Magic.

Considering most of the people I know, this is probably preaching to the converted, but hey, it’s been a slow month. You don’t need to look to faith, neither do you need to look to Penn, nor Teller for magic. Not real magic, anyway – that’s merely clever chicanery. Just pop to a book shop, or a library, and it’s everywhere. The way you can get hooked on the right words, the way Katie will explode with delighted laughter at the insults Willy Wonka and Grandma Georgina trade during Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, the way an author can leave your head spinning by merely stringing words together.

Thanks to one of our local libraries, I’ve recently had the good fortune to read the following:

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, Cat’s Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, all three bona-fide classics of American fiction. Vonnegut’s writing style curiously echoes that of J. G. Ballard, in that it is largely descriptive and unemotional, but occasionally you get suckered by a passage of such breathtaking beauty or haunting pain, you feel like you’ve been punched in the gut; particularly in Slaughterhouse 5 which recounts much of Vonnegut’s experience in World War 2, during which he was present at the bombing of the German city of Dresden.

Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which recently won book of the year, for obvious reasons. There are some books you read that just hit that sweetest of spots and transport you to that moment in childhood when you are finally able to read for your own pleasure and you discover such wonders that you never suspected your imagination could hold. It’s like that, and every page holds such joy that the spell it holds you in doesn’t break, even after the final page is finished. With the exception of Good Omens, which was written with Terry Pratchett, I’m quite late to Gaiman, but boy am I glad I caught up. American Gods, Stardust and Anansi Boys are all marvellous, if not quite as transformative as The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

Jasper Fforde’s The Song of the Quarkbeast, which is set in one of Fforde’s wonderful alternate versions of the UK. Aimed at younger readers, it is not quite as engaging as his other work, particularly the Thursday Next series and Shades of Grey, but is still great. Fforde is one of those writers that have such an astonishing grasp of the English language that genius wordplay and clever puns abound in his novels. The Thursday Next books are, if you can believe this, as good as Pratchett’s Discworld series. They are out there, no doubt, but if you’re not put off by all the weirdness then Fforde’s writing is hugely enjoyable.

Do yourself a favour and read some of them for yourself.

Growing up, guitars and good friends.

When I was in my teens, the big musical thing was Britpop. Now, that isn’t my fault, so don’t be too hard on me. The thing about music is it isn’t necessarily what’s best in a technical sense that becomes your favourite. Sure, everyone can appreciate decent lyrics and great playing. But your favourite music often becomes your favourite because of how you felt, or what you were doing, or even how old you were when you heard it. So when I first really got into music, following a brief flirtation with the mighty Jovi, it was to the strains of the Britpop movement. Blur’s Parklife was the first record I truly fell in love with (and to this day I remain so), but Oasis slowly eclipsed Blur as my favourite. As with so many of today’s leading guitar acts, Definitely Maybe inspired me to buy a guitar. I lacked both the talent and the will for it to go any further than a hobby, but being able to play first Oasis, and later Stereophonics, Blur and Weller was among the greatest joys of my teenage life.

One of my childhood friends, Ian, loved Oasis as much as I did, and there is no doubt that we bonded tremendously over this mutual love. Entire weekends would disappear learning Slide Away or Champagne Supernova; Ian singing, me playing guitar. Our friends were probably bored half to death listening to us, but we didn’t care. Then we got older, and things change as they always do. Girlfriends, jobs, moving all conspired to move my guitars to a cupboard under the stairs. Late last year Ian died of a rare form of Leukaemia, and now I find myself remembering all those weekends spent playing guitar. Turns out I can’t listen to Live Forever all the way through without crying anymore.

We never did get a band together. But in the end that isn’t what matters. What matters is the comfort of the memories I have of those years. There has been much talk of Ian looking down on us and the things we’re doing with approval and love. If you’ve read enough of these you’ll know that in my heart that’s a belief I can’t share, but at times like these I feel and understand the need people have for it, and I cannot give enough kudos to the vicar who spoke at Ian’s funeral, who happily admitted that he had been tasked with giving the ceremony just enough religion ‘to get him in’, and the good grace with which he managed this.

Thoughts now turn to those guitars, gathering dust under the stairs. I think maybe I’ll bring them out again into the light of day and give Don’t Look Back in Anger a whirl. It feels like a modest tribute, but somehow the most heartfelt.

Further adventures in parenting and crushing self-doubt.

I get told often by people that I’m a good father. Of course, as nice as that is to hear, I know enough to recognise that the opinion of one person, or several people, as much as I happen to love and respect those people, doesn’t necessarily make it true. I know that my kids are happy and loved, but is that enough? It won’t be too many more years before the influence I have over them becomes less than their peers and current cultural guff.

Katie can sometimes be reluctant to join in with group activities and parties, preferring instead to play with her sister who is half her age. I don’t really think this is anything to worry about, except I remember how it felt at school to be outside the groups, to feel awkward around the other kids. At a fairly recent birthday party she went to, a few of the other kids clocked that she wasn’t wearing different shoes, but the same ones she wore to school. When questioned on this, she merely looked at the questioner as if she didn’t understand what she was being asked, or what the point of the question was, and carried on dancing. The pride and love I felt for her on witnessing this was like nothing else. As is the feeling I get when I see her devouring book after book, and writing her own stories (she recently wrote one about a Christmas tree that was sad because it hadn’t been decorated).

She'd rather sing along to Disney songs or stuff from my collection (she's currently digging Lana Del Ray's Dark Paradise) than listen to One Direction sing about how much they want to shag people (almost all pop music, regardless of how innocent it seems, is about sex. Don't pretend it isn't). I've not forgotten the Jessie J incident, and I know this happy arrangement can't last, and I'm mentally preparing for that as much as I can.

But this lack of interest in other people’s opinions of her can’t last. Not to put too fine a point on it, it’s difficult to get through childhood without being irreparably fucked up by parents, peers, teachers, randoms or any combination thereof. I hope my two are strong enough, and I hope I can help them through.

Re-using actors and the occasional failure to suspend that disbelief.

Do you ever find that casting choices can sometimes spoil your enjoyment of films and TV shows? I don’t mean the casting of someone in a role they don’t suit – that happens all the time (*cough* Stallone *cough* Dredd *cough*), but because of a role they previously had. Does it bug you that Chris Evans is both Captain America and The Human Torch? Even though both Cap and the Fantastic Four technically inhabit the same Marvel universe? Usually I can manage – the fact that Indiana Jones and Han Solo are the same person is fine, but just occasionally something like that will make me double take and cause me to fall out of the story.

I can find no real reason why this happens in some cases, but not in others – Whedon, for example, re-uses actors all over the shop, but this tends not to faze me – the casting always seems pretty bang on, but then when Tonks got her kit off in season two of Game of Thrones it smashed that suspension of disbelief to tiny pieces. The fact that Johnny Depp has played Willy Wonka, Sweeney Todd, The Mad Hatter and Ichabod Crane somehow doesn’t faze me. Martin Freeman and Ian Holm are Bilbo Baggins at different stages of his life, and that I can handle, but the next time I see the prologue to Fellowship and Holm is playing Bilbo at the Freeman age, I get the feeling it’s gonna bug the shit outta me.

This mini-rumination has absolutely no point to it, but I’m intrigued as to the reason why sometimes particular casting choices just intrude on my enjoyment of the story, and sometimes they don’t.

Voting and the problem with not doing it.

So, unless you don’t have the Internet you likely know all about Russell Brand’s recent Newsnight interview, during which he advocated not voting and revolution. His reasons were good ones, and true ones, but the action recommended is, in my own opinion, reckless. I think it would be difficult to argue against the notion that self-interest and the interests of the corporate world far outweigh the need to take genuinely effective action against the very immediate and urgent problems of poverty, climate change and wealth disparity. I’ve mentioned it before and it’s still true that our democracy, so-called, isn’t really a democracy at all, more an elective oligarchy. There is no real alternative. At least not yet, although the Green Party occasionally show promise.

But. There are consequences to withdrawing your vote. There are differences between the parties, albeit small ones. One of them is accused of indulging in the demonisation of the poor, vulnerable and disabled. Another is criticised for being seemingly unable to keep a single promise it ever makes and shows no sign of the smallest backbone. Another has huge problems, is too much like the others to offer a genuine alternative, but doesn’t do quite so many of the unpleasant things the other two do. While some things won’t change regardless of who is in power, some other things do. And it is important to choose which side of that line you want to stand on. You choose that side by voting.

There is another reason, a better one. If enough people stop voting (and we are already not far from the cusp of this), then there is the risk that those who do vote will vote for parties wholly abhorrent to the majority. There seems little chance at the moment of the British National Party enjoying the level of support they had a few years ago, and if the English Defence League ever decide to become a political party, it is unlikely they will get widespread support, but, and it’s a big but, if we all make like Brand and stop voting, it’s leaving a crack in the door for them to get in – they don’t need a percentage of the population to support them, they only need a percentage of those who vote. The more likely proposition is the BNP-lite UKIP, who have enjoyed an up-swelling in support recently, despite having no real manifesto for running the country other than wanting to blow a big raspberry at Europe. If you find you are having trouble bringing yourself to vote because of the discomfort of seemingly arbitrarily supporting a system you know is unworkable and the very definition of the modern phrase ‘epic fail’, then simply vote to halt the spreading of the far right. All those of us who are not racist dicks have a duty to our country, to vote and stop this ugliness from taking over. While it is perhaps an extreme comparison to make, it is nonetheless noteworthy that in 1930s Germany, the Nazi party gained power even though they weren’t particularly popular and never gained more than 37.4% of the vote. There is more than one type of revolution. The same applies in America. Whichever party is in power, little changes. But there is still a choice to make; an ideological line to stand on either side of.

So what is there to do? Brand was open and honest about the fact that he has no solution and is certainly not the person we should look to to provide one. Is there one? Well, maybe there’s the start of one. Make your mark on the ballot and choose your side, safe in the knowledge that it doesn’t matter much either way. Do it even if it is for no other reason than to neutralise a vote for the far right. And then, focus on your local community, for this is where your power to change truly lies. Be involved as much or as little as you like. Whether you run for a councillor’s spot, become a Community Support Officer, donate to a local homeless shelter or volunteer in a food bank or merely support your local library and businesses, you are a potent force for positive local change. And it’s like a ripple in an ocean; on the face of it there seems no way it can make a real difference on a grand scale, but we have the numbers, and if there is enough of us, we have the collective will to force those who purport to lead us down a different path.

Viva la revolución!

Children.

Kids, right? Selfish, greedy, dirty brats who think only of themselves with nary a sniff of empathy. It’s all about them, all day long. All they want to do is mess around, have fun and never be responsible. So selfish: if someone’s got something they haven’t got, or if there’s something they can’t have it’s just the world being unfair. They should get whatever they want, and screw everyone else. It’s tiresome.

Oh, wait. THEY’RE CHILDREN. THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THAT. *gives everybody else a long, long, look* WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR EXCUSE?

Yeah, I have a job. And yeah, there are other people that don’t. And yeah, out of all those people out of work, there are some who would rather not get a job, and would rather be supported by the state. Seriously, who the frick cares? Who decided that our society should be geared so intensely towards working for the majority of your life? If it really bothers you that other people don’t have a job while you do, perhaps you need to find another job. Perhaps you need to find another way to live your life. Perhaps you need to walk a mile in their shoes to disabuse yourself of the notion that they are living an unpressured charmed life at your expense. Besides, even if they are, the expense is such a vanishingly small fraction of your total tax payments that it would make no appreciable difference to the life you live if that money appeared in your pocket. It’s all about your perception that they have something that you don’t, and your instinctive feeling that they shouldn’t. Like a kid in nursery who has noticed another kid playing with your favourite toy.

I heard once on a BBC documentary that you don’t lose that knee-jerk selfishness until you are in your 30s. It seems to me in a good deal of us that it’s never truly lost. Not that I’m not childish. The hours wasted on Xbox exploring Cyrodiil, shooting Locust or shaving precious seconds off those lap times testify to that fact. I just don’t see the fun in getting all annoyed at a misguided sense of privilege derived from a feeling that everybody should live their lives the same way you do. I don’t mean that everybody should be able to do whatever they like with impunity, or have no sense of civic or moral responsibility, I mean that the Jam lyric “Work, work, work ‘til you die, ‘cause there’s plenty more fish in the sea to fry” are not necessarily words to live by.

Operation Don’t Die: Update.

Well. I’m still less than I was. But the progress, it is also less than it was. I kind of ran out of steam on the regime I was on. If it’s supposed to be a change for life, then it can’t be something you get sick of, right? It’s gotta be sustainable. I didn’t so much as fall off the bandwagon, it was more like I was being crushed under its wheels.

So, I’ve altered it a little. I’m now going for more of a gradual long term improvement, rather than quick de-chubbing. I no longer feel quite like King of the Toads. It’s a bit tricky at the moment, because there’s not enough money to go on with the swimming, but it isn’t like there aren’t cheaper, nay free ways of getting exercise, so I reckon I’ll manage. Like they say, slow and steady wins the race. And loses the chins. Eventually.