Stop ruining things.

There was a field in my local town centre that always managed to lift my spirits as I went past it. It wasn’t very large and it was full of buttercups at the right time of year. It’s strange sometimes how small things can have a significant impact. This field wasn’t large or spectacular, but its yellow carpet throughout the summer months meant it always did a lot to improve my outlook when I drove past it (yes I know the fact that I drove past as I appreciated this field is possibly somewhat illogical, but its location meant that I would never be in a position to walk past it – if you’re local it’s by the M54 roundabout just up the hill from where Blockbusters used to be).

You might notice me talking in the past tense. That’s because they dug it up and concreted it over. It’s now yet another KFC and yet another Costa Coffee – there are already multiple instances of both brands throughout my town. Now driving past, the little lift I used to get has been replaced by another little tug dragging me down. Those little lifts are important – they help get you through the day, which helps get you through the week, which helps get you through the so on and so on. Without them, life has a little less colour, a little less joy, a little more…grey.

You could consider me lucky, because I still live in an area with a significant amount of greenery, but every time another meadow of flowers is ripped up and destroyed to build another copy of another brand we don’t need any more of, it gets harder and harder to stay positive.

How are we supposed to stop them? How soon will it be until they build a Costa on top of the Wrekin? Or on the Ironbridge? I don’t know. I’ve tried not going to them, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference, what with everybody else going to them.

Maybe eventually enough of us will realise what we’re losing with every new unnecessary church erected to the gods of capitalism and profit to make a difference, but I doubt that’ll happen in time.

Too late?

I’ve been banging on about climate change a lot lately. Well, I don’t intend to apologise for that. Just because too many of us are either not aware of what’s going to happen, or are ignoring it and choosing to carry on regardless, or, like me, carry on fully aware that everything I can do to reduce the damage I’m doing is like using a teaspoon to clean up an oil spill, it doesn’t mean the future we’ve decided for ourselves is something I can stop going on about.

Because I can take a pretty decent guess at how I think my kids are going to die. The latest IPCC report paints a pretty bleak picture of our future if major changes aren’t made yesterday. That bleak picture is actually pretty rosy compared to the likely reality, knowing full well as we do that those with the power to effect real change don’t have any intention of doing it. Keeping within 2 degrees of warming will merely mean the deaths of millions and the resettling of millions more. Not speaking for myself, we’ve always pretty much accepted this, because it will mostly be impoverished countries taking the brunt of it, so we’ll all be able to feel sorry for those poor folks living far away, maybe donate a bit to a charity and keep on pissing away the planet’s resources like we always have, assuming we can do enough to keep within 2 degrees.

But we’re not doing enough. It’s years too late. Maybe decades. But hey, this has only been known for 100 years or so in scientific circles, so it isn’t like we had enough time to change, you know? Murdoch, Koch and other names of very rich white men are continuing to push the discussion in other directions. The good we could have accomplished, and the progress we could have made if we hadn’t spent our time focusing on shite like leaving the E.U. (noticed how the Venn diagram for those heavily in favour of leaving and those that deny climate change is a clear and present threat (or even exists) pretty much overlaps?), abusing folks migrating from other countries (you have no idea of the shitshow coming if you think we’re overwhelmed now (which we’re not)) or countless other political pursuits that won’t mean anything in the long run if this isn’t tackled simultaneously breaks my heart and fills me with fury enough to, when I let it, stop me being of any use to anyone.

We’re currently banking on technology that hasn’t been invented yet to fix this mess at some point in the future. The truth is too ridiculous for parody. It’s like an American senator assuming praying will do a damn thing to stop idiots shooting schoolchildren so they can continue to do nothing (as with climate change, the lack of action by those with the power to affect change, leashed by the power of money, is now beyond reprehensible). There’s a Venn overlap again in there somewhere.

The increasingly likely outcome then is looking more and more like 8 degrees. That’s not ‘just’ the deaths of millions. That’s ecological collapse. That’s impossible to grow food (no, we can’t just switch to growing bananas and coconuts). That’s everybody dying. I’m guessing those on top of the economic tree using their influence to convince as many people as they can to keep the status quo and allow this to happen are assuming their money will protect them, and that they will somehow be able to profit off it. But sooner or later, food won’t just be expensive, it simply won’t be there.

And that’s why I’m worried I can take an educated guess as to how my kids might die. If it is, it’ll be the same way your kids will die. It might even be how I go out if I hold on long enough: starvation. Doesn’t seem possible at the moment does it? That’s why you listen to the people spending their lives in study of it telling you this could happen. It’s probably too late to swerve it, and we’re still going straight at it full throttle, ignoring the shouts of those telling us to change course.

Operation Don’t Die: Update

I’m 40 this year. In May. I wonder if I can use that. Currently, I’m a little slack in my efforts to unflab. An upcoming significant birthday might be the catalyst I need to refocus a little. So I’m planning a playlist for regular exercise session I can do at home (not about to join a gym). Rach has brought a book home with some ideas about what I can do.

I think something to aim for should go some way to help me. I can be quite good most of the time, but the problem with me is maintaining a regime for an extended period of time – quite frankly in my natural state I’m a lazy arse, and the laziness is always threatening to undo any progress I make.

Still, I would think that after 40, as I get older, my body is less and less likely to put up with my shite, leaving me open to heart disease, diabetes and other shitty conditions that are more likely to hit you if you’re unfit and overweight.

This isn’t about body positivity or anything for me – I’d look naff by most standards even at peak fitness, so it’s about living longer. I’m not big boned, I’m fat. So let’s see if I can make some progress before I turn the big 4-0.

A lasting impression I could do without.

Have you ever read a book or watched a film that you know is extremely good, but you still wish you’d never gone anywhere near it? I’ve done it twice now. The first was when we watched Grave of the Fireflies. Studio Ghibli has a body of work that pretty much nobody can touch for quality, save maybe Pixar. Grave of the Fireflies is a 1988 animated film directed by Isao Takahata which forms part of the Ghibli collection. It brings home the devastating cost of war by focusing on two children in Japan near the end of the second world war, who lose their parents and have to try to survive together in the face of starvation and the antipathy of a population numb to tragedy. Studio Ghibli films are not afraid to focus on hardship, loss and grief, but they are generally optimistic. When I had finished watching, I felt something I’d never felt in reaction to a film before or since; a physical pain. My heart was broken and I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. The film is incredible; told with the same gift for character and astonishing artistry that is par for the course for Ghibli, but I don’t ever want to see it again and I can’t bring myself to recommend it to anyone. It was like having my heart stomped on by the one person I can usually expect to make it soar. I was in a funk for weeks afterwards, unable to shake the feeling of desperate hopelessness it left in me. Art that can do that is undeniably powerful, but all the same, I’d rather not feel like that.

I recently read Random Acts of Senseless Violence. Written by Jack Womack and published in 1993, it tells the story of Lola, a young teenage girl living in a in a well-to-do area of New York, while the world around her falls apart. When her parents can no longer find work and have to move to a more dangerous area, we follow Lola as she changes from private school girl to ruthless gangster, and it makes for such a depressing read. It’s very well done, but it is so infuriating to see this innocent girl have her life taken from her and her potential lost. Not just Lola, but a society that could’ve been so much more devolve into shadow of itself, beset by riots and greed. It felt the same way reading High Rise felt, this chilling feeling of a society making the decision to let itself topple from the cliff edge, and the sense of everything slowly going to hell, when with just a little more will, it might’ve pulled itself back from the brink. A bit like living in a UK forcing itself to leave the European Union even though it knows full well what the consequences are going to be, or like I would imagine living in the U.S. under President Cockwomble feels like.

This book has stuck with me not just because of that though, but because of something specific, and that’s the death of Lola’s father. No longer able to make ends meet as a screenwriter due to the volatile world the book is set in, he has no choice but to work extremely long hours in a job in which he is constantly under pressure and screamed at and berated for barely enough money to afford the rent on the crappy apartment the family have had to move to. There is a truly haunting scene in which poor Lola finds her father dead having had a heart attack in the middle of the night, and eventually, this is the thing that pushes Lola beyond the point of no return.

I’m not saying that the world in which I live and work is anywhere near as bad as the unfortunate Lola’s. But I am on that borderline between just managing financially and not managing. And I do work overtime. Since reading that book, the only thing on my mind when I get up at 6:15 on a Saturday morning to work overtime to supplement my wages while my family sleeps is that dreadful scene of Lola discovering her father’s body, after he worked and stressed himself to death trying play a rigged game just to keep his family safe and alive (he’d already given up on happy).

If this strikes you as overly melodramatic, well you’d be right. I actually quite enjoy my job. My family are, relatively speaking, safe and happy. While I do always feel like I don’t have enough money to get by, the truth is, we’ve managed it so far, so I expect we’ll be fine. But that’s the effect of well-made art on the psyche. We are going to have to deal with major crises over the coming decades because nobody has got the will to do a damn thing about climate change, but instead of the biggest emergency our species has ever had to deal with dominating the news and the political stage, we’re arguing about whether or not it’s a good idea to rip up the fragile Northern Ireland peace agreement so Lord Snooty (how can you not look at that snivelling weasel Rees-Mogg and think of anyone else?) can keep hold of his unearned, inherited, offshore tax-free millions and withdrawing from the agreement that ended the Cold War (good job America. Well done).

So it feels like, as in Random Acts of Senseless Violence, we are also a society deliberately deciding to step off into the abyss, and that’s why Lola and her father struck such a chord with me; forced to narrow their view and look out only for themselves, and as far as her father goes, eventually die trying.

Still. Chin up, eh?

Pointlessness.

I went to a well-known convenience store the other day. I walked around the shop and picked up what I needed to, joined the queue, had a few polite words with the cashier and after paying, made my way to the exit. Before I could leave the shop, however, there was a person standing by the exit with a clipboard. They also had a badge. The clipboard and badge combo was how I knew they were official and had the right to inconvenience shoppers.

They asked for a few minutes of my time to basically rate my experience in the store. I’d bought a loaf of bread and a few other items, so goodness knows what they were expecting. They asked me to rate the service I’d received out of 10. I’d figured everything had been entirely reasonable, so thinking of what I score films I like when writing about them, I figured an 8 was a decent score, reflecting a positive, yet common experience. The immediate response was “Why are you marking them down?”

“I’m not,” I replied, “I thought 8 was a good score.”

“We expect our staff to get 10.”

Many things went through my mind at this point, none of which I said to the person asking my opinion. The first and most oft repeated thought was this: If the only good score you will allow your staff is 10 out of 10, and everything else, up to and including 9, is unacceptable, then what the fuck is the point of marking out of 10? It’s a yes or no answer: was your service of an acceptable standard today?

To get a genuine 10 out of 10 – i.e. a perfect score, they’d have to give me my shopping for free, chuck me a winning lottery ticket on the way out and carry me home on a palanquin. 10 out of 10 should be almost impossible to get. 6-8 out of 10 service when popping to a corner shop is perfectly acceptable. So should I stick with my 8/10 and get the cashier into trouble, or give them a perfect score?

“Suppose I’d better say 10 then,” I responded.

I was asked a few more questions, equally as pointless, to which of course I had no choice but to score 10s for as well. Like most kinds of consumer polling like this then, it’s entirely pointless, and the company will be able to claim something stupid like ‘9 out of 10 customers rate us 10/10 for service!’ when actually it’s complete bullshit.

On the way out I very nearly reverted back to the 8 and gave the reason for ‘marking down’ as being stopped on my way out and asked to take part in a survey that is, at best, stupid and pointless and at worst downright dishonest. But I didn’t. But I will now have a clearer indication as to how big a lie the ‘customer satisfaction’ bollocks that companies use actually is.

A conversation around a campfire.

The sun was a blazing orange fire over the western horizon. Even at this late hour, the heat was oppressive, leaving you at once drenched and parched whether or not you were in shade. Shadows everywhere were lengthening, announcing the onset of another night. The sky was a clear bright blue, but it was possible to see the blue turning a darker shade as the sun continued to set. The ground was bare, brown and dusty; there had been no rain all season, but the rains would soon return; torrential, relentless, deadly. For now though, dryness and heat reigned.

In the middle distance, the city sparkled. A dead forest of metal, concrete and glass, but it looked beautiful bathed in the orange and pink sunset for all of that. She knew not to get closer – that beauty was not even skin-deep. Up close, the façade wouldn’t last a moment and the stench of death and decay would overwhelm. In that place, she would be prey. Better to stay out here, scratching for whatever she could find to survive with her family.

In spite of the heat, they worked together to get a fire going. Even at this late hour, it was possible to get badly burned by extended exposure to the sun, but when it finally fell behind the horizon the sky would darken quickly. The family gathered in the shade of an overhanging rock and shared the meagre provisions they had managed to gather, save and catch while avoiding the worst of the sun and other scavengers. They had a little food and some clean water, which was getting more difficult to find around here, now the supply of sealed plastic bottles was running low. They’d probably have to move on again soon. Too much running water would make you ill, as would the air, but what could you do? You had to drink. You had to breathe. Unless you didn’t.

But those were problems for another day. Tonight they would eat, drink and be together in each other’s company. Perhaps nana would tell them more stories about the old world. Sure enough, when the sun had gone and the food had been eaten, nana regaled them all.

“Oh what a world we had,” she would say. “Those towers over yonder? There weren’t no death around them, no rot.” She paused. “Well, not as much as there is now. We’d live in buildings all cosied up next to each other, and the really tall ones like that,” she said, pointing to the dark horizon where we knew the night hid those tall, dead towers, “we’d go to work.”

“What’s work?” the others dutifully replied, although they’d heard nana talk about this before, and expected it all to make as little sense this time as all the other times.

“Well, little ones, we used to spend all day in buildings doing things inside them. Working.” Nana looked down. “Keeping it all going,” she whispered, almost to herself.

“Was it fun?”

“Fun? No, it was work. We had to do it. Or at least we thought we did. Even those that didn’t think we had to had to because there were so many of us that did think we had to. We spent almost all of our time working in those buildings.”

“Because you didn’t have to look for food?”

“That was the beauty of it my darlings. We didn’t need to. Huge buildings full of all types of food. We always preferred the food that hurt us.” She shrugged at this seemingly nonsensical statement before continuing. “We were paid for the work we did. We used what they paid us to get our food. Then just threw away what we didn’t want. Let somebody else deal with it, that’s what we thought. That’s what we were brought up to think.” Nana was on a roll now. The story was familiar, so they settled back and allowed it to wash over them. She pulled a dead, useless black box from her pocket and caressed it. She would often do that when talking about the old days.

“My whole life was in this little box in those days,” she said wistfully, as she had done many times before. “Every single one of these little things that were made damaged the planet. But we all had one. It was worth it. At least I thought it was, back then. We all did. Even when we realised the damage we were doing, we carried right on doing it. The world was a small price to pay for one of these. There were other devices as well. Huge screens where we would watch stories unfold, shiny boxes that would allow us to play games with other people all over the world.”

“I can’t even imagine it, but it sounds wonderful,” the older kids would say.

“It should have been your world as well little ones. You should have inherited it from us. But the truth is, we refused to stop. We didn’t want to. Why leave a wonderful world behind for others, when we could just take it all ourselves? In hindsight, I guess we should’ve been more considerate, but by the time it had become clear to most of us, it was too late. But there were enough of us that knew in our hearts and didn’t care to stop even so. Every year we used the pay from our working to by new boxes, new screens, new things, even though the ones we already had worked fine. The new ones didn’t do a whole lot different, but there were enough little things that change with each new one that we just had to have it. For a device that takes your picture and puts little dog ears on you, we figured the world was a small price to pay.”

“Ah well nana. Maybe someday that world will come back.”

“I hope so little ones. I hope so.”

They all knew it wouldn’t, though. For what did they have left to build it with? Seas choked with discarded plastic? Rivers of poisoned water empty of life? No. Better to focus on what was real, not what was gone. They would survive while they could and adapt if they could.

Evening gave way to night and the sky darkened further, before coming alive again with stars. The night was full of them, with the Milky Way visible as a long strip of dust dissecting the sky, saturated with starlight. They were all mesmerised, like always on a clear night. As they stared to drift off to sleep under the sky, some of them heard nana speak softly to herself, tears in her eyes and clutching her dead phone. “I’m so sorry,” she said, over and over again, until she finally slept.

Not losing the will to try.

That’s what they want you to do. You’re bombarded with so many outrages – lies upon lies upon lies. It’s fatiguing. It gets so tiresome that it can sometimes be hard to find the will to give a shit.

Take the presidency over the water (lower-case ‘p’ on purpose, before you wonder – that piss-filled cheese piece isn’t worthy of being called a President). Mere weeks ago a story broke about how he inherited hundreds of millions from his father that was laundered illegally – it should’ve been enough to finish any democratically-elected world leader, but it’s already been forgotten in the midst of his administration approving the launching of tear gas at migrants seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border. Granted, the facts of the matter here are not simple to ascertain, but following the administration’s previous efforts at separating families at the border and locking children up, even forcing distraught toddlers to appear in court, you’d think they’d want to be mindful of their public image. He’s just rolling from one dreadful abuse of power to the next as a constant diversionary tactic. And somehow, it’s working – Republicans are mildly critical, but won’t move to remove him as long as their agenda is being pushed through and Democrats don’t have enough power to mobilise (although that might now have changed following the recent midterm elections). It’s mind-boggling how a supposedly democratically elected party can represent the views of such a small percentage of a country’s population and yet hold such a large majority of the power. Makes the UK’s first past the post system and elected oligarchy seem positively fair. Although it isn’t, but I’ve mentioned that before. Speaking of our own fair isle, the press are largely doing their damnedest to convince us there is anything remotely positive to the shitshow that is our attempt to leave the EU – so far there is not one damn thing that is set to improve – our quality of life, our standing in the international community, our GDP – everything is going to get worse. But hey, we had a vote before anyone knew anything about the details of the consequences of our national brain fart, so you know, better just get on with it.

A similar tactic has been employed regarding climate change over the years. The future projections are now so dire that most people appear to be plugging fingers in ears and just hoping it will go away or somebody else will solve the problem. There are 100 companies responsible for about 71% of all carbon emissions, so the truth is we could have solved this years ago easily if people just weren’t greedy arseholes. It’s not going to go away. It’s going to get worse. Unless an asteroid comes along in the meantime and wipes us out it’s going to ruin us, and the timescale appears to be a matter of decades, not centuries. Not even the next generation – my generation. The changes that we can’t be arsed to make now will be forced on us, and frankly, I find it hard to think of a reason why we wouldn’t deserve it.

What was I talking about? Oh yes, the way all of this makes it hard to avoid being ground down. It’s ok to feel like that – there are times it’s unavoidable. Sometimes it pays to take a little time to collect yourself, then pick yourself up and do better. Continue to vote, to resist the creeping xenophobia and wider acceptance of it. Arm yourself with fact, not bullshit opinions spouted by others that have zero regard for objective truth. Do your research, don’t rely on one source of news, because it will misinform you. Don’t stop, because that’s what they want you to do.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post:

Ocean Colour Scene: Up on the Downside: “I am a witness to a land of a million fools.”