissors in her hand is not easily defeated and I keep going back to her because she knows my hair and all its strange eccentricities. She also never asks me where I am going on holiday but asks if I think war is ever justified, is repressed anger a recipe for disaster or what do I feel about meerkats? She is a Fen hairdresser with brains and attitude.
However despite my returning custom and our discussions about life, love and the universe she has deleted me on Facebook. How does one react to this. I could just take it that as a twenty-something person she doesn’t want me having access to her profile or her world of friends.It could be an accident I tell myself ny way of consolation and then start to wonder why being deleted by my hairdresser is such a terrible thing.

There was an article about Facebook in the Independent on Sunday yesterday that pointed out that many young people are leaving this ‘social facility’ as it chooses to call itself as the wrinklies were beginning to colonise it. Anything that your mother or even granny can join and paste up their favourite music of Celine Dion or Pink Floyd is not worth belonging to.The article pointed out that perhaps the younger generation are beginning to value their privacy whilst we oldies are flinging ourselves headlong like lemmings into virtual spheres of intimacy.
Perhaps we are seeing the first fully monitored CCTV generation coming through, big brother can not only follow you re your mobile phone, credit card use, internet communications etc it can physically keep an eye on you. I watched a policeman the other night in town tell a group of boys to take their hoods down. He was restrained, polite even jokey but he obviously felt that the CCTV cameras in the Market Square, where they were grouped, needed to see their faces. They had committed no crime, had done absolutely nothing wrong but wearing their hoods up obstructed the cameras view of their faces, as he kept pointing out to them. Of course they knew that and he knew that they knew that but it was the game they had to play. My civil liberties head fought with other emotions. They did look an intimidating group but merely because there were about ten of them, most of them gangly with fags poking out from under noses that were still too big as their faces haven’t caught up yet. I know people who have had their sons beaten up in town (Fen Towns are less than quiet idylls on a Friday night). I had watched on the local news as CCTV helped convict some men of brutally assaulting some Polish men in Wisbech and I was glad that CCTV was used to convict them.

Big brother might have our best interests at heart; if the likes of the Wisbech Friday Night Fighters, a group who specialise in terrorising foreign workers are to be discouraged then in this instance CCTV may be a good thing. Of course CCTV is only as good as the people that use it, it is a neutral tool. Just as a gun or a knife has no morality, it is the user that endows it with a good or evil purpose, is CCTV a neutral tool?. A camera can watch as a policeman beats up a black suspect, as it did famously in the States, just as easily as it can monitor a group beating up a Polish man, a gay man, an Asian,a woman, a Jew, someone who happens to brush shoulders with a psychopath on a Friday night. If you are doing nothing wrong what have you got to be worried about? That is the usual defence of its use. Cameras can be made to lie, you only have to watch any Hollywood film to know that a camera can make boys fly on broomsticks and awks walk the earth.What I worry about is who keeps it all in focus, who wil have the final say on this is CCTV use subsumed into the democratic process. I don't recall voting for or against it either in local or parliamentry elections. How do I get my say in where and how it is used?I worry that Hitler and other dictators would have loved CCTV if it had been available to them.

My Space and Facebook are all scanned by powers that be for potential threats. American servicemen in Iraq are now banned from posting on Myspace as they were posting too many negative comments about the war which their friends had access to. Myspace has a young and predominantly working class demographic, precisely the demograph the Army would draw recruits from, they might not want future recruits being put off would they? Facebook on the other hand was started by and for college students and thus mainly officers are using it and therefore note Facebook is not banned by the US Army for use by the military. See this link that was sent to me by a friend. Why does that not surprise me. Youtube videos made by serving soldiers are also being scrutinised closely.

However in the era of easy access(in the affluent West at least)to the means of disseminating information via the internet quickly and globally the camera is big brother and also big brother’s restraint. I noted that as the policeman was telling the boys in my small town to take down their hoods one of the boys was videoing him on his mobile phone…it could have been on Youtube or photos of the incident on Myspace or Facebook a few hours later… the camera can cut both ways.

Listen to the poet Charles Simic read his poem Cameo Appearance to underline how the camera can be used to illuminate or hide things in the shadows, it is merely the servant of its masters.


I’m off on holiday now for a while. I may try and post from pastures new ie the lakes where I am intending to wander like a cloud or a bunch of daffs and then on to an Arvon course from which I hope to return stimulated and fertile with ideas, if not in need of a de-tox for my liver if past Arvon courses are anything to go by. I shall take photographs of any unsavoury or suprising incidents to post later or to blackmail people with depending on how I am feeling.